SNOW AND ICE

It was cold, the first really cold day of the winter, snowflakes drifting earthbound from an ashen sky. As the year staggered on towards its end, the fields and hills around Edge Hill looked lean and unloved, now bereft of much of their foliage, stripped by so cruel a season.

Sam and Hal sat together on a low brick wall, wrapped in the rough wool of their greatcoats. Hal rolled a cigarette while Sam flapped his arms, folding and unfolding them in an attempt to conjure some warmth.

‘Bloody freezing,’ he announced, blowing hard into his hands.

Although the bruising around Sam’s eyes had long gone, he still looked tired and pale, not to mention dishevelled, what with his hair growing into an ever more haphazard clump, a nest for slovenly birds.

Hal handed Sam the cigarette before embarking upon another, teasing the papers with a certain studied care.

The wall on which they were perched lay some two hundred metres away from the main house, away from the back service areas, not far from the infirmary. In front of them, across a small unkempt lawn, was Daniels’ house, or rather, the house that now belonged to Kirkham. It was a fairly anonymous redbrick building from the 1960s - two up, two down, with rampant guttering along its every edge. At that moment the house and its immediate surroundings were a hive of activity - removals men laboured past with furniture and boxes under the ever-watchful eye of Kirkham, who could occasionally be heard squealing directives from his precarious perch, halfway out of a first floor window.

Sam and Hal sat and smoked and watched the chaos unfold, watched the snowflakes falling onto the grass around them.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, really I do,’ Hal said.

‘About?’

‘This bloke here.’

They both looked up towards the window.

‘Yeah, he seems a little -’

‘A little? A lot. A storm is gathering, make no mistake. Edge Hill is a funny old place. It’s fragile. Daniels knew that, understood that while things were a little chaotic, what we’d managed to make here was, I don’t know... rare.’ Hal exhaled, thinking. ‘Plus, this bloke has the look of a fascist about him.’

Sam shook his head, smiling. ‘Of course he does. Complete fascist. Obviously. No doubt these boxes all contain Nazi bullion. How long have you been here again?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well...’

Hal looked down, kicking a stone away over the patchy grass. ‘To be honest I’m not sure. Fifteen, twenty years maybe.’

Sam sat up, a little surprised to have got anything approaching a serious response. ‘Right. And before that?’

Hal shot Sam a sideways glance, drawing on his cigarette. ‘Things get a little hazy. I seem to remember having attended university - although I can’t be sure. And then I was driving a large truck. Heading north - but I’m not sure why. It’s become a little tricky to think of anything other than this place, to be honest. Institutionalised, isn’t that the term?’

‘That’s one way of putting it, yes.’

‘And you, I suppose, have spent the last ten years holed up in some kind of rank hormonal chrysalis, only to emerge here at Edge Hill a fully formed nonce?’ Hal sniped.

Sam laughed. ‘Funnily enough you’re not far off.’

Hal shrugged a half grunt, Sam leaning forward so as to glance back up towards the house and the goings-on there. And it was then that something caught his eye; something significant. Kirkham, it seemed, had a daughter.

She looked a little older than Sam, around twenty-five, with a slight frame and fine brown hair cut short into a sleek bob that ended just above her shoulders. Dressed in jeans and a thick woollen jumper, she helped repatriate the boxes, directing the removals men towards various rooms with an easy charm.

Sam was entranced. Instantly.

‘You wretch!’ exclaimed Hal, following Sam’s gaze over towards her. ‘You hound! You ape! You fool! How could you? To covet another man’s wife? Dickie!’

‘She’s not his wife. Must be his daughter. I guess.’

‘So you’re not denying it. You love her,’ said Hal, relishing the opportunity to make Sam squirm.

‘What?’

‘You love her. You’ll marry her. And then you’ll have little fascist children together.’

‘Piss off.’

‘Hey! You there!’ Hal shouted over, causing her to turn towards them. She had a strong jawline, well drawn, and yet her face was delicate, feminine, with a button nose and large hazel eyes.

Seeing them perched on the wall, she smiled and waved, a little hesitant, not knowing who these two draped lumps were.

Hal waved back with great enthusiasm, Sam next to him, quietly imploding.

‘Ha! There. See. Mussolini’s bride. Waving at you, Dickie.’

Sam blushed bright beetroot, waving back from the shoulder as if his right elbow were conjoined to the round of his ribs.

‘Piss off,’ Sam said through gritted teeth.

And Hal laughed, and smoked and laughed and laughed and laughed.

