Knowing yourself rarely brought the good that was supposed to inspire a change for the better. He lit a cigarette and, letting the match drop, watched its flame shrink, as Lucifer’s mark abandoned him. The pain of displaying his iniquity lessened the terror of waiting.
She felt angry at the sudden recall of Stanley’s disapproving expression. He would hardly credit her with the power of bringing the blizzard on herself, but his features might imply that with a little attention to the met. office and a scrutiny of the AA Route Atlas she could have diverted to east or west of hilly features and cut in towards the airport.
He didn’t belong in a place like this, and she objected to thinking about him. Why must he follow her everywhere? She certainly hoped she wasn’t wherever he was at this moment, but not being interested in where he was by no means meant that he wasn’t interested in where she was.
She contrasted the breast-like mounds of bluish snow beyond the window to the scene of springtime at their place in France. Buying the house had been her idea, because Stanley would have liked a chalet on the English coast. He had never said so strongly enough to stop her getting one in France, but did nothing ever after except try to disillusion her about all things French, not knowing that since she had never allowed herself to become sufficiently disillusioned by him to do anything about it, he hadn’t a hope of disillusioning her about the house in France. We aren’t as happy together as out of stupid pride we lead family and friends to believe.
‘Your paradise’ as he scathingly called it, was some way from a village, but he always complained about what to her were acceptable everyday sounds, even when they were sitting at the garden table with a bottle of wine and a dish of olives in the evening. If it wasn’t traffic it was an occasional aeroplane, or the faint clash of knives and forks from the villa down the road, or the harmless tinkle of their radio. And then some brainless dog that couldn’t tolerate the silence would begin to howl.
‘Oh, for God’s sake stop whinging all the time,’ she said on a superb day last year, putting him in a foul mood for a week, though he did stop complaining, which she was glad of, because out of all his faults (though she had hers, too) that was the one she could sooner or later divorce him for.
She had been brought up not to fuss, as no doubt had her parents. Whoever had reared Daniel must have instilled the same virtue into him, for she could not imagine him complaining either. If they were free of the blizzard and this ghastly hotel she would take him clandestinely to France, so that after a few days in the house and under her tender care he would become (as would they both) amiable and easy-going, different people to what they were now.
She had got to know Daniel more in a few hours than she had Stanley in twenty years, and ought to tell him that no man had to turn himself into a self-aggrandizing liar to prove that he loved her. She needn’t have succumbed into believing that what he had said was true, and certainly should not have blabbed to the others in a ridiculous fit of weakness. A terrorist with a van of high explosives! She wondered how she could undo the damage, while he (she was sure) sat in the attic laughing so much at her gullibility that he was getting stomach cramps, which pain could nevertheless be seen as an accolade for his gift of storytelling, a wonderful parlour-game kind of yarn made up solely for her who like a fool had retailed it to everyone else.
And look at them, in earnest conference as to what they should do, either frightened out of their paltry little lives or enjoying the situation in such a way that they would hardly notice the rest of the night go by. No longer bored, their existence has a purpose as they go for lights and ladders, saying what they will do to Daniel when they get hold of him. The men treat it like a war film, the only lack being a few extras coming and going in German helmets. She could see the plot turning into something very nasty indeed, so it seemed only right to try and make up for her gaffe, and save Daniel from their wrath.
‘You’re so full of shit,’ Garry said, ‘it even comes out of your mouth.’
‘Well,’ Parsons laughed, ‘shit fertilizes, don’t it? And it brings forth plants. I expect it says that in the Bible somewhere. I’ve always believed everybody’s got a right to work, and I’ll always say so.’
Garry spread his legs, and made another neat roll-up. Keith liked their chaffing, otherwise how could you know what people thought? You couldn’t get such raw material from television, though maybe those who wrote for it went out to pubs and sat over their pints of lager with a tape recorder strapped to their legs. Or maybe the Japanese had invented one that fitted into an earring.
‘When I wanted work,’ Garry said, ‘I found it.’
In spite of Garry’s foul language and adolescent passion for motorbikes, Parsons suspected him to be halfway intelligent. ‘There are only so many jobs to go round, though.’
‘I don’t know about that. I’ve done everything. I delivered papers when I was a kid. Then I tried snow shifting, and tidying people’s gardens. Anything to get money in my pocket. When I left school I worked in a radio shop for a year, so I even mend the odd wireless now and again. Then I went down the pit to get more money, but I packed it in after six months because I didn’t like being a cave dweller. I did lorry driver’s mate, pirate taxi driver, brickie’s labourer — everything I could. Then I cottoned on to the plumbing racket, a real cowboy till I got to know how to do it well. Now I’m good, and everybody knows me. I found it didn’t need much more time to do a good job than a bad ’un, so I undercut the cowboys on the make. But I’ve never been on the dole, and hope I never will. My brother was on it for a month, no fault of his. He said that whenever he went to collect his money he couldn’t find anywhere to park. When he got talking in the queue he found they sat watching the bloody telly all week.’
‘Are you saying those poor buggers out of work shouldn’t have a car to get around in,’ Parsons said, ‘or a TV to watch? People have got higher expectations these days. Blokes like you think everybody ought to live by the law of the jungle.’
‘It’s the only law that gets things done, as far as I can see. If thousands of unemployed were out shifting snow for their dole money we wouldn’t be holed up in The Cheapjack Hotel, with some bloody looney who’s gone and parked his bombed-up van outside.’
Fred set a tray of coffee and sandwiches between him and Parsons. ‘It’s not as cheap as you might find, if you took a room like any other guest.’
‘I like value for money, monkey-brain, and hotel rooms don’t come under that category. We take tents, and camp in a field. We pay the farmer a couple of quid, except when he lets us off for nothing, then we trade with him for eggs and fruit.’
Keith listened to the storm between their words, heard it whether he would or not, talk mixing with the blatant howl from outside. He thought of Daniel not yet found, the terrorists’ delivery boy who didn’t know how much of their prisoner he was.
‘Last year,’ Garry said, ‘we went to Spain, and stopped in a little inn. They’re cheaper over there. Well, the plumbing in the toilets was all shot, and we couldn’t stand the stink, so I fixed it. The man wouldn’t let us pay the bill. When we arrived, though, with GB plates back and front, he didn’t want to have us. Next year we might go to Yugoslavia. There’s nowt like a bit of travelling, though we behave ourselves overseas because we can’t speak the lingo, and don’t want to get good old England a bad name. Anyway’ — he drained off his pint, and turned back to Fred, who no longer saw anything unusual in sitting among the guests to drink his own coffee — ‘when are you going to ask everybody to settle their bills? The balloon might go up any minute, and even a half-p piece will be in twenty bits.’