Snowstop (27 page)

‘You did get it back, though, didn't you?' Alfred said mildly.

‘After twelve bloody years I did. You held off as long as you could. You had it in the bank making interest, because you hoped I would die, and you needn't bother then. But I didn't die, did I? And I won't, either. I'll see you out, you see if I don't.'

Aaron stood. ‘Lay a few more bottles out, Fred. A double whisky for me.' Not so much for conviviality as for his tooth. Tormented by draughts and chill, Hell was where you had toothache, and Paradise where you didn't.

Fred was pleased to take orders, middle of the night or not. That was what he was here for, such action a sign of normal life, placing glasses on a tray and balancing their weights to keep it even, a tuneless whistle at the thought of the till ringing. Hidden from them at the other end of the bar, he told himself that if Doris was here to share the work, life would be fine. But she wasn't and, considering the mess, it was just as well. If she were here she would never stop nagging – and I would never stop swearing. If only I hadn't learned to swear! But then, I shouldn't have been six years a sailor, because sailors swear, though when you think about it, who doesn't? The only reason women don't swear as much as men is that they nag and men don't.

He flung the white towel over his arm, scrawled fingernails through his hair, took a sip of Aaron's whisky as if to be sure it was a good brand, and strode into the lounge like one of the best waiters in the business.

TWENTY-NINE

How does a common fly get to where it is? Why does it land on any particular spot? A big black confident muff-footed specimen rested on the back of Keith's hand, hairs for a jungle and between the veins for valleys, a summer fly that had survived the autumn in some warm cupboard and now came out sensing that there was no safe place even for a scavenging fly.

He couldn't understand why everyone looked so cold: caps on, woolly hats donned, coats pulled together, overcoats buttoned and belted. He felt neither one nor the other, more proof (should he need it, though he forced himself not to) that he was different.

‘Our only hope is to start the van,' he said, after they had settled with their drinks, ‘and get it as far from the hotel as possible. Fred tells me there are spades and tools in one of the stables. Two or three hundred yards should be enough. Then we shelter in the strongest room to escape the worst of the blast. I'll drive the van myself, but I'll need volunteers with spades and mattocks to clear the way.'

He had come to the point aimed for from the beginning, the cul-de-sac of action in which he hoped to find the dream of youth which youth had waited to spring on him like a giant well-poisoned cobra in middle age, something about to happen which would erase the significance of all that had gone before. He had wanted such an event for a long time, had sensed it was inevitable and never been unduly worried whether he won through or not, since it was hard to imagine life after the snow. A dream beyond the dream could not exist when the present was so important. He wondered if the others felt anything similar, or would object to him drawing them into his adventure of redemption. They were talking all at once, and he let them go on, because that also was part of working towards the final plan at his own circumlocutory rate.

‘I'll drive the van,' Aaron said.

‘Another fucker wants the George Cross.' Wayne spat. ‘I'm willing to dig, though. I'll dig from here to Australia to spite that bomb-carrying fuckpig. I once dug my old man's garden over in one day. He swore I couldn't, so I bet him five quid I could. He thought I was as soft as shit because I was a biker. I knew the cunning old bastard only wanted to get the garden dug over for a fiver, but I proved I could do it, all the same.'

‘I don't care what I do,' Lance said. ‘Dig, drive, dance a jig. I'm willing to get at the wheel, though, because I'm a biker. When you're doing a ton on the motorway, every second can be your last, and who wants to live for ever?'

‘Everything in the van must be melting into a jelly,' Daniel said. Never getting to the drop-off point was the peril of the trade, a flash, and only a few bits in a bucket were left, after a couple of days finding them. He considered himself back in the comity of cave-land society now that the last hope had been proposed. ‘You would be wiser not to listen to your guru, and try getting through the blizzard to safety. It would be better to die in the cold and be in one piece when they found you, than have your bits scattered so that they'll never know who was who if they do.'

‘We'll need as many spare lights as we can get for those who go in front to clear the snow,' Keith said. ‘Also, wear every scrap of clothing you can wrap around your bodies. Are there any chains we can put on the wheels?'

