‘Yes. And you would have done, as well.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘You would if you’d been me.’
‘Did he tell you to keep it secret? To tell nobody else?’
‘He didn’t need to, though I don’t suppose he expected me to be such a flapmouth.’
Jenny felt Eileen ought to be protected from such a predatory swine, and though on a night like this he had his uses, she would say when he came in: ‘What the hell do you think you’re up to, telling a young girl you’ve just murdered your wife? Is that how you cook up your fun?’
All she had intended was to talk to Jenny, and since Keith couldn’t have lied, what would it matter how many people knew? ‘He didn’t want me to get killed, so he told me the only thing that would frighten me away. It proved he loved me, so how can it be bad? But he still killed his wife.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘You’re no fucking good to talk to at all.’
Jenny had a sudden dread that the explosion was about to happen. Talk had made her forget, but now she felt tense, almost tearful at what seemed sure to come. She soothed herself with the fact that whenever she had felt a warning premonition in the past nothing had taken place. It was only at those times when no sign was given that the unimaginable happened. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said in response to Eileen’s protest. ‘It’s just that I’ve learned to believe nothing men say. They’re liars, all of them. It’s bred in the bone for them to lie. As soon as they meet a woman they start lying, as if to mummy, all over again. Why it is, I don’t know. I think every man’s afraid of every woman. A person only lies if they’re frightened. The only total thing about women is that they have a vagina, but the one factor men have in common is that they all lie.’
Eileen laughed. ‘Christ! What a mouthful! I suppose most men are liars, but some must be different.’ The blizzard changed its tune to a high-pitched continual note, and though the windows stopped clattering the pressure against the frames caused more insidious anxiety. Another fall of debris sounded from upstairs. ‘Keith didn’t lie, so there’s one who’s different. My old boy friend Trevor lied all the time, when he condescended to speak. And women lie as well, I know that for a fact. Haven’t you ever lied?’
She needed little time to answer, but wondered whether she hadn’t missed something in her life. ‘No, never.’
‘I’ve had to, sometimes, so that I wouldn’t get a black eye, or to calm somebody down.’ It would be getting light soon, and she hoped the wind was having its last fling. ‘What about Lance, then? Doesn’t he lie? I know you went to bed with him.’
She smiled. ‘In the time we spent together he didn’t need to. Or I didn’t give him the opportunity.’ She didn’t want to think about him or be reminded of anything, good or bad, in her life at the moment. She wanted to sleep, and when she came out of it find that all nightmares had vanished at the onset of daylight.
‘I’ll bet he fucks like a rabbit in a thunderstorm,’ Eileen said.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘I was once forced by a biker. But I didn’t tell the police. Not on your life.’
‘You should have.’
‘It’s none of their business, either. It ended all right. We stayed together three months, and he was very good to me in the end. He looked after me. When I got pregnant he coughed up the money for an abortion.’
Jenny wondered if there weren’t more than a few liars among women, the way she told her story. ‘And how did you feel afterwards?’
‘Lousy. I wanted to do myself in. I felt so rotten he left me. Maybe I got preggers after being in bed with Keith last night. I hope so, because I’d have it. I don’t care what he says, if he’s here to say it. Anyway, if I do have a kid maybe I’ll be able to get a flat out of the social workers. I’ll look after it till my dying day.’
She was crying again. Who wouldn’t? At least you were living if you could cry. ‘Yes, never get rid of it.’ It was a hateful phrase, but one that would be readily understood.
‘I won’t.’ She was laughing, sucking in her tears. ‘If it’s a boy I’ll make its middle name Blizzard!’
They were both laughing, arms around each other, cheeks still touching. ‘And what if it’s a girl?’ Jenny said.
‘I’ll call her Snowdrop!’
With Alfred’s spade and then Aaron’s to help, Keith made them concentrate on levelling the way ahead so that he would be able to drive a further fifty yards. A range of snowhills from the digging had their own valleys and heights, the escarpment of a cutting mark here and there where human quarrying had been at work. Otherwise white, a blue glow in the dark, a false solidity you couldn’t travel over or through without sinking. The stars were paler, and contours of snow beyond their excavations vaguely outlined, undulations more or less flattened. They made their road into unexplored territory, seemingly to no purpose since its colour would never change enough to indicate what they might find.
A short stint, and Keith forced poisonous meditations out of his mind as he motioned them in, arms signalling that for them it was the end with shoulder and shovel, though unexpected energy came from somewhere when they walked quickly through the courtyard.
‘After we’ve had something to eat we’ll all move into the spare room, as far away as we can get.’ He was amazed at how fresh and neat Fred looked. He had taken off his apron and, cold as it was, wore no more than his smart waistcoated suit. Keith imagined him putting his head under the tap every half hour, spraying his face with a reasonable brand of aftershave, combing his hair, and wiping his shoes with a rag. As the only one able to go on with his normal trade, he was a being apart.
‘You ought to sleep,’ Fred told him. ‘It looks as if your battery’s drained. It wouldn’t do for you to fold up on us, sir.’ He turned, and pulled Enid out of her sleep. ‘I want some help in the kitchen. And no bloody cheek, or you’ll feel the flat of my hand.’
She smiled, no need to give him what-for, though he turned before she could do so. He felt light in the head, at the first pale hint of dawn coming back to the windows. Pulling the curtains open, to be more welcoming to the day, they ran completely off the rails, so with an operatic flourish he scooped them up and threw them on the fire, wondering why the hell he was doing such a thing.
‘Now you’re trying to choke us to death, you daft old bastard.’ Smoke clouding the room, Wayne pulled the drapes clear and ran to the door, black flocks falling as he flung them out.
‘What a mess my hotel is.’ Fred noted a lilt of hysteria to his laugh, and curbed it. ‘You wouldn’t think it used to be such a fine old place. All in a few hours.’ He walked towards the kitchen, shaking his head and wondering why it was that yesterday seemed weeks away. ‘You just never know what Fate is about to bring, do you?’
‘It serves him right.’ Enid followed at a certain distance, as if he were a wounded animal who, not yet knowing the extent of his disablement, might suddenly realize the pain and turn round to rend her.
‘It doesn’t serve him right,’ Aaron admonished, though gently.
‘Not if he hadn’t deserved it,’ Alfred agreed when she had gone. ‘And we’ve no reason to believe he has.’
‘We all deserve our fate, though.’
‘Do we? I don’t know about that. Anyway, what harm have we done?’ He poked Aaron in the chest, which Aaron felt as being too familiar, even vaguely insulting. ‘I’ve got nothing on my conscience.’ He had taken Jack Smythe’s trade and chased him out of business, but it hadn’t done any vital damage to Jack Smythe, who had then obtained a job as a long-distance lorry driver, and had also moved into a smaller house, which surely must be more convenient. There was nothing wrong with that because not being threatened with ulcers, how could he complain?