The Big Snow Read online

  The door to his room is slightly open and through it slip little runs of laughter, the light flow and skip of hers, like water over stones in the stream, and then the deeper ragged timbre of his which tears at the stillness of the night. There is a sudden wince as she touches the bruising on his face. He lies perfectly still in the bed and each sound registers sharply on his senses despite their soft distance but, like the fall of the confetti, the meaning slips between his fingers and eludes him. For the first time he is aware of a thin thread of light that lingers in the corridor. Just for a crazy second he thinks of following it, winding it in until it leads to where the sounds begin but instead he raises himself on to his elbows and as he lifts his head he smells the scents of the room and he thinks of the silver-backed brushes on the dresser and wonders if she ever used them to brush her hair and what sound they would make as they move through the strands. What her hair feels like to the touch. Does he touch it now? He’s suddenly conscious of the pain in his hand and for a moment he’s glad of it.

  He lies down again and tries to sleep and perhaps he does now, for more sounds slip into the room and this time they’re not smothered by the snow but it’s as if the deepening swathe that layers itself against the roof and walls of the house, pressing its silence against it, serves to magnify these sounds which scamper like mice inside. The laughter has vanished into a rush of whispers that are broken at first, then fluted into a rhythm that begins and stops, and he remembers the way the wind swirled the snow, slanting in at strange angles and the way it felt on his face. He pictures his hand when she held the tips of his fingers and sees how close it was to her face, how close it was to touching her skin, and now he stretches out his hand those final few inches but all he touches is the sound that filters through the night. And it’s her voice but it has no words and at first he thinks he’s hurting her and he’s almost going to help her when he begins to understand that what he hears must be the sounds of love and they send a shot of what feels like fear through him, which is followed by the jolt and spasm of sickness. And he tries to tell himself he’s wrong, that he’s mistaken and the moan and rasp of intermingled voices are only the weary scurry of the snow-laden wind, tired of what it’s had to carry for so long. But there are words, too, words he can’t fully hear and which run and crash into each other and at first he squirms his head on the pillow but then there’s something pushing into his head and slowly he knows he wants to hear it all and his heart is pumping and his body tightening and stirring.

  Carefully he gets out of the bed and goes to the open door, rests his hand on the handle, then drops it again. He stands behind the door where a thin edge of light seams the narrow gap between it and the frame. His back is pushed against the wall, leaning into it for support, and her voice rises and curls in his head and it’s his love that he’s giving her, his love that’s filling her, and across the bridge of touch flows all the depth of what he feels in this moment and his hand drops and tightens on the force of his desire. Her voice is fluttering like the silken wings of a moth and its coming closer all the time to the core of the flame and his senses are mesmerized by its rhythmic movement, its fragility, and then he hears the voice climb finally, before breaking into breathless pieces and he cups the warm spill of his love in the palm of his hand. His breathing is the rush of the sea in his ears but he’s careful not to spill it, as if doing so would spill what he feels, leave him stranded on a solitary shore. Suddenly there is laughter and it coils and lingers in his head, breaking the spell, and then in the shadowy darkness of the room he sees Richmond’s clothes laid out on the chair where he had set them and they are suddenly infused and filled by their owner’s body. His hair is still wet and matted by the snow and the scowl of bruising has spread across more of his face, and as he stares at it he thinks of it pressing to the paleness of her cheek, of the printed stain it now leaves, and he feels the surge of anger and then a sudden burst of shame. Turning away from the clothes he hurries to the window and quietly opens it and lets the cleanness of the night air rush in, then he skims a thin handful from the ledge and washes with it, finally pressing a last trace against his eyes and the dryness of his lips.

  His father says he’s never known a funeral like it and he’s seen some in his time. There was no way the cars would reach the Stevenson house to carry the coffin and the passengers to the graveyard. He’d done his very best but he couldn’t work miracles and it wouldn’t be fair for anyone to blame him or say he hadn’t tried. It would have been dangerous in these conditions to risk the cars on roads that had all but disappeared and if anything were to have gone wrong, who knows what the insurance company’s attitude would have been? He watched his father straighten his hat, brush dandruff off the shoulders of his black funeral coat – the coat he always described as a good investment. ‘People don’t die in the summer,’ he liked to say each time he wore it. He looked at the hat his father had handed him, even though he knew he always rejected it, and for some reason put it on.

