Longshot

Chapter 2

As I walked back to Chiswick from Ronnie’s office, I hadn’t the slightest intention of ever meeting Tremayne Vickers again. I forgot him. I thought of the present book I was writing: especially of how to get one character down from a runaway, experimental helium-filled balloon with its air pumps out of order. I had doubts about the balloon. Maybe I’d rethink the whole thing. Maybe I’d scrap what I’d done and start again. The character in the balloon was shitting himself with fear. I thought I knew how he felt. The chief unexpected thing I’d learned from writing fiction was fear of getting it wrong.

The book that had been accepted, which was called Long Way Home, was about survival in general and in particular about the survival, physical and mental, of a bunch of people isolated by a disaster. Hardly an original theme, but I’d followed the basic advice to write about something I knew, and survival was what I knew best.

In the interest of continuing to survive for another week or ten days, I stopped at the supermarket nearest to the friend’s aunt’s house and spent my food allotment on enough provisions for the purpose: bunch of packet soups, loaf of bread, box of spaghetti, box of porridge oats, pint of milk, a cauliflower and some carrots. I would eat the vegetables raw whenever I felt like it, and otherwise enjoy soup with bread in it, soup on spaghetti and porridge with milk. Items like tea, Marmite and salt cropped up occasionally. Crumpets and butter came at scarce intervals when I could no longer resist them. Apart from all that I bought once a month a bottle of vitamin pills to stuff me full of any oddments I might be missing and, dull though it might seem and in spite of frequent hunger, I had stayed in resounding good health all along.

I opened the front door with my latchkey and met the friend’s aunt in the hall.

‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘Everything all right?’

I told her about Ronnie sending my book to America and her thin face filled with genuine pleasure. She was roughly fifty, divorced, a grandmother, sweet, fair-haired, undemanding and boring. I understood that she regarded the rent I paid her (a fifth of what I had had to fork out for my former flat) as more a bribe to get her to let a stranger into her house than as an essential part of her income. In addition, though, she had agreed I could put milk in her fridge, wash my dishes in her sink, shower in her bathroom and use her washer-drier once a week. I wasn’t to make a noise or ask anyone in. We had settled these details amicably. She had installed a coin-in-the-slot electric meter for me, and approved a toaster, a kettle, a tiny table-top cooker and new plugs for a television and a razor.

I’d been introduced to her as ‘Aunty’ and that’s what I called her, and she seemed to regard me as a sort of extension nephew. We had lived for ten months in harmony, our lives adjacent but uninvolved.

‘It’s very cold... are you warm enough up there?’ she asked kindly.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I said. The electric heater ate money. I almost never switched it on.

‘These old houses... very cold under the roofs.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

She said, ‘Good, dear,’ amiably, and we nodded to each other, and I went upstairs thinking that I’d lived in the Arctic Circle and if I hadn’t been able to deal with a cold London attic I would have been ashamed of myself. I wore silk jersey long-sleeved vests and long Johns under sweaters and jeans under the ski-suit, and I slept warmly in a sleeping bag designed for the North Pole. It was writing that made me cold.

Up in my eyrie I struggled for a couple of hours to resolve the plight of the helium balloon but ended with only a speculation on nerve pathways. Why didn’t terror make one deaf, for instance? How did it always beeline to the bowel? My man in the balloon didn’t know and was too miserable to care. I thought I’d have to invent a range of mountains dead ahead for him to come to grief on. Then he would merely have the problem of descending from an Everest-approximation with only fingers, toes and resolution. Much easier. I knew a tip or two about that, the first being to look for the longest way down because it would be the least steep. Sharp-faced mountains often had sloping backs.

My attic, once the retreat of the youngest of Aunty’s daughters, had a worn pink carpet and cream wallpaper sprigged with pink roses. The resident furniture of bed, chest of drawers, tiny wardrobe, two chairs and a table was overwhelmed by a veritable army of crates, boxes and suitcases containing my collected worldly possessions: clothes, books, household goods and sports equipment, all top quality and in good shape, acquired in carefree bygone affluence. Two pairs of expensive skis stood in their covers in a corner. Wildly extravagant cameras and lenses rested in dark foam beds. I kept in working order a windproof, sandproof, bugproof tent which self-erected in seconds and weighed only three pounds. I checked also climbing gear and a camcorder from time to time. A word processor with a laser printer, which I still used, was wrapped most of the time in sheeting. My helicopter pilot’s licence lay in a drawer, automatically expired now since I hadn’t flown for a year. A life on hold, I thought. A life suspended.

