His Coldest Winter

Lance took him to a pub in the cattle market for lunch. They sat by the fire with beer and sandwiches, surrounded by the smoke and backchat of stockmen. ‘Things all right, Geoff? You were looking a bit down in the mouth this morning.’

‘Was I? Yes. Fine, thanks.’

‘Not your normal chatty self.’

‘Haven’t been sleeping too well. Maybe it’s a bug. There’s one going around, isn’t there? Louie’s been a bit off colour this last week or so.’

‘Oh, well, that explains it. Not getting enough. That’s your problem, old son.’

‘It’s nothing like that.’ Geoffrey laughed uncomfortably.

In the afternoon, morbid thoughts of Cynthia crowded in on him: she’d left the firm; she was seriously ill; some Brylcreemed boyfriend with a car had smashed her up in an accident on the ice, her legs, her spine, her face; some thug in leather and jeans had lured her on to his motorbike.

There came a point where he managed to tell himself these imaginings were false, and that, as a true researcher, he should be taking note of them. He reached for a pad. But pen on paper would leave a trail of evidence. With Butterfield’s memo still in his mind, he paused, biro unclicked. Again, it was as though his thoughts were on display, as though his skull had been can-openered and the brain laid bare.

At last, with darkness beginning to fall, the frenzy seemed to drain away. Cynthia Somers was just a nice girl, nothing more – maybe not even a nice girl. Perhaps he really had been fighting off a bug of some kind. Maybe it was something he’d eaten.

With great relief he worked on for two hours, setting up a control programme of silica-film deposit tests for the following week. And he felt reconciled to the firm. Government patronage needn’t just be military. In any case, someone had to invest in initial research. Great benefits had come out of the hectic experimentation of the war years – nuclear power, for one. Lionel Rae hadn’t necessarily been hired to steer the firm into dark waters, no matter what Lance believed. Rae was all right, he thought. Rae would look after him. On his way home, he’d stop and buy Louie something nice.

Lance looked up at him. ‘That’s more like it, Geoff,’ he said.

There was permission to leave early. Geoffrey quit the building at four thirty, and the freezing crust in the car park crunched under his feet. But the Mini started first time. He set the electric heater, and the demisters, and turned on the lights. Gloved and scarfed, he nudged his way out of the gates and crept along the skirt of town. There was the frailest early sunset: strips of pale yellow were brushed on the cloud cover just above the horizon. He crossed the Verulam Road, where slush churned up by the day’s traffic had frozen into brown heaps. The car struck one of them. It made a dull sound against the bodywork.

Then, at the bus-stop on Bluehouse Hill, just beside the tract of ground that covered the Roman town and the site of the martyrdom, he saw Cynthia in the queue. He was sure he did. She was wearing calf-length boots, black, quite breathtaking. He braked involuntarily, and the wheels locked. The car slithered to a halt five yards past the stop, stalling the engine as his foot slipped off the clutch. In the mirror, he saw the six or so people in the queue staring at him.

PLATITUDES SPILLED FROM his mouth as he stepped through the foot-deep kerbside snow towards her: ‘Thought I recognised you … too cold to be hanging about for a bus that might never come … wondered whether I was going your way.’ He felt they would do, in front of the onlookers. She had that smile on her face.

Now she was next to him in the car, and they were heading off along the Hempstead road. He drove in silence, horrified at himself, and intrigued. He could see out of the corner of his eye the tight grey pencil skirt that folded over her knees, the tops of her boots.

She seemed to read his mind. ‘Kinky boots,’ she said. She lifted the right one as far as the skirt would allow and angled it towards him.

He pretended to take his first look. The boots were soft leather that hugged her calves, wrinkled at the ankle and stretched smoothly, sexily, over a high heel. ‘They’re lovely.’ He looked back at the road.

‘When the bus didn’t turn up yesterday, I took the day off and bought them with my Christmas money.’ She seemed completely natural. ‘Aren’t they fabulous? They’ve just come in. Everyone wants a pair.’

