‘Yes, God,’ Garry said. ‘He knows Morse code. The only thing is, I thought He’d snuffed it.’
Daniel’s words were wrenched out because it was more than any bodily pain to keep them in. ‘He can’t be dead, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Neither would you. It could only be God who brought us to this.’ Who else had held the friable arms of the timing mechanism apart for so long? If he didn’t think that God alone was responsible he would run for the wall and bang out his brains in despair, though he felt something near terror at having broken his silence when all rights to do so had been taken away. ‘God decided, and drew us together for His higher purpose, just as He made me do what I did. Everything that happens is part of His scheme.’
His words were English, but the outlandish language grated so painfully on Aaron he wanted to get up and strangle him. Perhaps the hatred was from a déjà vu dose of his own slipshod way of expression when he was young and writing poems, something he had ceased to do when the future closed its doors. The flash of similarity blinded him to pity unless, he thought, it was pain from the rotting tooth once more on the attack, but if so what had made it reassert itself? Calm so far, enjoying the rarity of being marooned (in any case, he had problems to solve), his sudden craving for violence against Daniel was only stoppable with the greatest effort.
Not everyone bothered to hold it back. A heavy ashtray spun by Daniel’s head and hit the lintel of the fireplace. ‘You shitbag!’ Garry’s effort made him gasp at the pain in his leg, and he was even more enraged because he had missed. ‘You’ll be in jail soon, not fucking church. Or you’ll be dead, if I have owt to do with it.’
‘No, I won’t.’ When Sally tried to stop him talking he pushed her away so forcefully that her back struck the chair. ‘If anyone should try to get us out of this, it ought to be me.’
Parsons peered at the maelstrom of snow. After twenty years down the pit his ears could pick out any sound that was different, and he swore he heard the churning blades of a helicopter. Yet it couldn’t be, came from his fantasy of hope perhaps. Pressing an ear to cold glass, the uproar of the blizzard heightened the ante of cyclonic wildness.
Daniel fell from Keith’s push at his chest. ‘There’s nothing you can do to help. If you want to be safe, stay quiet.’
Sally was not part of such people, never had been. She belonged with Daniel, sat by him to be loathed as part of him, marked off from those who thought themselves much in the right but were as culpable as anyone because all they had in mind was to kill. Daniel had done what he had done out of an idealism he had never clearly understood. ‘It’s your responsibility that nothing happens to him, and I’ll hold you to it, believe me.’
‘Not a duty I take too heavily, I might tell you.’ Keith turned from her. ‘The next question is whether there are any bomb-disposal experts among us, who can fight their way across the yard and tackle that tangle of wires and fuses? Well, I knew it wasn’t on, but I had to ask. It’s the only thing that would save us, though even a bomb-disposal expert can make the wrong move.’
Parsons wished somebody would, in his lower moments, because what could he say when he got back to Ashfield? His life was finished, so he didn’t much care whether he did or not. There would be nothing but scorn from the lads, even if they didn’t have him prosecuted, and there were more than a few who would want to. I’m over the hill, rotting from the inside out, and I can feel it speeding up, doing its stuff with every minute that passes. If I had to run a hundred yards for a bus I would drop dead before grabbing the rail. Twenty years ago, when I was ripping out coal underground, and was a dedicated servant of the Union, I made up my mind I would get to the top in that set-up at least, but somewhere on the mountainside of endeavour I began donkeying around in circles. I’m bloody sure that was a helicopter, unless it was a chimney falling down in the wind, or drainpipes cracking under the weight of snow. And then what did I do? Spent the Union’s money in a Soho club, fifty quid for a bottle of stuff they called wine but tasted like the worst vinegar in England, and then off to bed with a woman who wanted to whip me because I couldn’t get it up. ‘It’s nourishment I want,’ I said, ‘not punishment.’ On my way to meet Jenny at the station I found she’d robbed me blind. Christ, I’ll tell ’em it fell out of my back pocket. ‘I was mugged,’ I’ll say. ‘Don’t kill me just for that.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Keith stood by the fire, a hand in his pocket as if it were full of ideas and he couldn’t decide which to bring out next. ‘The question is,’ he said, ‘whether one of us can’t get to the nearest house or phone box to explain matters, and call a bomb-disposal specialist in by helicopter.’
Fred’s map, fished from what he called The Information Drawer, was an old one-inch clothbacked provisional edition hurried out for use by the Home Guard during the Second World War, a relic picked off a junk barrow in the market for ten pence. All but falling to pieces, its only use was in showing that if you went left from the hotel the road undulated for miles until it reached a valley and the nearest village. If you turned right it did the same for an equal number of miles and led right into the fangs of the gale.
‘We’re up the creek,’ Eileen said, ‘without even a soup spoon.’
Joking in face of peril, feeling no responsibility for getting out of it but waiting for someone to tell you what to do, must be paradise to them, but for Keith such a state would be torment. To them it was normal, but he had been born to show people and think for people and, when necessary, to lead people. At such times he was most alive: people trusted him, and wallowing in their dependence was like a tonic — though finally he must justify their faith.
Your secrets were your own, until you let them out. Look into people’s eyes and, however frank you appeared, they could know nothing unless you told them. In a crisis, when it mattered to conceal what you were thinking (so as to mull more effectively over your choice of what to say), you were one person hidden and for yourself alone, then another for those with whom you had to deal. So he could hope to be their saviour, while guilty of murder. Such thoughts were necessary for his strength of purpose — pausing only to seem more caring to his audience, as if to imply that a half-concealed scholarliness mixed with the man of action.
His tone was one of impatience at Eileen’s remark. ‘Not too far up it. I saw a pair of skis in the junk room. They weren’t exactly new, but the rats hadn’t eaten the straps as they did the leather of the Assyrians’ shields. The runners look straight, so the only question is who, apart from myself, is able to ski?’
The bikers couldn’t, he was sure, and Aaron would be too old to plunge through such conditions. As for Parsons and Alfred, the same for them with knobs on, even if they could ski, which he doubted.
‘I can,’ Sally said. ‘Ever since I was old enough to stand on my feet. My parents insisted I do everything: type, swim, drive, ride — and also ski. I can do it as well as anyone here, if not better. The snow must be above the hedges by now. It should be plain sailing.’
Keith remembered a white-out near Bluedale Tarn, when with all his weight and strength (and experience) he could hardly stand against the wind which was blowing from the direction he needed to go. The only way was to have the wind with him, though it pushed and buffeted, and more than doubled the distance to safety, with moments when he thought he would never reach his hotel. A local farmer lost in the same storm was found dead a month later, in spite of building himself a shelter in the lee of a wall.