Snowstop (28 page)

‘Let's get moving, then,' Lance said. ‘My nuts are knocking from the cold, even though they're twenty-two-carat gold.'

They tumbled into the snow like black polar bears – if there were such things in the Far North – and went back to the porch, while Keith stayed to make certain that the van doors weren't entirely closed so that they wouldn't lose the same sweat getting in again.

Wayne kicked and Lance thumped, but the door to the hotel held, their efforts silent in the high pitch of the wind. Keith pushed at solid wood. If every little operation took so long they would still be arsing about by the deadline of eight o'clock. The Yale latch had been on when they came out, and had clicked behind. What they needed was luck, and you put yourself in the way of that only when you worked your hardest. They were willing and capable, so could afford to be hopeful, though all the force they could muster wouldn't move the door.

Aaron sheltered the last inch of his drink, as if a man out of the desert would come in and slurp it up. He wanted to make it last. The day was dire, he had known from the start that it would be, because every time he saw a word on a signpost or shop door he had tried to say it backwards. He often did this for amusement and to cultivate his dexterity with anagrams, but when the habit persisted, and he was unable to stop, it meant that something irritating or just plain unlucky would occur before the day was out.

Duffle coat, scarves and gloves were heaped on the carpet while he waited for Keith and his myrmidons to come in cursing and exhausted, and tell him to have a go. He did not want to, saw no reason to, they were trapped and there was nothing to be done. The besetting sin of the English was idleness. At least Robert Burton had said so, and Burton should have known, writing but one book in his life. Maybe that makes me more English than most, he thought, because the others are labouring hard enough.

Beryl worked harder, never still, even now she would be sitting at home in the room with the old-fashioned miner's grate which shone because she black-leaded it every day to make it look
traditional.
At the table she would check the titles and prices for the next catalogue, or make sure the house accounts were in order. She took note of every penny spent, and of every pound that came in, a rigid framework he liked. Into such a dream world of work, love and lodging he would introduce Enid.

He drank the last of his whisky. He thought it might come back up, but his stomach, like an old friend, let it rest. It was all lies, a pitiable deception of a lost and honest girl, because the offered job did not exist. The police were onto him for forgery. Even without that upheaval Beryl would have said we can't afford her, the spare room is full of books, she will be more trouble than she's worth. And he would have to tell her she was right, for to lose Beryl (and she was always threatening to go) would make life untenable. Any rift between them, and she would die, she said at the same time. So might he, the dread of the hostile world on him, because she had become his and his alone.

Every month she stood for hours at the parlour window looking at the moon, weeping at the emptiness of her life, always after days of sullen complaint against everyone she had known: their parents, friends, him – most, he thought, not justified. Or she would rave about slights that had happened so long ago they did not deserve to be remembered, brewing herself into a pitiable crisis of nerves, raving as if a wolf were loose in her, possessed by a longing for the side of the moon she would never see. No inducement, persuasion, or show of affection could break that barrier, every fit as painful to him as if he were witnessing it for the first time.

The end was always the same. Exhausted by unexplainable suffering, she allowed him to lead her to his bed, which he did with intense feelings of shame and joy. In the morning her eyes were clear, brow smooth, heart calm, levity for herself and subtle commiseration for him, and a wistful kind of gratitude that he had helped the storm go by. For him one evil cancelled out another, but what would happen if he took Enid home?

The fire glowed between two half-burnt logs that would never sufficiently meet to give a warming flame, kept that way by Fred's attack of manic parsimony. Alfred put his father close, laid his cashmere coat across to keep the blood from coagulating unto death. The old man's teeth clattered like Ezekiel's bones, stopped and then began again, eyes intently shut as if to let him listen more appreciatively to the rhythm. Alfred eased up his trousers, and the flesh above the socks was of a cold that would keep rising, an ice age in reverse going towards the warmer Pole.

Jenny knew there wasn't, but had to ask. ‘Is there anything I can do?'

‘He needs a warm hospital,' and the sight of a lovely-looking nurse or two.

She wondered at the smile when his cheeks were wet with tears. ‘So might the rest of us, before the night's over.'

