Wayne navvied the spade, gripping the handle, pushing well under, drawing each swaying load towards him and upping it clear. Snow is my worst enemy. Everybody loves me except the snow. They think I’m handsome but the snow shouts that I’m ugly. Snow doesn’t love me because I hate it. The only thing to do with snow is make a fire and chuck it on till it melts away, then it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t love me.
Because I’ll never get to the end I’ve got to go on, but you can’t tell in the dark how much is left. If I make a neat roadway at the same time I might push through to sunshine and green pastures. Sweat saves blood, but what I’ve leaked already matches the blood in my body three times over, enough to sink the bloody Bismarck, though I’ve got to go on till I drop, which I will in not too soon if I don’t have a break, I’m even ready for a basin of Fred’s stew, except he’s put that old man’s corpse in, thinking waste not want not, looking at it with that glassy left eye as he stirs it up: as long as I don’t break my filling on a button.
They leaned on their spades – cripples and supplicants, wounded soldiers, phantom gravediggers – Keith fixing them in the headlights. Close to dead beat, the last of their stamina was called for. Snow swirled a film over the macadam so far uncovered and, both standing to guide him in, he drove forward, and as he slowly passed they presented arms with their spades like two busby-headed swaddies on guard in Whitehall. In their exhausted state they were laughing, and so was he, out of gratitude at them making fun of the common plight for his and their enjoyment, in defiance of the blizzard, and mocking whatever the explosives in the van could do.
Such an assessment might be sentimental, a summary of his liking for traditional values and the comfort they gave, the refuge they provided whether real or not, yet he didn’t care, because in the charade their innermost spirits were sending a signal they knew was acceptable. Nobody could see, the noise overshouted it, and when he laughed again so did they, as if to say: What are we doing here, and what the hell’s going on?
They were digging again, if more slowly, knowing that before they could draw the van back till it was head to head with his car they must clear a track behind. He prayed no spade would make a spark, strike the van, metal against metal. Perhaps in their weariness they would curb their new enthusiasm, but he tapped Lance for the spade, who refused and cut another slab from the bank.
Neither would Wayne allow him to take a turn, not caring to have his motions broken. This was his job, not some posh shagbag’s up from London who had never held a spade in his lily-white hands, tough nut or not. Wayne hated work, but wouldn’t give up a job once begun till it was finished. If somebody else did a bit in between he wouldn’t be able to say that he himself had done it, and if he couldn’t say that, what would have been the use in starting?
Miniature clouds of snow drove at their coverings, no defence but to shake the head and stumble like the moving semi-frozen stones they were turning into, doing what had to be done before sinking under the weight growing heavier and heavier from the inside. They excavated, shifted, stacked, and stamped down with their boots. Steel claws gripped Keith’s feet as if he wasn’t wearing socks, let alone boots and two thick pairs inside. When there seemed nowhere else to put the snow he moved the van so that they could shove it from front to back in the space they had made.
He unclipped both bonnets and slotted them safely open, his own battery neat at the terminals but the torch showing the van’s corroded to a sickly, almost glowing green. He scraped them free with his penknife, hoping for enough live acid and distilled water within to conduct the jolt to its destination. Positive to negative to make a circuit, he unravelled the jump leads, sorted the black and red ends, and fastened the croc-grips with freezing fingers.
The dashboard glistened red in the wilderness. Jump the red light and you might be dead, but this was friendly and comforting, a means to an end, a red eye you drove through the spot-middle of to get into action. The engine gagged with life after a few spasmodic jumps, power unhealthy and threatening self-extinction any second. He told himself the odds were too great, but he must keep such ruminations to himself and go on working, mentally thanking them for every effort, as if they were doing it for him alone. Tackling one problem at a time, you didn’t think much about those still strung in line ahead like differently shaped and coloured beads waiting to be sorted. You took the setbacks and, prime mover, kept the end in sight, so he put his head down and went on to consider the next hurdle.
A stench of smoke and petrol filled the van. Spades clanked across the windscreen, erasing harder nuts of snow, till the wipers – reluctantly – took the rest. Changing into reverse, the engine slugged dead, but it was easy for Lance to bypass the ignition because, at fourteen, up to no good one day, Albert Green explained the mechanics of hot-wiring, doing it like the best teacher: by example. They were topped and tailed by the flashing blue lights and screaming horn of a Jam Sandwich. His father was an old Desert Rat, no less, who with the rest of his tank crew had shaved and trimmed up to look dead smart for the drive into Tripoli. He had grovelled before the local powers, wearing his suit with the permanent medal ribbons, a believer in war and justice, to prove that he loved Lance his son, a man who always had a good morning smile to any passing copper, and if he hadn’t then Lance would surely have landed something more than two years on probation.
He kept a blank slate ever since, and if once or twice he had been close to another scratch of red chalk due to his biking forays, he wondered nevertheless what the old man’s face would look like when he learned that his son had been blown to bits, as he himself nearly was a few times in the war.
