Snowstop

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘You’re bigger than God,’ he heard, ‘or you had better be. So dig it out from under the white stuff, push it free, drive on, we’re waiting. Get to work.’

  Work is noble, his father had said, who had never worked, or so Daniel imagined he had heard in those days of no date.

  ‘I’ll do my utmost.’

  ‘You’d better mean it.’

  The receiver burned his dampened hand, and he put it down. Fight the blizzard, and you would disappear for ever. Forgive them, Lord, they knew not what they said. But they did, and if he didn’t try they would kill him, so as a fillip to his morale he meditated on the joyful scene of destruction as the van went up, felt that lilt of the heart when, should the excitement be increased one more ratchet, the heart would cease to exist, as would the body which relied on it.

  The back window showed him curtains of snow shaking into banks against the walls, oblong tombs where cars had been. In the lay-by his van would be indistinguishable from landscape, and a thermal suit would be necessary to walk on the moon of snow and search for it.

  A car appeared, as if to deny notions of anyone venturing out, sepulchral engine sounding through the gale, slid towards the hotel door, stopped a few inches before the treat of metal-crunch against the wall. An overcoated wendego drudged across the headlights, regardless of the battery running down, and opened the other door, mouth calling yet silent in cross-hatching flakes.

  Daniel looked on as at a theatre, at the big man cajoling, in the middle of an argument, or impatient because of the snow. He ran back to turn off the lights, a muffled door-slam, then he was pulling another person out, protecting him as if he were wounded, and planting him one foot before the other towards the inn door.

  Daniel helped to get them in.

  ‘Thank God,’ Alfred said. ‘I couldn’t see a thing. That was a kindly action on your part. Thank you.’

  He stood aside, hating the thank you while knowing he could never be thanked enough. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘He’s a bit frozen, that’s all.’ Nothing the sight of two shapely tits wouldn’t cure. ‘And he’s tired. He’s an old man.’

  ‘You were lucky to get here.’ Daniel felt light in the brain: Jamaica Inn, full of wreckers. Or is it The Laughing Cavalier? He spoke like the quiet schoolmaster again. ‘I only just made it myself. I had to leave my van down the road.’

  In the corridor Percy pushed them aside and walked on his own. ‘I’m not so doddery, you cheeky pair of devils. Still on my pins, any road up. In the old days rough weather like this was ten times worse.’ Emerging from the straitjacket of his overcoat he was tall enough to stare Daniel into evasion, steel blue to cold blue, knife to knife. ‘Who’s this damned lunatic? I wouldn’t trust him an inch.’

  The daft old card would insult anybody, after being fairly quiet all day. ‘He’s only a kind man trying to help us, Father.’

  A framed hunting scene showed a Derbyshire pack taking the stone wall, close in up the emerald hillside, a man leaning on a gate to watch it out of sight. ‘Steer clear of him, that’s all I say.’

  Alfred nudged, hard. ‘Why don’t you keep your stupid trap shut?’

  Back in the world of the humanly vivified, touch cloth, press flesh, feeling nothing but worry and exhaustion, Daniel forgot the lethal package of his van. ‘We could do with a glass of something hot, I think.’

  Percy leaned against the wall. ‘Are we there, Alfred?’

  ‘Halfway house, Father, providing they’ve got a room for both of us.’

  ‘I’ll get some help,’ Daniel said.

  ‘No, don’t bother.’

  ‘It’s no bother at all’ – thinking how lucky a man he was to have his father with him in middle age.

  ‘We’ll manage.’ The less people saw what a shameless old load he was carting around the better. Daniel offered his cigarettes, and Percy’s hand reached out, the three of them lighting up like mates after a long journey back from the away-game. ‘You’re stranded as well, then?’ Alfred said.

  ‘Who isn’t, in a place like this?’ Two big soft boxing gloves held it fast. ‘My green Commer got stuck in a drift.’

  Percy’s drooping fag straightened as his teeth took hold, an alert countenance shining back into the land of the living. ‘We passed it, didn’t we? Three bikers in their leathers doing a fandango. I rode a motorbike thirty years ago. I used to take you pillion, didn’t I, Alfred? We often went to Mablethorpe. Even Llandudno once. Bloody good times, weren’t they?’

