No papers this morning. He heard the news headlines and flicked up the switch. It was a day to start with a breakfast, spread rashers on the grill and run the opener round a tin of tomatoes, crack eggs into a pan. It was an enjoyable life: a pleasant loneliness filled in trying to bridge the here-and-now with Pat to his old life with Nancy, in which the gorge of chaos was wide and deep. But the effort annoyed him, because it was too early to throw out the bridge, spring the camber and tighten the hawsers. Better to look back on it over much land and time, when the gaping earth wound of now would be a mere slit to step back over. Living with Pat he felt a contentment more enjoyable because he sensed its precariousness in that they hadn’t been visited by any sort of fatal quarrel. He and Nancy went at it like cat and dog, but here, maybe they were too absorbed to argue yet. And perhaps it wasn’t true that quarrelling was proof of love, for it was marvellous that they didn’t, apart from occasional sour looks of a too-early morning.
He cleared away breakfast and hatched a fire. There was a smell of tea, the subtle combined residues of tea made or about to be, a pleasant herbal odour joining generations of people and memories that persisted when the windows of summer were thrown open, went even beyond the drastic cleansing of renovation when Pat first came. Drawing back the curtains, thick flakes were drifting zig-zag in a hypnotic slow-motion down the outside windowpanes. It seemed strange, a snowfall in early morning. He’d always fixed the prevailing time for it as being towards dusk or during darkness. There was no telling where the base of the clouds began: the sky was particles of white, lapping slowly through the livid scar-blue of a day not yet wakened. In spite of the fire, he rubbed his hands: it was an ashen desolate marvellous window, but had to be turned from. Nothing would get through, not mail, milk, newspapers nor breadwagon — only perhaps the phone would ring for help from the village or beyond. He would have to dress up in compass and gumboots and brave the blizzard for provisions. Not that they needed much, for he’d taken care that they were well-stocked for such an undistinguished calamity, but he’d maybe slog it to the village just for the battle against piling snow.
He took orange juice and tea up the steep stairs. She lay with pillows heaped behind, and a book in front, wore a heavy cream woollen bedjacket rolled slightly at the sleeves, showing her white wrists. ‘I heard you making the fire. I think before that I was wakened by the sound of snow coming down. It’s funny how it wakes you.’
‘I thought you’d be still deep in it,’ he said.
‘No. A day like this is like the end of the world, so you’ve got to be awake.’
‘It’s the beginning, more like.’ He sat on the bed-end. ‘Unless you get called out, we’ll be locked in all day.’
‘Not a hope,’ she laughed, pushing strands of hair back over her shoulder. ‘I’m usually looking at people in bed. It’s good to be resting for a change.’
‘I should be in with you,’ he joked. ‘But I like to look at you. It’s a bit of a change, anyhow. Maybe I’m getting old, or older. I feel more alive than when I was in Nottingham. It’s funny, that. It’s not so many months ago, either, but it seems years. A family kills you; it kills everybody, I think, the way it drags your spirit down unnecessarily.’
‘That’s the only way to live.’
‘It needn’t be. There must be a better way. If there isn’t I’d cut my throat. In China they reckon there is, but not here. Go on reading if you like. I’ll go down and throw something in the pan.’
‘No, sit here for a bit. You’re always so restless. The air’s muffled with so much snow around, as if I’ve gone a bit deaf. It’s good to talk when it’s so quiet: words mean something. You know, you don’t have such an accent in your speech as you did when you first came. It must be my influence!’
‘I’ll be giving out the news on the B B C if I’m not careful. “Here is the news, and this is William Posters reading it. An atom bomb got lobbed on London this morning, so will everybody with a sore throat please report to Nurse Shipley on their way north through Lincolnshire?” I can see that, right enough.’
‘You don’t take anyone or anything seriously.’
‘It was your joke,’ he said. ‘I do though, inside myself. But outwardly I’m cool, dead cool.’
‘If you’re so cool, you want to be careful the fire isn’t out.’
‘No danger of that. If I’m cool it’s because I’m burning up. I haven’t got guts but a firegrate full of prime pit dust that you get no flame from but can toast bread at.’
She looked at him sitting there, smoking a cigarette, out of his depth, and not knowing where he belonged — a strong aura clinging to him that made her think she would one day wake up and find him gone. She couldn’t imagine the house without him. Or she could, in which case she couldn’t imagine staying in it, feeling that both she and it would collapse if something impelled him to leave as unexpectedly as he’d come. There was always a danger of it, but he would deny it in a blind rage if she mentioned it. So she never would, and maybe in this way it wouldn’t mystically lodge in his brain, and he would stay for as long as always turned out to be. He was downstairs, and came back with tea and fried eggs.
‘It’s stopped snowing. It’s freezing over where I cleared away. I wish I knew how to skate or ski, then I’d get to the village in no time for whatever we want.’
She smiled: ‘There’s nothing we need. The pantry’s full.’
‘And the fire’s burning a treat. Even if you come down in your shimmy you won’t feel the cold. I’ve never known a house so warm in winter.’
‘As long as the taps don’t freeze.’
‘I’ll melt snow.’
‘I can ski,’ she said. ‘I went to Switzerland the year before last.’
‘Where are they?’ looking around as if they might be in the bedroom.
‘I don’t have any, rented some when I got there.’
‘You’ve been around,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t mind travelling a bit, out of this country. I never used to think about it. Maybe it’s reading books that set me going, and talking to somebody who’s travelled.’
‘I wouldn’t say I’ve travelled,’ she said, a little too quickly.
‘Now you’re showing off,’ he laughed. ‘Maybe we’ll go one fine year, who knows? Hump our bags to Spain or Italy. I’d like to do that. I knew a bloke in our factory, about my age but single who set off to travel round the world. He saved up, and planned it for years, said he’d work when money ran out. I looked on him as a real adventurer, someone to envy. We had a party for him before he went, and it was even in the paper about him. I was sad to see him go, yet bucked at the idea of what he was doing. Six weeks later, he was back. He’d been through France, got as far as Barcelona I think. I was disappointed, almost didn’t want to know him. If I go away I’d want to do better than that. Don’t you ever get fed-up in this village?’