I thought occasionally that I could eat better if I sold something, but I’d never get back what I’d paid for the skis, for instance, and it seemed stupid to cannibalise things that had given me pleasure. They were mostly the tools of my past trade, anyway, and I might need them again. They were my safety net. The travel firm had said they would take me back once I’d got this foolishness out of my system.

If I’d known I was going to do what I was doing I would have planned and saved a lot more in advance, perhaps: but between the final irresistible impulse and its execution there had been only about six weeks. The vague intention had been around a lot longer; for most of my life.

Helium balloon...

The second half of the advance on Long Way Home wasn’t due until publication day, a whole long year ahead. My small weekly allotted parcels of money wouldn’t last that long, and I didn’t see how I could live on much less. My rent-in-advance would run out at the end of June. If, I thought, if I could finish this balloon lark by then and if it were accepted and if they paid the same advance as before, then maybe I’d just manage the full two years. Then if the books fell with a dull thud, I’d give up and go back to the easier rigours of the wild.

That night the air temperature over London plummeted still further, and in the morning Aunty’s house was frozen solid.

‘There’s no water,’ she said in distress when I went downstairs. ‘The central heating stopped and all the pipes have frozen. I’ve called the plumber. He says everyone’s in the same boat and just to switch everything off. He can’t do anything until it thaws, then he’ll come to fix any leaks.’ She looked at me helplessly. ‘I’m very sorry, dear, but I’m going to stay in a hotel until this is over. I’m ‘going to close the house. Can you find somewhere else for a week or two? Of course I’ll add the time on to your six months, you won’t lose by it, dear.’

Dismay was a small word for what I felt. I helped her close all the stopcocks I could find and made sure she had switched off her water heaters, and in return she let me use her telephone to look for another roof.

I got through to her nephew, who still worked for the travel firm.

‘Do you have any more aunts?’ I enquired.

‘Good God, what have you done with that one?’

I explained. ‘Could you lend me six feet of floor to unroll my bedding on?’

‘Why don’t you gladden the life of your parents on that Caribbean island?’

‘Small matter of the fare.’

‘You can come for a night or two if you’re desperate,’ he said. ‘But Wanda’s moved in with me, and you know how tiny the flat is.’

I also didn’t much like Wanda. I thanked him and said I would let him know, and racked my brains for somewhere else.

It was inevitable I should think of Tremayne Vickers.

I phoned Ronnie Curzon and put it to him straight ‘Can you sell me to that racehorse trainer?’

‘What?’

‘He was offering free board and lodging.’

‘Take me through it one step at a time.’

I took him through it and he was all against it.

‘Much better to get on with your new book.’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘The higher a helium balloon rises the thinner the air is and the lower the pressure, so the helium balloon expands, and goes on rising and expanding until it bursts.’

‘What?’

‘It’s too cold to invent stories. Do you think I could do what Tremayne wants?’

‘You could probably do a workmanlike job.’

‘How long would it take?’

‘Don’t do it,’ he said.

‘Tell him I’m brilliant after all and can start at once.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘I might as well learn about racing. Why not? I might use it in a book. And I can ride. Tell him that.’

‘Impulse will kill you one of these days.’

I should have listened to him, but I didn’t.

I was never sure exactly what Ronnie said to Tremayne, but when I phoned again at noon he was mournfully triumphant.

‘Tremayne agreed you can write his book. He quite took to you yesterday, it seems.’ Pessimism vibrated down the wire. ‘He’s agreed to guarantee you a writing fee.’ Ronnie mentioned a sum which would keep me eating through the summer. ‘It’s payable in three instalments — a quarter after a month’s work, a quarter when he approves the full manuscript, and half on publication. If I can get a regular publisher to take it on, the publisher will pay you, otherwise Tremayne will. He’s agreed you should have forty per cent of any royalties after that, not thirty. He’s agreed to pay your expenses while you research his life. That means if you want to go to interview people who know him he’ll pay for your transport. That’s quite a good concession, actually. He thinks it’s odd that you haven’t a car, but I reminded him that people who live in London often don’t. He says you can drive one of his. He was pleased you can ride. He says you should take riding clothes with you and also a dinner jacket, as he’s to be guest of honour at some dinner or other and he wants you to witness it. I told him you were an expert photographer so he wants you to take your camera.’

Ronnie’s absolute and audible lack of enthusiasm for the project might have made me withdraw even then had Aunty not earlier given me a three o’clock deadline for leaving the house.

‘When does Tremayne expect me?’ I asked Ronnie.

