The Ice People

by Maggie Gee

  ‘We can do it,’ I said, and I smiled like a hero.

  Partly to cover a surge of fear. Now I was committed to doing it by road, driving up, up into nomansland. Another crossing as hard as the last one.

  What had I seen as I lay on that beach the morning after we sailed the Channel, deafened, stupefied by wind and waves, watching the sun cut curves through the dunes, clutching the icy blankets round us?

  That the world was enormous, and I was very small. That life was short, and death was certain.

  And yet I was responsible for Luke, and Briony. I could not die, because of my son.

  ‘Let’s get some sleep,’ I said, kind, paternal, though a little voice inside me said Come to bed, if you’re afraid of the dark, kind Daddy will help you … ‘I’ll get more bedding out of the car.’

  ‘Don’t forget the gun,’ Briony said. She felt we were safer keeping it with us, but each time I placed it by my bed I feared that Luke might shoot himself by accident. I secretly determined to leave it in the car.

  ‘I’d rather not be alone,’ she added, and my heart lifted, my penis stirred. I would happily cross the Pyrenees for this.

  That night the sex was slower, better, still wildly, deliriously exciting but more human, more friendly, like coming home, as I whispered to her, and she sighed, and kissed me, though we were all so far from home. But I fell asleep with her in my arms, curled tightly together against the cold, against the hatred between men and women that had turned me into a brute and a killer. ‘I like you, Briony,’ I said. ‘I like you too,’ she said, after a pause. I felt warm, and safe. I began to drift. Tomorrow would be hard, but tonight was good …

  What seemed like seconds later I was suddenly awake, seeing bright beams of light circling the ceiling, and the sound of a car engine uncomfortably near. I felt icy cold. My heart was thumping.

  ‘Briony,’ I said. ‘Wake up. I think there’s someone outside the house. Could be the owner.’

  She sat up, eyes closed, made an incoherent noise and lay flat again.

  I heard footsteps on the gravel outside, and cursing in French, and a muttered conference. They’d seen our car, and the dangling shutter, and the smashed pane, and drawn their own conclusions. I got up stealthily and tried to look out. Then I saw how many cars there were, six or seven, maybe, drawn up in the snaking ‘S’ of the drive. So that explained all the noise, and the lights. There were six men, ten, perhaps a dozen. And then I knew we were really in trouble.

  I assumed they were the owners, that they had keys, but of course they were more probably looters, criminals … But I remembered the halffinished whisky. And the confident way the cars had scrunched on the gravel. The owners, bringing back their friends for a party. Should I try to talk to them? Charm? Explain?

  I remembered what I looked like. Big. Unshaven. Wild. Mixed-race. Frightening. We were in their house. They wouldn’t wait for explanations. No one waited for anything; the ice moved too fast.

  Luke was next door; if he only stayed quiet they might never realise he was there. But I had an uneasy feeling that he wouldn’t keep quiet. I was afraid my son would try to be a hero.

  I pulled the bedding gently over Briony’s face. If they looked quickly, they might think it was just a pile of clothes. I took Dora, who was in Sleep Mode, and pushed her roughly behind the sofa. Trousers, shoes, I pulled on my shoes, and of course they wouldn’t go, the heel stuck stupidly to my naked flesh, but I’d never find my socks, so I grimly crammed them on.

  Gun, sodding gun. I hadn’t got it.

  Briony had told me, but I hadn’t obeyed – I didn’t like being bossed around by women. So somehow I would have to get out to the car. They were all spilling round towards the front door, talking, by now, in subdued voices that diminished more as they went round the corner. I’d climb out through the broken window and fetch the gun.