Percy's eyes took time to settle and focus. ‘I should be out there, giving the lads a hand.'

He'll get at me with his last breath, Alfred thought. He means why aren't I with them. They don't need me yet, he could say, but it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

Percy called out in self-reproach: ‘But I'm not up to it. I've got these awful aches in my shoulders.'

‘Try to rest,' Alfred said. ‘You'll be fit to travel in the morning then.'

Aaron thought they should get him upstairs to bed, but Alfred waved him away: ‘I want to keep an eye on him down here.'

Enid was putting the various drinks together, like to like – beer, whisky, wine, gin and sherry. ‘We always do this when we clear up. Fred tips the spirits back in the bottles, but he lets me have the other dregs before I go home. The beer and wine makes me sleep better. Only I'm not going home tonight.'

‘I'll never get to the palm trees,' Percy sighed. ‘I know it's a geriatrics' home you're taking me to, and who wants to go to one of them? I twigged we wasn't going to our Brian's. I'm not so bloody daft.'

A ship had come, to pull Alfred away from the island where he had been marooned with his father since birth. Or that's what it seemed. The old man was dying, and he wanted him to, but at the same time he hoped he would go on living. ‘I was only trying to do what was best.'

The rattle in the throat declined to a cynical laugh. ‘Oh, I know you was. I was a pest at times, wasn't I? Everybody is, though. You'll be a pest one day. Maybe even a bigger one than I've ever been. If you aren't a pest to somebody you aren't alive. And everybody's alive, so everybody's a pest, aren't they?'

His hands seemed to be searching around the inside of a refrigerator for his favourite leftovers. ‘Sing “Greensleeves” to me, Alfred.'

‘I can't sing, you know that.'

‘I allus loved it. It brings everything back. Your mother loved it, as well. There's a lot to say goodbye to. Life's a bit of a pushbike at times, ain't it?'

Why don't you die, you old bastard? – which Alfred didn't entirely mean, Percy's words (and his) a row of taps releasing more tears. ‘Don't leave me, Dad.'

‘I'm not going, you silly sod. What makes you think so? It's just that I don't know where I'm coming to.'

No one was going anywhere on a night like this, Eileen thought, the gale thumping and bumping at every brick. She should have stayed in Buxton. Even a doss in a shop doorway would have been cushier, though the police might have prodded her on a few times.

Fred came in with a heap of blankets, the captain of the ship once more, or The Flying Bloody Dutchman, though even that was something to smile about. ‘It's too late,' Aaron said, ‘though you might as well cover him. But it was more than blankets he needed, so don't feel bad about it.'

‘Oh, I don't. We expect casualties on a trip like this. Even though I run a tight ship you can't stop the odd accident. We crossed the North Atlantic in such weather once, and lost three chaps. One died of an ulcer, one had a brain haemorrhage, and the third disappeared over the side from no apparent cause. It was the worst crossing I'd ever been on. I left the ship as soon as I could. I trod on a bloody great rat as I went down the gangplank.'

‘Did you?' Eileen said.

‘You should have heard it squeal. I had a heavy kitbag on my shoulder, and I weighed more than I do now.'

Eileen sniffed. ‘Poor bloody rat.'

‘I didn't think so. I hated 'em.'

Alfred took the other end of the blanket, to spread it over the body. Talking right to the end: I might have known. If he could talk, and get on at you at the same time, he was alive, nobody more so. I thought he would never let go of the rail, but he's gone now, back to his tadpoles in jamjars as a kid, and the way sense was knocked into him at school, then to working and college at the same time on the engineering side, living for next to nothing a week and being happy on it because fags were a shilling for twenty and beer a tanner a pint, when courting was courting because you had to be careful of VD and putting a girl in the club – back to hiking and the bike, hard work and cold water, football on the wasteground, the pictures once a week if you were lucky and the music hall when you were flush – back to the happy days you couldn't get back to till you died, and then you were lucky to find anything at all, though he was sure his domineering old bugger of a father would get all he wanted, even on the other side.

