Snowstop (2 page)

Two years had gone by, and he saw himself in a phone box that yobbos hadn't paralysed with boot and fist, rain as horizontal as in one of those Japanese prints framed in the hall at home, and hearing her say she didn't remember him or, hubby hovering, that they already had enough insurance. Or, on the other hand, that she was so happy he had thought of her, and would love to see him, but he would hear a baby screaming from some cosy alcove and say: ‘I'm too far away, otherwise I would pop in for old times' sake. I just wanted to know how things stood.'

He veered off the motorway towards Macclesfield, and then beyond on one of England's high-up arterial lanes, lights twitching from farms away to left and right. The road to himself, he couldn't see the sky but felt it moiling overhead; killed the radio because unable to tolerate the senseless yacker of the disc jockey; better the silence his own brain concocted, which these days was more likely to surprise him than chitchat from the ether.

Blips of snow came into the zone of the headlamps, stuff already fallen shouldering the roadside. Speed made bends and crookbacks, but he took care, oh yes, care not to die or get mangled. He wondered how long he would survive if he holed himself up in the huge forest to the south, a wild man of the woods lost to the world, all ropes cut and nevermore for home.

In his seat of familiar calm, hands lightly at the wheel, he bombed up to seventy on straight bits while brakes shuddered at bends and corners, more bash than on the motorway, a ballet of manoeuvring but always within the forward throw of main beams. Other cars were visible for miles, dip-flash-dip-flash, a corps of signals passing to the west but no one overtaking.

A grey piece detached itself from the snowy verge and hobbled into his track. The car swerved, bumper glancing the bank. Treadling the brakes he went bang, hit a sheep, left it dying behind, and what was worse there was maybe a scratch on his precious car. He fucking-helled, crunching over whitened gravel into a lay-by.

The beam of his heavy-duty Maglite went up and down the paintwork: a feather of wool stuck on the fender turned out not to be when he rubbed back to green with a rag. The cigarette shook at his lips, but it was hunger that unnerved, not fear, as he set a box on the bonnet, pulled out a stove, a pan, a packet of bacon and some bread.

The smell of a common fry-up dispelled the icy cold and, door open, sitting on the step, he looked for stars but saw none, overcast complete, heaven's roof poised to unleash its burden: I should have continued south on the M6, but here I am, instead of heading for Hampshire, set to steer across the ominous High Peak towards milder pastures in Norfolk.

A car some way behind stopped, turned on a descent to the left. The kettle steamed. Never at a loss for a brew, he looked for a teabag. Another car passed, then one from the opposite direction: the Peak District rush hour. What would he find at those mythical fields of ease, supposing they existed? Not knowing seemed the ultimate comfort, a state he had deserted home and London to attain. On the other hand, snowbound in Buxton or Bakewell on Saturday night was not his idea of adventure, and hellfire scalded his wrist as the kettle fell. A panic button of warning said he wouldn't be able to drive, but he filled his mug, regretting he couldn't hold his injured skin under a cold tap, and while the tea cooled walked ten yards to bury the hand under snow till the whole arm ached.

‘Where are you going?'

He stayed calm at the disembodied voice.

‘I'm only asking where you're going.'

‘Why do you want to know?'

A girl came into the light. ‘That old cow dropped me off in the middle of nowhere after she told me she was going all the way to Buxton. I got frightened when she put a hand up my skirt. I told her what I thought of her, though, and now I'm stranded, unless I walk my bleeding feet off.'

TWO

The dubious gift of confetti across the windscreen did not promise a happy marriage to the weather, but rather reminded Aaron Jones that being caught driving in it must prove that earning a living was the most important activity of life. He spun the roundabout of London's Orbital and steered northerly, twigs from black branches standing out in sulphurous light. The elements had been anybody's guess, but such behaviour proved that guessing was, even at the best of times, a no-win game.

Solid trunks spaced along patches of January grass stood behind a mourning verge of mud splashed up by passing traffic. Toothache had gnawed since breakfast, top-left on a bed of infection making the rest feel rotten as well. He would have to endure till he got to the dentist, meanwhile recollecting that according to Napoleon the only two things certain in life were death and taxes, though Aaron could add a third which was toothache.