  I landed as quietly as I could on the gravel and ran to the wrong car in the moonlight, cursing, impotent, then recognised ours, and the key turned miraculously in the cold lock and I was in, fumbling, desperate, and on the back seat was my heavy friend, my horribly heavy, serious friend, the green canvas bag, with my Magnum on top, but the Magnum didn’t have enough shots … I dived down deeper, to the shotguns and rifles, the bag had got smaller, tighter, duller, I could find nothing in the dark – I dragged out the first big gun I could find, which turned out to be the antique American carbine, loaded it by the light from my door, talking to myself, ‘Hurry, hurry’, as I jammed the full clip into the breech, and it took an age, it took two minutes –

  Gun clutched to my body like an awkward baby, I ran round the back. Everything was locked. A shuttered French window was my best bet. I put down my rifle and tugged at the shutters, quietly at first, then fiercely, desperately, bruising my fingers, but the wood didn’t yield, all my life I had been out in the cold …

  A great tide of anger swelled my chest, the blood poured into my face, my fingers, I took the old gun by its pitted barrel and began to smash my way in through the shutters, using everything I had, shoulders, boots and the giant swell of rage surging through me, and feeling no pain, I had smashed my way in and ran yelling on with the gun outstretched until I was suddenly in the kitchen and pointing it at a startled crowd of identical, black leatherclad, longhaired men. They were panicking and gibbering and swearing in French and yelling instructions I couldn’t understand, but as long as they grasped that I was going to kill them … They seemed to get the point fast enough: they looked at the gun barrel, backed away and stood in a tight bunch of eight or nine in the corner of the kitchen by the micronizer.

  I had got so far, but I wasn’t an expert at holding up a large crowd of men. Where did we go from here? I thought. Do I have to shoot someone to get respect, on the principle I followed when I was a teacher?

  ‘Qui êtes-vous?’ I demanded, aggressively, loud, but my voice did a curious squeak at the beginning which was probably the effect of adrenalin, so I tried it again, rougher, deeper, and waving my rifle in the air. In a small space, a large gun is frightening.

  One of them, who was tall and slender with a bald patch on top and long hanks of red hair, said with a slightly shaking voice, but a certain dignity, ‘Mais je suis chez moi. I live here, Monsieur. So who are you?’

  Oh dear. I had just smashed his shutters. In any case, what did they look like, he and his friends, with their drooping hair and little chains and heavy boots, and their pierced faces dangling small metal symbols?

  Of course, I thought, they must be Scientists, the French equivalent of Scientists. They’re a male club, but they grow their hair: fashions are different over here.

  All of us must have been sweating with fear. I could smell a strong smell of acrid maleness mixed with the lingering smell of roast chicken. It suddenly felt very hot in the kitchen – I think I was in shock, hysterical.

  I pulled myself together. ‘Okay,’ I said. I thought, I’ll have to lock them up, but how, for godsake, where and how? Why was it never like this in the movies? I got no further, because a black violent arm came round from behind, closed over my face, crushed my nose, moved down in an instant to get me by the throat, jabbing painfully into my Adams apple, and I dropped the gun in shock and pain.

  Then for what seemed like at least halfanhour but may have only been a few dreadful minutes all of them shouted and punched and kicked me, hard in the ribs, knocking the air out of me, the sickening feeling that something was broken, in the teeth, the lips, the side of the head as I lay on the kitchen floor blinking at the light, I thought, They’ll kill me, of course they will, I came here to die in this small bright hell …

  Actually they ran out of steam quite quickly, once they had seen I was thoroughly flattened, and they in turn had restored their amour propre. Perhaps I briefly lost consciousness, for the next thing I remember is lying on the sofa in the room where I had been sleeping with Briony. My teeth and tongue felt jagged and huge and my aching head rolled horribly, as if a rock surged arou
nd my brain. I opened my eyes, and the room swung past me, then the first thing I saw was blood on the sofa. A lot of blood. Beside my head. I tried to feel my face with my right hand, but there was an agonising pain in my shoulder. Left, left, I tried my left. It felt oddly reluctant, muddily moving, then I realised my hands were tied together, amateurishly, in front of my body. Slowly, I raised them to my face, and found a long ridged gash on my forehead – I remembered breaking in through the French windows. No wonder I’d frightened the men in the kitchen, I must have burst in dripping blood. Then I saw Briony twenty feet away, her arms jammed behind her back. Her expression was a mixture of anger and terror. She looked at me without seeing me. I tried to wave, but my shoulder stabbed.

  Luke wasn’t here. Perhaps they hadn’t found him.

  It was easier with my head on the pillow. The rock didn’t roll about quite so much. I could hear a tide of noise and laughter coming from the kitchen or diningroom, explosions of oaths, then more laughter. A moment later, the redhaired man with the long nose and wide cruel mouth looked in through the door to check on us, but I lay doggo, and he went away.

