Peter went inside and picked up the phone, but he knew it was a waste of time. There was not so much as a crackle, even when he rattled the cradle. The Rayburn had gone out. He'd light it later, and in the meantime he'd keep his coat on. Hell, he couldn't stop indoors; he'd go mad and his head needed some fresh air to clear it. He had meant to buy a bottle of aspirin in the village but somehow it had slipped his mind—which wasn't surprising; it seemed to take him all his time to keep sane these days.
He went outside again. It was snowing properly now; fine flakes, which the wind was beginning to drive horizontally. By the time he reached the garden gate there was a white film building up on his navy blue coat, and the sky was the colour of good old Tipton black-pudding.
He had to stop himself from pacing up and down the road outside. Where the hell were Barratts Garage and the telephone engineer? He checked his watch: three pm. Another hour and it would be dark. Calvert had been a bit vague in his instructions over the phone to the garage. But surely they knew where Hodre was, even if they did have to come from ten miles away. And British Telecom would surely be able to locate every phone by its number. Maybe one or both of them had broken down on the way. Christ, anything and everything was a possibility these days.
Peter mounted the steps leading up to the granary. It was snowing too hard to stand about in the lane and anyway there was a better vantage point from the elevated doorway. At least he thought so until he got up there and saw how the snow was reducing visibility. It was barely possible to see as far as the first bend less than a hundred yards away. The hedges were white all over, and if he stared for too long the gnawing pain at the back of his eyes began again and started off shooting lights. Perhaps he ought to have consulted a doctor; perhaps he had concussion after the blow on his head. Well, it was too late now. With neither telephone nor car he wasn't going anywhere at all.
He lifted the catch on the granary door and stepped inside. At least here he would be out of the cold and the driving snowflakes, and if anyone should arrive he would hear them.
The gloomy interior of the musty-smelling building was somehow soothing. Peaceful, Like a church that shuts out the presence of everyday life and allows one time to relax.
Peter's eyes adjusted to the gloom and he found his gaze wandering over the piles of useless junk. That was when he saw the gun.
At first he thought it was a length of rusty iron piping but as his eyes followed it down he saw the battered stock bound together with wire to repair a crack in the grip. He moved across and extricated it from amidst some loosely coiled rusty barbed wire, almost refusing to believe what his eyes told him.
It was a gun all right, and he knew enough about shotguns to identify it as a 12-bore. Double-barrelled, the twin steel tubes a brown colour that was a mixture of rust and Damascus steel, its hammers shaped like carvings of the devil's ears, an under-lever that needed brute force to open the breech.
He blew down the barrels, then coughed at the cloud of dust which rose up. Sound enough, a credit to the makers, whose name on the centre rib had become obliterated.
The feel of this ancient shotgun in his hands gave Peter a sudden sense of power even though it was empty and useless. Something he'd once read in a cheap western novel had stuck in his memory ever since—'God created men, Sam Colt made them equal'. It applied to shotguns as well as pistols.
It was totally unbelievable that in a space of five minutes not only should Peter discover a gun in apparent working order but that he should also find some cartridges—four unopened canons of them packed into a small wooden crate as though at some time they had been transported from the vendors by rail.
He opened a carton, took one out and examined it closely: a crimson cardboard cylinder with a shiny brass head, a crest on the case—EBL—and the words Maximum. Long Range. Heavy Load. It sounded impressive, powerful! Some traces of damp clung to the outer casings—though the granary itself was dry and the shells felt dry enough. Maybe an hour or two in front of the Rayburn to dry them off...
Peter stepped back outside, the gun cradled under one arm, the case of ammunition in the other. It was snowing hard now, large flakes whipping horizontally from the west, coating the hedges, forming a white layer across the road. There was no break in the heavy clouds, no sign of it easing up. The telephone man wouldn't come today, neither would Barratts. But he didn't bloody well care. If anybody was looking for trouble tonight then they were going to get it!
It was strange how the incentive to work had disappeared, Peter reflected. He felt that if he could have made the effort everything would have come relatively easily. But there was plenty of tune. Christ, he had a year in which to deliver the finished manuscript and a day, even a week, wasn't going to make any difference. There were more important matters to attend to.
Darkness was coming early and the snow had not relented. The kitchen window was gathering a white coating on the outside, so Peter drew the curtains to shut it out. He could just hear the—faint pitter-pattering of flakes against the cushioned glass and the wind howling ceaselessly in the Rayburn chimney.
In a way it was easy, Peter decided. He didn't have to go anywhere, he had plenty of food in the larder—enough to last him a couple of weeks at least. And, most important of all, he had a gun.
After he had eaten he began to clean it up. Some oil on the barrels showed that they were not as rusty as he had at first supposed, and the Damascus steel showed a beautiful grain. The hammers cocked and uncocked with smooth precision, and when he tried one of the cartridges for size it only needed a slight pressure to slide it right into the breach. The ammunition was drying off well on the shelf over the Rayburn.
He re-lit the Rayburn, made himself another cup of coffee and contemplated the weapon on the table. It had changed his whole outlook; the feeling of futility and helplessness had evaporated almost immediately upon discovering the 12-bore in the granary. Suddenly he had become the hunter instead of the hunted. If the lurkers did not come with their flashing lights tonight he was going to feel decidedly cheated.
Eleven-thirty. He went to the window and pulled back the curtains. The glass was plastered with snow and it was impossible to see out. Upstairs, the bedroom window was just as bad, but with some difficulty he prised it open.
Peter's first reaction upon looking outside was one of sheer amazement. The snow had stopped and the skies were clear, with a myriad of twinkling stars that shone down on a pure white landscape. So still and silent—even the wind had dropped—that the whiteness of the snow and the starlight showed up every detail as clearly as though it were bright moonlight, A sparkling arctic panorama.
The raging blizzard had spent itself but in its wake it had left deep drifts. The tops of the hedges which bordered the lane were only just visible above exotic miniature white mountains where the snow had driven through gateways and gaps in the hawthorn. He tried to make out where the Saab was and thought he vaguely recognised its shape beneath the largest drift. Even the dark forbidding mass of forest on the skyline had been transformed into a white ridge that was totally unrecognisable,
'Jesus Christ, what a blizzard!' He spoke aloud, deliberately breaking the silence. Otherwise he might have convinced himself that this was a dead world, that he was dead too, in the frozen hereafter as opposed to the eternal fires.