The Ice People

by Maggie Gee

  At table they became loquacious, so I’d got it wrong, about the rule of silence. They plied us with questions about the roads in France, about how easy it was to buy fuel, the presence or absence of police in towns, where we had found abandoned houses – though I skipped over the details of our ‘borrowing’: I didn’t want them to think we were crooks. How cunning I fancied myself to be. I knew that I was getting drunk, but I tried to do it relatively slowly.

  It was nineoclock before we finished eating, then one of the brothers brought round some brandy, and I was almost asleep in my seat after our sleepless night the day before. I began to feel hypnotised by their brown hoods. They began to seem like bags of darkness in which their hard eyes darted, flickered, as if they were making signs to each other, sly little signs from the depths of their burrows, and I realised my mind was starting to wander, I was starting to shut down … I must go to bed, and Briony, I saw, was also exhausted, though she had an alert, worried look. Luke had gone out ten minutes before, I’d thought to have a piss, but he hadn’t returned.

  ‘Go and find Luke,’ she suddenly said, with surprising force, in English, though we’d all been talking in French before. ‘He’s gone to the car to get his things.’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ I said. I wanted one more brandy, I’d deserved a sit-down and a little drink, but women always find things for you to do – then she kicked me hard under the table.

  I didn’t want Luke to get lost in the dark. Of course I didn’t, although I was drunk. I went, after only a little complaining. The eyes watched me as I left the room, the eyes slid after me like little bright stones, reflecting the candles on the table. I turned to the right as I went through the door and had a distinct unnerving sensation that one of the dozen cloaked men in the room had got up quietly and followed me. Without clearly knowing why I did it I stood back in a doorway on the left of the corridor and yes, there he was – I let him go past me, then followed him, trying to make sense of this. Perhaps he just wanted to make sure that we didn’t steal their monastic treasures. Not that I’d seen anything worth stealing. He went to the front door, looked out briefly; I had dodged back behind a tall cupboard. He walked right past me again looking puzzled and hurried back to the diningroom. I was rather pleased with my game of cops and robbers, I felt that my mind was working brilliantly fast, as you sometimes do when you’re dull with wine.

  Outside the door it was fiercely cold. There was a pool of golden light from the hexone flambeaux suspended above it, and in that pool big flakes of snow whirled gently down, unreal, like a ballet. Outside the bright whirlpool there was thick darkness. I peered across to where the car was parked, but Luke was suddenly right behind me, I jumped when he laid his hand on my shoulder and heard him hissing in my ear, ‘Briony says, get in the car. She thinks they’re going to kill us. She’s following.’

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t take it in. ‘She’s crazy. Monks don’t kill people.’

  Words tumbled out, a river of protest. ‘They aren’t monks. Not real monks. I was having a look round, I went to the wrong door, the room was full of bones. Dirty yellow bones, with these foul dried shreds … Maybe that sausage we were eating at dinner. Dad, please listen. And in another room, there were all these documents, passports, birth certificates, from so many countries, piled on a desk. I think they were stolen, they take them from travellers. She promised me she would follow you – she knew they wouldn’t let you go out together –’

  ‘We can’t leave Briony in there, helpless.’

  ‘She isn’t helpless. She’s got that big gun. It’s in her bag. The great big black one.’

  I was speechless for a moment. ‘But that won’t help her. She can’t bloody shoot –’

  ‘Dad, she wasn’t just lucky, last night. Briony was Wicca’s Weapons Officer. She was exArmy. Then she quarrelled with Juno –’ I seemed to be losing my grasp of all this, but I dimly remembered something Sarah told me, ‘our Weapons Officer’, I hadn’t believed her – ‘Dad, let’s go.’ He was pulling my arm. ‘Dad, come on. We’ve got to start the car. You start it, I’ll drive, she can jump in the back.’

  I’d occasionally let Luke take the wheel on straight stretches of road, because he wanted to learn – No, this was all wrong. I had to go and get her. Get another gun, and go in to find her. I couldn’t shoot lefthanded, but I’d wave it around – I ran to the car, every step hurting.