  They were making so much noise they would never hear me. ‘Briony,’ I hissed. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, you’re all right,’ she said, and smiled, and suddenly looked a lot more normal, ‘Saul, thankgod, I thought you were dead. I was asleep. I couldn’t do a thing. I don’t think they’ve found Luke.’

  The sounds from the other room were getting louder in a way I associated with drink. There were little snatches of song, as well. If they got drunk we might have a chance. On the other hand, drunken men were unpredictable … I thought of their chains, and their pierced ears and noses, the strange little symbols I hadn’t decoded. Perhaps they were sadomasochists. I thought of Luke. My mouth went dry. Foreign perverts. We had to get out.

  Then a strange, unsettling sound came soaring through above the noise of the party, and with it, the noise of the party died. A man singing, but this time really singing, steadily, fullthroatedly, with concentration – it was a Puccini aria, mygod, he was singing ‘Nessun Dorma’ – I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Perhaps I would meet Sarah there, like our very first day, my redheaded love, in that glorious hourglass of sun in the foyer …

  He couldn’t be a brute or a bad person, how could he, singing out his soul like that? Then I remembered the twentiethcentury Nazis.

  ‘Is that Turandot?’ Briony whispered, amazed.

  But just as the chords were drifting over us, the dividing doors into the nextdoor room where Luke was sleeping burst violently open, and Luke’s muffled voice was shouting ‘I’ll bite you’, and a fat laughing man with greasy blonde hair manhandled him in, arms behind his back, and Luke was naked, I saw to my horror that Luke was completely white and naked. The man had piggy eyes and a loose pale mouth, and he muttered obscenities as he held him –

  Without thinking, I was up off the sofa and staggering absurdly towards my son, running without arms, like a skittle on legs, shouting in English, ‘Let him go, you fat pig –’

  But that was as far as I got before I fell, landing painfully on my swollen jaw. My teeth crunched sickeningly together, Briony screamed, I had a mouthful of fluff. I tried to roll over and get up again but the fat man kicked me hard in my stomach.

  ‘So you want me to kill you? Quel con!’ He hissed, gleefully, pulling my face up by the ear. It was agony, I was much too heavy, my ear would come away from my head – but he suddenly gave a sharp yelp of pain, and let me go. I managed to roll over and saw my son, whitefaced with rage, attacking our tormentor with his fists, panting, yelling, and I tried to help him, wrapping my legs round Fatty’s feet, but with a roar that would have woken the dead he fell over on top of me, winding me completely, and ground his elbow into my neck.

  The aria next door faltered to a halt. Before Fatty and I could kill one another they had all rushed in, and seconds later, I recognised, pushed up in my face, my own battered carbine, its sour dead smell, the black foul eyehole in its barrel. I lay quite still. Fatty heaved himself off me, pointing at Luke, making crude remarks about his beauty. And now the nightmare was really upon us. Now we had to wake up, or it was better to die.

  Luke’s terrible nakedness, amongst all that black leather, those studs and chains, that bulging nuskin. I could not take my eyes off him, but I could not bear to look at him.

  I could smell the drink on their massed breath. They were laughing and making crude exclamations. Two of them had Luke by the arms and the fat one was pressing his face into Luke’s and pinching his cheek, so I’d have to kill them.

  Then the redheaded one with the unpleasant mouth said loudly, above the babble of voices, ‘Mais doucement avec le petit. Nous ne sommes pas des brutes, hein?’ And suddenly his mouth was not unpleasant, his face was sensitive, and kind, and there was a God, after all, there might be …

  A little silence followed his speech, suggesting he had a certain authority. Then Luke’s voice piped up, in what sounded to me like perfect French – ‘S’il vous plaît monsieur, ça veut dire quoi, la petite clé que vous portez tous à l’oreille et au nez?’ So it was a musical clef, the metal symbol. My son’s eyes were sharper than mine.

  The red-headed one said ‘Why do you ask, jeune homme?’ not sounding unfriendly, and Luke answered, in his clear brave voice, ‘Parce que la musique, c’est ma passion, monsieur.’

  And before I could understand what was happening they were talking music, the two of them, in that instant common language musicians have.

