Snowstop

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Don’t think I won’t settle the score,’ Alfred said. ‘This isn’t the end of the world.’

  ‘It’ll be the end of you if you don’t stop threatening me. We were having a joke. We weren’t hurting anybody.’

  ‘I think you should be quiet,’ Keith told Alfred, which set a momentary silence over all of them. Percy’s face, in sleep, lost twenty years of his age, and he wasn’t awake to comment when the lights went out, and stayed that way.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  At the sound of fighting, Daniel spoke to the palpable ghosts he imagined were crowding him in: Let them kill each other, and when they’re dead I can go down and make my way into the countryside, where it will be better to die than stay here in the dark, though a dozen fleecy sheep in the lee of a Derbyshire wall might still save my shepherd’s life.

  The chimney structure was warm from the fire downstairs, though his feet were cold. Time had no value. The air was bleak in the space he could sense but not see, more space than he had ever possessed, his body slowly expanding to fill it. He would be here for sufficient time to reach the bounds and burst through. Only then would he know why he was on earth, a boon never to be conferred on those who quarrelled while deciding how to dispose of him.

  Unfamiliar with the discipline of faith, they did not know what they wanted to do. Only faith could guide them into defeating him, but since they did not have it (and he did, both in himself and in his Cause) he would stay safe long enough to become the vanquisher.

  He had already been through many lives in his refuge, saturated himself in the past so as to be reinforced for what future he could make. Out of the past all answers come. Only the past tells you what you are, and how to act in a crisis. Pure faith and hardness of purpose make it unnecessary to distinguish between good and evil.

  It was dark except for the inner light such thoughts provided. To escape and survive he had to deal with brutal people, the squalor of conflict which no one consumed by pure ideals could avoid. So far he had only contributed by driving a van of explosives, but now he was trapped, and to escape would mean contact with the lowest form of an impossible-to-enlighten enemy, who killed the believer only for what he believed and not out of what they believed. They were as unthinking as the blizzard which had them all trapped.

  Sooner or later they would come to get him, but they could only squeeze through the trap door one at a time. Strait is the gate which would save him, because when hand or head appeared he would smash them with a post of wood which the attic had providentially provided. Strong enough to cause confusion among his assailants, the first to try his redoubt would never forget how foolish they had been. The brutalism of the idealist would defeat the savagery of the unbeliever.

  His mother had also said: ‘As long as you believe, you are safe.’ Fighting for survival might muddy the distilled water of your ideals, but belief survives and the water will become clear again. She may have meant her words to be taken in a different spirit, but whenever did those who spoke the Word have any control over how others interpreted what they said?

  ‘First you tell us,’ Keith said, ‘then you say you think you made a mistake.’

  ‘Yes, I was convinced. But now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Nor was I, till he locked himself in the attic. Then I went to look in the van, so I know that what you said in the first place was right.’

  Fred turned the gas lamp to a white glow on the bar. ‘I heard him going walkabout just now, so why don’t we get him down?’

  ‘Not through one little trap door,’ Keith said. ‘It’s too dangerous to go up one at a time.’

  ‘We’ve got helmets,’ Garry said, ‘and thick gloves. It’s no problem for The Queen’s Own Biking Hussars.’

  ‘You never attack head-on.’ Keith wished he had taken such advice for himself in the past. ‘You create a diversion. Since there’s only one trap door, we’ll make another, break a hole in the plaster. One man goes up sharpish through the one our terrorist can’t defend, and we’ve got him.’

  ‘Let me be the spearhead,’ Garry said. ‘Lance can go through the other, because he’s got thin raps. And Wayne can catch him when we drop him down like a sack of spuds.’

  ‘I’d like to go up and talk to him,’ Sally said.

  Fred was uneasy about the structure of his hotel. ‘I don’t want you breaking up my ceiling. There’s been enough damage done already.’