  ‘It’s a team of huskies we need this morning,’ his father said as he wiped the sledge one last time. When he had returned earlier that morning from the Richmonds’, his father had been cleaning and polishing the metal frame, staining the scuffed wood with shoe polish. ‘Are you sure your hand’s up to this?’ he asked now as he stood back to give the sledge a final inspection. He nodded and smoothed the new dressing his mother had put on it. The doctor was attending the funeral and she had already phoned to ask if he would look at the cut after everything was over. Then he took the new rope his father had fitted to the front of the sledge in his good hand, and they set off for the Stevenson house with the sledge trailing lightly behind them. As they walked, his father rehearsed the arguments he had already heard since his return home. No one could blame him about the cars, and under the circumstances it was the only thing he could think of and wasn’t it lucky enough that he remembered that Tommy Leeman’s brother had made a sledge in his metalworks a couple of years earlier. A few spots of rust here and there but it had cleaned up a treat – he’d be getting it back in better nick than he’d lent it. He’d give him a few bob and all. It was the only way of getting the coffin up to the graveyard – without it there’d be no chance. They just had to be careful, really careful, that there wasn’t an accident because that didn’t bear thinking about.

  There had been no new fall of snow and the night frost had crisped everywhere, making it firmer underfoot but there were still places where it had drifted into deep mounds and they had to pick their way carefully. There was a cold wind stirring which felt as if it come straight from the Arctic and it tautened and nipped his face and skimmed thin flurries of snow into the air. He was almost glad of his hat, not for the little protection it afforded but for the greater anonymity he thought it lent him. For he carried a sense of shame as he walked and sometimes it felt so strong and uncovered that it seemed it must be visible to anyone who looked at him. Keeping his face lowered, as if to pick his steps, he wondered if everything had been destroyed, rendered soiled and smirched by what he had done. His father rattled on but the words blurred, then vanished inside his deepening sense of loss. Some crows flapped away at their approach and their cawing laughter mocked his miserable plod. He thought of her voice, the sounds he had heard, and he tried to tell himself that they belonged only to him, a secret that no one else could ever know, but then in his memory he saw again Richmond’s clothes draped over the chair in his room. His hand began to smart and he wanted the pain to be greater so that it might block out the shame and stream of his thoughts. Behind them as they walked, the sledge hissed over the surface of the snow.

  There were already people gathered outside the Stevenson house, huddled in small groups and wrapped against the weather in bulky layers that culminated in Sunday best. All turned to watch their approach and his father lifted his head and stepped out with a more formal stride as if to compensate for the absence of the car. As they got closer, heads nodded in greeting while their gaze fastened
on the sledge. His father left him holding the rope before vanishing inside the house. Along its guttering a jagged row of icicles caught a sudden throw of light and sparkled even in the weak flare of sun. Faces at the upstairs window got blanched and lost in the same light. If there was no minister as his mother had said, they’d bring out the coffin at any moment. He wasn’t sure what he should do to anticipate that moment but he straightened the sledge and tightened his grip on the rope. He only knew Martin Stevenson, who taught in a local secondary school, to see, but they had never spoken. He’d served his wife in the shop a few times and knew she was keen on photography – he’d once seen her taking photographs along the river. A summer’s evening when the midges had clouded above the water and the banks had been clotted by thick-headed rushes. She had red hair. The sinking sun seemed to seep into it. Skin and bones at the end, his mother had said. She hadn’t seen him, she was so intent on the camera. He couldn’t see what it was she was focusing on, for all he saw was the glaze of the sky on the dark shimmer of the water, but all her energy and concentration had been in that moment and he wondered how such a person could be dead.

  The snow had been freshly cleared from the front steps but the concrete was blistered with white whorled spots as a rock is spotted with shells. One ridged footprint marked the top step. It might have been his father’s. There was the murmur of voices and the door opened fully. He heard his father’s voice slip into his familiar guiding litany of ‘Slowly does it. Steady now, almost there. That’s the way.’ His voice had assumed a gentle authority which was reserved for these occasions. He spoke like a pilot guiding a boat to shore, someone who knew the reefs and hidden currents. He came out the door backwards, his steadying hand on the top of the coffin, his head half turned to negotiate the steps, then he paused the carriers so that they could shoulder a new assurance. Stevenson’s face was inclined to the wood, his cheek brushing it and as they came through the door he turned full-face and his eyes blinked at the unexpected brightness. Then on his father’s signal he stepped forward with the sledge and helped as they slowly lowered the coffin towards it, his father’s eye and hand gauging the precise moment when to anchor it to the support of the wood and metal. He felt the sledge shift and settle as it took the weight of the coffin and then his father joined him on the rope and they moved it forward to the road, glancing back all the time to check that it was balanced and secure. ‘So far so good,’ his father whispered. ‘Your mother was right. There’s not any weight you could talk about – we were lucky there.’ They both draped the rope over their shoulders and began the slow haul to the graveyard. Behind them processed the line of mourners, their low voices and the sound of their feet muffled almost to nothing by the swathe of snow. Along the route others waited at the end of their driveways or on corners and as they passed the men joined the tail of the cortège, leaving the women watching in silent huddles.

  The sledge pulled freely through the snow but it still required physical effort to keep it moving forward and after a while the rope started to cut into his shoulder. The strangeness of this new world suddenly struck him. A different world, a different continent: even a different time. He remembered a Russian film he had seen at university and thought of the funeral scene. All that was missing now was the priest walking ahead scattering incense and someone carrying the holy icon. The wind rose a little and smoked the snow ahead. He glanced back at the procession – it was as if the whole world had transmuted into black and white. The holy icon, the only colour, with its gold and seraphic blue. The sun igniting her hair.