Fred sat writing a list of the wanted items. ‘Not for a van. The wheels are too big. We can try them, though.'

Daniel pushed Sally's hand from his mouth. ‘You won't even get to the gate.'

Fingers moved among bottles in the half-dark – wine, beer and whisky – chose the solid neck of a champagne bottle and grasped it as firmly as to uproot a tree. Keith at the window tried to assess their prospects, but behind the wind there was discordant singing, like a woman wailing her heart out, calling him. At the back of the wind, a multitude of people on the moors and hillsides howled as if a terrible disaster were about to overtake them. He was hypnotized by the noise that went on and on intolerably, but he stood it out, couldn't turn from the cold glass, forced himself to listen, moments like days, to the endless wailing of cosmic despair breaking the heart of that part of the world which thought itself safe, as if all beyond the hotel was a vast Pompeii being earthquaked out of existence. A real and immediate scream filled the room, a heavy object smashing dully against flesh.

Daniel's blood raced him to the floor.

‘He opened his trap once too often.' The jagged glass went again at the injured head. ‘I told you to belt up.'

Parsons and Aaron pulled him away, and Wayne sat down but kept the bottle in reach as if for another bout at the time of his choosing. Keith stood over him, staring the crazed face out, the mind behind peeled of all sense.

‘He asked for it.' Wayne burned bright with indignation at Daniel's gloating pessimism. ‘If he opens his mouth again, he's had it. We don't need him any more. I feel like a massacre. Fuck the van. Let's have fun. We'll fuck the place up before the van does. Let's take a few happy walkers with us.'

‘We've got to stick together.' Garry spoke softly, and Keith was appalled at his pallor when he held a light close, glad the candles had been so low on the illumination of his suffering. ‘We'll shift that snow,' Garry said. ‘We didn't have so many tools when we moved the van before, did we? If we wreck the place we're on that Daniel's side. We got the van here, didn't we? Well then, we'll get it away again.'

Hands over her head, sinking to the floor, Sally knew there was nothing to be done, either for Daniel or for herself, only to go down at his scream of pain and despair. They would murder him, and then kill her, both lost if they didn't run away, no one willing to help. The hideaway under her arms and inside her closed eyes was dark and warm, a last protectorate formed by cutting out sound and light, as the howl from someone she hoped was not herself went on and on.

Fred came in with a bowl of warm water and a pile of hand towels, busy as on a summer's day when a kid had gone uncontrollably headfirst from one of the swings in his garden. He had been meaning to cull stones out of the playground, but then gravel was just as bad to the palms and knees of a falling child. ‘In my business you have to be a jack of all trades: plumber, carpenter, electrician, even a doctor, like now. Come on, Mr Daniel, let's see the damage. We'll soon have the bleeding stopped. But that screaming's a bit of a nuisance, isn't it? What's got into her?'

‘Kill the bitch,' Garry said faintly. ‘She's getting on my wick with her racket.'

Fred pulled Sally's arm out of her lock, the flat of his hand ringing against her face. She stared, then discovered where she was. ‘You ought to be all right now, miss. I'm sorry I had to do that, but I'm sure you'll understand now you're back to normal.'

Lance stretched himself and reached for his leathers. The jacket was heavy with studs and belt but Jenny held it high enough for his arms to go in, getting her amiable strong guy ready for his labours. Enid and Eileen fitted up Wayne with trousers little slimmer than his legs, boots well zipped and buckled to the knees, jacket fastened with press studs and thick belt, helmet with visor set on his head. ‘Look at that fussy old bastard dabbing at that little cut I gave Old Ferret with the bottle. He'll still be at it when the balloon goes up.'

Fred scissored another strip off to tie the bandage, then stood back to view his work. ‘You'll be all right now.'

‘I wish you'd stop my leg bleeding,' Garry said, ‘instead of wasting your time on that pair, though if he's as all right as you said I was he'll be dead in a couple of hours. His troubles are over, if he did but know it.'

‘He's right,' Enid said. ‘Look at that blood on the floor.'

A pool had spread in the shadow, and when Fred took off the swabbings blood pulsed bright red from the wound. ‘We'll do a tourniquet. I've seen worse at sea.'