Daniel looked around the room as if he hadn't seen it before – limitless in the gloom, people slumped in their chairs as if in the waiting room to Hell and hoping for the doors to open soon. He could do as he liked now that he was doomed with the rest of them, wouldn't bother to tell that the van battery was all but flat, only good if you kept the wheels turning, having barely got it going again when it stalled at traffic lights outside Warrington. He stood, a demented-looking figure with a bloodsoaked towel around his head. ‘They won't come back.'

‘You look like a real fucking terrorist now,' Eileen said. ‘One of them Arabs. But if you don't stop saying things like that, I'll go in the kitchen for a carving knife and finish you off. I won't fuck around with a bit of old bottle.'

Garry raised a fist, as if to indicate that no one would deserve it more. His tongue wouldn't do as it was told. He slept and woke. Words spoken in the room came through to his dreams, and when no one took his advice on what they should do with Daniel he assumed they couldn't hear, being too much in the shadow. In more light they might have heard him better, done something. When Jenny came to hold his hand, a fragment of warmth went momentarily back into his body.

Fred bent from the waist to look. ‘This young rating could do with a few blankets' – spreading over him what remained. ‘You'll sleep like a top under these.'

Aaron took the flashlight. ‘Let's fetch more. They're going to be needed.'

‘What for?' Enid wanted to be left alone. Heat was supposed to rise, when there was any, but upstairs it was like entering headfirst into a layer of ice. ‘I'm perishing,' she said at the landing.

He kissed her lips, hoping to warm her. ‘Go back, then. I'll do it on my own.'

‘No, I want to help you. It's like a morgue down there. I'll only go back if you come with me.'

‘We'll find some blankets first.' His light picked out the exit sign, which he read as TIXE, then focused on wetness spreading from the corner of the ceiling, the wind sounding as if packs of dogs were assembling to go on a journey.

She gripped his hand, as if the building had been abandoned years ago. ‘The place ain't the same any more.'

‘It will be, when the lights come on again, and the heat gets going.' He led her into the spare room where the ladder rested against the open trap door. Air streamed from the attic as cold and strong as a river in the tundra. He put a foot on the ladder. ‘I'm going up to have a look.'

‘Don't leave me in the dark.'

He held her in his arms till she stopped shivering. ‘Only for a moment. I promise.'

Sally followed him to the window. The same dull whiteness bulged at the panes. ‘What are you thinking about?'

He saw only her eyes, nothing of the rest of her face, so turned to the snow, fatally drawn. ‘We must get out.'

She wanted to unravel the towel that made him look as unreasonable as his words. A pocket had been torn from his jacket, his trousers were ripped at the knee. His power, such as remained, was in thinking they had a future. She touched his arm. ‘Where?'

‘Away,' he said, ‘anywhere,' as casually as if suggesting a walk through summer glades, with no more danger than a cooling shower of rain. ‘We'll be all right, the two of us. One alone might not be, but two can find a wall, and build a shelter. We'll make a palace in the snow.'

She was cold against him, even inside, ice coming through and freezing the sentiment. The sound of a grown man sobbing by the fire told her there was no more hope. She wanted to shout for him to be his age, pull himself together, it wasn't natural for a man in his fifties to cry because his father had died. No man should cry. Her father never had, and she wouldn't when
he
died. Nor when her mother passed away, come to that. ‘We have to stay here. They'll get rid of the van, and then everyone will be all right.'

A palace of snow would make them impermeable to cold, halls of ice for eternal lovers to shelter in. They belonged together. ‘I believed you when you said you loved me.'

She stood with folded arms, warmed by her coat. Yes, it had been love, nothing more so, but it would be suicide to go into the blizzard, though whether she would or not if the time came, and she had no way of stopping him, she couldn't say.

No guidance expected, she looked around. Jenny knelt, head on the blankets covering the injured leg of that horrid biker. Parsons' whining snore dominated, until Eileen poked him, at which he stared as if she were mad, then turned into another position and slept more quietly. The old man was dead, his son mourning him like a child who had lost his mother. Enid and Aaron were prowling around upstairs, though God knows what they expected to discover. Keith and his pair of yobbos were in the snow at the back trying to move the van, and Fred was in the kitchen assembling food for their comfort. He would only think there would be less to feed if she ran away with Daniel.