Snowstop

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Thank God,’ Bill said, ‘now we can have another game. I only hope we don’t get any more refugees parking themselves on us.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll be here for weeks,’ Paul said. ‘They’ll eat all our supplies and take our jobs, though if we do run out of something to eat we can have a game and serve the loser up for dinner. Or we could carve a slice off you know who.’

  ‘He’ll be rotten before he dies,’ Bill said. ‘You can smell him already, even in this cold den. I don’t mind starving to death, if it comes to it, but I’m buggered if I’m going to die in agony eating tainted food.’

  ‘We’ve got to be prepared for all eventualities,’ Paul said. ‘Don’t you recollect what happened to old Jack Bailey and his crew on the way back from Brindisi after doing that Greek run? They took a short cut through Switzerland, and got stuck in the snow for three weeks. Luckily, they’d picked up a hitchhiker near Milan. Jack told me he’d bought a bottle of olive oil and a bag of dried mushrooms in Italy, so that helped as well. When it thawed they sank what was left of him chained to an old tyre in one of them Swiss lakes. Jack’d stop at nowt to get his teeth into a good dinner.’

  Bill reached for the primus. ‘I don’t think I would be reduced to that, though, as long as I had plenty of tea and sugar, and a few cartons of fags.’

  ‘Mind you,’ Paul went on, ‘if it came to that sort of crisis there’d be no option, would there? Not that I do think we’re going to be here anything like three weeks. The cold’s not as sharp as it was. Yes, I will have another mug of tea. It’s no use offering that poor bugger any. It’ll be wasted on him. He fetched half the last lot up.’

  The house was bigger than he had imagined, not a bungalow at all, but floor after floor and bits going off in all directions. Somebody had got there before him, because it was already fully plumbed up, unless he had done it in another life and forgotten. Maybe his estimate had been too high, or Alfred had spotted some fault in the details, though you couldn’t think so to see how no expense had been spared. The baths were porcelain and the taps were gold, and in every room there was one of them funny little bidets which he had seen in even some of the cheaper places in France where he had stayed with Wayne and Lance. Every bathroom was tarted up like a picture from a catalogue so that you would think the Queen was going to live there.

  The trouble was, they had fucked up the central heating, and he would never have done that. He couldn’t see a radiator anywhere, and as for a fireplace, forget it. It was the coldest house he had ever been in, though there was bright blue sky at every window, and lights on in every room. He climbed a spiral staircase to see what was on the next floor but funnily enough couldn’t go any further because some steps were missing. There was no carpet and they were so filthy with broken glass and wet dead leaves he nearly went arse over bollocks. Then his breath was torn out like a flame, and when he tried to jump to where the steps began, instead of backing down like a sensible lad, he fell, and kept on falling.

  Clouds were dividing, such gaps showing the Big Dipper. Aaron’s pleasing fantasy was to have it turn into an actual scoop, and clear a ten-mile lane through the snow, along which they could walk to freedom. Beyond the gate, Lance and Wayne leaned against the side of the van as if asleep. His watch showed six o’clock, eyes closing, and the ache in his arms total. He went a few paces back towards the hotel and, no coordination in any limb, fell sideways.

  The wind beat as if to power the massive sails of a ship, at war with stillness, not the random drumming of the blizzard, but gusting with some new purpose not yet apparent. Alfred and Parsons had given up half an hour ago. The clean and welcome smell momentarily revived him. Drawing his spade out of the snow, like Excalibur from the Stone, he cradled it for fear he would lose such a prime tool of their endeavours.

  The even piping of jet engines came from thousands of metres up in blue sky and sun, telling those living near an airport that another ordinary day was soon to start, a sound reminding him that the trap they were locked in could not stay closed for ever.

  The van stood out, stark and dark green, coils of pale smoke from its exhaust, almost alive in relishing its power to destroy them all. Keith looked dispiritedly at the ramp of snow, and at the Trojan Horse it seemed impossible to budge more.

  Wayne took off his helmet, a smile followed by the gesture of a hand across his throat signifying that he’d had enough. Lance turned his visor towards Keith as if to say that whoever owned the head inside would do no more. But Keith knew there was always more energy where that came from, an untapped abundance in everyone still, that last black rock of reserve waiting to move the van another hundred yards.

