‘I suppose that’s why Nancy left, then, because you wouldn’t go into anything.’
‘I think you may be right,’ he said.
She was curious and persistent. ‘Have you ever been to bed with Enid?’
He didn’t like her asking questions about his sex life as if she were a mate of his in the army. ‘No,’ he told her.
‘Isn’t she attractive enough for you?’
‘She’s gorgeous, really, but she doesn’t like me. Maybe she thinks I want to disrupt things. In any case, Handley wouldn’t want it.’
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘You mean she’s his property?’
‘She belongs to herself.’ They were silent for a few paces. ‘I wouldn’t make love to my friend’s wife.’
‘Don’t you believe in free love?’
They turned on to a sunken lane, and a sheep with full udders wanted to get out of their way by crossing the ruts, but they were so deep it got trapped in the mud. Dawley went to it slowly, its blue and vacant eyes nailed helplessly as his grip tightened. She watched him. He straightened his legs and lifted it with much more strength than she thought he had, walking through the mud and setting it down in the open field. It stood, then walked along the hedge, following them for a while. ‘I don’t believe in free love,’ he said, still out of breath.
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve never seen anybody else who does. Let’s talk politics — it’s more interesting.’
‘This is politics.’
‘Do you believe in free love?’
‘Yes. But I’m careful about it. I don’t like to hurt people.’
They stopped by a stile, and he touched her arm. ‘It’s going to rain again. We’d better turn back.’ He couldn’t take his hand away, and gripped her flesh, hoping she would come towards him.
‘How did you persuade Shelley to go into Algeria?’
He held her close, but not to kiss, not feeling love, but glad of her ample warmth spreading over his body. He whispered, afraid of the words: ‘I pointed a gun at him.’
She drew away. ‘Entonces?’
‘He accepted it. As fate, I suppose. I didn’t frighten him with the gun. He wasn’t afraid of me. He just used me and the gun in my hand to make up his mind for him.’
‘You liar.’
‘I don’t lie. The fact that he died is eating me away. I’m guilty of his death. I’m dying because of it. I loved Shelley. I’ve told nobody. You’re the one I shouldn’t tell because you’re in love with him still.’
She walked back across the field, and he followed. ‘I made him stop playing politics and act,’ he said. ‘But I was the one who was acting. I’d have given my life to save him, but I couldn’t. It’s never like that. I was wounded later, but I didn’t die. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.’
‘He never played politics,’ she said. ‘He did a lot in Spain, at great risk.’
Tears were on his cheeks like acid. His lungs were contused and burning. ‘It’s a nightmare with me. It goes on day and night. It gets worse.’ He wanted to crawl into the middle of a wood, and rot painlessly to death.
She walked quickly. ‘Stop it.’
‘I hadn’t started to live until that happened,’ he shouted. He caught her up and pulled her close. ‘I don’t expect to be forgiven.’
‘You won’t be.’ She regretted her words in case her hatred gave him comfort, only wishing she had a gun to kill him now.
‘We talked about you. You might have done the same thing. He told me you both believed in revolution to the point of being willing to go to war for it.’
She was silent.
Shelley had only hinted as much, but he felt the need to defend himself, not being utterly craven with guilt. They walked without talking, and when he took her warm hand she did not draw it away. But she could see no hope for him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The hedgehog made its way from the paddock, through the garden, and up to the back door, where Ralph found it two days later lying in the saucer from which it had eaten the custard. He had been looking for it.
Brought up on a farm, he didn’t know whether this was the reason for the hedgehog coming back to him. His own slow nature burned with sympathy where such a creature was concerned. He was in touch with animals. As for people, that was another matter.
After his mother, Mandy was his longest involvement. He loved her but, being shy and not talkative, didn’t know whether she loved him. Sometimes he was sure she did. At other times he was certain that she did not. Real love meant someone who loved him all the time, no matter what he did or in what state he was, giving continual ease, security, and total independence. He knew it was a ridiculous ideal, yet couldn’t help hankering after it. But Mandy was volatile, and he was moody, she wanting an unattainable sort of real manly love, and he craving something which he had never got from his mother.
Now and again their expectations met half-way, and they could love for a few hours, or even a day or two, until both suddenly realised that life was bitter because they were only half-way towards what they wanted. And then the antagonism of disappointment tore them apart — which was happening at the moment.
He picked up the hedgehog, well defended against the world by its own prickly nature. Its face was not entirely covered by its attitude of self-defence. He noticed a small yellow and white area behind its ears, and realised with pity and horror that they were maggot-cases laid there by blowflies while it had been unprotected in the paddock. They had burrowed in, and put their eggs there, all their consciousness in the grip of nature.
With his fingernail he scraped a few of the cases away. There was a box in the garage, in which the children had once kept a white mouse. But the mouse had escaped, so he bent down at the edge of the paddock to fill the empty box with choice dock-leaves and juicy grass. He put the inert hedgehog inside, then set it in a cool far-corner of the garage.
He stood, unable to move for some minutes because he had a terrible feeling that the hedgehog was going to die, and that nothing he could do would save it. The savagery of the world came down with full black force as he put his hand among the grass to reassure the innocent creature that it was not alone.
It seemed obvious now that he should have brought the hedgehog into the protection of the garage when he had found it two days ago. It had occurred to him instinctively to do so at the time, but then the voice of reason told him that such animals die in captivity, and he had obeyed this stupid precept rather than his own common sense. In that vital time the blowflies had laid their eggs.
This is the animal world, he mused, asking himself if the human part was any better. In many ways it was not, and the great question as to why this was so hammered in his head. He got bits of cold bacon from the kitchen and put them in the hedgehog’s box, stooping to see if it would eat. The feet scratched as it unwound itself, and its small nose came out. It ruminatively sucked at a piece of fat, then went back into its domain, either sensing that he was there, or giving in to the more immediate deathly presence inside itself that it couldn’t now shake off. But Ralph took it out bodily and held it in his hand, stroked its sharp bristles till it unwound and stood on his palm with its webbed feet. Then he put it back.
All evening he was silent, saying nothing at dinner, not even listening to the transistor radio carried in his pocket. He was thinking of the hedgehog and its fate, as if it were some creature or even person with a soul whom he had known since birth and been in love with, or as if it were a child of his own, and perhaps in some way as if the animal were himself.
Next day he picked up the hedgehog and saw that the maggots had hatched. When he stroked it, and it opened for him, he felt its belly gone cold and damp. He got a saucer of water and disinfectant, and with a piece of cotton-wool tried to swab the maggots away in a last effort to save its life.