  ‘If the police did the job,’ Keith said, as if to reassure him, ‘they’d have the whole roof off. At least we’ll try to do it neatly.’

  Wayne extinguished the nearest candleflame with his thumb. ‘Tear gas would be best, if we had any. A smoke canister lobbed in. Then we would shut the lid and wait. It’d be better if we chucked in a couple of thunderflashes first. We could go in like the Israelis. The bastard would really get the chop.’

  Sally became more and more scared of their talk. ‘I could bring him down peacefully. You wouldn’t have to make the other hole in the ceiling then. I’m just thin enough to get through. That would save him or anybody being injured. It’s got to be tried.’

  ‘Common sense at last.’ Fred stood by a candle to light his cigar, favouring a solution to stop further vandalization. Gas lamps and a scattering of candles didn’t sufficiently illuminate the room, and gave a sinister urgency to their talk.

  Garry turned to Keith with a grin. ‘I apologize in advance for swearing, but if you ask me,’ he said to Sally, ‘you’re fucking barmy. You’re totally unrealistic. If you got up there and tried to talk to that looney he would either butcher you, or take you for a hostage. Then we would really be in the shit.’

  The virtue of keeping quiet and letting others state your opinion was not new to Keith, and he was gratified at hearing his own views so tersely put, needing only to add: ‘If he took you or anyone else hostage we would have to tear the ceiling apart and really go in and get him. Nor would anyone worry overmuch if the hostage was killed in the process.’

  He spoke so quietly that Sally hardly heard. She did not know what other way there was but couldn’t believe theirs was the only solution, though she recalled the half-whispered implications of Daniel’s fervent monologue and again began to believe that what he had said may well have been the truth. Yet to get him down with the enjoyable and ebullient violence which had taken hold of the others didn’t seem the proper course.

  Keith held Fred’s arm, and drew him to his feet. ‘Bring that ladder from Trap Door Number One, and provide us with any saws, hammers, crowbars and axes you can find.’ He felt luxuriously in harmony with the crisis, but in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs at home he had done something which had put a stop to his existence, and made all that he was doing now seem like the action after death of an animal still making sound and movement until the millrace of the blood finally abandoned the heart. Her head crashed against the bannister again and again into a mass of blood and hair and brain, her astonished then horrified face fading into death.

  He held his hands together, as if to stop them vibrating uncontrollably, but they were still. ‘And you,’ he said to Alfred, but indicating Aaron and Parsons as well, ‘can stay one at each door down here to look after the women and the old man, in case he tries to make a run for it. Sit on him if he does. We’ll hear the racket, and come right away.’

  Aaron, at his ease, thought that if Daniel tried for a getaway the kindest action would be not to hinder him. When he had phoned Beryl to say he was stranded she told him that the police had called that afternoon, wanting to interview him. They had asked where he was, so the only thing for him to do, she went on, was get back home as soon as possible.

  The charge would mean ruination whether or not they made it stick. It wouldn’t be difficult. The buyers and experts were understandably enraged, and chemistry would do the rest. He would be lucky not to get jailed, but felt defeated more than guilty because knowledge and skill, rather than his conscience, had been called into dispute.

  He had worked pati
ently night after night and, if one reckoned up the hours of labour spent on his various forgeries, he had netted no more than a few pathetic thousands. It began when he went to inspect a cache of books for sale in a local vicarage. Let into the attic to root among shelves and in trunks, he came across several quires of paper a century old when, for example, Conrad was getting into his prime. The manufacturer’s date was still on the packets, the watermark plain. The vendor willingly put them in with the books he bought.

  His steady hand had gone scores of times over a signature until no one, or so he would have thought, could have said it wasn’t written by the celebrated writer. The edition of the book, the paper and ink had to match (no problem for a man of his old trade), as had the date, the place, and the inscription of friendship. Then came the letters …

  The challenge of the game had been more tempting than the profit, his only incentive to return being that in court the evidence of the prosecution would show how he had been found out, as if the explanation of his failure must be so interesting that it would make up for his chagrin at being a felon in the dock.