  They followed him like a patrol of yetis, Lance in the lead, Aaron and Wayne together. The glow of false dawn about the yard faded as clouds closed. Snow flurries irritated his face, a hand sliding over the greased features, stung his eyes that were barely able to see.

  He stood alone in the dark between the cars, did not know why. An animal sound mimicked the wind, a note of despair turning to a tone of wonder at surface snow flying into clouds of mist to find a better position and becoming more and more irritable at knowing they never would. The issue of life and death had lost its bite. Utter exhaustion stopped him knowing where he was. Belonging nowhere softened the spirit, till he remembered that the job was not yet done, and forced himself to go in after the others.

  Fred needed no help, but Eileen followed him from lounge to kitchen, and from bar to store room – like a little dog, the lucky bitch, because she surely knows about the bit of paper that rustles in my pocket where’er I walk.

  He was jealous of his work, work being precious, work being like gold to him. He made each task last, spun it out because while there was something to do he wasn’t worrying about past or future, nor the present which could end more abruptly than he wanted and which therefore didn’t bear thinking about.

  He had never known what happiness was, only that if he worked he was not unhappy. Work was a luxury – especially in this situation – as long as enough money came with it to keep him in food and shelter, and the little packets of those cigars that he puffed with such relish. He had faith that Keith would bring them sound in wind and limb through the night, and keep the bikers working so hard that they wouldn’t have the energy to torment him any more.

  By dawn, if you looked at the way things were going, the hotel would no longer be habitable. The attics were full of snow and debris, the ceilings of the bedrooms were patched with damp, icy wind was coming down the stairs. In other words, it would be a write-off. He would claim full insurance, and begin the great work all over again – like that bloke who kept pushing a boulder up a hill because God or whoever at the top always rolled it back to the bottom. This time though he would buy a place on the coast in a more benign climate. Maybe he would even start up somewhere in Spain, because Doris would be sure to come back to him then.

  ‘I love the smell,’ Eileen said, as he laid strips of streaky bacon from a five-pound pack on a hotplate over the fire. ‘It’s the best meal in the world.’

  ‘I prefer the smell of roast turkey,’ he said, ‘when it comes out of the oven at Christmas.’ She was complimenting him on his work, so he could almost take to her. ‘Turkey and stuffing: it’s the best smell in the world.’

  She moved from the warm rail to let him throw more logs into the stove, his best dried logs held back from the fire in the lounge. ‘Did you have a party, then?’

  ‘At this hotel we did. I set up a Christmas Special, at twelve quid a head. All anybody could eat. And did they eat! It did me good to see ’em, except that they were robbing me blind. They said I made the best garlic bread they’d ever tasted. I came out on top, though, financial-wise. And I didn’t mind, anyway, because it was good for trade at other times, except that it’s been falling off a bit lately.’

  She leaned forward to light some paper for her cigarette: ‘I wish I’d been there.’

  He struck a large kitchen match for her
. ‘You should have been.’

  ‘Well, I was elsewhere, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘At my boy friend’s. We had a can of beer and a pizza between us.’

  ‘That’s not much to celebrate on.’

  ‘We enjoyed it, though.’

  ‘If I’ve got a place by next Christmas,’ he said, ‘you can come and eat all the stuff you like. I shan’t charge you anything.’

  ‘I don’t want charity. If I’ve got no money I’ll do some work for you to earn it.’

  ‘No, you won’t. I’ll treat you. For old times’ sake.’

  If what Keith had said was true, she thought, he would either be dead or in prison. She still didn’t know. But she had to believe what he had said about his wife, because nobody would tell a whopping lie like that.

  ‘Now what are you crying for? He’s alive, isn’t he? Listen, I can hear them coming in. It’s a good job we’ve got these bacon sarnies on the go. Everybody loves a bacon sandwich.’ It might be better if he was dead, though, he told himself, and then she would have his money. The daft young thing don’t know how lucky she is. No, she would only lose it in six months, so he’d better stay alive.