‘He seems pathetically pleased that anyone wants to take him on, after the top men turned him down. He says he’d be happy for you to go as soon as you can. Today, even, he said. Will you go today?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘He lives in a village called Shellerton, in Berkshire. He says if you can phone to say what train you’re catching, someone will meet you at Reading station. Here’s the number.’ He read it out to me.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘And Ronnie, thanks very much.’

‘Don’t thank me. Just... well, just write a brilliant chapter or two and I’ll try to get the book commissioned on the strength of them. But go on writing fiction. That’s where your future is.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Of course, I mean it.’ He sounded surprised I should ask. ‘For someone who’s not afraid of jungles you exhibit the strangest self-confidence deficiency.’

‘I know where I am in jungles.’

‘Go and catch your train,’ he said, and wished me luck.

I caught, instead, a bus, as it was much cheaper, and was met outside the Reading bus station by a shivering young woman in a padded coat and woollen hat who visually checked me over from boots six feet up via ski-suit to dark hair and came to the conclusion that I was, as she put it, the writer.

‘You’re the writer?’ She was positive, used to authority, not unfriendly.

‘John Kendall,’ I said, nodding.

‘I’m Mackie Vickers. That’s m, a, c, k, i, e,’ she spelled. ‘Not Maggie. Your bus is late.’

‘The roads are bad,’ I said apologetically.

‘They’re worse in the country.’ It was dark and extremely cold. She led the way to a chunky jeep-like vehicle parked not far away and opened the rear door. ‘Put your bags in here. You can meet everyone as we go along.’

There were already four people in the vehicle, it seemed, all cold and relieved I had finally turned up. I stowed my belongings and climbed in, sharing the back seat with two dimly seen figures who moved up to give me room. Mackie Vickers positioned herself behind the wheel, started the engine, released the brake and drove out into a stream of cars. A welcome trickle of hot air came out of the heater.

‘The writer says his name is John Kendall,’ Mackie said to the world in general.

There wasn’t much reaction to the introduction.

‘You’re sitting next to Tremayne’s head lad,’ she went on, ‘and his wife is beside him.’

The shadowy man next to me said, ‘Bob Watson.’ His wife said nothing.

‘In front,’ Mackie said, ‘next to me, are Fiona and Harry Goodhaven.’

Neither Fiona nor Harry said anything. There was an intense quality in the collective atmosphere that dried up any conversational remark I might have thought of making, and it had little to do with temperature. It was as if the very air were scowling.

Mackie drove for several minutes in continuing silence, concentrating on the slush-lined surface under the yellowish lights of the main road west out of Reading. The traffic was heavy and slow moving, the ill-named rush hour crawling along with flashing scarlet brake lights, a procession of curses.

Eventually Mackie said to me, turning her head over her shoulder as I was sitting directly behind her, ‘We’re not good company. We’ve spent all day in court. Tempers are frayed. You’ll just have to put up with it.’

‘No trouble,’ I said.

Trouble was the wrong word to use, it seemed.

As if releasing tension Fiona said loudly, ‘I can’t believe you were so stupid.’

‘Give it a rest,’ Harry said. He’d already heard it before.

‘But you know damned well that Lewis was drunk.’

‘That doesn’t excuse anything.’

‘It explains things. You know damned well he was drunk.’

‘Everyone says he was drunk,’ Harry said, sounding heavily reasonable, ‘but I don’t know it, do I? I didn’t see him drinking too much.’

Bob Watson beside me said ‘Liar’ on a whispered breath, and Harry didn’t hear.

‘Nolan is going to prison,’ Fiona said bitterly. ‘Do you realise? Prison. All because of you.’

‘You don’t know he is,’ Harry complained. ‘The jury haven’t found him guilty yet.’

‘But they will, won’t they? And it will by your fault. Dammit, you were under oath. All you had to do was say Lewis was drunk. Now the jury thinks he wasn’t drunk, so he must be able to remember everything. They think he’s lying when he says he can’t remember. Christ Almighty, Nolan’s whole defence was that Lewis can’t remember. How could you be so stupid?’

Harry didn’t answer. The atmosphere if possible worsened, and I felt as if I’d gone into a movie halfway through and couldn’t grasp the plot.

Mackie, without contributing any opinions, turned from the Great West Road onto the M4 motorway and made better time westwards along an unlit and uninhabited stretch between snow-covered wooded hills, ice crystals glittering in the headlights.

‘Bob says Lewis was drunk,’ Fiona persisted, ‘and he should know, he was serving the drinks.’