  I started the engine and left it running, pulled open the back door on a wave of pain and began to search for the canvas bag. Briony had moved it when she got out the shotgun – women always have to move things around – and then my hand touched the icy canvas of the bag and I yanked out the Kalashnikov, triumphant. I loaded it lefthanded, switched it to auto –

  And saw her coming, backing out very fast from the blaze of snow and light at the door. Mygod, she was shooting. One blast then another. It was like the mountain cracking, like bolts from the gods, the darkness exploding, and I hefted the Kalashnikov and ran towards her, but she screamed, ‘Go! Get Luke away! Get in the fucking car, Saul!’

  I couldn’t lift my gun with my right. I changed it, awkwardly, to the left, and shot off a burst to the side somewhere. At least this way they would think she had cover, two lots of noise, two guns blazing –

  By now Luke had started the car and was driving it round in a big erratic loop, the back door flapping open like a damaged wing. But what was he doing? Mygod, he was going too near the house. At any moment they’d be shooting back. He was going to fetch Briony, of course –

  In that split second my choice was made, and ever since I’ve had to live with it. Of the two of them I had to save my son, and I ran after the car. I banged on the side, scrambled in, and wrenched at the wheel. Thankgod that the car was lefthand drive: I changed his course, away, back to the road. I don’t suppose he knew what I was doing, the deafening noise, the snow, the darkness, and now the robed figures were shooting back, and Briony was down on one knee, mygod she was good, aiming, pumping, then she was backing, zigzagging, shooting from the hip, great flashes of fire bursting from her arms and jolting her each time she shot –

  And then her course became strangely erratic. She looked as though she were dancing, ducking. A terrible slowness took over her steps. She held on to the gun, she was staggering, falling, and just before she fell to the ground –

  Ohgod. Ohgod. This I never forgot. I have never been able to remember this without a stab of grief and guilt, although I think I am immune to guilt.

  At the very last moment she turned, and stared, and she called something, and I think it was ‘Saul’ – be honest, bastard, it was ‘Help me, Saul,’ it was, godforgiveme, a faint call for help, after saving our lives, she knew she was dying, and she wanted, then at the last, not to die. She hoped after all that someone might help her, after a short lifetime when no one had helped her, and I loved her, didn’t I? I’d have to go –

  But our car was already veering away, things happen too fast, and chances are lost, it was already too late, I know that it was, they were slamming her with bullets that jerked her about like a broken doll, the shame, the horror, and I saw out of the corner of my eye, as I yelled at my son to drive off down the mountain, that half her face had been blown away.

  Briony. Briony.

  She called for help, in Roncesvalles Pass, but it was too late, and no one came.

  PART THREE

  18

  Iwas mad, and ill, for days, maybe a week, after Briony died, and my memories are dreamlike, tiny bright clearings in fogs of despair–

  I was saved by my son. He saved me. I had thought I was saving him.

  Of all the deaths, hers was the worst.

  (That’s why I feel nothing but a turning of my stomach when I think about what happened to Chef. I quite liked the feeling there were two of us around, two grizzly beards, two oldtimers – I didn’t mind him, but he wasn’t a friend, I wouldn’t call him that, he hardly gave me the time of day when I went in to collect the scraps.
When I first arrived I tried to talk to him about the Parisian restaurants I’d known, about Lapérouse with its private booths, its rosy rooms and red jewels of beef, where Sarah and I once had illicit sex and managed to get our clothes straight by dessert – but he cut me off, he was sour and grumpy. ‘I don’t want to know about your life,’ he said, ‘You don’t want to know about mine, pigé? This is our life. This vile pissoir.’ … He can’t have expected me to save him.

  It happened on the other side of the airport. Perhaps I guessed but I’m busy, you see, I’m an old man and time is short – perhaps I guessed, but I stayed in the shadows. They made the fire flatter and neater than usual, more like a bed, a burning bed. They brought him out as it was getting dark, it was a brilliant night after a bloody sunset, the first stars were just coming out, the flames were starting to glow dull orange. He looked smaller than he was, carried by the boys. He was a big man, fat, who ate as he cooked. He ate too much, they said, they claimed – He had dark red cheeks and a great pot belly and knots of grease in his thick grey beard, I saw him every day, I remember him well, but last night he looked shrunken, and his face was gashed. I think he’d been ill; that was why he stopped cooking. Here no one is allowed to be ill.

