Snowstop

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘He must have been lonely,’ Jenny said.

  ‘We all are, when we’re on our own.’

  ‘What makes him so rough?’

  ‘Who knows? I’m rough, as well. I suppose it’s because we’re bikers. Everybody’s against us. We’re young, we’re free, and we’re mobile. People hate us for that.’

  It all sounded so romantic, though everybody’s romantic life wounded somebody. But she tried to sound positive: ‘I suppose it is a good time for you.’

  ‘When we’re all out together, riding over the dales, nobody can touch us.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Are you married?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘How did you kill him? Poison, a knife, or a gun? I wrote a song like that once.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ Percy woke up. ‘Lovely no-holds-barred peals of feminine laughter!’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better take you up to bed, Father. We’ve had a long day, and tomorrow might be even longer. You must be all in.’

  ‘I like it down here.’ His eyes glinted. ‘I might miss summat if I’m asleep. There’ll be plenty of time for sleep when I’ve popped my clogs.’

  ‘He left me,’ she said.

  ‘A nice person like you? He must have been insane. You didn’t lose much, if he was that stupid.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ She felt as exhilarated by such talk as he must feel when flying across the landscape. ‘I got pregnant, and wanted to have the baby, but he didn’t. He said we couldn’t afford it, and that he wasn’t ready for such a responsibility, whatever that meant. I couldn’t figure him out. So I thought: if he isn’t ready, neither am I. It would be a disaster to have a child under those conditions. I got rid of it, and now I see how wrong I was. He’d still have left me, but I’d have managed. Women do. And then he went off with one of my best friends.’ She wanted to be free with him, yet saying such things might put him off. ‘It’s because I like you’ – which was as far as she could go.

  He had had plenty of girls, but not a woman like her. ‘I love you, as well. It’s good to trade stories.’

  ‘Have you written a song about it?’ She laughed, touching his face, laid her palm there, winning the dare with herself to do it.

  He kissed her. ‘I would have looked after that baby. I know I would. I hope the snow keeps us here for ever.’

  Kiss my tears and taste the salt. And I’m not even drunk. But she felt sick from the champagne, a vacuum forming in her stomach. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does, but you might as well forget it. Worry is no good for anybody.’

  ‘What made you so wise?’

  ‘You should ask my old man that. He’d laugh till he died. So maybe you should. It could be the snow.’

  ‘I’ve been looking at you all evening,’ Enid said, ‘whenever I came in and out. You didn’t see me, though. I like you. You’re more interesting than anybody else here.’

  Aaron wondered how she had come to such an amazing conclusion.

  ‘I like older men.’ She wanted to make good her previous mistake. Her grey-green eyes shone. ‘Older men have been through a lot more. Young ’uns make me sick. Older men have learned how to treat you better.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, I don’t, do I? But I’m sure it’s true.’ She looked at his hands. ‘Your nails are clean.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they be?’ He was never allowed to come to the table unless they were, and such early inculcations didn’t die.

  ‘I hate dirty nails. That’s the first thing I look at in a man. That pig’s nails was black, every one of ’em. Didn’t you notice?’

  Thank God he was asleep. He wanted to keep trouble away as long as possible, dreading that they would wake up and fight among themselves. ‘He’s probably been working on his motorbike. Everyone’s nails are black at some time.’ Her nails were clean, but eaten to the quick, ‘I always look to see if a person bites their nails.’

  She drew them back, reddening in a way he found charming, ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can’t stop. I try, though, honest I do.’

  He wondered why she was working in a place like this. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘About three months.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘I live in the next village. I don’t want to milk cows or chase sheep all my life. It pays my way here, but it’s not a career, and that’s a fact. I’ve been to secretarial college, and I can work computers. I’ve applied for fifty jobs in the last few months, in Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby – all over the place. Sometimes I get as far as the interview, but then I don’t hear from them again, I don’t know why.’

