‘It’ll be interesting to see if they really believe in equality,’ Maricarmen said. ‘But don’t say anything till the day of the meeting, then perhaps it’ll come as such a shock that no one will oppose it!’
Myra was dubious. ‘You’ve had experience at this sort of thing.’
‘Of what?’ Enid came in from the hall with a bowl of cooking apples, which she set on the table and began to peel for sauce. Myra went through the plan, elaborating each stage with Maricarmen, who began to help Enid.
‘I’ve been in it so long,’ Enid said, ‘that I’d die if I ever got out of it. But I’m only forty-odd so I can always start a new life. It’ll certainly be new for Albert if we pull it off.’
‘Pull what off?’ Handley demanded, coming in from the garden, trousers and jacket smeared with paint. Even his face was pocked with colour.
Enid stood to pour his tea. ‘Just one of those little domestic issues that bore you to death.’
He sat down, and held up both hands which were also caked with paint: ‘I’ve always been a dirty worker. It’s just that I forget myself. Splash, splash, splash.’ He stretched his legs towards the Aga. ‘Any biscuits? I get a ravenous appetite, being the breadwinner.’
‘You look as if you paint houses, not pictures,’ Myra said, mixing eggs for a custard.
‘Thank God it is pictures.’ Handley lifted his cup for more tea. ‘We’d be on bread and jam if it was houses.’
‘Some people are happy with bread and jam,’ said Enid.
Handley sneered — but good-naturedly. ‘They stick together longer.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Too many flies on ’em.’ He laughed into his empty teacup. ‘I get thirsty.’
She filled it. ‘Choke.’
‘How are you enjoying life in the commune?’ he asked Maricarmen.
She put out her finger, and Mark gripped it. ‘It’s restful, but I’d better start work sometime.’
‘If you want to make yourself useful, it’s up to you.’
Enid put the finished apples into a cauldron and set them on the stove. ‘She is already.’
He reached for the cake platter. ‘That’s fair, then.’
‘We all work in this house,’ said Mandy, just coming in. ‘Except you. You just splash paint about.’
‘How’s my lovely nubile daughter?’ he asked, always able to forgive her taunts — unless they were a prelude to wanting money.
‘Your Dad’s an artist,’ Enid said sharply, whose ire rose whenever Handley went soft over his daughter. ‘So have a bit of bloody respect for his work.’
Mandy had no fear of her father, but went into sullen silence at any outburst from her mother — who was never above a stinging slap across the face.
‘I’m full of tea,’ Handley said, ‘and sweet things to eat, and my family is in its usual state of mutual antagonism, so I think I’ll get to my solitary studio and work till I drop. Goodbye all. Don’t heave on your plots and ploys while I’m away.’
There was no response when he went out.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ralph sheltered in the garage till the rain stopped, then went back to the paddock with another huge plastic bag of waste for burning. He disliked the flames consuming what he tipped from these sacks. What fire took, it never gave back. And so much squandering frightened him. He hated it, almost as if it were a direct threat to himself. He had two wishes in life — one was to be fabulously rich, and the other was to exist on as little as possible, using the barest amount of the world’s goods to keep himself breathing. In that way he would be secure. He smiled at the living mass of contradictions that seethed in him — so much useful rubbish that he would not throw away and burn.
Out of the bag came unused drawing paper, efficient boxes, half-finished exercise books, plastic bottles and containers, decorative tins, useful bits of pencil, broken gadgets and toys of all sorts that ought to be fixed — though there was no one to spend time and talent repairing them, and he wasn’t able to do it himself. It was indeed an extravagant house, he thought, tipping a further bag into the embers.
He strolled across the paddock. The air was warm and heavy — sweetened milk to him after the utilitarian rain. Brambles proliferated, and doubled the thickness of the hedge. Across the angle of the far corner was a slit-trench ten feet long and several deep, a parapet thrown in front from excavated soil. Dawley had dug it for the children to play Viet Cong in, and Ralph recalled him a couple of months ago in Wellingtons, wielding spade and pick, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. It was a neat trench, revetted with boards, a few inches of muddy water in the bottom from recent rains adding to its realism. The children had enjoyed it at first, firing two-two air-rifles at a line of target tins stuck in the ground thirty yards away, but recently they had lost interest.
Coming back at another angle towards the still burning fire Ralph saw a small grey-brown object lying between clumps of grass. It was a baby hedgehog, and he picked it up. A few feet away were pieces of prickle-covered skin, the remains of the mother.
His mind only acted with speed when a sentimental issue was involved. The catastrophe to the hedgehog family unrolled with heart-rending immediacy. A few nights ago, with Mandy curled beside him in their narrow bed, and the rest of the house in equally dark pits of sleep, he was roused by a high-pitched shriek, as if a fox had caught hold of a cat and were tearing it to shreds. The noise went on and on, and the sweat of terror poured from his arms and legs, soaking his pyjamas. He wanted to go down for the shotgun, but sleepiness and inanition prevented him.
Holding the small frightened hedgehog in the palm of his hand, he knew now what the noise had been. A fox had got into the garden, found the hedgehogs and prised them open. The screams came from the mother who tried to protect her young, before she also was killed and eaten. He knew that hedgehogs, even when rolled into a ball, were not well defended against foxes. The small one in his hand had escaped the massacre.
He hated the savagery of foxes. There were tears in his eyes when, putting the hedgehog back on to the ground, it made its way cautiously towards the piece of skin that had belonged to the mother. Hedgehogs were gentle and harmless, the gardener’s friend who ate noxious insects and slugs. It was too young even to know how to roll itself into a ball. He walked back towards the fire, cursing fox-like animals who preyed on helpless and innocent creatures. The thought of such cruelty in the world put him into agonising despair. Then he was cheered by the fact that one hedgehog of the family had survived.
He couldn’t leave it alone, and after raking the fire went back to where he had put it down. A huge bottle-green blowfly had settled on to its ear, and two more flew away when he picked it up. Its spikes pricked his hand, and it made as round a ball as possible, but the cool dark skin of its feet and head were nevertheless visible.
By the kitchen door he set down a saucer of custard. To his delight it unfolded and pulled itself to the rim with its short legs. It began to suck, and enjoyed it so much that it climbed completely into the saucer, sat in the custard, and lapped till it was gone.
Ralph told himself that hedgehogs died in captivity — if for example he made a nest in the garage — so he took it back to the middle of the paddock where he had found it. It burrowed into a clump of grass, as if glad to be home.
On his way to the garden he saw Maricarmen and Dawley walk through the gate and on to the road. It was difficult to know who was talking, but he assumed it to be Dawley because Maricarmen’s head was lowered, as if intent on listening. Perhaps she had asked a question that needed a lot of explaining.