‘I didn’t know they were allowed,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘Oh, yes.’ She was delightful.

‘So yesterday the bus didn’t show up?’

‘I nearly froze to death waiting.’

‘But today?’

She seemed once again to know what prompted his questions. ‘Oh, today Butterfield’s Doreen was off and they couldn’t find anyone to take his shorthand, except me. So I was drafted queen bee for the day. Makes a change, I suppose.’

Geoffrey believed he might have heard an apology in her tone. He stole a glance at her face. She was gazing straight ahead through the windscreen, at the landscape. Then she smiled and turned to meet his eye. ‘I like the snow,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do, actually. I like it, too.’

‘I taught myself shorthand when I was still at school. My mum helped. It makes a difference. What about you? You’ve been working on all that hush-hush integrated-circuit stuff I was typing up for old Butterfield. You have, haven’t you?’

He was silent for a moment. The snow in the headlights glistened. ‘I’m not really supposed to say. Cynthia.’ Her name.

‘Oh come on, Geoff.’ She’d spoken his. ‘I probably know more about it than you.’

‘Do you?’

‘We work for the same outfit, don’t we? Do you like records? Do you like the Beatles?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Should I?’

‘Only the group everyone’s talking about.’

‘Were they the ones who made “Walk Right In"?’

She spluttered. ‘Not likely.’

‘Oh.’

He thought the subject closed.

‘Love me, do,’ she said.

Geoffrey’s foot flapped down on to the accelerator just when he should have been braking for a bend. Luckily, the wheels spun at the low speed, and the car simply skidded sideways. He brought it under control, unnerved.

‘It’s been in the charts for weeks.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

‘I thought we were going into the hedge, then.’

The earth was silver. The farms and woodlands stretched away to either side under a darkening sky, supernaturally luminous.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

‘We’d have been in a pickle, wouldn’t we, stuck out here?’

Geoffrey trained his eyes on the road. He could feel her face turned towards his. He believed her eyes were amused, her lips slightly parted. He could see her without looking, knew her already. He felt the blush creep up from his collar and into his cheeks, and he cleared his throat. ‘Now. Where am I supposed to be taking you?’

‘Boxmoor. You go by there, don’t you? I’ve seen you a few times. Sure I have.’

‘Have you?’

‘You must have seen me, too. At the bus-stop. Blackbirds Moor, by the cut.’

‘No. Never.’ He took a risk. ‘Wish I had, though.’

Cynthia made no reply. They crossed the motorway and came to the heights of the new town. His heart thumped. She’d dealt him a card: he could offer to take her in to work. Something would begin whose end it was impossible to foresee. Perhaps, just while the snow lay, there was a brief dispensation, an angel of mise-en-scène under whose wings they were allowed to meet. How easy she seemed with the flirtation – for flirtation it undoubtedly was. He flicked an eye sideways again at the skirt over her knees, and at her boots.

They drove down the hill from Adeyfield. Hemel Hempstead shopping centre raised its modernist blocks, and lights blazed from the strict mathematical forms. Geoffrey negotiated the roundabout named Paradise, felt it apt and ebbing. The Mini nosed towards Boxmoor under the very faintest western glow.

‘Now. Whereabouts am I to drop you?’

‘Oh, anywhere will do. It’s an easy walk from here. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

‘Honestly, it’s no trouble. No trouble at all. It’ll save you a bit of time. After all, Friday night, a girl like you … I expect the boys’ll be queuing up to take you out. And women always need ages to get ready, don’t they?’ He was crass. But he continued, because he was doing nothing wrong, ‘Take my wife, for example …’

She crossed and uncrossed her ankles. ‘The boys I knock about with,’ she said, ‘you’d call them rough and ready. Till you get to know them, that is. Teds, really. We go out on the bikes. That’s what I like.’

‘On the bikes?’