  He had an apple in his mouth. His mouth was forced open; the fruit was like a tongue, a great round tongue, smooth and bursting. It came from his store, where he kept the best things the expeditions brought back, to serve at celebrations. A yellowred apple, which caught the light. They brought him past me, as close as they could, so I had to look at him. Much too close. ‘You say goodbye,’ Kit croaked at me. ‘You say goodbye to your skivey friend. Monsieur bloody fucking fatboy Chef. Now he feed us again, don’t he? What you think? Huh?’

  I try not to think about him at all. But I did feel sick. And – well, nervous. That massive belly must have spat and crackled – it hung on the air, the smell of meat.

  Just two more days, and I’ll be back to my tasks, and then no one can say I’m skivey –

  No, I think they’ve already decided.)

  My health is good, I am rarely ill, but after Briony died my system crashed. Exhaustion, pain, a raging fever – most of my memories of those days must be real, but they don’t join up, they don’t make sense.

  – It was pitch dark, my son was driving, it felt as if we were inching down a cliff edge that at any moment might disappear. The road turned blind bends without any warning, and as we slowed the snow got worse, coming straight for our headlights, a field of stars streaming thickly towards us out of the blackness. I was hypnotised. I stared at the stars. They were the point, they were infinitely many … Then I jerked awake as the brakes squealed.

  Poor Luke. How did he manage to drive at all, having just watched Briony get shot to pieces, with me alongside him dozing and drifting and yelling ‘Watch out!’ whenever I woke?

  I was running, remember, on massive shock, two sleepless nights, too much alcohol, and several unattended wounds. My head was bleeding, a low warm seep down the side of my neck that I ignored, thinking my last night’s wound had opened, but by the grey light of early morning I found that one of their bullets had winged me.

  I remember morning in the mountains. The morning after, or several days later? Yellow, leaden, the snow pouring endlessly out of the bottomless pit of the sky, and visibility so low that although we knew that to the right of the road the land must stretch down to the plains of Ebro, all we could see was snow and mist, mist and snow, swirling, blowing, and Briony was dead, it couldn’t be changed, and the car felt queerly unbalanced and empty.

  Then the mist for a moment suddenly parted and I saw a minute village laid out at our feet, a midget church, three tiny houses, and it seemed that nothing on earth could stop us plunging over and crashing downwards.

  I was not myself. Quite how bad I was I didn’t realise till I woke up and Luke had laid me out on the seat of the car, with my head on a blanket, too stiff to move. When I gingerly felt my temple I found that he had bandaged it, and put a Coolsafe skinpatch on. It was dark again. How many nights?

  My head had cleared, or so I thought. We were parked in the ruins of some sheltering building. There was a fire. He must have lit it himself. He was sitting in the front seat, mumbling to Dora. No, he was playing chess with her. She was an excellent player, but predictable. I knew there were things I had to tell him.

  ‘Luke –’

  ‘You’re awake! I just changed your bandages.’

  ‘About Briony.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about Briony.’

  ‘It’s your move,’ said Dora, brightly.

  I ignored the creature. I had to explain. ‘She begged me to leave. She was thinking of you –’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Luke interrupted. His voice was shaking, furious. ‘Don’t blame it on me. You grabbed the wheel, you went and left her –’ I knew he was trying not to cry. ‘Don’t ever say it was because of me.’

  ‘It’s your move,’ Dora said again.

  I think Luke would have liked to punch me. Adolescent boys often fight their fathers. But we couldn’t brawl, all we had was each other, and we were alone in the Pyrenean night.