  Beryl had suggested the forgeries as an amusing pastime on winter nights after the catalogues were finished and the last orders hauled in canvas bags to the post office, but he would not hint that she had been involved. Nor would she expect him to, therefore he must return before she implicated herself. She now knew the name of the hotel, and when the police came again she would tell them, though he doubted they would send a helicopter to pluck him out of the blizzard.

  He didn’t want to go back. Enid was sleeping nearby, and if it hadn’t been for the snow he would have driven south with her and had a good time in the days that were left. Paradise would never come again, so it would be going against life not to take advantage of it now.

  If Daniel broke free it would be merciful to let him escape into the snow, and also sensible to do the same himself. He felt comforted to know that there was more than one option open.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The box room cum linen cupboard at the end of the corridor on the second floor was the best place from which to excavate another entrance into the attic. Keith set a Calor lamp on a chair to light up the exact position. They were, he told himself, laying siege in medieval fashion, by opening a way into the fortress from below, before mounting their final attack.

  Fred took out sheets and blankets, sidling in spite of his girth around the angled ladder to reach the shelves, yanking down loads as big as could be carried and leaving them in haphazard positions along the corridor where they would be safe from plaster.

  His activity amused them, but Keith made way for him when he could, however inconvenient (and his rescue of the precious linen said much in his favour), because he liked his populist and splenetic spirit that would never countenance the likes of the man upstairs. All terrorists and their helpers should be put to death, Fred had signified, preferably at the point of capture so as to save hearing the garbage of their crackpot slogans from the dock.

  A mighty blow from the top of the ladder sent Garry’s crowbar through the plaster, Fred wincing as if the cold steel had entered his own flesh. The odour of un-aired long-stored linen, pressed against his nose as he took it out, brought poignantly back how he and Doris had worked night after night in their own small sitting room when the guests had gone to bed, hemming and repairing, folding and smoothing with almost obsessional neatness, writing letters or totting up the accounts between them, while the wireless played mindlessly on low. Hard days with never a moment to spare, and not much time for sleep either, were recalled as months of happiness because there had been no slot of idleness in which to quarrel.

  Fred looked through the doorway, the air so full of flying powder he saw only the outline of a muscled arm drawing back for another exultant smash. Keith brushed bits of wood and dust from his clothes, and when there was a hole big enough for a head to go through Garry lifted the visor of his knightly helmet and called down: ‘We’ll be there in a bit.’ He paused to sneeze. ‘I’ll need the axe, though, to snap these bits of lath off.’

  Lance in the lumber room slotted a carpenter’s saw between the edge of the trap door and the ceiling, and cut through the wedge holding it in place. When it fell open towards him he immediately thrust his saw into the space like a weapon should anyone jab down. ‘He won’t surrender, I know Old Ferret. He was a strict bastard at school, the only teacher who wouldn’t let us arse around.’

  Wayne at the foot of the ladder spat, and dodged the ricochet. ‘And now we know why. A killer, that’s why. Here’s the hammer. Knock it around, to make him think we’re about to have his guts for garters.’

  ‘It’s a claw hammer.’ Lance tossed it from haft to head as if it were an ivory-handled gun in the Wild West, then banged a jungle rhythm around the gap. ‘A real murder weapon. He was all right, as well, though. He tried to teach us summat.’

  ‘Yeh, about how great England was,’ Wayne said. ‘He used to cry a bit when he said it, just so’s we’d believe him. As if we needed that wet prick to tell us what we already knew. Here, let me have a go. I’ll make his fucking tripes jump.’

  At a signal, Lance came down. ‘They’ve smashed a hole in the other place,’ Fred whispered, ‘and everything’s ready. But the Captain says you’ve got to be dead quiet.’