  Nor did he. When not battling to preserve her self-esteem she looked sad and serious, her faraway expression of not entirely belonging to this or any other world making him feel sorry for all young people who had to get used to the brickbats of life. ‘I run a second-hand book business with my sister. It’s the usual thing of buying cheap and selling as dear as I think we can get away with. We put catalogues out a few times a year, and by the end we’ve made enough to justify our efforts.’

  ‘It sounds nice work. Especially if you like it.’

  He held her hand, his heart at a faster rate when she looked at him as if not wanting him ever to let go. ‘It’s hectic, sometimes. We get a lot of orders in and they all have to be packed and posted. In fact we’ve often thought of getting somebody to give us a hand.’

  ‘Come on, Father, it’s time,’ Alfred said, ‘the sort that waits for no man. If we don’t get into our beds soon they’ll run away and leave us for them as needs ’em.’

  Percy stood up, and took his son’s arm. ‘Aye, we don’t want that to happen. I must get my beauty sleep for when we get to Bournemouth. There’ll be a lot to see, won’t there?’

  The older he got, the more pity he felt for his father. ‘There’ll be all sorts of nice things, I promise you.’ Alfred waved good night, but Percy wouldn’t leave till he had shaken a few hands.

  ‘Have you got a room here?’ Lance asked.

  ‘Of course she has.’ Sweat fell from Parsons’ nose as if he had just run ten miles. ‘Nothing but the best for such as her – the best that my money can buy.’

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ Lance said, ‘I love you, you can tell that, can’t you? You’re nicer than anybody else here, because I don’t know anything about you.’

  She laughed at his ambiguous compliments. ‘I’m ready when you are.’

  ‘She’s nothing but a bloody tart,’ Parsons called tearfully.

  Unsteady on his feet, he sprawled backwards at the first blow.

  ‘Oh good,’ Wayne yawned, ‘the fighting’s started.’

  Jenny was sodden with pity and regret at Parsons having helped himself to the Union money, not at all encouraged by her. He had been in a funny mood the whole trip, unlike his usual self (whatever that was, she now thought), as if he had made up his mind to spend the money beforehand but hoped she would save him from it, and show that she cared. She hadn’t guessed his weakness till too late, and if she had it would have been impossible to stop him. She pulled at Lance’s arm: ‘Please, leave him alone.’

  ‘He’d better keep his trap shut, then,’ Lance said, ‘or my boot’ll fill it.’

  ‘Pack it in.’ Aaron lifted Parsons, though without much sympathy, into a chair, blood falling onto his sleeve.

  ‘Nobody can take a joke,’ Parsons muttered. ‘The young ’uns always win. That was bloody well uncalled for.’

  Lance hooked into her arm as they walked away.

  ‘You could take a job with us,’ Aaron said to Enid. ‘We certainly need someone.’ Living a quiet life produced unseemly fantasies that might one day turn magically real. He imagined she looked at him with love, while knowing himself to be older than her father. He would take her home after the thaw like the top prize gained in a raffle, and Beryl would give her the spare room, and slowly they would train her to the business, and he would marry her.
He had never had children, and would be an old father, the world not short of such cases.

  ‘I like you,’ she said, ‘but you don’t have to fix me up with work.’

  ‘We need someone, and you would learn.’ What was power if you couldn’t use it for good? But when Beryl said that the police had called, it could only be for one thing. She would look after Beryl while he was in prison.

  ‘I want to go to bed with you,’ she said.

  ‘The snow seems to be taking everybody the same way.’ Parsons, unabashed, swabbed the cut lip with his handkerchief. ‘You’d think the booze had been laced with Spanish fly. Or maybe it’s the snow itself. Though I suppose it’s the booze: you never know what the landlord gets up to.’

  ‘Dirty old sod,’ Enid said. ‘They’re all the same.’

  Fred came back from his own quarters, happy at seeing half the guests gone to bed. ‘What are you sitting down here for? You should be behind the bar, serving the clientele. This isn’t the Barbary Coast. What the hell do you think I’m paying you for?’

  ‘I suppose you mean me?’ Enid sneered, stood, and marched close. ‘Well, do you know something, Mr Fucking Frog Belly? I don’t work for you any more.’