  ‘I’ve never seen the like of it,’ his father said. ‘In all my days I’ve never seen its like. This is beginning to pull the shoulder out of me – we could’ve changed sides but for that hand of yours. And we can hardly stop for a rest. Bloody snow! My feet are like blocks of ice.’ His father’s breath clouded in front of his face as he spoke. ‘And I haven’t told you the half of it, about what happened in the house. Your mother was right, there’s neither sign nor trace of McCance – not a dicky bird. What we’re going to get at the graveside, I’ve no idea. I suppose the way to look at it is that it’s bound to be shorter than one of McCance’s sermons.’ They plodded on and it seemed that his father had forgotten whatever it was had happened in the house.

  ‘I’d like to take her now,’ Stevenson said. He’d come up behind without them hearing. ‘I’d like to take her the rest.’ He nodded his head in affirmation of his words and his eyes were shiny and blue. His father went to say something but he stalled him with a tug at his sleeve and by handing over the rope. ‘We’ll be close behind,’ his father said. ‘Try to keep her steady.’ Then with a slight reluctance he handed over his share of the rope and as the sledge moved forward he followed close to it, but keeping to one side as if to distinguish himself from the rest of the procession.

  The runners hissed in the snow and the strengthening spear of sunlight struck the varnished grain of the coffin and polished the brass. ‘Keep her steady as she goes,’ his father whispered to himself as he slipped into his pilot speech, then, ‘This man’ll do us all out of a job – first he gave McCance the sack and now it’s us. All that’s left now are the gravediggers. But thank God the grave was dug before the snow or we’d never have managed it.’ He watched his father take a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his brow. ‘She was like a doll in the coffin – wasted away to nothing. And I was telling you, before I sealed the lid he put things in the coffin. Seen that done all the time but never seen anybody put what he put. Keep her straight and steady. That’s the way. A camera, a book of photographs and then a map. It was folded over so I couldn’t see where it was.’

  They trudged on. It wouldn’t take much longer. The sky had clouded and closed again over the moment like ice. A map. To find her way to the underworld? To find her way back home? He thought of Meaulnes poring over ancient maps, trying to find his lost domain. They had started the climb to the church. His own hand circling and fluttering round the candlelight like a moth. What was it that brought you home? What was it that carried you into the flame and release of love? Suddenly Stevenson stopped. He still held the rope but he stood motionless in front of the sledge. Behind him the procession had also stopped. His father blew a stream of breath between the press of his lips but was unsure of what to do. They looked at each other and behind at the waiting line of mourners. His eyes followed the thin trace of the runners left in their wake, then leaving his father he walked forward to Stevenson and briefly touched his back before taking up half the rope. Stevenson lifted his head to the sky, then wiped his eyes quickly and roughly with the back of a hand and shouldered the rope again. On impulse he removed his cap and shoved it inside his coat and said, ‘Not long now. Just a little further.’ Stevenson nodded his head and said, ‘Sorry.’ They pulled together and the sledge felt weightless as it skimmed over the frozen snow. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t. Didn’t think there were any left.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ he answered, his own voice suddenly wavering. ‘It’s us who are sorry. Very sorry.’

  Stevenson nodded, then looked up at the sky. ‘It’s not how I imagined it would be. The snow and everything. It’s hard to get a hold of it all. Maybe it’s a good way. She liked the snow, said it made the world beautiful. Maybe it’s as good a way as any.’

  Ahead the church tower loomed into view. ‘Not long now, just a few minutes,’ he said when his father came alongside and asked if he wanted to change but he declined the offer and his father faded out of sight again. He looked at Stevenson, who suddenly expelled a rush of breath which sounded as if he had been holding it in for a long time, then bit his lower lip with his teeth. The rope slipped a little. He had to say something. ‘It’s a good way,’ he said. ‘If she liked the snow, it’s a good way. She was right – it does make the world beautiful.’ Stevenson tightened his grip and stared at the yew trees, which had coiled into white cones, and he wondered if he had said too much, spoken foo
lishly, for how could anything in this world ever seem beautiful again to this man beside him. The light was slipping away. It looked as if more snow was coming. There was a new smart of pain in his hand. They both sensed the need for urgency and they stepped out with greater insistence and then almost without thinking he said, ‘I saw her once – Mrs Stevenson – along by the river. She was taking a photograph. Of the river, I think.’ They had reached the open gates of the church and they paused there for a moment: their burst of speed had opened a gap between them and the mourners. Stevenson ran his hand along the layer of snow on top of one of the pillars, then looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. ‘She was trying to photograph light. Trying to capture the light.’ Then he dropped the rope and walked in search of the open grave.