‘Yes. There’s nothing like it. When you’re on the back and the world’s coming at you and you’re going faster and faster and there’s nothing you could ever do. So you just hang on. And all at once there’s a moment when you’re not afraid any more, you’re not left out, or alone, or different, and it’s like … I don’t know. Like you’re winning.’ Her voice was animated. ‘Like that’s the only time, the only chance you’ve ever got. When any second … the next second, you might die and you don’t care. You just don’t care. Blokes think they own you. One kiss and you’re property, you don’t exist any more. But on the bikes you come back to life.’

Geoffrey’s throat was tight. He tried to swallow. ‘I’ve never ridden a motorbike,’ he said.

‘You should try it.’ She sounded sincere. ‘You might like it.’

She showed him the turn-off. It took him to the road behind the pub called the Fishery, a snow-blank lane with only tyre tracks between the cottages. ‘Just here. Next to that lamppost. Thank you ever so much. I’m really grateful.’

He stopped, and she opened the door her side. And he watched her swing her boots away and lever herself lightly out of the car. Her feet sank deep into the white drift. She turned and looked in at him. ‘Thanks again, then.’ Her voice seemed suddenly serious, a little sad.

He heard himself say, ‘This weather’s so awkward if you haven’t got transport. Tell you what. If I see you Monday morning and it’s still like this, I’ll stop. How about that?’

‘Oh,’ she said. He saw her hesitate. ‘All right. That would be nice.’

‘Could be any time between eight and half past. I can’t guarantee …’

‘Till Monday, then. Perhaps.’ She smiled and shut the car door. ‘Thanks, Geoff.’

He watched her go up to the little house. She turned once more and waved briefly before disappearing inside.

All along the valley road, between the occluded farms and the occasional pubs, he felt such elation, and such guilt. His blood pumped. His legs shook so that he could hardly manage the pedals. Almost, he wished there’d be a thaw over the weekend – for by that the deed would be undone.

But there was no thaw. Instead, most unusually for temperate southern England, the mercury dropped like a stone, and the winds got up again. The weather was about to strut and ad lib. On the Saturday night blizzards west of the Malverns would drift twenty feet deep. By the Sunday, cars and houses not so very far from Geoffrey’s home would be completely buried, with never a train able to move. Sheep on the Welsh hills would disappear along with their shepherds. Birds in mid-flight would fall lifeless from the air.

II

PARALLEL COURSES

THE PHONE RANG. Cynth had got hold of his number. Alan hurried downstairs into the hall to pick up the receiver. He stood barefoot on the floor tiles in his pyjamas, the memory of her lips still touching his.

It was his mother. She sounded strained, far more distant than his aunt’s house in Kent, her voice almost scrambled. His father had been called away, unexpectedly, on business, and she’d be returning home alone. But not until the weather eased. Travelling just now was next to nigh impossible. Was Alan coping? Would he pass on the message about Lionel to the Fairhursts, as their phone line seemed to be down?

‘Called away?’

‘Yes. On business.’

‘What business?’ He could hardly hide his disappointment.

‘You know, dear. The firm.’

‘Oh. Just like that? Out of the blue?’

‘Sometimes it isn’t for us to ask … Apparently, there’s an emergency. He is still important, Alan, in spite of what you seem to think. They’re sending a car to take him to the airfield at Northolt. I’m only worried he won’t have enough to wear.’ His mother sighed; the sound was crackly, metallic. ‘So can you manage to go up to the Fairhursts for us? About getting to work. Geoffrey and … Louise, I think her name is. You know who I mean, don’t you?’

‘More or less. Give me the address, then.’

He heard her calling to his father. The name of the road was indistinct.

‘What was that?’

‘Cowper.’

‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Up past the almshouses.’

‘That’s it, dear. Your dad says it’s on a corner. The point is he doesn’t remember the exact number. But my address book should be on my dressing table. You’ll keep the boiler going, won’t you? We don’t want burst pipes. And you’ve got enough to eat?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Bye.’ He put the phone down.