  ‘I’d want a month’s notice, if you didn’t. So do as I say, and none of your lip.’

  Aaron thought he was about to slap her, though the twitch of his hand might have been the onset of DTs. He took her by the elbow. ‘Sit down, Enid.’

  ‘You’ll get no notice out of me. I’ll be off first thing in the morning.’

  She wouldn’t be easy to replace, bad as she was at her work. Most girls in the area were barely out of the Stone Age. ‘You can’t leave me in the lurch like this. You wouldn’t get a reference, anyway.’

  ‘You can stuff your reference. I’ve already got a job.’

  ‘You won’t have when I tell ’em how you left me.’

  ‘He won’t mind. He’s sitting here.’

  Fred took it in. ‘Well, that’s the bloody limit, when the guests come and take my labour away.’

  Aaron saw that he was right, but it was done, and he would stand by his offer, though he was sorry she hadn’t let Fred know more gently.

  ‘I’d like a drink.’ She sat down. ‘Tell him to get me a drink, Aaron. I feel like celebrating. We can drink to my new job.’

  He wasn’t sure it would be tactful, ‘I’d like two whiskies.’

  ‘Not for her,’ Fred said. ‘Anyway, the bar’s closed. The towels are on. I’m not having any more of this. You can get out into the snow and die of the cold. This isn’t a pothouse – nor a knocking-shop, come to that.’

  ‘Oh, stuff it, then.’ Enid pulled Aaron by the hand. ‘Come on, let’s get up to bed. I’m dying for a bit of sex, after all this excitement.’

  ‘Can I come as well, duck?’ Wayne called when they reached the stairs. ‘I’ll be ever so quiet!’ He felt lively after the sleep, no longer hungry, and certainly thirsty due to the state of his pigsty mouth. ‘Get me a pint, mate. I want to console myself.’

  ‘One for me, as well.’ Garry stretched, and belched. ‘I ain’t had a drink for an hour.’

  ‘The towels are on,’ Fred told them. ‘You’re welcome to sit here until morning, but there’s no more to drink.’

  ‘It’s only ten o’clock,’ Wayne said.

  ‘My watch says ten minutes past. Everything’s closed up.’

  ‘How much more of his fucking lip are we going to have to take?’

  ‘I might as well clear off to bed myself.’ Parsons’ face still ached. ‘I’ve just come to the end of the longest day of my life. Good night, everybody.’

  Fred wished some guests had stayed down, as witnesses or assistants should it come to violence. ‘I run a respectable house, and when I say time’s up, it’s up. I mean it.’

  ‘The best thing you can do’ – Garry took him by the lapel in such a way that if he struggled he would choke – ‘is sell us a bottle of whisky, and then get to bed yourself, where you’ll be safe. I can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘You can’t frighten me.’ Fred pulled free. ‘I’m going to phone for the police.’

  Garry sat in an armchair. ‘Do you have a secret CB radio in your room? Because that’s the only way you’d get through tonight. Me and Lance yanked the wires out before we came in. We’re dab hands at that, though I expect the line was down already. In any case, don’t you know that our lovely lads in blue are at this moment in time supping tea with their toes up against a stove? And who can blame them? Be sensible, and rustle us up a few drinks.’

  ‘I’ve told you. My mind’s decided, and when it is, it stays that way.’

  Garry turned. ‘Where’s Lance?’

  ‘He’s up in a bedroom, having it off with that woman.’

  ‘Pity. He’s going to miss this.’

  NINETEEN

  He had said nothing, a muteness she deserved perhaps, and didn’t mind because he had moved in such a way during their lovemaking that she’d had her pleasure each time. She lay on her back, eyes opened in the dim light, clothes to her chin. Curled by her side, he seemed asleep, in the shape of a shorthand symbol studied in her teens.

  But he wasn’t asleep, his voice startling, as if it were a facility which he’d never had before. ‘We’re all going to be dead by the morning.’

