Free Snowstop by Alan Sillitoe Page A

extended family? You had every right to relax, much being permitted within it, and you did not abandon a good country for selfish reasons like avoiding the ubiquitous taxes. Or at least you should not, and no doubt he wouldn’t, but he had to get out now because his passion had turned violent and ruined everything. He would go as soon as the snow cleared. Gwen wouldn’t be found until the au pair returned from Germany, so he had time to reach a place where he could not be brought back.
    â€˜The roads get blocked every year.’ Tom wouldn’t take silence for a put-down. ‘Farms and villages are cut off, but this time it’s a real clinker. You’d think the county council would be a bit more ready, wouldn’t you? I sometimes don’t know what we pay our rates and taxes for.’ He wondered why he let himself complain before a shitbag yuppie-mug like him. The sweat he had doled out in his time on PAYE must have paved a good few roads and cleared the odd drain. Society was run for the common good: good for him, good for them, good for everybody, and you had better think that way, otherwise it was back into the trees, the undergrowth a tangle of Tory aspidistras.
    Keith was unable to resist saying, though he smiled: ‘I saw on the road that they had declared this area a Nuclear-Free Zone. It’s a pity they can’t do that with the snow as well.’
    Jenny took out a little circular compact and tapped powder onto her face, hoping a heightened colour would improve her aspect on looking into the mirror. The toilets were clean, not like some on the way up from London. She stopped using make-up after Raymond left but, feeling at the bottom of her handbag, as if playing a game of lucky dip, fished some out and used it, didn’t know why. Hard to know why she did anything the moment it was done. Her tights had become twisted, so she opened her slacks to adjust them.
    The make-up burned, caked her skin so she wanted it off, skin as well for preference, her fingers would touch, find what was underneath and, knowing at last, start to live again. She wondered where he was, what he was doing, not even three years had rubbed out the wound of loss. The more rotten he was the more he was missed, but would he have burned for her if she had gone first?
    Returning to the lounge in such a state, Tom would notice, and start in on his baby talk. She stood in the cold-floored corridor, her smile a crack down her cheeks that no make-up would obscure. By the back door she heard a thump on wood, the wind having hands as well as feet. Raymond was trying to get in. The blizzard was eating him alive, as if he were on fire out there. She would let him die – if only it was him. Maybe the snow would freshen her burning face.
    The day before leaving he said: ‘Whatever I do in my life you know I shall always love you, Jenny, don’t you?’ And she had laughed: ‘Of course I do, sweetheart,’ and thought no more about it, as you often don’t with someone you know you can’t entirely trust, not even when he had gone, not for a year afterwards, by when she had soaped the ring of fidelity from her finger, not till the shock had become a normal condition, and she trawled through every second of that final day. She never knew why he had said something so unnecessary and cruel, unless it was to imprison her in eternal hatred.
    Often in the morning, at the mirror, flesh on her bones turned sulphurous white, agony that her bones were rotting. Two people got married, joined by whatever it was called – so, maybe, love – in an offensive and defensive alliance to make existence in the world less arduous, but his betrayal had robbed her of peace for ever, destroyed all hope. Decisions came not by thought but instinct, turmoil making life unbearable and actions out of control. Perhaps that was real life at last.
    Opening the door, a body fell against her legs, pushed by a blast that