Till midday he cleared snow from around the house, scraped walls and steps, shook it from fences. Standing on the floor of the shallow loft, he opened a skylight and freed a good part of the sloping roof, right down to its blue slates, by wielding a long brush and shovel. He hauled up an aluminium ladder and fixed it from the skylight. Within the radius of his burning mind and arms he worked to push snow-ridges down towards the eaves, over and off, a spluttering impact as it hit the ground.
A whole flank cleared, he straddled the roof to begin the other. The low sky, absolutely without feeling or sense, a forlorn William Posters at his wits’ end and taking a breather, stood by his elbow and above his head, dumb, omnipresent, and never-pouncing.
Arms and chest sweated under his jacket, but he pushed strenuously at the snow. The thaw might not come for weeks, and his irritation at this was expressed by a slow, patient thoroughness in his task of uncovering the house. He swung the ladder over and fixed it to the ridge, made his way down almost to the eaves, scooping snow even out of the drainpipe tops.
A few beams of midday sun came through. On earth again, he shovelled snow from the lane, until the house and its outskirts was an island of brick, slate, paths and fences in an ocean of snow-covered wolds, an isolated clear speck of winter-liberated country. He inspected his work, walked around the cottage on solid ground, stamping his boots as if still necessary to knock snow off them. Cold air penetrated now that he was still, stood smoking a cigarette, wondering when Pat would be back. Possibly there was no point in waiting, but it wasn’t in him any more to run away. The fighting had only just begun and he hoped that both of them would be worthy of what they could end up becoming to each other. Two more calls had come in before she left, so a whole day would pass in helping some bawling pink blob of a kid into this arctic-orientated world.
He put on his coat and ploughed a way through to the village pub. Five lanes met at Carnford, sloped in at various points along the sinewy mile-long street. Much of the road had been cleared, though no bread would come from Louth that day.
He shook his way into the saloon bar, and the landlord was talking about it to the only other customer. ‘They’ll have to manage on biscuits and cakes then,’ he laughed. ‘I saw a fine stock of them in the shop just now.’
Frank reached for his pint and the cold tusk of it going down was something he’d craved during the snow-heaving. He sat by the electric fire, more for company than warmth, a solitary two-bar heater glowing from the depths of an ancient fireplace. The other drinker caught his eye: ‘I expect it’ll last a while.’
Frank didn’t mind talking: ‘I’ve cleared my lot. Been on it all morning.’
‘I’d never shift mine,’ the man said. ‘My kids are too idle. Strong, but bone idle. They wouldn’t lift a spade, not them. I’ve got seven of ’em, all grown up. If I said: “What about taking a spade to it?” as I did this morning, they’d say, as they did this morning: “If we want to do that sort of thing we can go to work. I suppose you’ll be sending us to work soon? Nothing would surprise me.” So we have to keep ourselves as best we can. It’s not easy, it ain’t. It’s not, either. My name’s Handley, Albert Handley. I live at the Burrow. Turn left by the next pub and it’s up the hill a bit. You’re living at Nurse Shipley’s, aren’t you?’
Frank couldn’t be sure till he saw her again. He took the measure of Albert Handley during a few gulps and commonplaces. He was a tall, spruce-looking man with short dark greying hair, the sort you could comb without a mirror. He seemed about forty, had brown eyes, a reddish face, and a small dark moustache. There was something intelligent, considerate and ruthless about his face, as if he’d left the army as an N C O not long enough ago to have regained the easygoing appearance of a working man of the world who hadn’t done much work because he thought himself a bit above it. He didn’t seem like a farm-labourer, nor a farmer, nor even one of those men from the council houses who took the bus for Scunthorpe steelworks every morning. It was hard to say what he did, though from what he said, he did nothing — hard to get to know such a man until you got to know him.
‘How did you land up in this place, then?’
‘Came to see Nurse Shipley, and stayed,’ Frank told him. ‘Have a pint on me.’
‘I’ll do that. Like the old village?’
Frank stood at the bar with him, pushed two empty jars towards the beer pumps. The landlord filled them. ‘I’m fond of a bit of isolation. Lived in a city all my life.’
He chuckled. ‘You’ll get it here. Health to you.’
‘Cheerio.’
‘I’m a Leicester man. Was on the coast in the war, artillery. Met a girl from this village. Married her. Worse move I ever made. Still, mustn’t grumble, as the parson says. Ever since then I’ve never had the bus fare to get back to Leicester. With a wife and seven kids every shilling gets snatched away. Perhaps I like it though, I don’t know. What’s your trade?’
‘Machine operator, when I do it. I gave it up a few months ago and came here to think things over. I read a lot, which stops me from thinking, so maybe I don’t want to think after all — yet.’ Half the pint slid into his throat.
Handley was also a fair drinker: ‘You read a lot, do you? You don’t look that sort.’
‘Thanks,’ Frank said. ‘I wish I could meet somebody subtle for a change’ — though aware of him being someone with whom small talk couldn’t get you hung, drawn and quartered. Handley laughed: ‘I used to read a good bit in the old days: Marx, Conan Doyle, Michael Arlen, Lenin. Not that I get much time for it now, old chuff, what with writing my letters, and painting.’
‘Painter and decorator, are you? Have another?’
Handley’s brown eyes looked steadily: ‘Are you rich?’
‘No,’ Frank told him.
‘I didn’t think so. Honour among thieves. Have one on me. It’s my turn. I don’t paint houses, I paint pictures.’
‘Pictures?’ Frank snapped into his new pint.
‘I have to live. You’ve never heard of Albert Handley’s Lincolnshire primitives? Neither has anybody else, above twenty miles away. But stay around a bit, and I’ll show you something before the day’s out. Get that drink finished, and we can walk up to the Burrow for a bit of exercise.’
‘I’d like to,’ Frank said. ‘I haven’t met anybody before who does paintings. Not that I need exercise after the clearing out I did this morning.’ He bought two quarts of brown, and they were ready to go.
The sky was darkening, as if evening couldn’t wait before closing in. An icy wind licked over the wolds, fit to prise open the village street, all doors clamped against it, smoke caught by it, scooped up slowly from every chimney. ‘I’ve spent many an hour analysing winds according to what part of the body they seem most hell-bent on,’ Handley said as they walked along. ‘Up here they’ve all got characters, the winds — which is more than I can say for the people. Sometimes there’s a leg wind that paralyses the kneecaps, pulls you over by the ankles like a starvo-loony mixing you up with the NAB bloke. Now and again a wind will get at your breath — a chest wind, the most dangerous of all. Or there’ll be a head wind, which makes the temples ache and the eyes smart. They just concentrate on one place, even in a gale. I’ve known a wind just go for the shoulders or the small of the back — leaves you groaning for three days with rheumatism or lumbago as if you’ve been conned into a job on the new motorway. A wind can give you a stomach ache as well, or it can get at the heart or liver. One consolation is that it never goes for two things at one time, but one is enough to floor you in most cases.’