Ice

‘Did you expect me to put out the red carpet for you?’ The feeble flippant retort sounded offensive. I was becoming angry, knew I would not be able to control myself much longer.

When, still keeping up the farce, she inquired in the same artificial tone what I had been doing, I answered coldly: ‘I’ve been with someone you know,’ giving her a long, hard, meaning look at the same time. She understood at once, dropped her affectations and showed signs of anxiety. ‘When I first saw you … I thought you … he … I was afraid he’d arrived here.’ ‘He will be here at any moment. I came to tell you that. To warn you, in case you have other plans, that he means to get you back—’ She interrupted, ‘No, no—never!’ shaking her head so vigorously that the hair flew out with a sheen like spray. I said: ‘Then you must leave immediately. Before he comes.’

‘Leave here?’ It was cruel. She looked round in dismay at the home she had made. The sea shells comforted, the little room was so reassuring, so safe, the one place on earth she could call her own. ‘But why? He’ll never find me….’ Her wistful, pleading voice did not touch me; mine remained adamant, cold. ‘Why not? I found you.’ ‘Yes, but you knew…. ‘ She looked at me with suspicion, I was not to be trusted. ‘You didn’t tell him, did you?’ ‘Of course not. I want you to come with me.’

All of a sudden her confidence was restored, she reverted to her former disparaging attitude, gave me a derisive glance ‘With you? Oh, no! Surely we haven’t got to go through all that again!’ Attempting sarcasm, she rolled her big eyes turned them up to the ceiling. It was a deliberate insult. I was outraged. Her slighting tone belittled my desperate effort to reach her, ridiculed everything I had endured. In a furious rage suddenly, I took hold of her roughly, gave her a violent shake. ‘Stop it, will you! I can’t stand any more! Stop being so damned insulting! I’ve just been through hell for your sake travelled hundreds of miles under ghastly conditions, run fantastic risks, almost got myself killed. And not the slightest sign of appreciation from you … not one word of thanks at the end of it .. . you don’t even treat me with ordinary common politeness. … I only get a cheap sneer…. Charming gratitude! Charming way to behave!’ She was gazing at me speechlessly, her eyes all black pupil. My rage did not become any less. ‘Even now you haven’t got the decency to apologize!’

Still infuriated, I went on abusing her, called her insufferable, impertinent, insolent, vulgar. ‘In future you might at least be civil enough to thank people who do things for you, instead of displaying your stupid conceited rudeness by laughing at them!’ She seemed stricken, dumb; stood before me in silence, with hanging head, all trace of assurance gone. In the last few moments she had become a withdrawn, frightened, unhappy child, damaged by adult deviations.

A pulse at the base of her neck caught my eye, beating rapidly like something under the skin trying to escape. I had noticed it on other occasions when she was frightened. It had its usual effect on me now. I said loudly: ‘What a fool I’ve been to worry about you. I suppose you moved in with your boy friend as soon as I left.’ She looked up at me quickly, apprehensively, stammered: ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Oh, don’t pretend you don’t understand—it’s too sickening!’ My voice sounded aggressive, got louder and louder. ‘I mean the owner of this house, of course. The fellow you’re living with. The one you were waiting for on the verandah when I arrived.’ I could hear myself shouting. The noise terrified her. She had begun to tremble, her mouth was shaking. ‘I was not waiting for him—’ She saw what I was doing, broke off. ‘Don’t lock the door….’ I had locked it already. Everything had turned to iron, to ice, to hard, cold, burning impatience. I grasped her shoulders, pulled her towards me. She resisted, cried, ‘Keep away from me!’ kicked, struggled, her hand shot out, dislodging a bowl of delicate wing-shaped shells, which smashed on the floor: our feet ground them to rainbow powder. I forced her down, crushed her under the blood-stained tunic, the sharp buckle of the uniform belt caught her arm. Blood beading the soft white flesh … the iron taste of blood in my mouth….

She lay silent, unmoving, avoiding me by turning her face to the wall. Perhaps because I could not see her face, she seemed like someone I did not know. I felt nothing whatever about her, all feeling had left me. I had said I could not stand any more, and that was the truth. I could not go on; it was all too humiliating, too painful. I had wanted to finish with her in the past, but had been unable to do so. Now the moment had come. It was time to get up and go, to end the whole wretched business. I had let it go on far too long, it had always been painful and unrewarding. She did not move when I stood up. Neither of us said a word. We were like two strangers accidentally in the same room. I was not thinking. All I wanted was to get into the car and drive and drive, until I was somewhere far away where I could forget all this. I left the room without looking at her or speaking, and went out into the arctic cold.