‘I suppose you dragged the poor fuckers behind the ship in salt water,' Garry said.

‘Only for a week.'

Keith lifted the telephone on the bar, in case it had mended itself, but there was no sound. He hammered it against the desk.

‘That's always the first to go,' Fred told him. ‘That, and the power. I meant to get a generator in last year.'

‘Then you would have had enough light to operate on my leg,' Garry said. ‘No thanks.'

Fred tied the ligature, and the bleeding stopped.

Which was good, Keith thought, unless gangrene's the result. ‘We'll look at you when we get back.'

Percy stood up, staring ahead, clean and spruce as if he had just finished a long dolling-up for a Saturday night at the pub with his wife. ‘Aren't you going to take me? I fancy a walk on Bournemouth's lovely sands. The sun's coming through the window, which is funny, with the blizzard going on. Still, I'll bet some lovely nurses are sunbathing out there in their birthday suits.'

In one swift walk, before Alfred could get to him, he was stroking Sally's hair, a grin on his ancient maniacal face, large immaculate teeth fixed in her sight for ever. His hand roamed her shoulders and went down to a breast, gripped so hard she cried out and pushed him away, the fall-out of his body shaking the floor.

Eileen looked at Keith, and he felt that to kiss her would be too much like saying goodbye, an impression he didn't care to give. He smiled and touched her hand. ‘We won't do it all at one go. We'll have to come back for more help.'

‘I love you,' she whispered. ‘I've never loved anybody so much in my life, honest. I know that now.'

‘I feel the same. Don't worry.' And that would have to do, as he turned from a sweeter farewell than he had ever received from Gwen, or given her. But then, I never loved her – though in the beginning he had been infatuated, and eventually obsessed by her as she wove and stitched and knitted him into her possessive web, and he had gone along with it, not knowing that one day he would kill her. Or maybe I always knew, he told himself, as they went into the blizzard.

Part 3

THIRTY

The back door was as much in the lee of the tempest as any part of the hotel could be, Keith nevertheless leading Wayne and Lance into a meteorological topsy-turvyness similar to when he had yachted with boat-loving colleagues in gales around the Orkneys. The spirit was with them and the flesh was also willing, but icy snowbits drove against their cheeks, and Keith wished he too had a helmet instead of a balaclava around his head. Wayne and Lance wielded their spades and chopped a footpath through waist-high snow till a blade clanged against the back door of the van.

Lance mouthed a joke no one heard, the flashlight brushing his visor, sound stopping all but their own Royal Banshee shouts of glee. Keith did not know who was who: one at the side door hammering with the spade handle to break the ice that crusted it shut, while whoever other it was slid between the van and the wall and after a few uppercuts with the handle opened a door.

He got in and lay flat across the seat, pulling himself up like a spayed animal. One out and one in, between them they forced the other door to slide back, a thud that sounded out the wind. They sat in a row, damp upholstery and mock leather smelling above the cold, snow padding the windscreen. ‘Now what?'

Lance turned the key in the ignition, and the dull red spot came on and then went out, a lifeless click on trying a few more times. ‘Just what I thought. The fucking battery's as flat as a pancake. Now we're fucked, and no mistake.'

Keith cleared water from his watchface – at four o'clock. There were two possibilities, he told himself. Only two, but listen, he said to them: ‘Either we find a car ready primed with a full battery and a set of jump leads in the boot so that we can start the motor from a boost out of the good one, or we unload the explosives and fuses into another car in which the engine will start, and drive that one away.' But there were two disadvantages to consider. The first was that while manhandling the lethal cargo they might disturb it and – goodbye all.

‘Not yet,' Wayne said. ‘I love the world still.'

The second snag was that a car would be less able to negotiate the snowdrifts than the robust van. So they must get back in the hotel and find out whose car had a full battery, or who thought their car had, and whether or not it was equipped with a set of jump leads to make the transfer of power. The prospect of finding that other car, supposing it existed, and assuming it could be found, and uncovering it from the snow, and manoeuvring it into position to get the two engines close, then opening both bonnets and attaching the jump leads with freezing clumsy fingers was, to put it mildly, awesome.