‘Then maybe the jury will believe Bob.’

‘They believed him until you stood there and blew it.’

‘They should have had you in the witness box,’ Harry said defensively, ‘then you could have sworn he was paralytic and had to be scraped off the carpet, even if you weren’t there.’

Bob Watson said, ‘He wasn’t paralytic.’

‘You keep out of it, Bob,’ Harry snapped.

‘Sorr-ee,’ Bob Watson said, again under his breath.

‘All you had to do was swear that Lewis was drunk.’ Fiona’s voice rose with fury. ‘That’s all the defence called you for. Then you didn’t say it. Nolan’s lawyer could have killed you.’

Harry said wearily, ‘You didn’t have to stand there answering that prosecutor’s questions. You heard what he said, how did I know Lewis was drunk? Had I given him a breath test, a blood test, a urine test? On what did I base my judgment? Did I have any clinical experience? You heard him. On and on. How many drinks did I see Lewis take? How did I know what was in the drinks? Had I ever heard of Lewis having black-outs any other time after drinking?’

‘That was disallowed,’ Mackie said.

‘You let that prosecutor tie you in knots. You looked absolutely stupid...’ Fiona ran on and on, the rage in her mind unabating.

I began to feel mildly sorry for Harry.

We reached the Chieveley interchange and left the motorway to turn north on the big A34 to Oxford. Mackie had sensibly taken the cleared major roads rather than go over the hills, even though it was further that way, according to the map. I’d looked up the whereabouts of Tremayne’s village on the theory that it was a wise man who knew his destination, especially when it was on the Berkshire Downs a mile from nowhere.

Silence had mercifully struck Fiona’s tongue by the time Shellerton showed up on a signpost. Mackie slowed, signalled, and cautiously turned off the main road into a very narrow secondary road that was Hide more than a lane, where snow had been roughly pushed to the sides but still lay in shallow frozen brown ruts over much of the surface. The tyres scrunched on them, cracking the ice. Mist formed quickly on the inside of the windscreen and Mackie rubbed it away impatiently with her glove.

There were no houses beside the lane: it was well over a mile across bare downland, I found later, from the main road to the village. There were also no cars: no one was out driving if they could help it. For all Mackie’s care one could sometimes feel the wheels sliding, losing traction for perilous seconds. The engine, engaged in low gear, whined laboriously up a shallow incline.

‘It’s worse than this morning,’ Mackie said, sounding worried. ‘This road’s a skating rink.’

No one answered her. I was hoping, as I expect they all were, that we would reach the top of the slope without sliding backwards; and we did, only to see that the downside looked just as hazardous, if not more so. Mackie wiped the windscreen again and with extra care took a curve to the right.

Caught by the headlights, stock-still in the middle of the lane, stood a horse. A dark horse buckled into a dark rug, its head raised in alarm. There was the glimmer of sheen on its skin and luminescence in its wide eyes. The moment froze like the landscape.

‘Hell!’ Mackie exclaimed, and slammed her foot on the brake.

The vehicle slid inexorably on the ice and although Mackie released the brakes a moment later it did as much harm as good.

The horse, terrified, tried to plunge out of the lane into the field alongside. Intent on missing him, and at the same time fighting the skid, Mackie miscalculated the curve, the camber and the speed, though to be fair to her it would have taken a stunt driver to come out of there safely.

The jeep slid to the side of the lane, spun its wheels on the snow-covered grass verge, mounted it, ran along and across as if making for the open fields under its own volition and tipped over sideways into an unseen drainage ditch, cracking with noises like pistol shots through a covering sheet of ice.

We’d been going slowly enough for it not to be an instantly lethal crunch, though it was a bang hard enough to rattle one’s teeth. The nearside wheels, both front and back, finished four feet lower than road level, the far side of the ditch supporting the length of the roof of the vehicle so that it lay not absolutely flat on its side. I was opening my door, which was half sloping skywards, and hauling myself out more or less before the engine had time to stall.

The downland wind, always on the move, stung my face sharply with a freezing warning. Wind-chill was an unforgiving enemy, deadly to the unwary.

Bob Watson had fallen on top of his wife. I reached down into the car and grasped him, and began to pull him out.

He tried to free himself from my hands, crying ‘Ingrid’ urgently, and then in horror, ‘It’s wet... she’s in water.’

‘Come out,’ I said peremptorily. ‘Then we can both pull her. Come out, you’re heavy on her. You’ll never get her out like that.’