He had to pull himself together to attend to his mother’s message. Of course it wouldn’t have been Cynth. His father had been called away, and he was to tell the Fairhursts. He bit his lip and turned back to the stair. Then he stopped. Called away.

He’d paid no heed to the spy theory since the Busy Bee. The absurd notion of Lionel in the pay of the Kremlin had simply bobbed up in the wake of his scare, and, with equal facility, it had bobbed down again. All his imagination had been taken up with the girl in blue. Come when the snow clears away. The snow this morning lay deeper than ever. It was four days since he’d seen her.

Still, there was a grainy, B-movie quality to his mother’s news. He noted how on edge she’d been. He recalled her sideswipe for his lack of respect. And the scene she’d evoked was open to interpretation. Under the cover of darkness, later that afternoon, an unmarked car would appear out of the murky, snow-covered backstreets of south-east London. It would halt before the house in Wickham Lane, engine running, headlights flaring. A peremptory knock at the door would be followed by the emergence of his father, and an awkward farewell would take place in the presence of two men in raincoats, who would then whisk Lionel off – to Northolt, she claimed. Taken with a dose of Harry Lime, it had all the elements of an arrest by MI6, or even a lift-out by the Russians. At the very least it was a coincidence: as if his own lurid suspicions had already exposed his dad, as if a weird mirror life of his whole family had started to materialise.

He went to the sitting room. The grey-white glare struck up through the undrawn curtains. It scoured the hastily textured ceiling, exposed the jazzy walls, the geometric light fittings, the scratch-resistant wood-block floor, the teak-style sideboard. It clung to the one beauty, the polished piano, where Alan and his mother found a degree of sympathy. The Rayburn in the fireplace had gone out. He switched on the electric heater in the dining area and stood over it, shivering, holding his breath.

Then he switched it off. Four days – because of the snow. Or was that merely an excuse? Cynth could hardly have predicted the weather. All he had to do was swap brooding for action. And there was no need to take the bike. All he had to do was get over to her door somehow and knock, while the snow kept the gangs away. He’d walk if he had to, set off as soon as he’d run his mother’s errand. He must simply get dressed, snatch something to eat, wrap up. Four days. There was only the Fairhursts’ address. Only that one thing. He went up to his parents’ bedroom.

The address book lay on her dressing table, exactly where she’d said. He found the house number and closed it again. His fingertips rested on the cover. The book was right next to her lipsticks, her powder jars and sprays. Her scent still lingered in the air; her dresses filled the cupboard. Fastened to tangled nylons in her drawer was an elasticated garment she wore next to her skin. Before he knew it, before he even knew why, he was wavering. Cynth would never know, neither would his mother. It was just a game. He could give it up when he liked. Four days was long enough – a good stint, even.

Now he was remote, almost an onlooker. Someone had said there was a tart in the fourth year, if you gave her a quid … Tarts with Teds, bike boys with painted girls, grubby, trodden articles from Tit Bits, The People, Reveille – some women liked it, were insatiable. There was a place you could touch them and they’d do anything. The complicated female clothes fastened awkwardly here, zipped clumsily there, and soon Cynth was queen of the bypass. After that, in his mother’s threefold mirror, it didn’t take him long. A few minutes, and it was all over.

But the feeling afterwards was bitter as ever. Poor boy, he hated himself. He wished he had been killed at the Elstree. It wasn’t the deed – trivial, a pantomime – but the shame. Why did this shitty side of things always have to show through, this script of a dirty planet, hurriedly made-up, abruptly shoved in, scrawled across unsullied teenage love? His life was worthless. He was paralysed, crippled, because his father so respected his mother, cared so assiduously for her, showed nothing the least sexual in his approaches to her. Lionel in this so triumphed over his oddities – while he, Alan, was the sick, perverted one. He alone wore the family’s missing sexuality.