Similar pangs six months ago had receded when his cold got better, and he had gambled on it not coming back, hoping that mortality would cease its inch-like advance yet knowing that it could not. Life was hope, and hope nothing but ignorant optimism, though without hope existence would be untenable.

Last night a floorcloth around the moon prophesied rain, but he hoped to beat the two hundred miles home before wet or worse descended. Plastic rags in a tree waved white and purple to the east: the remains of daylight would clear him of London, and from then on he would set the compass, put the mind into overdrive, and let deca-miles pass while he dreamed of better climates.

The back seat and large boot were packed with books: books in boxes, books in plastic bags, books laid out on an old sleeping bag and on newspapers. With a Schimmelpenninck comfortably lit he gloated over a haul netted on his three-day trip through shops on the south coast. People from the north or abroad retired with their books. When they were unable to make their last shuffle along the promenade and died, the family threw them out as lumber for next to nothing.

A man stood by the roadside, thumb up for a lift, and Aaron stopped all thought till he got by: a young bloke with long hair and a rucksack at his feet, as if he had been there half the day. Can't do it. Want to be alone with my maunderings. Sorry, very sorry. He had given lots of lifts in his time, so maybe he had done his share.

Still, he felt vile for a couple of miles, then went back to the bargains he often brought home which more than paid for petrol and overnight bed and breakfast. As for his time, if you dealt in books there was no such measurement. Books glutted the secondhand shops, shelves and even tenpenny boxes spilling treasures, though the finds were less good than ten years ago because assiduous hunters nearer to the sources went fine-tooth combing for what seemed better to have than money, and could be traded if you knew the right place to pass them on to. Prices had gone up, but he could still find what he wanted, and looked forward to showing Baring-Gould's work on the Cévennes for a pound, which he'd put in the next catalogue for ten and have no bother to sell.

Such care and industry made a living, after dropping his laboratory job to earn money out of his lifelong enthusiasm for books. Early retirement pay had bought two houses knocked into one, at the end of a row in a mining village crumbling under Thatcher's fist, with a fine view of emerald hills from the front bedrooms. Change jobs in middle age and you end up with two lives for the price of one, because after his wife went away to train as a social worker and didn't come back, his sister Beryl moved in as a partner to his industrious dealings.

A juggernaut overtook on the dual carriageway, the splash at his windscreen swept aside by clean jets and chasing wipers. Ahead lay high flying galleons of cloud, while his rear-looking mirror showed menacing gaps of steely blue. Living from one bank statement to the next, he no longer worried about the significance of life, as he had to a tormenting degree when working for a salary. Existence had become too real to question why he was on earth. All he needed was faith in the engine which carried him from place to place, and trust in the knowledge that bookselling hurt no one. He kept Beryl and himself in moderate comfort, while anxiety and striving shut out self-indulgent doubts.

The car was a cocoon of odours: the whiff of cigar smoke, a damp overcoat, and the reek of books that had been too long in cellars, garden sheds, Wendy houses, garages or attics. Some nights he dreamed of going into the sort of Nissen barrack he had done national service in, full of such tomes he had never hoped to find, dusty from motes continually shed by cobwebs and age. Eyes bedazzled, hands clasped with uncertainty as to what shelf he would go to first. He opened a nineteenth-century volume of travels to find coloured plates botched beyond definition, and maps – of no country ever heard of – falling to pieces while unfolding.

Headlights made little difference to the road. A grey Cortina shot into the dimness, twin brakes reddening at an unexpected bend, so far out that a car from the other direction flashed him rabidly because it almost went into the hedge.

Aaron felt a tremor at the stomach. The road was a linear battlefield, every month the same number of people killed and maimed as in the Falklands War. All you could do was take advantage of your age and, like an old soldier, never die, treating each journey as the first, and whatever route you chose as
terra incognita.