  Wayne pressed against the ladder to keep it firm. The only sound was an uneven moaning of the wind from beyond slates and walls. Lance went through the trap door slowly so that his leather jacket pressing at the edges wouldn’t give warning by its squeak.

  Reaching for the cosmos, you had to shift slates from between the rafters, and pull them out as do prisoners in hencoop Victorian jails. He would root a way through, roll in a blanket of snow, and go down the sloping roof, no stars in the blizzard to light his escape, moiling clouds holding them off. He would fall through space into the yard, break from his shell and fight each hypothermic step till a safe haven was gained.

  While the vivid scene comforted, he restrained his stave from smashing the first slate, knowing that whatever he did could only bring the end closer. The fearful banging began, and because it wasn’t feasible to defend two places at once, he would gladly descend peacefully if they would let him, knowing that his ex-pupils turned yobbos could be dealt with – though not the man Keith, who had them under his barbaric control. If the bikers had not succumbed to such a person they might have merited redemption at some future hour, but they had found their natural ally and master, and been set on hounding someone whose mission had crosswired into a dead end because his mother foretold it.

  Hearing her mini-mouth saying that God had turned his back on him, he recollected with loathing her theological platitudes. Regardless of cuts at his numbed fingers, he pulled shards and shavings clear so that he could unhook more slates. A flat undersurface of packed snow broke into crystals and fell against eyes and hair.

  Light from far off picked out the beams, as he frantically pulled at the covering roof, showing himself to heaven before the pack closed in. There was no time to climb through and escape, but he would wreck as much of their refuge as he could. He stabbed into the snow, lunging as if to draw blood from the Almighty God who would not use His power to save him. Heavy and sharp, the slates became easier to rip away, till water ran down the warmth of the chimney, larger pieces of snow slopping around him. He sent a slate spinning, which broke to pieces on hitting a strut, the noise making him smile and forget his peril.

  A wet sleeve turned his arm heavy and cold, the second slate falling uselessly between the beams. ‘When you are sent on a mission you’re on your own, but we assume you will get there. We’re mature people at the game, and nothing is expected to go wrong through human error.’ They had come up through the ranks, so who could deny them their purblind assumptions, their power? They weren’t an army fair and square for all to see. They were an underground gang or gangs, as much on the hooks of fate as he was. Things went wrong, by chance, or betrayal, sudden inexpli
cable despair, or excess of confidence, or because of the weather. In the beginning was the word, and the word was luck. In his memory of arguing with them he always spoke with an Irish accent – ever perfecting his shibbolethic passwords – but he hadn’t, not at all, not in actuality, because somehow he had neither the mouth nor throat for it.

  He laughed, as if testing his humour as a weapon against them. They wouldn’t find him, in spite of their torches. He launched slates lethally one way and then the other at advancing light. The beam struck when he altered stance. Slates in reserve were as sharp as razors and as weighty as claymores, chilblains plaguing his fingers, however, when he touched them, ready for the well-fed confident hunters.

  They had warm clothing. Their voices threatened: find him, get him, kill him: curses and futile exhortations. He flung with all his strength, a scream of rage as a slate struck, one of them out of the game. A boot went through lath and plaster. Someone laughed. ‘Come on, Ferret, it’s no good. We’ve got you cornered. You can’t get away. Be a good lad, Ferret, and stop chucking slates about. You’ve hurt my mate, so isn’t that enough? Come down with us and get warm. We won’t hurt you if you do.’

  He knew how to care for himself in his own kingdom, had been here since before he was born. Let them gain it by inch and foot. He forced himself not to answer, or explain, or plead that they leave him alone, change sides, help him. They had retreated, turned lights off and vanished, silence but for the ever-wailing blizzard.

  Unbelieving, he skimmed more slates as a test. They were cunning, well trained, patient under fire, wouldn’t let him know if they were anywhere at all. They would hear him breathing, so he breathed as if he were dead, too rarefied and superior to need air in his lungs.