  The first run they had done was to the West Country, and Lance remembered them belting down the M5 like skirmishers trying to get in front of an army, Garry in front, followed by Wayne, and then him, weaving between the cars of happy holidaymakers with noddy toys hanging in the back and kids either puking up or howling out for water. All three heading next summer for Devon they would gun along in the sun, stopping for a cream tea at a place Garry had known from his earliest roadworthy days. But even with such a picture he felt so dead tired it was a struggle to keep both hands at the bacon sandwich and chew it down.

  Fred went with his tray to Aaron and Alfred. ‘How is he, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t dead.’

  Parsons lay, mouth fallen open, soundless, eyes upwhite and seeing nothing. Fred used the force of both hands to close the mouth, then pressed on the eyelids to conceal the ghastly stare, and arrange arms across the chest. He was dead all right, but what could you do? We all had to die sometime. ‘I can put undertaker down on my list of trades now, and that’s for sure.’ He spread a blanket: ‘A man in his condition shouldn’t have been sent out. Anybody might have known he’d have had a heart attack.’

  He didn’t care how many went, now that his father had gone. ‘Try telling it to that stuck-up swine. All I can say is: God preserve us from bloody heroes.’

  ‘I did. Parsons could have got out of it if he’d wanted, but he insisted on doing his turn. He must have known the score. Everybody I’ve ever known always knew that kind of score. Have another bacon sarnie?’

  ‘Thanks, I will. I thought I was about to cop it as well, a time or two. You won’t get the MBE I laughed to myself, but you might end up with the MCA pinned to your chest. That’s what they said my brother-in-law died of – massive cardiac arrest. But I’ve never worked so hard out there, and I hope I’ll never do anything like it again.’ He ran a hand over himself, as if hoping to find another coat to button up against the chill. ‘I might as well chuck some more wood on the fire.’ He reached out for a chair and, gripping top right and bottom left worked the legs loose till all the blood from his body seemed to be in his face. He riffled the ashes with a poker and threw the bits on. ‘We may be in out of the snow, but I’m still bloody freezing.’

  ‘Why don’t you take a hatchet and start on the beams?’ But Alfred didn’t hear, and Fred knew that you just couldn’t get into the haybox of some people, not even with sarcasm as blunt as a cold chisel.

  Giving all her warmth to Garry had done him no good, and Jenny felt that she had no spark remaining, not even for herself. Lance’s face was coated with grime and grease, eyes deadened with fatigue, flopped hair adhering from sweat. She didn’t care to imagine what her own face looked like, on coming to the table, or think about what she had turned into since entering this house of death. She didn’t have a job any more, but what would it matter if none of them lived beyond the night? If they did she would go back south and stay at her parents’ till she found a job and a room of her own. They’d always told her that Raymond was no good, that she shouldn’t have married him, and as for going off to live in the north … she would put up with any taunts to live in a more civilized place. No, it wasn’t that, because wherever you were you couldn’t escape from yourself, always a real Piranesi prison if ever there was one.

  Lance thought this is how a soldier feels, not knowing you’re going to be alive the next second, though not caring too much either because to do so would break you into a thousand bits even before a bomb or shell could do it. Still, it isn’t in the Falklands, and I’ve got this lovely woman holding my hands, though hell, I don’t know what to say to her except: ‘Love you, Jenny.’

  Jenny was surprised by a smile that she felt improved her features. ‘I hope you’ll be all right out there.’

  ‘I don’t think about it,’ he said. ‘It’s in the bag, though the Chief’ll never say so. All the time I was digging I was thinking about us in bed together.’

  His inexperience had been made up for by guidance and abandon, and his energy. ‘I’m glad. I was thinking of you.’

  ‘Even when you was holding Garry’s hand?’

  ‘It was a way of holding yours.’

  ‘He’s still asleep,’ Wayne said. ‘Fancy sleeping all through this. He don’t know how lucky he is. It’s not like him, though. That terrorist caught him a real packet. I hope he’s burning in hell.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Lance said. ‘You can bet on it.’

  She drank her tea, not wanting anybody dead, yet not able to care if they were. It was cold. So was Garry, dead and cold, but they would discover it when their work was done, or nobody would find anybody if they were unlucky.

