And this lasted into the New Year. Hard luck on those who had got carried away with the Christmas spirit during the holiday and slipped from their homes to celebrate elsewhere. Worse luck on those who were where they shouldn’t be. Even more disastrous for those who were somewhere they plainly didn’t want to be and were now, for the time being at least, thoroughly stuck.
To some it might be quite cosy. With their feet up, snowing in by the television set with enough food to last, enough wine and fags and good company. The powers-that-be telling them quite categorically that they oughtn’t move from their very armchairs if they wanted to live. Beyond the thick curtains, moving with certainty in the dark, a vertical and unceasing ocean was breaking crest after crest onto the ground.
The weight of snow creaks perilously on council house roofs and guttering. Mould on indoor walls freezes over black, like bark. But to be in your own home, even with the pipes cracking and distended and the central heating knackered and the Birdseye trifle remains in the fridge looking less inviting by the day, even this is better than to be out in the woods and away from home.
Trains stop. Motorways are broken up and sent home. Doors slam. Lights go on but curtains are drawn, futile against the careless paws of snow. The streetlamps buzz on and they stay on.
When you’re out somewhere strange, there’s an odd comfort you feel, and resent feeling, about the streetlamps. They spread an impersonal, slightly gloomy continuity through your journey. They tell you, You’ll see a lot more of our sort before you hit home.
Or they tell you, You aren’t going to get home tonight. Come and sit beneath us. Gather your legs up under an umbrella of light, rest your back against the humming trunk. You are like a parody of an old-time wayfarer, travelling the countryside without a care in the world and falling gently asleep beneath spread branches.
No such comfort. This is the way your world ends: disenfranchisement. You’re out on the street, out on your own. It’s easy to slip from the orbit of your life. You simply stop your journey back home. You sit under a streetlamp. What else might you need to complete the effect except a cup from McDonald’s for coins?
And if your stop is forced upon you by circumstances, then your decline seems all the easier, all the better accomplished. If you cannot move heaven and earth and get yourself back on the right track of your life, then a new career in a new and strange town is just the thing. But it’s the wrong career. A career in the wrong direction, like a car crash.
So the snow shuffles down to trap people, to make them veer off course and wring dread out of them.
And it begins, quite gently, this afternoon, from a sky which still looked blue when Sam led her party into the patisserie in Headingley.
SCRAPING THE LEGS OF HIS CHAIR, MOVING AWKWARDLY FOR LACK OF space, Mark stood up. Sam had Sally crushed to her chest, as he had last night. Iris and Peggy were impatient for their turn, and to clasp him, too, in this reunion. By the café door, exchanging glances with the owner, stood the policeman.
As Sam looked up and mutely refused to let go of her daughter, they were locked in a question: what next?
Richard answered them by standing and catching everyone’s attention. Mark said, “This is—” and Sam bent forward and smacked Richard hard in the mouth.
“You’re Tony, aren’t you?” she yelled. “You’re that fucking Tony?”
He sat back down, hand over his mouth. It was loose and swelling, dripping between his fingers as his said, “No.”
“It’s Richard,” Mark said quietly.
“Who? Who the fuck are you, then?” she demanded, and Sally started to cry.
“A friend, Mam,” she said. “You punched my friend.”
“It’s all right,” Richard said, dabbing himself with a napkin. “No damage done.”
“It might need a stitch,” Iris pushed in, squinting at the blood.
“Look at the bloody vulture swoop,” Sam said and pulled up a metal chair, hauling Sally firmly onto her knee.
“Shall I order some coffee?” asked Bob.
Absently she nodded. She fixed the still-startled Richard with a glare. “I’ll apologise if you’ve got nothing to do with this.”
“He hasn’t,” Mark told her bitterly. “Not a bit.”
“Then I’m sorry.”
“Richard,” Mark added.
“What’s your problem?” she hissed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I think we should all calm down,” Peggy said, squeezing in between Mark and Iris. The cups and vase on the table wobbled.
They sat in an awkward silence while Iris fumbled in her bag for a clean handkerchief for Richard. Mark made some quick introductions and Peggy went on, “Let’s just be grateful we’re all here, safe, and adult enough to talk this through like adults.”
“But Tony isn’t here,” Sam insisted, eyes gleaming. “Don’t we need him too? Or has he just pissed off again? Where is he, Mark? Come on, tell us.”
Bob came back from the counter with a tray full of cups, saucers and crisps. He set it down and stood behind Sam, one hand on her shoulder. Sally looked up at him unblinkingly. He smiled at her without reward and looked away again.
“I haven’t seen Tony yet,” Mark admitted.
“What do you mean, yet? Where is he?”
“He’s back at the house,” Richard said, his head still lowered into the hanky.
“No, he wasn’t,” Mark said.
“I mean, he should be, by now.”
“So what do we do?” asked Sam. “Mark?”
“We’re all going back home,” Bob said suddenly. “We’ve got what we came for.”
“Who we came for,” Iris corrected him, and grinned at Sally.
“No,” Mark said. “We can’t yet. There’s still stuff to sort out.”
“Such as?”