  ‘After that’ – even her laugh was dry – ‘I don’t think I’m going to feel alive ever again.’

  ‘You don’t know what I mean.’ Half out of bed, he reached for cigarettes in his jacket. ‘The joy of it is, nothing can alter the fact.’

  ‘Are you telling me we won’t see each other again?’ She hardly expected it, though to continue the adventure might be interesting, and certainly pleasant, albeit dangerous, unless she confined her activity to while Stanley was away.

  He turned to her, leaning on an elbow. ‘I mean exactly what I say.’

  ‘But why say it so soon after such a good time? Wasn’t it marvellous for you as well? It seemed so to me.’

  He held his cigarette away while kissing her. ‘It was the best thing that’s ever happened. I don’t mind dying.’

  She supposed it was the old bite of sadness after sex – weren’t men said to feel it more intensely than women? – though he was putting it a bit strongly.

  ‘It won’t make any difference,’ he continued in the same weird tone, that she hadn’t picked up in him before coming to bed. ‘I wish it would, but it won’t. We might just as well lie here and let it happen. There’s no better way.’

  She stroked his hard flesh. ‘Darling, tell me, what is it? Talk to me. I love you, don’t you know?’ And who wouldn’t, caught tightly in this blue world of snow? It must be snowing again, since even I sound different to myself.

  He felt an unfamiliar contentment, dwelt alone on a confined levitated plane, which state he didn’t want to spoil by too much talk. ‘I’m happy, that’s all.’

  ‘So am I. It would be strange not to be.’ But she wasn’t, not entirely, recalling his anguished face when he had been on the telephone, the expression of a person in such trouble that he was afraid for his life.

  His disembodied voice came again. ‘I never imagined my existence would end in happiness. I have to thank you for that. You’re the glorious person who will make it possible for me to die happy.’

  ‘I’m glad for you, if this is the effect I’ve had.’ He was being more poetic, even profound, about the experience than Stanley could ever have been. ‘I feel wonderfully satisfied as well, but it seems to have been more interesting for you. Tell me more about it. I love to hear you talk.’

  ‘You could hardly be expected to understand.’ His protective mood of detachment had been broken into, violated, though he wasn’t able to care. ‘It would make no sense.’

  She borrowed his cigarette, as she had seen lovers do in films. Stanley had been irritated when she once tried. ‘Maybe you’re right. Why spoil our lovely time?’ Ease came back. No reason to feel guilty of a little a
ffair in the night. What the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve, as her mother used to say, but about things far less important.

  His voice again sounded as if from a little box in the stratosphere, out of timbre with reality, and she didn’t want to lose him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I never did know. I suppose it’s the human condition that we can never know till we die what it’s essential to know, and by then it’s far too late. My mother was convinced she would go to heaven, but for me it will be hell, like my father.’

  Oh, that stale Catholic stuff. As far as she was concerned she wouldn’t go anywhere. But let him talk, it must be good for him, almost as good as it was fascinating for her to listen. Perhaps he had to make up for his unnatural silence during their exquisite session of love, though what he was saying was hardly flattering.

  ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you,’ he said.

  ‘All right then, don’t. I’m happy just lying here’ – floating listlessly between utter wellbeing and a concupiscent desire to make love again, touching him, smoothing his flank, but softly so as not to disturb his obviously fragile spirit while he struggled to get rid of some burden clearly impossible for her to comprehend.

  ‘I don’t know whether or not I can trust you, you see.’

  He was so serious that she knew she had better listen, a faint alarm that she hadn’t known him long enough to rely on his sense of humour. ‘That’s for you to decide.’

  ‘I want to trust you,’ he said. ‘I need to. I suppose I’ll be compelled to, anyway.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Talk, muffled or garbled according to distance, came from other parts of the hotel like waves of far-off traffic, as if the snow had now gone and the roads were dry and open, motors speeding in all directions. Then silence again, except for a sudden jolt of the ancient plumbing system. They were in a structure of enormous weight that would be part of the world till the world itself came to an end.