Smoke from the paddock fire drifted in, and Frank wondered why Ralph burned rubbish only on days when wind was blowing back to the house and yard. He closed the window — and his sweat dropping on the top map distorted mountain contours north-west of Laghouat. Standing away, he sharpened a pencil. There was a hesitant knock, and even before opening the door, he knew who it was, and called for her to come in.
She looked at the maps. ‘Are you still thinking about Algeria?’
‘I must get it out of my system.’
Her dark hair was wet, but she’d tied it lankly behind with a piece of ribbon. ‘It sounds clean and clinical. Isn’t it too important to get rid of so easily?’
‘It turned my hair grey,’ he smiled. And tore up my confidence, he added to himself.
Her brown eyes looked, and he couldn’t meet them. He wanted to spit. They were cow-like eyes — but they burned nevertheless. ‘What was so unusual about your adventure?’
She was questioning him for some deep reason, and he sensed that she hadn’t intended him to see this. There was a warmth inside her that would not let her be casual. He decided to be on his guard. ‘I died, but somehow got my strength back.’
‘But you didn’t die.’
He couldn’t mistake her tone of wishing that he had. ‘There were enough bombs flying, but my name wasn’t on them. It isn’t easy to tell what happened.’
‘Are you writing a book?’
‘It’ll fill one, certainly.’
He lit cigarettes for them both. She was surprised by it, and accepted. He found it hard to meet such knowing eyes, such softly arrogant eyes that finally knew no right or wrong. But he was glad she had no fear of him, that she appraised him and talked on a level of fair equality. He hadn’t often met it in Englishwomen.
She was weighing him up, too, wondering how much cunning there was behind those grey eyes. Cunning was the diplomacy of the powerless — or was it the unintelligent? So was it weariness or sloth? She stood by the door, as tall as he was and looking at him with a friendly smile — which he didn’t trust. Lack of trust made him feel middle-aged, but it occurred to him that for some people to be middle-aged is to be grown up at last.
He was pale, his face was thin, his spirit plain. She told herself there wasn’t so much mental substance inside him that everyone supposed. Maybe Algeria had sucked out his spark of life, but if so he could never have been strong.
‘When you’ve finished what you’re writing I’d like to read it.’
He leaned against the table. ‘I’m doing it in the community’s time, so it’ll belong to all of us. I don’t know what there’ll be of value in it. What’s anyone’s life worth?’
‘Who can say, till they’re dead?’
‘True’ — thinking that his life wouldn’t cost much at the moment.
‘Are you glad you came out of Algeria alive?’
‘When I was there I never thought about it.’
‘That made you indestructible.’
‘Did it?’
‘I wonder what was in Shelley’s mind?’
He reached for an ash-tray they could both use. ‘I never wondered about dying. It’s not part of my nature. But Shelley always assumed he would get out alive. He was confident.’
‘And you weren’t?’
‘I told you, I didn’t think much about it.’
‘And now you’re safe and sound?’
He grimaced, not liking the talk. ‘I suppose you think it would have rounded things off very well if I’d caught a mortar shell and got blown to bits. I didn’t, and for my sins I’m still alive and kicking. Look,’ he said before she could say something else, for it was plain she had plenty on her mind, ‘I’ve been cooped up all day. Let’s walk down the road.’
She nodded, and Ralph saw them go through the yard.
‘We need some wind and sun to dry the fields’ — knowing that one day he would have to think about dying. He noticed her loose breasts, and found them attractive. She was a beautiful woman, and he wanted her to take his arm as they walked. Her nearness told him how pleasant it would be to make love to her, as if it would give back some of the life-blood he needed. He wanted to go to bed with every young woman he saw these days, and wondered how much closer you could get to lack of back-bone than that.
‘I think you must have been a good factory worker,’ she said, when they were passing the village shop. ‘Nobody should stop doing what they are good at.’
‘I can’t return to that.’ He thought that as soon as he found a woman who didn’t want to get him back into a factory he’d marry her.
He was straightforward in his answers, and she pitied him for his honesty. An honest person took too long getting to know themselves. Shelley said as much, and she could see how right he’d been. Maybe it was this doggedness in Dawley that had snared Shelley into Algeria. Such people were dangerous, and it had been Shelley’s bad luck to fall in with him. She was momentarily alarmed at wondering whether she wasn’t being trapped by it. ‘What will you do, then?’
‘Drift for the rest of my life. Once you begin, it’s hard to stop.’ But he didn’t know why he was living in the community, either. Nancy had jacked it in, and so ought he. He should never have left Nottingham in the first place. Surely it was better to stay where you were born, to go from womb to grave in the same town, with one woman, and work that never altered, so that life could be empty, really empty, and go by in a flash, get itself and you over with. He didn’t believe it, but had to say so to convince himself that he didn’t. Birth was a prison and death was a prison, but life needn’t be.
She stepped from him to avoid a pool of water. ‘So going to Algeria was just one phase of your drifiting?’
He wanted to dodge her sharp questions, but he could only give straight answers. He’d never been much of a liar. ‘There were political motives, and the only person who could prove it is Shelley.’
He felt her stiffen, and wished he hadn’t spoken so brutally. Shelley’s death would be raw in her forever.
‘I wonder what he’d say if he were alive?’
‘That you can’t live on memories,’ he said sharply, beginning to see that something was wrong.
‘He’d like being here. It’s a pity the three of us were never together.’
‘And John,’ he said, ‘with Handley and Adam and Richard. Even Ralph and Cuthbert. The eight of us might have had a lot to tell each other!’
Her smile, more than words, put him in his place. ‘You don’t think much of wmen.’
They passed the school and watercress beds, leaving the houses. He led her along a footpath and into the Gould Estate, a route ascending between two dark patches of wood. The air was so heavy she could hardly breathe.
‘Depends who they are’ — glad to get her away from unhealthy recollections about Shelley.
‘The three you left out of your list are all intelligent enough to understand politics. I thought Spanish society was dominated by the male, but it’s as bad in England.’
He had no defence. She had caught him squarely. ‘You’re right. But they never talk to me.’
‘How many of them have you been to bed with?’
A minute went before he was able to answer. ‘Mandy, once. Then I lived with Myra nearly a year.’
‘Don’t you live with her now?’
‘In a way. When there’s something in the air that we can’t stand we fly to each other. Maybe that’s love.’
‘Is that why your wife left?’
‘One of the reasons. It’d be useless going into all that.’