Before he left on any trip Beryl was as shaky as if he was going off to the underworld and might never come back, not strange for the kind of person she was. No husband had been good enough for her, and he had been good enough for no wife. Village people had taken it that they were married, not brother and sister – as well they might, because on their walks she held his hand, would kiss him on his return even before he got through the door. Well, she was always anxious. Why do women worry so much? Beryl did because he couldn't, so someone had to. The perfect couple, you might say. He would telephone in an hour when he turned off the main road, knowing she would be glad of that.

Stopped at a lay-by, he smelt snow in the air, a peculiar damp wind caressing the back of his head as he stood by the hedge hoping he was wrong. Beyond LBC range and the soothing rasp of Brian Hayes he buttoned onto long wave for a weather forecast whose threatening prognostications he hoped to foil.

Driving in the dark was a chore, but in winter you had no choice. He envied those in their safe houses, lights glowing, homely smoke from the chimneys. Half-past four seemed like midnight, but he would call at one last shop, branching fifteen miles off the trunk road to Morford, where the woman who ran the place didn't pull down the shutters till six. He would be in plenty of time, but knew that whenever he made a special deviation he rarely found anything.

Every rule had its exception, and he could not afford to turn any chance down, uneasy when the turning came and he forked off like a somnambulist. He had no say in the matter, never had in anything of importance in his life. He had always liked it that way, because that was how things worked best and, reasoning in the process of an unreasonable act, he knew that what he had done must, happen what might, turn out to be right after all. Having come to the end of such zigzag cogitation, the toothache reasserted itself.

THREE

‘Do you always curse like that?'

She came into the light, a young girl wearing a bomber jacket and carrying a portable radio, with dark bubbly hair and a snub-nose, haversack hanging loose. She laughed at the tall, slightly stooped man looking at her, a rare specimen with his short-back-and-sides haircut. Some blokes are born that way – though he seemed a bit harassed. ‘You mean how
you
swore? I heard you effing and blinding like a trooper. “What a dirty-mouthed bastard,” I said to myself. You went on so long I thought you'd never stop.'

‘I suppose I did.'

She nodded at the handkerchief over his wrist. ‘Did you trap your hand in the door?'

He wasn't happy at having her crash his privacy, damned if he would give her a lift. The only paradise in the world was to be on your own, encapsulated in a motor car and floating from point to point. Contact with people, even at parties and meetings, was hectic, nothing calm anywhere, the constant clatter of noise, pounding of torment. Yet he was known as being sociable, so had a right to claim at least that for himself.

He packed mug and stove into their wooden box, all things fitting neatly, and she was too interested in his painstaking movements to broach a request for help. ‘Are you a sales rep?'

‘Certainly not.' He pushed by her, carrying the box to the boot. When he started the car she banged on the window, as he had known she would, and he smiled at her disappointed face and shouted message of abuse coming through the Plexiglas. He got out intending to pound her head into a pulp of turnip and blood, leave her dying under a drift of snow. No one would pester him from then on, except his conscience which, belonging to him alone, would also take a long time to discover. Spread fingers patted the side of his trousers, then opened a door to the rear seats. ‘Why didn't you ask properly?'

She was surprised as much as he at his change of mind. ‘It's perishing out there.'

His expensive jacket and sweater had been like paper near Beagle Tarn. ‘For a few miles, then.'

‘My boy friend chucked me out.' She sniffed, hugging her slimline knickerpink trannie. ‘He's earning two hundred quid a week as a chippie, and thought I was too expensive because I asked for a gin. Some people are born rotten. I winked at one of his mates, as well, but it didn't mean anything. Just a bit of fun. Anyway, you've got to show you're alive now and again, haven't you?' She patted the seat and looked around. ‘It's a lovely car, though.'

Wheels crunched onto the road, tarmac buttered with light. ‘Why didn't you go back home?'

Her laugh ended as a squeal. ‘Home? What's one o' them? Oh yes, I used to hear people talking about such things. I wrote to Santa Claus asking for one at Christmas. I even saw one on telly once. It looked ever so funny.'