Outside it had got quite dark. I paused on the verandah for my eyes to get used to the blackness. By degrees the snow became visible as it fell, a sort of faint shimmer like phosphorescence. The hollow roar of the wind came in irregular bursts, the snowflakes whirled madly in all directions, filled the night with their spectral chaos. I seemed to feel the same feverish disorder in myself, in all my pointless rushing from place to place. The crazily dancing snowflakes represented the whole of life. Her image flew past, the silver hair streaming and was instantly swept away in the wild confusion. In the delirium of the dance, it was impossible to distinguish between the violent and the victims. Anyway, distinctions no longer mattered in a dance of death, where all the dancers spun on the edge of nothing.

I had grown used to the feeling that I was going towards execution. It was something in the distance, an idea with which I had become familiar. Now it suddenly sprang at me, stood close at my elbow, no longer an idea, but a reality, just about to happen. It gave me a shock, a physical sensation in the pit of the stomach. The past had vanished and become nothing; the future was the inconceivable nothingness of annihilation. All that was left was the ceaselessly shrinking fragment of time called ‘now’.

I remembered the dark blue sky of noon and midnight which I had seen above, while below a wall of rainbow ice moved over the ocean, around the globe. Pale cliffs looming, radiating dead cold, ghostly avengers coming to end mankind. I knew the ice was closing in round us, my own eyes had seen the ominous moving wall. I knew it was coming closer each moment, and would go on advancing until all life was extinct.

I thought of the girl I had left in the room behind me, a child, immature, a glass girl. She had not seen, did not understand. She knew she was doomed, but not the nature of her fate, or how to face it. No one had ever taught her to stand alone. The hotel proprietor’s son had not impressed me as particularly reliable or protective, but rather a weak unsatisfactory type, and disabled as well. I did not trust him to look after her when the crisis came. I saw her, defenceless and terrified, amidst the collapsing mountains of ice; above the crashes and thunder, heard her feeble pathetic cries. Knowing what I knew, I could not leave her alone and helpless. She would suffer too much.

I went back indoors. She did not seem to have moved, and though she looked round when I came into the room, at once twisted away again. She was crying and did not want me to see her face. I went close to the bed, stood there without touching her. She looked pathetic, cold, shivering, her skin had the same faint mauve tinge as some of the shells. It was too easy to hurt her. I said quietly: ‘I must ask you something. I don’t care how many different men you’ve slept with—it’s not about that. But I must know why you were so insulting to me just now. Why have you been trying to humiliate me ever since I arrived?’ She would not look round, I thought she was not going to answer; but then, with long gaps between the words, she brought out: ‘I wanted … to get … my … own . . back….’ I protested: ‘But what for? I’d only just got here I hadn’t done anything to you.’

‘I knew….’ I had to bend over her to catch the accusing voice, speaking through tears. ‘Whenever I see you, I always know you’ll torment me … kick me around … treat me like some sort of slave … if not at once, in an hour or two, or next day … you’re sure to … you always do…’  I was startled almost shocked. The words presented a view of myself I much preferred not to see. I hurriedly asked her another question. ‘Who were you waiting for on the verandah, if it wasn’t the hotel fellow?’ Once more a totally unexpected answer disconcerted me. ‘For you … I heard the car … I thought … wondered….’ This time I was astounded, incredulous. ‘But that can’t possibly be true—not after what you’ve just said. Besides, you didn’t know I was coming. I don’t believe it.’

She twisted round wildly, sat up, flung back the mass of pale hair, showed her desolate victim’s face, features dissolved in tears, eyes black as if set in bruises. ‘It is true, I tell you whether you believe it or not! I don’t know why … you’re always so horrible to me… I only know I’ve always waited. wondered if you’d come back. You never sent any message . . but I always waited for you . . stayed here when the others left so that you’d be able to find me….’ She looked a desperate child, sobbing out the truth. But what she said was so incredible that I said again: ‘It’s not possible—it can’t be true.’ Face convulsed, she gasped in a voice choked by ears: ‘Haven’t you had enough yet? Can’t you ever stop bullying me?’

Suddenly I felt ashamed, muttered: ‘I’m sorry …’ I wished I could somehow obliterate past words and actions. She had thrown herself down again, flat on her face. I stood looking it her, not knowing what to say. The