  But not for long. Fatty interrupted, reminding Jacques that we were trespassers, burglars, ‘And the old one’s a maniac,’ he added.

  But Luke insisted we were ‘refugees’. ‘The shutter was already broken –’

  ‘Ils disent tous la même chose,’ someone interrupted, and there was a low murmur of agreement. ‘All thieves are refugees now,’ one added.

  ‘Last week, little one,’ said the redhead, ‘a socalled refugee stole two of my violins – not to play, I am sure, but to sell on somewhere for a fraction of their price, to an idiot. And now you want to talk about music –’

  Then he noticed the blood stain I had made on the sofa and swore, instantly furious. It was cream brocade with embossed roses – godknows what it had cost him, in this age of chaos – and he tried, badtemperedly, to rub at it, and must have jerked the whole thing backwards, because all at once, with her flair for the incongruous, Dora was speaking – he had switched her on.

  ‘Hallo, good to see you –’ said her familiar voice, slightly nasal, ineffably calm, and everyone swung round and stared at Briony, but she was slumped, inanimate. ‘– Hallo, more than one person, hallo.’ (The ‘more than one person’ was a malfunction that had recently slipped into Dora’s voice file, which had crossed connections between ‘colloquial’ and ‘grammatical analysis’.) ‘Would you like to ask me a question?’

  Puzzled silence.

  Then Dora did a ‘random chuckle’, which sounded very strange in this fraught room. ‘I like you,’ she said, another of her programmes. ‘Isn’t life fun? I’m feeling happy.’

  Someone went diving behind the sofa to rugbytackle the mysterious stranger and found, of course – Dora. Craning my head, I watched her emerge, her innocent eyes, her ruffled feathers … ‘Merde! Viens voir, Jacques, c’est une Colombe!’

  They also had their Doves, we discovered, but this English model was unfamiliar, they liked her lashes, her feathers, her feet … Very soon they were all gathered round Dora, admiring her, trying her out. Three of them took her into the hall, where I heard them exclaiming at her walking, and trying to imitate her English voice.

  Suddenly I became aware that Luke was arguing with Jacques, and Jacques had taken him by the arm, not forcefully, but it was still horrible to watch, Luke’s fragile arm in Jacques’ stiff dark one … Jacques was telling Luke that he wanted Dora, she would be payment for the damage we’d done, but he promised to let us all go in the mor
ning –

  I started to speak, in so far as I could, with my head pressed flat upon the carpet, I wanted to agree before Jacques changed his mind, but I’d hardly begun my acceptance speech when Luke interrupted, shrill, indignant.

  ‘You can’t give them Dora! She’s alive, she’s my friend … In any case, she’s got my voice. Have you forgotten she’s got my voice?’

  Jacques asked him what he meant, and Luke explained about being a singer, and again I could see Jacques being drawn in, his long nose positively twitching with interest.

  And so he did what I hoped he would do. He asked my son to sing to them. I knew that if Luke sang they could never kill him. And Luke, with more of his amazing courage, said he would, if they untied Briony and me.

  Jacques shook his head impatiently, but then Luke smiled, took a deep breath, turned and sang, just a phrase, fifteen seconds of ‘Pie Jesu’. It had always pierced my heart, that pure song, but there, then – Pie Jesu, dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem – Merciful Jesus, grant them rest. When he stopped singing, there was absolute silence. Thankgod, his voice was as pure and clear as it had ever been; no rift, no frog. He looked at Jacques, who was staring at him with the intent gaze of a musician. ‘I can’t concentrate if they’re tied up.’

  At a sign from Jacques, two of the other men went over and untied Briony, then me. Every touch was painful; my arm felt broken. They tried to help me up, and I fell again. I was shivering – with exhaustion, not cold, for the heated house felt warm to me, but one of the leather brothers noticed, and threw Luke’s duvet round my shoulders. They were not savages, as Jacques had said. Now he prescribed coffee for both of us, ordering someone to take us to the kitchen.

  But I refused; I would not leave Luke, standing white and naked among the men, his penis hanging like a flower, his slight pale balls, not properly dropped … Briony disappeared to the kitchen; I stayed and watched him as he sang. ‘Cherubino!’ one of them was shouting.