Some vestige of sense got through to him and he let me yank him out far enough so that he could stretch back in for his wife. I held him and he held her, and between the two of us we brought her out onto the roadway.

The ditch was almost full of muddy freezing water under its coating of ice. Even as we lifted Ingrid out the water deepened fast in the vehicle, and in the front seat Fiona was yelling to Harry to get her out. Harry, I saw in horror, was underneath her and in danger of drowning.

The one headlight which had still been shining suddenly went out.

Mackie hadn’t moved to save herself. I pulled open her door and found her dazed and semi-conscious, held in her place by her seat belt.

‘Get us out,’ Fiona yelled.

Harry, below her, was struggling in water and heaving, whether to save her or himself was impossible to tell. I felt round Mackie until I found the seat-belt clasp, released it, hauled her out bodily and shoved her into Bob Watson’s arms.

‘Sit her on the verge,’ I said. ‘Clear the snow off the grass. Hold her. Shield her from the wind.’

‘Bob,’ Ingrid said piteously, standing helplessly on the road and seeming to think her husband should attend to her alone, ‘Bob, I need you. I feel awful.’

Bob glanced at his wife but took Mackie’s weight and helped her to sit down. She began moving and moaning and asking what had happened, showing welcome signs of life.

No blood, I thought. Not a drop. Bloody lucky. My eyes became accustomed to the dark.

Fiona, halfway panic-stricken, put her arms up to mine and came out easily into the air, lithe and athletic. I let go of her and leaned in for Harry, who now had his seat belt unfastened and his head above water and had got past the stage of abject fright. He helped himself to climb out and went dripping over to Mackie, showing most concern for her, taking her support from Bob Watson.

Ingrid stood in the road, soaked, thin, frightened, helpless and crying. The wind was piercing, relentless... infinitely dangerous. It was easy to underestimate how fast cold could kill.

I said to Bob Watson Take all your wife’s clothes off.’

‘What?’

‘Take her wet clothes off or she’ll freeze into a block of ice.’

He opened his mouth.

‘Start at the top,’ I said. ‘Take everything off and put my ski jacket on her, quickly. It’s warm.’ I unzipped it and took it off, folding it together so as to keep the warmth of my body in it as much as possible. The cold bit through my sweater and undershirt as if they were invisible. I was infinitely grateful to be dry.

‘I’ll help Ingrid,’ Fiona said, as Bob still hesitated. ‘You don’t mean her bra as well?’

‘Yes, everything.’

While the two women unbuttoned and tugged I went to the rear of the overturned vehicle and found to my relief that the luggage door would still open. I pushed up my sleeves and literally fished out my two bags and Harry, close beside me, watched the water drip off them with gloom.

‘Everything will be wet,’ he said defeatedly.

‘No.’ Waterproof, sandproof, bugproof were the rules I travelled by, even in rural England. I found the aluminium camera case under the water and set it on the road beside the bags.

‘Which would you prefer,’ I asked Harry, ‘bathrobe or dinner jacket?’

He actually laughed.

‘Strip off,’ I said, ‘in case the ice-man cometh. Top half first.’

They had all been dressed for a day in court, not for trudging about in the open. Even Mackie and Bob Watson, who were dry, hadn’t enough on for the circumstances.

Bob Watson took over again with Mackie, and Harry began to struggle out of his sodden overcoat, business suit, shirt and tie, wincing with pain as the cold hit his wet flesh. His singlet was sticking to him. I gave him a hand.

‘What did you say your name was?’ he said, teeth clenched, shuddering.

‘John.’

I handed him a navy blue silk undershirt and long Johns, two sweaters, grey trousers and the bathrobe. No one ever dived into clothes faster. My shoes were a size too big, he ironically complained, hopping around and pulling them on over dry socks.

Fiona had changed Ingrid to the waist and was waiting to do the second half. I took off my boots and then my ski-pants, which Fiona put on Ingrid after trying to shield her brief lower nakedness from my eyes, which amazed me. It was hardly the time for fussing. The boots looked enormous, once they were on, and Ingrid was nine inches shorter than my ski-suit.

For myself I brought out a navy blazer and jodhpur boots, feeling the ice strike up through wool to my toes.

‘My feet are squelching,’ Fiona said, eyeing the boots with strong shivers, ‘and I’m wet to the neck. Is there anything left?’

‘You’d better have these.’

‘Well... I...’ She looked at my bare socks, hesitating.

I thrust the boots and blazer into her hands. My black evening shoes, which were all that remained in the way of footwear, would have fallen off her at every step.