  Daniel, in his sweat of terror, could only think the stupid old grandad truly gaga, surreal images from his deliquescence floating in the icy fagsmoke. He joined in the son’s dislike when the old man went on: ‘Young ’uns have got the energy for doing a knees-up outside a Commer van in the snow. It’s nowt to young lads. It looked a treat, though. I just caught a flash of them as we went by. Alfred didn’t see. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? All eyes on the road. He didn’t want to prang with his dad in the car, did he?’

  A loving reach for his son’s cheek was driven away. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside.’

  Pain in the brain, Daniel thought, as Percy’s face bunched into a cry. Even I would treat him better – still longing for his own generous long-dead disgraced father dying by inches in his bury-box, the father his mother had robbed him of, having brought him up according to the rules of emotional predators.

  Alfred’s bullying of his father was humanly acted, out of a normal up and down life that time had warped. He clutched him, a fist in his armpit, which might have been painful, but it set him moving towards the reception counter. Waiting for the manager, he put an arm around him, then turned him roughly across the way and flopped him into a chair as if he were a ventriloquist’s doll after an unsatisfactory performance.

  ‘I want no drunks in here.’ Fred’s arm went out like a signpost. ‘Blizzard or no damned blizzard.’ His pink-dotted bow tie was a compass needle stuck at east-north-east, eyes shot with blood at rage unexplainable, jacket stained from a spilled drink.

  ‘He’s not drunk, you bloody toffee-nosed fool. He’s all-in, can’t you see? We want a room for the night.’ The threatening arm drew back. ‘Two beds in it. We’ll be on our way first thing in the morning. And get us a couple of whiskies while you’re about it. We’re frozen stiff.’

  Fred saw his mistake, too late to right it, but told himself: never apologize. The more battered his dignity the straighter his back became, though it was hidden somewhere in his short and corpulent body. And one for myself, he decided, on such a night, and with this bloody mob around my neck. ‘Just sit in the lounge while I sort things out. How was I to know? You’d be surprised at the sorts we get in here.’

  Nothing had ever been enough for Alfred, and such driving had unthreaded his self-control. ‘He’s my father, and he hasn’t been drunk in his life. So get that into your aspirin brain.’ His height and weight were something to thank his father for at least. If he didn’t hit out he would lose all self-respect. A man works his guts to pieces running a transport business, and this whisky-nosed pugdog takes his father for a drunkard. The stance was of a panther ready for the leap: ‘I’ll rip you to pieces if you don’t show him some respect. I’ll break your china-pot head.’

  Aaron stood up. Everybody existed on such a short fuse these days, ever ready to curse or lash out with boot and fist. In Bexhill, on opening his door in the parking place, he had accidentally touched the next car, and the sort of woman who in olden times might have welcomed the troops back from Dunkirk with cups of tea and a cream cracker, harangued him for not having respect for other people’s property, so bloated with rage – and still ranting as he walked away – that if she’d had a gun he felt sure she would have killed him. ‘That wouldn’t be wise, because who would look after us if you did?’

  The low tone, not unpleasant, dispelled Alfred’s fit of wrath, though Aaron added: ‘I’ll give you a hand with him, if you like.’

  Percy stood as straight as a soldier. �
�I don’t want any help, thank you very much. It’s a shame though that a chap can’t have forty winks without everybody thinking he’s gone senile.’

  ‘They said you was drunk, Dad.’

  ‘I wish to God I was.’ At the counter he took a Biro from his inside pocket, head hovering over the book as he asked: ‘Where do I sign?’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ Fred said nervously, sensing he wasn’t yet free of peril. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  He’ll pocket the takings, Aaron thought, or it’s a tax dodge. Everybody’s on the fiddle in Mrs Thatcher’s Britain. But then, they always were. It probably started when they fleeced the Normans. Or the Danes. Or even the Romans. They’d practised on each other since the Flood. He felt it in himself.

  Percy’s hand slewed over the counter. As he was coaxed into the lounge by his son, Aaron caught them up and put the pen in the old man’s lapel pocket.

