Enid grew angrier the more Richard expatiated on the political significance of poaching. ‘Sit down,’ she said, when he came to the end. To break in before would be to tread on a holy theme of the Handley way of life. ‘I only believe in poaching if we’re too poor to buy food, and at the moment we’re not.’
‘That’s contrary to our policy of living off the land,’ Handley said quietly.
‘If I want any rabbits I can buy them at the Co-op,’ she said. ‘I never ask you to steal them for me.’
‘Death to all shopkeepers!’ cried Adam.
‘I don’t see why we should be driven out of this village,’ she said.
‘Let them try,’ said Richard. ‘We can hold them off for weeks.’
Only Handley and Enid were on their feet, the normal end of any upheaval, it seemed, in whatever house they occupied. Frank did not see how their community could exist for long under this internal tension. But he grew to see that because of such upheavals — which were, after all, merely the Handley method of debate and consensus — it could go on for ever. And if he could not stand it he could always remove himself to a land where the bonfires of insurrection had burst into reddening flame, to lead or follow against the dark forces of whoever governed.
‘I suppose,’ Handley said to Enid, ‘that you’re getting latched on to your usual neurotic dream of wanting an ideal place to live and die in, where you are on totally unrealistic terms with the people, and are unselfconsciously hobnobbing with the local gentry? I don’t have to ask where Mandy gets her death-wish from. All these ideas ought to be chased from the brains of such grown-up people. You can’t live at peace with the world. Not this world which won’t ever let you live at peace with it except on its own impossible strait-jacket terms. We’re not that sort of gang, family, tribe, or whatever you like to call us. The world hasn’t got to be only lived in, because even if you keep yourself at a distance it will corrupt and destroy you by forcing you to keep your distance, but it has to be continually attacked, raided, sabotaged, marauded, plundered, insulted and spat on. It’s not the sort of place you can walk around with your head cocked back in bollocky-eyed disdain and splendour, because even the birds of the air which they’ve trained and which had been trained without meaning to be, will go peep-peep and shit in your eye. You only make your mark and set up your score by giving no quarter either within or beyond the law. The village may not be ours by day, but it will be by night. We can’t at the moment melt in among the people like fish in water but after a few years the situation may be different.’
While he was speaking the lounge door opened, and a tall burly young man wearing a cap and overcoat stood a little inside the room. Handley noticed him but went on talking. The man slowly opened his overcoat at the food-heat, and took off his cap. He wore a black shirt, and the white reversed dog-collar of a priest. His face was sensitive though overfed. He had a long narrow nose and thin expressive lips, and curly fair hair that fell over his forehead and the depth of his brow. He could have been any age between twenty and forty. Listening at first with respect and attention in what may have been a habitual expression, his lips slowly took on the shape of contempt that finally was exactly duplicated on Handley’s face when he stopped talking and looked at him for a moment. That, thought Frank, must be Cuthbert.
Handley was determined to finish: ‘But we can forgive Enid balking at some of our activities, because she is basically a noble and gentle soul who can’t throw out her past because she’s still living in it. And as for Ralph, he should be ashamed of himself. His family are rich Lincolnshire loam-farmers who plundered their tenants and workers for decades, and when he shows a bit of individuality his pain-in-the-heart of a mother pitches him out without even a strip of field to use as a necktie or arserag. And as for Mandy she’s just got the same belly-yearnings as her mother, combined with my pitch of obstinacy, which she’s perverted to her own sybaritic use.’
‘You’re talking like a madman,’ Enid cried. ‘In a few years you’ll be in jail and we’ll be destitute. You’ll soon be as crazy and epileptic as John whom we sheltered and kept alive for so many years unless you get back to your painting and stop all this nonsense.’
Cuthbert broke in, shouting through his smile: ‘Well, well, I can see the old matrimonial death-grapple is still going on. Call it a community, call it what you like, but I can smell it a mile off for what it is. I come home and what do I find? The same old gluttons at the pig-trough. What you want around here is a bit of plain speaking!’
Enid’s back had been to the door, and only now did she notice his presence. She turned and smiled at her favourite and eldest son. ‘We didn’t expect you till next week, Cuthbert. How are you, my love?’
He ignored her. ‘Aren’t you going to welcome your firstborn, Dad?’
‘Sit down and get some stew,’ Handley said, grim-lipped. ‘Maybe it’ll stop your mouth up.’ Cuthbert was the perfect blend of his parents, in that you could not distinctly see either of them mirrored in his features, though at the same time you knew he could be none other than their son. Enid set him a place, and Maria brought a plate of stew. Richard, not too willingly, poured his wine. Frank sensed that the equilibrium of the house had been permanently displaced by his arrival.
‘I’ve got news for you, Dad,’ Cuthbert said between food. ‘I’ve been thinking that with everybody’s permission I’d like to stay here, because I’ve nowhere to go since leaving college. I hope nobody minds.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Handley said, ‘as long as you fit in like the rest of us. There’s plenty of work to do. We all earn our own keep.’
‘Give him time,’ Enid said indignantly. ‘He’s only just stepped through that door.’
‘And he can step right out of it again if there’s any trouble or disruption. He had the best bloody prospects in the world, of becoming an ordained priest in the Church-of-rotten-England, and he spoils it all through lust and greed, and I suspect a bit of simony and black mass thrown in. He could have infiltrated right into the middle of the enemy’s juiciest pie. What a chance gone to dust and ashes. It gives me the knee-ache to think of it.’
Cuthbert stepped up by his chair, kicked a couple of bottles aside and blew a candle out with the flap of his trousers. He stood full height on the table, his head bending slightly under the smooth chalk of the ceiling. With a deliberate gesture he ripped off his priestly white collar, so that only his black shirt remained. ‘In coming here I chose freedom. Do you hear, father? FREEDOM! I’ve had enough of being your germ in a sealed train steering for the heart of the imperial poxetten church. I resented being used by you, and used by them, which is what it amounted to. By intermittent intelligence, continual fawning, and eternal hypocrisy I nearly got stuffed into that pit of frayed hymnbooks and incensed cassockrags that you intended me for. But I’d rather risk my life than my spirit. I was beginning to like it, and if I’d stayed another month I’d have been so genuinely deep in it that you’d have lost all control of me. That’s what I call a crisis of conscience: getting out before you are too far in. I can’t lead a double life. I had to come back here so as to stay loyal to you and the family. It’s all right for you, Dad. You think it’s easy to live six lives at once, because you’re an artist, but me, I’m not an artist. I’m honest, and can’t stand having my guts corroded by playing false-face to something as corrupt as the Church of England. Oh no, not me. I can be treacherous to a cause which has been genuinely set up to help a large section of hapless mankind get out of its awful sufferings, and all that stuff. Find me a good cause to rip open like a rat from the inside, that I can believe in from the bottom of my heart, and I’ll enjoy no finer work destroying it. Then I’ll show you what skill and patience I’ve got in me, so that even you would pat me on the back — father.’