Keith eased the engine, coaxed it to a roar whether or not vibrations jostled the van’s frail insides. If they deserved a medal, and they surely did, what bit of flesh would the Queen pin it on? The laugh got him into reverse and several yards towards the clear, turning sufficient progress of degrees to aim for the gate. Headlamps picked up needles of wandering snow, their way blocked by a bank that even a plough would find hard to shift.
Snow was semi-solid water, an ever-present enemy you had to vanquish. Man would always vanquish, a fight without quarter and even to the death against the earth which had never been anything but his enemy, otherwise how could you believe in God?
Daniel fought his way, made a track for Sally to follow. It was no use turning to see if she did. The demon’s howl blocked his ears, so maybe she wasn’t there any longer, had gone back to betray him a second time, or had given in by accepting the warmth of endless sleep.
Like thin wet carpets, his clothes drew in the cold and stored it to send to the soft marrow at the middle of his bones. Drifts were crust-hard in places, and sometimes sinking as if he were unable to stop until engulfed, he would flounder in panic, but quickly right himself, as if even in such visibility he was being observed by everyone in the world.
The fire in him could not be put out by snow, though the vicious wind might extinguish it before shelter was reached. He knew he would not die, the blaze giving no say in the matter, a question of live now and perish later if you must, because if the police didn’t kick him into a catatonic state or put him in a place for so long that he would wish he had died, then the people waiting in Coventry would track him down and, as the awesome phrase had it in order to terrify, ‘blow him away’.
So up and over the powdery snow, into a stinging veil of wind that whoever was caught in it felt it was out to get them and nobody else. Followed by a woman so close he sometimes fancied he could hear her breathing even above the tigerish rage of the gale, he couldn’t see her when he turned, the sound being his own. As he scrambled hands and knees to the summit of the wave, no energy to spare for looking back, she was the last person in his life, and he must go on loving her for that.
He was the only person in her life, and she had nowhere else to go because her own sort had cast her out, and there was no turning back except that she didn’t know how the move had been made, always the blindin
g light of non-comprehension, snaring her in like a moth trap, the process then carrying her along. She had followed mutely after a kiss, overcoats and galoshes quickly sought in case someone should try to hold them back, then the door closing fatally behind.
Floundering with frozen hands he used an interior compass to try for the lay-by where he had left his van which the unthinking bikers had brought to the hotel, didn’t know why he wanted to get to that blemished spot, but followed the markings of the road between wall tops visible now that his eyes were accustomed to the darkness through swirling snow.
Map and compass would be useless in this continent of wild attacks from every direction. He had done orienteering on Dartmoor in winter for the school. A boy in a stream netting specimens had lost a shoe, sucked off by the current. Daniel splashed in bare feet to rescue it, and gave the boy his own dry socks and shoes after yanking him clear. The boy never realized his peril, and Daniel hoped he would not lose his own feet from frost-bite before reaching safety.
He saw flashes as of light bulbs breaking because of too much light, eyes as exhausted as his limbs, eyes unmercifully bombarded that could take no more, pain so great he kept them closed as on and up and through, he had to get there, though no longer knew where there was, nor what he would find.
Sally had to draw back so as not to collide with his hunched form, wondered whether he wouldn’t collapse before reaching a farm. She was freezing alive, starting to burn in a fire, wasn’t tired yet dreaded ice and fire in collision forcing her to stop. Reality had come back after leaving the hotel and its awful people, life had meaning again, the urge to win through. Never had she thought to meet such types (didn’t they call them ‘punters’?) who wouldn’t show the vaguest comprehension of a man like Daniel, no sympathy with ideals which, though leading to unjustified violence, needed to be forgiven. Faced with the unfamiliar, they turned into killers set on murdering him and her as well, so better go into the snow, Daniel had said, as they stood by the window.
She followed him towards the door, the storm drawing her fatally because she wanted to find out whether she could defeat what the elements were able to throw against her. And as for whether she had done right, now that she had done it she must believe that she had.
Absence of landmarks sapped his power, and he didn’t know if he would recognize the lay-by when he reached it. He prayed to the moon, a different man to the one who had been in charge of explosives for the Cause: rational, courageous, certain of himself, unthinking you might say. Wherever the moon was, knowledge of its existence permitted him to go on, praying to it because it was the last ally he could have.
Hope pulled him as if with a rope attached, told him that in a few days he would be back at school, no one living to connect him to the explosion. Those in the hotel couldn’t possibly get the van out of the courtyard, and would be obliterated. Even the men in Coventry would hardly blame him for his failure. Life must go on, but what about the woman behind, who was the only witness?
THIRTY-TWO
If allowed to go on working they would use that reserve of strength which should only be kept for the final effort, so Keith signalled a way back to shelter. ‘The snow’ll need clearing again in half an hour,’ Lance said as they went in. ‘Look how it’s coming down.’
‘It’s only dusting,’ Wayne told him. ‘We’ll scuff it away with our toecaps. It won’t stop the tyres.’
Arms of light went up the walls and across the ceiling like rapid columns on an army map, flames arrowing almost to the mantel shelf. Lance unzipped. ‘Where did all that wood come from?’
