What a noble creature she had proved herself at last, going away with the first mug she falls for. He really couldn’t think too badly of her, though they had been a long time together, and she had taken a lot of his life with her, just as she had left a good bit of hers behind.
He sat for a while, till he heard Rachel and Paul coming in from school. Myra was calling them to order, and he thought that at least there was one good woman in the world. A spiky bomb was lodged in his entrails, pressing on every pipe and vein as if, should it explode, his eyes would be the first to go. Maybe she had taken none of his life with her at all, and that as soon as the boat left England the full weight of what she was doing would cut every minute she had spent with him out of her system forever.
Obviously they had been planning it for weeks, and he had been so blindly engrossed in his painting that he’d not noticed a thing. Yet even if he hadn’t been working they’d have been brewing it up. He couldn’t blame his art for everything, and that was a fact. They’d hated each other at times, but he loved her, just the same, and loved her still when the pain wore off for a moment, and before it came back.
But he had to pay some price for getting rid of her, and if that price was to have his love destroyed then long live love! It was good that life could be lived again and again no matter what happened, providing the love of life remained. He was glad it had stayed long enough with Enid to let her go off for a new start with a youth of eighteen. She deserved happiness after the bleak decades with him. And if he wanted revenge for her going away, he was already assured of it in the sort of person she’d decided to live with. It was an unworthy thought, and he was sorry it came, but it was some comfort at this desolate moment.
She’ll be back, he thought. Maybe she changed her mind at Dover, when the sea breeze hit her, and will come haring home again. Not if I know it. I hope not. I don’t want her. Enid’s not one to suffer making up her mind for nothing, and neither am I. The older you get the more you learn not to waste anything. Waste not, want not, as the terrible old adage goes. She’s on her way. I’m not on mine, though. She’d had a few weeks to get ready for this, so I expect she’s further on the road to recovery and change than I am, but my road will lengthen, as soon as I come out of this black spin, and then there will be no more turning back for me, either.
Life felt strange. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to get up from the armchair and go to the garden, to savour his newly awarded freedom, but he couldn’t, because Enid wouldn’t be there for him to tell his impressions to when he came back afterwards. It was like thinking what an interesting experience dying would be, but then realising that you’d have no one to share it with.
He stood, and put the letter in his pocket. He swayed, as if about to sit down again, then he straightened his back and walked into the kitchen — the hub of the house.
Dawley saw him, upright and pale, but with a smile on his lips, and Handley could tell that Dawley knew when he looked at him. ‘She walked out,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you see ’em?’ — as if Frank might have stopped them.
He poured Handley some tea. ‘They drove by me and Myra when we went for a walk up the hill. We realised what was happening, but there was nothing we could do.’
‘Who walked out, Dad?’ Rachel asked.
‘Your mother.’
‘Shall you tell her off?’
‘She won’t be coming back.’
‘Dean as well?’ Paul asked.
‘Him too,’ Handley spat. ‘Lace that tea with whisky.’
Frank opened the bottle. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ Handley said. ‘It’s all God’s work. That is to say, mine. We ask for whatever happens to us. But I’m still sound in wind, limb and brainbox.’
‘That’s fine, then.’ Handley had been dealt a near mortal blow, but Dawley knew he would survive — as one had to.
‘I’ll sit for an hour or two in John’s room,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a bit of comfort there. If you see Mandy or Adam, tell ’em their mother’s gone on a trip with Dean — to Turkey. They’ll understand. I’ll explain it to ’em though, if they don’t come in till later.’
He walked upstairs, slowly, one step at a time, not so much out of shock and grief, but so that he wouldn’t upset his teacup brimming with whisky. He stood for a moment by John’s door, then opened it and went in.
The first subliminal flash showed him the old room, the altar and shrine and relics of his saintly brother’s life, among which he’d wanted to efface himself and take comfort in recalling that more cosmically devastated love. He needed to sooth his own galling hurt that to his shame and chagrin was taking him over more and more. But he stepped back almost to the landing.
The room was spare and neutral, and had nothing to do with John or any memories at all. Books, maps, radio gear had gone. Only a small photograph of John had been left on the shelf. It was as if the room had been scooped out by lightning. The neatness and order had created a prison — or a hospital.
He wondered who was trying to drive him mad, but laughed at the idea and drank half his whisky-tea. He took out a long thin cigar and lit it, then sat in the wooden armchair. He was proof against madness. One shock destroys another. This desecration of John’s life could only be the combined work of Cuthbert and Ralph. It was a cauterisation of memory.
He sat with hands over his head, as if shells were exploding all around him. They were bursting thick and fast. He’d have to get away from this house and go to Lincolnshire, back to the ancient battlefield now grown over and green where he had spent most of his life with Enid and their children. He didn’t really want to be close to her any more, but he needed some connection with reality — which was always the past.
He regretted John’s revolver being dropped into Gould’s Lake. If it had still been in the cigar box he might have used it, and followed his brother’s footsteps along the only road that honour and a cure for pain demanded. But he pissed on honour: he didn’t need honour to show how brave he was. Such pain as this could be over-lived, though he didn’t think so at the moment.
Yet it was a pity the revolver had gone, he thought, lifting his head, because no matter what his arguments he might still have killed himself. There was something to thank Maricarmen for, after all.
He finished the whisky in a few more minutes, and the stripped room began to feel spiritually healing. In the old version he might have given himself up to the agony of his loss, but in this strange chamber he was not so sure that there would have been any good in that, because there were certain people on earth who had lost far more.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
With such an inheritance Ralph was at last able to show what kind of man he could be. As the owner of five hundred acres of the richest agricultural loam in Lincolnshire he soon became reconciled with his parents. He took their advice on how to buy and what to plant, and where to invest the lump sum he had acquired — though he had this checked by a Boston lawyer before finally acting.
He was rich enough, albeit within the dreams of avarice, to satisfy himself in all he modestly wanted. His house, Skeat Court, was bigger than he’d imagined in his fantasies while locked in the Handley Community, but it was comfortable enough not to give him any more ambitions, which meant that his madness was cured.
At thirty he was the father of three sons, and it was having children, as much as his good fortune, which helped to draw him closer to the elder Spilsbys. Mandy loathed them as much as ever, and did not hide it — at first. But Mabel Spilsby, her mother-in-law, grew gentler as the children came, and Mandy put up with her because whenever the mood took her she could dump the kids there and take off in Ralph’s large Royce to the motorway, in an effort to chase out the smouldering discontent till such time as she would know what to do with it.