She turned to Aaron. ‘Are you going to let him insult me like that?’
‘Let’s get on with our meal,’ he said.
Fred came into the kitchen with a tray of soiled pots. Those in the lumber room were belching, farting, or puffing cigarettes and groaning from their injuries. He was sorry about that. The lads were more hurt than they let on, so he would leave them alone and hope the medics got here soon to mend ’em and bandage ’em. Even so, they seemed more harmless under their tribulations than before they had known about the van, and that couldn’t be bad. It was amazing how pain and peril turned tearaways into heroes. He would show his appreciation by rustling up something tasty for dessert. What they really needed was a good plate of spotted dick smothered in a rich egg custard, or hot dumplings running with treacle, but neither time nor cooking facilities allowed of that. He kicked at a large rat running across broken glass to safety under the sink. ‘Not another one away?’
‘She’s fainted,’ Jenny said. ‘Is there a dry bed somewhere?’
He pointed to a mattress. ‘I kipped on it myself now, and again last night. What happened?’
‘She saw the mess.’
‘I told her not to go out.’
‘Well, now she knows. And so do I.’
He set the tray on the sink. ‘We don’t even have any water. Everything’s frozen, or burst. I hope we’ll be out of it soon. It’s getting intolerable, even to me.’
She let Eileen gently down, thinking it typical of him not to help. The struggle of getting her in from the storm had been almost too much, as if both might never reach shelter.
He turned doctor again. ‘I’ll find some brandy.’
Eileen lay on her back, arm over eyes, mouth shaped in the perpetual horror of a half-formed cry. Someone had punched her into a nightmare, and she was running up and down tunnels unable to find a way out. Her forehead, was cold, the pale skin unwrinkled, and Jenny hoped that soothing fingers would do some good. Eileen’s breathing was even, as if she were asleep, shocked out of herself but into something she had never known about, senseless from the exhaustion of terror and utter loss. Jenny touched her lips, then quickly took the hand away at the thought of being bitten, a melancholy smile at such an unlikely occurrence.
Fred shook the bottle’s insides to a froth, snapped out the cork, and put it to her nose. ‘This is better than any brandy. A ship’s carpenter once gave me the formula. But I wonder where she’ll go when she leaves here? Keith picked her up off the road.’
Snow had melted into her clothes, but her warm sweet breath came through the odour. ‘I’ll take her home with me.’
She surprised herself, because what would she do about Lance? Let things happen as they might or might not, she’d see him or she wouldn’t, surely no need to worry about wanting her when you had spent a night dying and being born again. She would love who she liked. No, that’s not it. I’ll never be able to change, nor will she, but if we can’t live with each other, at least for a while, who the hell can we live with? ‘I’m out of a job as well, but we’ll manage.’
‘Better you than me,’ he said.
‘It never could be you, could it?’ she responded sharply.
‘It’s having some effect. She’s coming round, but you’d better stay with her.’
‘I will.’
‘Poor thing needs somebody. And when you get her home, give her this envelope.’
‘What is it?’
‘How the hell should I know? Keith left it for her. Maybe it’s a last will and testament. A Dear Eileen letter, for all I care.’
Alfred dragged a mahogany table from the fireplace and set a box under it where a leg was missing. He stacked jumble around the walls, sorted stuff for burning. A boot through the unhinged door of a wardrobe sent clouds of snuff and splinters towards that part of the ceiling still able to cover them from driving snow. ‘We can sit it out here a treat.’ He was proud of the order he had made. ‘The bikers are asleep, and they deserve to be. I wish I was their age again.’
‘You had a good time when you were, I suppose?’
‘I worked too hard,’ he said to Aaron. ‘I never had the guts to be more myself than I dared. With my father in the offing all the time I had to watch my Ps and Qs. He had to know about every little thing. I suppose it did my character some good, by the time I was forty anyway. It seems funny now he’s gone. Mother died ten years ago — or was it twelve? — so I’m an orphan! What a bloody silly thing to be, at my age! All I want is to see my daughter married, and get back to business, though the first thing’ — he lit a cigar from a burning stick which he threw down before his eyebrows singed — ‘will be to get my father decently buried. I have a son, but he cleared off five years ago to live in London, where he’s working on computers. He’s got two kids of his own, and pays for ’em to go to a private school. He had more guts than I did, and didn’t want me breathing down his neck, though I tried not to when he was little. His grandfather was as nice as pie to him, would you believe it? So I hope he’ll come up for the funeral, though it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t. I even offered to buy him a car last year, but he said he’d already got one. That’s the modern generation for you.’
Enid looked at Aaron as if, he thought, she had never seen him before. ‘I’ll go home as soon as I can, and let my parents know I’m all right. I don’t like them to be worried. When they’re worried they get upset.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘I’ll write to you about that job.’ She didn’t think she would, but she might. You never knew how you would feel in the morning, and why should you? If you knew how you would feel from one day to the next you might as well be dead, and who wants to be dead when you can go on enjoying yourself? She patted his folded hands. ‘I promise I won’t bite my nails any more. My mam and dad will be ever so pleased.’
Fred came in with a tureen of fruit salad. ‘I went out to empty the slops, and saw a helicopter over the tor a couple of miles away. I expect it’s the police. Or maybe the RAF.’
Wayne yawned, and whispered in his pain. ‘Go and wave a white sheet, then.’
‘You damned idiot,’ Fred said. ‘They won’t see it in the snow.’
‘I’ve got to go to court next week for speeding,’ Wayne grumbled. ‘I was doing a ton near Youlgreave. They won’t let a biker live these days. I didn’t even kill anybody. I hope that was a chopper and there’s a doctor on board who can fix my ribs up. They’re giving me bloody hell.’
‘All I ever hit was a dog,’ Lance said, ‘and I was only doing thirty. I’ll be scarred for life with this bloody gash in my face. The blood’s congealed, though, so it’s not running any more. The poor bloody dog ran right out of a garden. The little girl who owned it broke her heart, but the farmer admitted it wasn’t my fault.’
Fred set down bowls and spoons. He would stay in Nottingham with his old shipmate Tommy Blidworth who had a fuel delivery service, work with him till he could get a job, or until he made up his mind about buying another hotel, unless it paid him to insist that the insurance build up this one to exactly what it was like before. He had done nothing but send Doris insulting letters since she left, but if he wrote nice things and posted some flowers maybe she would come back. We’ll start all over again. I’ll need a bit of help in a new place. Her cook’s bound to be fed up with her by now. The only thing worse than being together is living apart.