Free Snowstop by Alan Sillitoe

laughed at anything, and if he ever had breakfast, since somebody like that would be scoffing all the time. Such a pack of keys would sink from their weight and not be found till the thaw, so many keys to unlock cars, houses, suitcases, but she had never opened anything in her life that belonged only to her, wouldn’t mind such a key letting into a house all her own, though you had to unlock a dream first, and how much would that key weigh?
    Eartips frozen, the boot lid sheltered her till the case was out. Hand dashed to feet and clutched the keys immediately when they dropped, fingers burnt and sticky as they went into her pocket. She pushed the sluggish case like a sledge to cut a channel through, effing and blinding at the sting of air, and her brittle left arm, wondering what he had in luggage that would be heavy even if it was empty. She had seen him sign the hotel book, curious as to what her name was for the night, didn’t mind what she might be in for, because though he was a stranger the kiss was still on her lips and he wasn’t bad-looking, it seemed she had known him weeks already, and fancied him a bit, licking the sting till it warmed her, blue with hunger, white with cold, black with a zest for adventure if she didn’t peg out before getting to the door, which had never seemed as far off as any in her life, saturated as she was to the waist and bleeding to death inside but warmer and warmer in the drift that suddenly seemed taller than herself.
    Keith stared into brandy the colour of amber and tasting like the one-star throw-outs of a supermarket decanted into a VSOP bottle, foul to that in his flask, but after fighting the storm it was good to sit down and be served by no less than the landlord himself. Such hostelries, as sham as they came and shamelessly expensive, at least kept the rabble at their Berni houses and in bed-and-breakfast bungalows.
    â€˜So you got stuck, as well?’ An idiotic cheery face poked a finger towards the window. ‘It’s enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.’
    Keith had never come across such a primate in his reading of natural history, though why dispute the point with someone who would certainly have lodged at a cheaper place had it not been for the blizzard. As it was, he would be so much out of pocket after being benighted at The White Cavalier that he would drink no lager for a month. ‘I suppose it is.’
    Tom’s smile colonized the rest of his face, at this jumped-up smarm-chops whose nose was at the back of his head, barely deigning to pass a civil word in his direction. ‘It would have had mine off, if I’d stayed out a minute longer, and I wouldn’t like that to happen, because even at my age they still have their uses. In other words, I would positively miss ’em, though I suppose there’s some as wouldn’t.’
    â€˜I’m sure you would.’ It was a feeble riposte, but he wanted to stay undisturbed, ruminating on a life that had led him into the cul-de-sac of an endless swamp. His ambition had been to acquire so much money that he no longer needed to work, no matter how hard he must work to achieve it, and in the last ten years he had put enough by to make it possible. To live, yet not to work, to meet only those people of his choice, and live in a climate where thoughts came out of yourself instead of bouncing from the mediocre minds of others. Ambition had driven, energy was fierce, brain deft, hand and eye in trim for every chance. Ninety thousand pounds a year was his salary, and shares brought in enough from the Cayman Islands to beef up his various accounts. Ingenuity pointed a way out of the tax trap, and using talent to the full generated more energy by the example it set, and the more energy there was in the country the more prosperity for everyone.
    The foulest pig-brandy or not, it mellowed the steel in him, because wasn’t it a fact that a country was like one big