  Keith sat with Eileen, and she held his hand, nothing to say, she just didn’t want him to eat alone. Not even a dog should. Though he was in charge, and had done so much, he looked beaten, finish written on his face in streaks and wrinkles, lips more down than when they had been fighting their way through the snow to get here. His eyes were dark and fallen-in, his skin cracked and in places peeling into the grease. Maybe pain made him look at the end of his strength. Everybody else’s face was in a rotten state, masks breaking up, except when they smiled or said something. He squeezed her hand, but she held from telling that it hurt, and pressed back gently when his fit of whatever it was had passed.

  After one of the last quarrels with Gwen, when everything had been said on both sides to cause the maximum hurt, he went out of their Chelsea bijou gem – as she scathingly called it: she had never stopped telling him how much she disliked it, in spite of the half-million it would fetch on the market, and not being by any means so bijou – and drove over the bridge along the Inner Ring Road, comforted by traffic lights opening onto green-go when a hundred yards away.

  Lulled by the light traffic he lost himself somewhere in Lewisham, circling but glad to note that for a while Gwen hadn’t dominated his mind. Even realizing her absence only brought her back for a moment. He stopped by a pub to orientate himself with his atlas, to find a route out of town for the Kent coast, where he would go to a hotel and sleep the night in peace.

  He wound the window down to let out cigar smoke, and heard singing from the pub. All windows were squares of light, and though the singing was hardly the King’s College choir, he stood on the pavement to listen. The music rose and fell in waves of boisterous noise, till after a few choruses he made out the words, and began to laugh. Ain’t it grand, to be bloody well dead! They struck him as well off-centre, for of course it could never be grand to be bloody well dead, though going by the sound of their happiness it might be exhilarating to say so.

  Expecting to see harridans with false teeth and candyfloss hair he went inside to find a dozen girls, with punk or otherwise elegant hairdos, sitting at a l
ong table with linked arms, swaying from left to right and singing at the height of their voices, all healthy, confident, with good teeth, nice individual clothes to each.

  Men along the bar and a few older women looked as if such merriment wasn’t taking place and there was nothing between them and the wall but silence and empty tables. Keith mimed a clap of applause, and one of the girls waved, her smile a flower thrown for him alone, to wear till it faded from his lapel. Sipping brandy and smoking a cigar, he enjoyed the crude yet funnily inspiring songs, as if the girls had inexplicably taken to such old-time melodies for the verve and gusto of their music.

  They cared for no one, young women who worked hard and had money to spend, not the sort who would tolerate the marital anguish he was locked into, though maybe they would have to later. When he got home he could answer Gwen’s taunts with such equanimity that they went to bed without further quarrelling.

  Sixty yards out on the road, the blast would sweep through the hotel like a thousand knives and kill everyone inside, so one more attempt was needed to get the van clear, and at half-past six there was no more time to play with.

  ‘Another stint.’ He touched Lance on the shoulder. ‘Just one more,’ he said to Wayne. ‘I want you as well, for as long as you can do anything to help,’ he told Alfred and Aaron.

  They followed without complaint.

  Every trade had a different apron, the escutcheon of skill and industry, but Fred of many trades had only one. He had bought a dozen of the strongest cloth, and picked them out himself. Doris chose everything else, which was right, but the aprons were his. Never let anyone choose your aprons, not even your employers, the butler at his first job had said. If the slave bought his own chains they wouldn’t feel as strong.

  Funny things you thought of when you could be blown up at any time. He wore an apron so as not to sully his suit, narrow grey and white stripes that made him look a little longer in the body. He listed the trades he had been forced into on this long night which was not yet over. Barman and waiter at the beginning, then cook and bottlewasher, doctor for the wounded and priest for the dying, and undertaker if you thought about it, which he did as he whistled with apparent cheerfulness between the tables, collecting pots and cutlery, hearing the baleful groans of the gale and half expecting the floor to heave under him as it had in the old days at sea. In a great gale he had been aware that the waves were big enough to tip the whole caboodle into oblivion. Any second could come and without anybody’s by-your-leave decide to be their last.