I dug into the bag again for jodhpurs, black socks and a sweatshirt. ‘These any good to you?’ I asked.

She took all the clothes gratefully and hid behind Ingrid to change. I put on my black shoes and the dinner jacket: a lot better than nothing.

When Fiona reappeared, her shivers had grown to shakes. She still had too few layers, even if now dry. The only useful thing still unused in my belongings was the plastic bag which had contained my dinner jacket. I put it over Fiona’s head, widening the hole where the hanger usually went, and, if she didn’t care to be labelled ‘Ace Cleaners’ at intervals front and back, at least it stopped the wind a bit and kept some body heat in.

‘Well,’ Harry said with remarkable cheerfulness, eyeing the dimly seen final results of the motley redistribution, ‘thanks to John we should live to see Shellerton. All you lot had better start walking. I’ll stay with Mackie and we’ll follow when we can.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘How far is it to the village?’

‘A mile or so.’

‘Then we all start now. We’ll carry Mackie. It’s too cold, believe me, for hanging about. How about a chair lift?’

So Harry and I sat the semi-conscious Mackie on our linked wrists and draped her arms round our necks, and we set off towards the village with Bob Watson carrying all the wet clothes in one of my bags, Fiona carrying dry things in the other and Ingrid shuffling along in front in the moon-boots with my camera case, lighting the way with the dynamo torch from my basic travel kit.

‘Squeeze it.’ I showed her how. ‘It doesn’t have batteries. Shine it on the road, so we can all see.’

‘Thank God it isn’t snowing,’ Harry said: but there were ominous clouds hiding the stars. What little natural light there was was amplified by the whiteness of the snow, the only good thing about it. I was glad it wasn’t too far to the village. Mackie wasn’t draggingly heavy, but we were walking on ice.

‘Doesn’t any traffic ever come along this road?’ I asked in frustration when we’d gone half a mile and still seen no one.

‘There are two other ways into Shellerton,’ Harry said. ‘God, this wind’s the devil. My ears are dropping off.’

My own head also was achingly cold. Mackie and Fiona had woollen hats, Ingrid was warmest in the hood of my ski-suit, Bob Watson wore a cap. Ingrid had my gloves. Harry’s hands and mine were going numb under Mackie’s bottom. If I’d brought any more socks we could have used them as mitts.

‘It’s not far now,’ Bob said. ‘Once we’re round the bend you’ll see the village.’

He was right. Electricity twinkled not far below us, offering shelter and warmth. Let’s not have a power cut, I prayed.

Mackie suddenly awoke to full consciousness on the last stretch and began demanding to know what was happening.

‘We skidded into a ditch,’ Harry said succinctly.

‘The horse! Is the horse all right? Why are you carrying me? Put me down.’

We stopped and set her on her feet, where she swayed and put a hand to the side of her head.

‘Did we hit the horse?’ she said.

‘No,’ Harry answered. ‘Better let us carry you.’

‘What happened to the horse?’

‘It buggered off across the Downs. Come on, Mackie, we’re literally freezing to death standing here.’ Harry swung his arms in my bathrobe, then hugged his body and tried to warm his hands in his armpits. ‘Let’s get on, for God’s sake.’

Mackie refused to let us lift her up again so we began to struggle on towards the village, a shadowy band slipping and sliding downhill, holding on to each other and trying not to fall, cold to the bone. I should have brought the skis, I thought, and it seemed an extraordinarily long time since that morning.

One reason for the dearth of traffic became clear as we reached the first houses; two cars lay impacted across the width of the lane, and certainly nothing was leaving the village that way.

‘You’d better all come to our house,’ Fiona said in a shaking voice as we edged round the wreck. ‘It’s nearest.’

No one argued.

We turned into a long village street with no lighting, and passed a garage, darkly shut, and a pub, open.

‘How about a quick one?’ Harry suggested, half serious.

Fiona said with some of her former asperity, ‘I should think you’ve heard enough about drink for one day. And you’re not going anywhere dressed like that except straight home.’

It was too dark to see Harry’s expression. No one cared to comment, and presently Ingrid with the torch turned into a driveway which wound round behind some cottages and opened into a snowy expanse in front of a big Georgian-looking house.

Ingrid stopped. Fiona said, ‘This way,’ and led a still silent procession round to a side door, which she unlocked with a key retrieved from under a stone.

The relief of being out of the wind was like a rebirth. The warmth of the extensive kitchen we filed into was a positive life-giving luxury; and there in the lights I saw my companions clearly for the first time.