ALAN CLEANED HIS face and put the garments back, still covering his traces. He thought of the bike death he’d escaped and Cynth picking him out, and he tried not to cry. She was real and waiting for him, and he’d just disqualified himself from ever going near her. He’d let her and everyone down, because of what he was.

He stood for a moment on the stair, oblivious to the cold. Called away. Come when the snow clears away. As his hand strayed over the splodgy, embossed wallpaper, a peculiar train of thought struck him: Cynth and the disappearance of his father were somehow connected. He snorted and carried on down. But there was a logic to it so perfect and tempting – just as at the Bee – that he stopped once again to let the idea sink in. It was like one of those flip-flop circuits his father went on about. If he let Cynth go, Lionel would be back in a day or two. If, on the other hand, Alan went after Cynth – as he still longed to, as she herself had invited him to – the eerie conviction grew that his Commie dad would never show up again. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he recognised exactly the quantum condition his father had joked about. Lionel, just like the cat in the story, was in two situations at once, and the determining factor was Alan himself.

He laughed out loud and dismissed the whole notion. It was a thought experiment, the sort of ridiculous parlour game Lionel himself might have dreamed up – if he’d ever played parlour games. No one could shape things retrospectively. The bells of St Peter’s began in the town.

His mother had been concerned about the heating. The so-called chalet was deceptively spacious; two of its four bedrooms were tucked like polar caves under the ground-floor eaves. In one was a huge cast-iron boiler, which Lionel had found in Exchange and Mart, its pieces so heavy they’d almost crushed the car’s suspension. His father, fired up himself, had assembled it, persisting with calculation and design.

The other bedroom he’d already turned into a workshop for his projects, installing a bench and a Gothic, industrial lathe. For the boiler, he’d burst forth to rip the home apart, tunnelling through walls, wrenching up floor-boards, creating ventages and installing thermostats, wiring and cursing again. Flung hammers had missed Alan, the dutiful apprentice, by inches. For all this sweat and telemetry, the heating system had failed to heat. A fault lay at its heart so basic as to be childlike – a complete misimagination of the heat transfer from copper to ducted air. Prime Lionel, of course, unworldly and bitterly funny; but an image came to Alan before he could stop it, of his father already under interrogation, his face bloodied, his legs jerking. He hooked an iron handle into the boiler’s lid, lifted it and peered inside.

Only embers remained from the night. He opened the draught as far as it would go, before dumping in fresh coke from the scuttle. Then he prowled for food. Back in his bedroom, he dressed himself beside one of Lionel’s grilles, and the breeze raised goose pimples on his legs.

He hitched up his jeans. Sadly, he scooped Brylcreem on to the palm of each hand, and swept it through his thick dark hair. He had to stoop to see in his own mirror – quite like his mother as it happened, sultry, maybe a GI’s kid, even. He combed his quiff, checked this profile, now that, touched at definite sideburns with his razor. The good looks were a cruel irony; it was a cold hard world. Lionel had said so often enough – and Lionel should know.

Listlessly, he zipped his suede jacket, picked up his gloves and silk scarf. He went down to run his drab errand – all that was left of an impulse so hopeful only minutes before. A pair of his dad’s wellingtons stood by the door to the boiler room. He plunged his feet in them, because there were no others to fit him.

CRYSTALLINE BETWEEN CHALET and garage, the snow was chest high. He kicked a path. The slot of sky was leaden. The frontages, all open-plan, were mapped into one steep slope by the overnight fall. A neighbour was clearing a drive; a child, wrapped up in coats and scarves, patted a snowman. The church bells began again, echoing back from the opposite side of the muffled town, and the sound touched him – strident, so public.

He screwed the key and swung the garage door up from its white wedge. His Triumph stood on the oil-stained cement gleaming dimly, its mudguards spotless, the chrome of its two silencers lustrous from his efforts. He sat astride the tangerine-and-cream petrol tank and the big twin wafted up its greased-burnt metal smell. He squeezed at the clutch and clicked the gear change with his toe. The handlebars swerved in his grip when he twisted the throttle.

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