The Silent Land

Outside, a gibbous moon spread waxy light over the deep snow. Jake kept checking to see if there was any sign of Sadie. The pines cast slender shadows at the restaurant, and where the shadows didn’t fall the moonlight glittered with unsympathetic beauty on the snow crust.

‘I don’t think Sadie wandered off. I think she was taken away from us.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what I think.’

Zoe looked at him hard and long. She knew him well enough to know that he didn’t mean that some dog- fancier had kidnapped Sadie. She didn’t like any alternative idea she could come up with. ‘Consider this. Instead of thinking that she was taken away from us, maybe she was given back to you, to us, for that short time.’

He leaned over and twined his fingers in hers. ‘You always see the better way. Or choose to.’

‘But it’s like life, isn’t it? We know death is coming. And yet we always see our loved ones as taken away from us, instead of given to us for whatever time they have.’

‘You’re right. It’s just that right is hard. It’s much easier to collapse and feel sorry for ourselves.’

‘I always thought of it as a gift. Life, I mean. I don’t know from what force. But I always knew it was a gift. And somehow I think this extra space, this strange extra time right now, has been given to us. For what purpose I can’t begin to understand.’

‘Admit it. You don’t think we’re going to be here for ever, do you, Zoe?’

‘No.’

She looked into his eyes, and there was something of the moon-on-snow in his gaze as he looked back at her. Earlier when she’d been in the jewellery store and she’d had the prospect of picking out anything—Cartier, Tiffany and the rest—she hadn’t wanted any of it. What must it be like to be rich, if you could just pick this stuff up without it creasing your brow for a second? There could be no satisfaction in acquiring anything where there had been no difficulty, no struggle. You would have to have a perverse need to order a dozen or two dozen of the objects in order to feel the pinch. Or only aspire to things that take a bite out of your means. The only jewels she wanted were her husband’s eyes regarding her with admiration as he did right at that moment; the only necklace that of his breath on her skin as he kissed her throat; the only ring the simple gold band she already had. She told him all this.

He laughed. ‘You’re drunk and sentimental.’

‘Nope. I’m sober, stone-hearted and clear-eyed.’

‘I love you. For longer than this is. Whatever this is.’

‘You’re the one who’s drunk. You only tell me you love me when you’re drunk.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘To hell with all that crap about a dessert and a coffee. Shall we walk back?’

They strolled back through the moon-illumined snow, a million diamonds winking on its fragile rime. Jake leaned on Zoe as if he were drunk, though he was not. Before they went inside he held her face in his hands and kissed her in the milky light. She tasted the wine on his kiss; she was sure of it. She didn’t have to remember how his kiss tasted; his kisses always tasted of red wine, silk, pepper, the scent of blood, of hope.

Back in the room Jake lurched into the toilet. She heard the sound of his urine streaming in the bowl. Jake always pissed heartily, like a horse. Zoe hung up her ski jacket and closed the wardrobe door behind her. She made to unstrap her salopettes but was interrupted by a familiar musical sound. She turned to mouth some thing at Jake, who was still busy in the bathroom.

What’s that? she had time to say to herself. It’s your… it’s your phone, you fool. Someone is ringing you on your mobile phone.

The cheerful ringtone grew louder.

‘Jake!’ she shouted.

It’s in the wardrobe, Zoe said to herself. It’s in your ski-jacket pocket. You should get it! Go on! Get it!

But she couldn’t. She was paralysed. She heard her own blood rushing in her veins. The sudden intrusion of the ringing phone had her rooted. She made to call out to Jake again. He should be the one to take this call, not her. She tried to move but she felt trapped. Physically constricted, as if something held her arms and legs in a cold grip.

The phone rang again.

‘Jake!’

She was back inside the snow tomb of the original avalanche. Packed hard with snow. Upside down, breathing the air from a tiny trapped pocket, trying to move a single finger. She moved a finger, a hand, her arm, and the hard-packed snow around her crumbled, dissolved. She fell towards the wardrobe, flinging open the door to snatch at her jacket. The mobile phone was still trilling. It was in one of her zipped-up pockets. She fumbled with the zip and reached into the pocket. Hands trembling, she flipped open the lid and the square patch of blue light proclaimed Number Withheld.

‘Number withheld,’ she murmured to herself.

She pressed the answer button and lifted the telephone to her ear. There was a voice. A man’s voice.

‘I’m sorry… I’m sorry, I…’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘Slowly please! Je m’excuse, lentement, s’il vous plait. Plus lentement… Pardonnez-moi, monsieur… je ne comprends pas.’

‘What’s that?’ Jake shouted from the bathroom.

‘It’s a man.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t understand, his accent is so thick… Monsieur, monsieur, s’il vous plait, parler plus lentement… no, no!’

The phone had gone dead. Zoe held the phone at arm’s length, stared at it in the palm of her hand, as if it had tried to burn her.

Jake was out of the bathroom, ridiculously holding up his trousers at the waist, wanting to know who she was talking to.

‘It was a man.’

‘A man?’

‘Yes, it was a man.’

‘A man? What did he say?’

‘I don’t know, I just couldn’t make it out.’

‘But… Holy Christ!’

‘I don’t know! I just don’t know!’

‘Did he… Was it French? Was he speaking French?’

‘Maybe! But I couldn’t… his accent was… and the line was breaking up. I didn’t catch what he said.’

‘Can you ring him back? Can you just ring back?’

‘He withheld the number.’

‘Can you get a line out? Maybe you should try to ring someone again?’

Jake was standing over her now, his fingers trembling just centimetres from her silver phone, as if he wanted to take it away from her. ‘But if someone rang in… I meant back in England. Dial someone at home. Why don’t you?’

‘Okay. Okay. But Jake—what if he’s trying to get through again? The man. What if that man is trying to ring me again? Shouldn’t I keep the line free?’

Jake collapsed back on the bed with the palms of his hands pressed flat against the sides of his head. ‘Yes… yes, leave it free. He might be trying to get through right at this moment.’

Zoe laid the phone on the table. Then she sank down next to Jake, gripping his arm. Together they waited, staring at the phone on the table, willing it to ring again, terrified that it might.

They watched the phone for twenty minutes. Then Jake sighed and suggested she try to put a call through to England. So she did that; but the results were the same as before. The telephone rang and no one picked up.

‘What did the man sound like?’ Jake was desperate for tiny details.

‘He was hard to understand.’