  ELEVEN

  A bleak sea going through the motions of stormforce, then the underwater cables broke, lines down in the wilderness. The thin-faced, rather fanatic-looking man had had the final word with the world beyond the snow. She might try later, in case a miracle-working company of weatherproof mechanics with fine hands and unassailable expertise had righted the poles and scuffed icy fluff off the wires to make them sing again.

  Stanley, in the meantime, would stay bereft, the little-boy vacancy willed all too easily into his eyes. It was hard not to laugh at the distinctly faxed picture, yet she was undeniably grateful for this heaven-sent separation. He would park himself, providing the aircraft had been able to get down, and had not been rearranged to Paris or Frankfurt (and then what would he be doing?) in some neon-lit airport, putting away wash after wash of dismal coffee, gloomily mulling on the postponement of her sexy reception when, after bolting all doors, they hurried to the bedroom for that quick, yet usually satisfying, wrestle of reunion.

  In her dreams she had always wanted to find, behind the false door of a bookcase as in old movies, a hall of people dancing under the glare of white lights, inebriated by delicious wine as they circled through the smell of their own warm sweat, half-naked men and women carried beyond fine talk into manic licentiousness, as unreachable by everyday domestic worries as they in this ghastly gimcrack hotel were from their destinies beyond surrounding snow.

  Strange hands stroked her adequate breasts, subtle fingers finding every orifice, till her voice joined others in orgasmic chorus, an orgy she had never partaken of but would have run into had such heady music sounded from the neighbouring room. She would disgrace herself, alone in the corridor by the dead telephone, but didn’t want to release the too vivid scene, unearthed from parts of her that must always have existed, their whereabouts unknown to her and certainly to Stanley, though perhaps he had sensed it and was unwilling to touch it off, to let her go body and soul on her own into that very special country, which struggle accounted for his little-boy look of all-round defence.

  Shrugging – the thrilling vision sucked away, as all such visions must be – she went into the lounge, to see who might be interesting to know. A girl preceding her with a tray of drinks set a pint by that same middle-aged, middle-sized befuddled man staring at the flames as if he had lost something. The man who had been talking on the telephone took his whisky and went to gaze through the window with an expression that might have been on Sally’s face if she had looked out, focusing on the monkey-puzzle of Fate. She found him interesting, though knew as she sat down that she must not look too obviously, since he seemed the type who might be easily offended.

  A tall man with large features and longish greying hair was reading a book like the Bible, a bottle of wine on his table, calm face suggesting he would sit out the isolation no matter how long it went on. The serving girl put a pot of water and two large whiskies between an old and impeccably attired gent in a suit and tie, while the younger man who was obviously his keeper poured so much water into his glass as to lose the alcohol entirely.

  A woman of about thirty, short mousy hair, wearing baggy trousers and sensible-type shoes, slept in an armchair, more wantonly displayed than she could be aware of, feet out and an arm above the back of her head, a breast lifting into an attractive curve in spite of the thickness of her sweater.

  A raddled fortyish man was talking to a girl whose look turned close to adoration after she stopped laughing, and Keith lifted his drink to say: ‘Here’s to you, then.’

  ‘You’re trying to get me sozzled,’ Eileen said. ‘But I don’t care. I like to get a bit tiddly now and again.’

  ‘You’ve certainly earned a drink.’ Glasses touched, and were drained. ‘Let’s go and see our room. You can tell me whether you like it or not.’

  The true exit was the window not the door, Daniel decided, to watch and see yet not to go, a picture of the outside which would torment but not elucidate, rather than a door which, inviting him to action, would surely kill. His courage was exposed, determination found lacking, sight battened on snow flocking down, nothing to do except wait and hope. To open a door and run into the elemental trap would release him from civilized anxiety. He liked the window because he could see and not act, and his attachment to duty gave way to an acceptance of the unusual peace, nothing to be done but enjoy comfort and be calmed by the falling curtain of snow, like the weeks prior to a marriage that promised everlasting protection and ease, before the wagons of doom as in grand opera rumbled over the cobbles.