  ‘I’ll get some air,’ I said to him. I pulled on my boots, which seemed to take forever, and heaved my body out of the car. We were in some kind of ruined chapel, which gave us shelter from the icy wind. I dragged my blankets near the fire and closed my eyes, too tired to argue. Coolsafe is also a sedative. A dog was barking; I ignored it. I tried to think of the future, not the past, the red plains of Spain, the greygreen olives, the distant whiteness of the coast, the sea that divided us from Africa, such a little sea, and beyond it, safety … Safety for Luke, where the ice would not come.

  I told myself it was all for him. I had even sacrificed Briony – I held on to the thought it was somehow heroic.

  (I had to think that when the flashbacks came, repeated flashbacks of my last sight of her, jerking like a puppet, turning, calling – and that sudden vile explosion of matter from the side of her head, her small brave face.)

  But now, when I am so much older and colder, I see I wasn’t a hero, or a villain, or any of the things they say in stories – but merely one tiny unit of biology, stopping at nothing to save his genes.

  These were the attitudes we struck, as the ice crept on towards our feet. We dreamed apocalyptic dreams. We fled our terror of the cold. We thought of the ice as waste, dead, a barren zone where life was extinguished –

  But gradually I began to see the truth. We were the exceptions to the rule. The ice was bad for human beings, shattered our careful webs of control, killed our parasites, bugs and bedmates – and yet, the rest of life was flourishing.

  Lovelock had said it decades ago. There were more species in ice ages, not fewer. Add on the sideeffects of human decline …

  When the cat’s away, the mice will play. We’d been eating lunch one day in France, in a nondescript wood by the side of the road, when I realised I was hearing birdsong. I hadn’t done that since I was a child. The French must have been too busy escaping to bake their songbirds in a pie.

  But it wasn’t just birds who were corning back. There were other species, not all of them friendly.

  I think Luke shouted from the car window. I started awake. ‘Dad, is that a dog? … It couldn’t be a lion?’ Row, row, row. That bark again, closer this time. Did he really ask if it was a lion? Luke had seen so few animals. In Britain we had eradicated dogs, the bird populations had shrunk to nothing after two great fires in pesticide plants, and the zoos had all been closed by law. Luke’s generation had never heard lions.

  ‘No, not a lion – go to sleep.’

  All over Euro, according to the screens, there were packs of wild dogs, rabid, halfstarving, who terrorised people on the edge of the towns. But we were not on the edge of a town. I fell asleep, thinking of childhood, when there were dogs in England too, and they were seen as faithful friends … We had a dog, a cocker spaniel, with
crooked, silky ears and tail, Sally, she was called, panting, adoring, before rabies came through the Channel Tunnel and the whole dog population was destroyed. Thousands of people thronged Whitehall and pelted the politicians with dogshit, but it was too late to save my Sal.

  She was barking, desperately, in my dream, because they were taking her away to the vet’s, and although I had secretly planned to save her, when it came to the moment, the only one that counts, I knew it was hopeless, and did nothing, I turned away and let her die, and now she howled and howled in my ear …

  I woke in an instant. The howling was real. I tried to sit up, and something ran in to the ruins, by the glow of the fire, then another, and another, and I smelled them, too, a wild, rank smell, and their shape was strange, like queer thin huskies …

  Then I saw, as one ran past the fire, it had bloody bandages in its mouth, the bandages Luke had taken off me, and in the same instant, on a surge of fear, I realised they weren’t dogs but wolves, or hybrids, perhaps, of dogs and wolves. I saw one’s fangs, its heavy tail, the narrow chest and crippled hips, and from its terrible thinness, that they were starving.

  I staggered to my feet, throwing off my blankets, and felt a puncturing bite in the meat of my thigh – Surely I was dreaming, but my leg felt wet. I made for the fire, I’d read that wolves were afraid of fire, and the buggers ran at me again, three or four of them this time, harrying me, the firelight catching damp tongues and teeth, and the smell was disgusting, overpowering, they smelled of urine and blood and bad breath, and at the last moment I grabbed some straw and as it flared into a great untidy bundle of flame I pushed it at them. They howled and ran! I grew bolder and pursued them, roaring and yelling, and quickly as they’d come they ran out again.