Alfred, a hump of grief near the fire, reached for another broken chair and threw it on as if it were the imp from hell that had caused all his troubles. Fred had given up on spinning out his supply of fuel: the wood pile had melted down, and he was rummaging for half planks and bits of old beam, the remnants of builders’ rammel coated with dust and congealed whitewash which gave off spectacular tongues of green flame.
‘He’s already cleared the spare room.’ Parsons was encouraged and made cheerful by this systematic gutting of the hotel, and nodded towards Alfred. ‘I expect he’ll start on the stuff in here next.’
‘Not if I know it.’ Fred laid soup plates and spoons on three tables put together, which Enid had spread with the whitest cloth from one of his personal cupboards in a box room off the kitchen. Where the devil did she find the key? he wondered but, saying nothing to her about it, turned on Alfred and Parsons. ‘You two are like a pack of barmy schoolkids. You should have a bit more respect for other people’s property. Not that I expect you to understand a thing like that, though.’
‘At least Alfred’s making the place a bit more cheerful.’ Parsons spoke to Keith so that none of the others could hear. ‘We took a kitchen knife off him half an hour ago. He would have done a tidy bit of damage with a weapon like that. Aaron jumped him from behind. It was quite a scuffle.’
With such people the administration of the crisis took on its own momentum, Keith smiled. The bomb maniac and his woman would die in the snow, and good riddance. And that lunatic who’d had his father die on him had given himself the duty of keeping them halfway warm, lips jabbering out the list of his misfortunes.
I must be a fool, Alfred said to his own picture not far in front of his staring eyes, and feeling an intense conviction he hadn’t noticed in himself for a long time, to get so upset at seeing my father’s worn-out carcass tipped unceremoniously into the snow, when I was wanting him dead during the drive here. That’s the proof you love somebody, when you wish every day they would kick the bucket. His, after all, sudden departure for the happy hunting grounds had put the kaibosh on Bognor, and no mistake. I won’t break my heart twice a day from now on wondering if they’re doing the right thing by him, or forget to post off the monthly cheque. When this bit of bother’s over I’ll give him a decent burial, and then get back to happy working days.
He took the leg from a chair and hit the frame of one already on the fire. Sparks singed his face but he let them fade out rather than take any trouble in brushing them off, then threw the rest of the chair on, telling the sparks to be more careful with his skin next time round. The fire was a wolf trying to come for them out of the snow, flames its arms, sparks its claws, a raving animal which would stay in its place only for as long as plentiful wood was slung into its jaws, and he thought about the even more than halcyon days now that his father had departed. Funny how you didn’t imagine dying yourself till your father had copped it, God in Heaven’s way of letting you know for sure that one day the same would happen to you.
Fred, in his cook’s white hat, scooped the ladle round and round the large tureen to let the smell of soup fill the room, looking at everyone and waiting for their words of appreciation.
‘Oh, wonderful,’ it would have been easy to hear them braying, ‘wonderful, it’ll save my life!’
‘Serve it quick. I can’t wait!’
‘Good old Fred!’
‘You can always rely on him!’
‘For he’s a jolly good fellow!’
Keith ended the silence. ‘Wayne and Lance first at the food.’
‘Yes, sir. That’s understood,’ Fred said.
Every part was stone, Jenny couldn’t warm him, his ice-cold body at rest, impossible to know where the spirit had gone. Fear ached her, she had sat too long in one position, only half alive herself, panic making her want to run outside, to wait no longer. She had champagned her faculties into and out of sleep, but was awake now and so cold she had to sit at the table.
Wayne placed his elbows to either side of the plate, his stare fighting with blue and white mixing into droplets of snow, still seeing drifts surrounding the cars, squalls continually buffeting. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Nor me.’ Lance picked up a spoon, hunger changing his mind. ‘A piece of chocolate might do.’
‘That’ll be for dessert.’ Fred was eating: he’d always enjoyed his own cooking. ‘I found a few slabs in
the stores.’
Keith thought the best way to live might be to regard every minute as your last. Look forward to nothing, and whatever came that was more than nothing would be an unexpected bounty, and perhaps beneficial enough to deserve consideration. If he had realized this from the beginning then that other existence with Gwen might not have seared his spirit.
‘It’s a lovely stew.’ Eileen imagined that if she got blown to bits her father would say in twenty years’ time: ‘I ain’t seen our Eileen lately. Where do you suppose she went?’ And her mother would no doubt reply: ‘How the hell should I know? She’ll come back when she’s ready.’ No, she was being unjust: they would wait no more than two years before asking the Salvation Army to get on her trail.
‘It’s a stew to put lead in your pencil,’ Parsons laughed.
‘If you’d been out there,’ Lance said, ‘you wouldn’t have enough lead left in your pencil to scribble a betting slip.’
Keith tried to eat, but the food died in his mouth. It was impossible to search back far enough in his life and find the turning point which had set him on a course ending in murder, no more than you could wind back the reel of history and sidetrack the wars of the century. He had been driven to where the crime was waiting for him, and he had lost control, the mind becoming a vacuum in which he had for a fatal moment ceased to think, an unforgivable surrender never to be made good. He felt her hair in his hands (that crown of all her glory!) and the merciless mindless banging till the weight of her unconscious body meant that strength had jettisoned reason and she was dead.