  He would be killed for failure, but deserved to be whitened as utterly as the window for the butcheries he had helped to bring about – not much to take credit for, if credit he wanted, knowing well enough what he had done. You couldn’t pay for the sins of your father, though his mother had set him on a course of thinking he ought to, so that he had committed sufficient to bleach his father’s crime sheet white.

  The snow had saved his soul in burying the van with its radar time-locks, directionally-set detonators, the quarter-ton imperial weight, rendered the box of technology so harmless that a muffled volcano would lift only ice and darkness. His eyes widened, as if the white-out shielded more mysteries than he could conceive of at the moment.

  ‘Is it still snowing?’ Percy called.

  Daniel came from the window. ‘Less than it was, whatever that means.’

  ‘None of us will get away tonight,’ he cackled. ‘We’ll be here till Doomsday.’

  Alfred opened all the buttons of his dark cashmere overcoat. ‘Finish your drink, Father.’

  ‘I’m right, though. You’ll see.’ The swallow went skewwhiff, splashing his collar. Wiping himself, he took the watch from his waistcoat. ‘We’ve been here an hour already, but we’ll need a calendar by the time we’ve done.’

  Standing in the garden outside the kitchen window Alfred had heard his father talking to himself, which he supposed was understandable if no one else was living in the house. But nowadays he was beginning to talk to himself even when other people were close, and that couldn’t be good.

  Sally asked the serving girl what wine they had in the cellar.

  ‘What sort do you want?’ She spoke angrily, tongue going over her uneven teeth.

  ‘What do you have?’

  ‘How do I know? We’ve got all sorts.’

  ‘See if you can find me a half-bottle of nice Bordeaux.’

  Enid put the few coins on the tray into her apron pocket, drying fingers up and down her thigh. ‘I expect we’ve got some somewhere. But he don’t like me rummaging through the wine. He thinks I might knock a bottle off. As if I would!’ She laughed. ‘The best vinegar in England! A chap once sent some back, and Fred nearly went bonkers because nobody had done that before. But it tasted like rotten plonk, as well, when I finished off a glass somebody left on their table.’

  She smoothed a pale cheek, which turned momentarily rose, and when she walked out with swaying hips Tom Parsons said: ‘She wants her arse smacking, that one does.’

  Sally doubted it, but not the sincerity of his desire,
supposing the world to be full of perverted men, though the dancing people of her dreams might not laugh at such notions, at Death in his cap and bells, at her in his wake, but always their love and lust combining, turning as swiftly in their priapic gyrations as space in the great hall would allow, under the light of candelabras, fuelled by the fumes of wine and the subtle odours of sweat, she not knowing where the vision came from, but half her body was in it, heart and left breast and leg caught in the swirl, the other half about to be dragged helplessly after, as she in her deepest being wished to be.

  Her husband or mother might say she was going mad, but the stunted man’s words somehow connected to her peculiar spectacle of obscene revelry.

  ‘Revolting,’ she said, shaking the picture from her mind.

  Daniel, surprised at such a fervent reaction to Parsons’ jocular remark, looked at her with interest.

  TWELVE

  The lee side of the van was better for comfort, but not much. Foreheads to the tin, they pissed yellow holes in the snow deep enough for any midget to crawl into and survive the winter.

  Garry passed the bottle. Life was only worth living if you were half cut and riding the bike, though being in the blizzard on his vibrant seven-fifty wasn’t the best way to be either. ‘Windy tonight.’

  Wayne pulled his growth of beard out of the slipstream and wiped his lips. ‘Where’s it coming from?’

  ‘Heaven, you cunt.’

  ‘Hell, I reckon.’

  ‘It’d melt then, wouldn’t it?’ Lance argued. ‘It would be rain. Or steam.’

  Wayne flicked a drop of whisky onto his cock. ‘Don’t say I never give you owt.’

  ‘Shall I tell you summat?’ Garry said.

  He zipped up. ‘As long as it’s dirty.’

  The Commer van bumped against them. ‘Well,’ Garry said, ‘we’re stuck. The bikes’ll never get us out of this fucking lay-by.’