The main house was teeming with activity as they made their way through the atrium and into the East Wing. As part of Kirkham’s strategy for the improvement of the facility more handlers had been employed, together with a construction firm whose builders had already started on some general refurbishments. Indeed, the corridor that led to the library had already been lined with scaffolding to attend to some of the peeling paint and plaster on the ceiling.

However, the sight that greeted them as they walked into the library was something else altogether. The walls had been cleared, the broad, ancient shelves torn apart and the books piled high in sorry heaps at the back, while here and there stomped thickset workmen carrying materials, erecting scaffolding or eyeing plans, sawing and banging and drilling.

For what seemed like an age, Hal stood and stared, leaning back somewhat as though physically repelled by the sheer force of this particular revelation.

‘It’s... it’s...’ Hal began as he walked around the room.

Sam began to consider more closely the works. The builders seemed to be installing some sort of frame around the perimeter, a round steel-and-concrete structure emerging.

‘There you are,’ said Morris as he approached them from the doorway.

They turned to face him. Hal looked wretched, his eyes almost to the point of tearing.

‘Moz, what... ? What the... ?’

‘Sorry. I meant to catch up with you guys this morning. Our new managing director has responded to suggestions made by the brass at TWL in terms of modernising the care facilities here, to come in line with the proposed shift in emphasis to the current activity schedule.’ Morris avoided eye contact, instead reading aloud from his notepad. ‘As such, the house library, located in the East Wing, will be closed with immediate effect, pending refurbishment, or rather, recycling.’

‘To shut down the library... it’s heartless and cruel. It’s unforgivable, Morris,’ said Hal.

‘Well, to be fair, Hal...’ Morris paused, steeling himself, ready for the abuse that his next statement might bring. ‘None of the residents can actually read, you know?’

‘But that’s not the point!’ snapped Hal.

Morris shrugged - that was exactly the point. ‘And even if they could we just can’t justify this use of space, not any more.’

‘But where will we do the arts and crafts?’ said Hal, looking to Sam for support.

‘There simply won’t be any, I’m afraid. Not here at Edge Hill.’

‘You what?’ Hal spluttered, his face scarlet with anger.

‘Like I said - curriculum’s changed. It’s a shame but -’

‘So what will there be?’ Said Sam. ‘What are they building?’

Morris paused, swaying slightly as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

‘Morris!’ cried Hal, desperate to know.

‘An ice rink. They are turning the library into an indoor ice rink. The idea is that the residents need to spend a greater proportion of their time engaged in physical activity. And there’s only one tennis-court - which we can’t really use in winter. Anyway, the plan from upstairs is that the residents can ice skate. Easy enough for them to pick up, and easily supervised. Cheap to run. Open all day, every day. Personally I think it’s all a bit silly, but...’

Morris had delivered these last few phrases looking down at his toes, muttering towards his enormous navel. Sam for his part found it all rather depressing. At least the time they spent in the library was generally peaceful, and whatever anyone said about their cognitive abilities, Sam was convinced by now that the residents’ unsophisticated daubs in fact denoted something, that some element of their makeup still clung to sentience.

Hal looked unwell. He bent forward and grabbed at his chest, minute gasps escaping from between pale lips.

‘Hal? You alright?’ said Sam, thinking that perhaps he was on the cusp of a stroke or some such other trauma.

Hal said nothing but continued to fret, to grow more and more puce, straining to pass what turned out to be a huge bolus of language.

‘ThatshitforbrainsfascistpiglickerifhethinkshecanjusttakeawayMYlibraryhe’sgotanotherthingcomingi’llshit’imi’llshit’imMorrisyouwatcharrrhhhhhhhhhhh!’

And with that Hal was gone, hurrying away through the doors and along the corridor.

Sam and Morris stood and stared at each other for a moment, shell-shocked.

‘Crap.’

Together they bolted after Hal, through the East Wing and out of the atrium onto the front lawn. Rounding the eastern edge of the house, they were alarmed to see Hal up ahead charging through the service area.

‘Oh dear,’ said Morris. ‘This can only end badly.’

The removals men were almost finished at Kirkham’s house, three or four of them in their red uniforms milling about outside, waiting for the off. Otherwise the house was quiet.

Sam and Morris closed on Hal as he scuttled up the path and rang the doorbell, giving it a much longer blast than was necessary. He rang it again and again and again until eventually Kirkham’s daughter appeared at the door.

‘Hello,’ she said in a fine, lilting voice, not in the least bit taken aback by the furious-looking man in front of her and the two others hanging further back. Then, leaning forward and with an exaggerated use of her index finger, she pressed the doorbell. ‘Do you hear that?’ she said with a smile, tilting her head a little to the side for emphasis.

Hal gawped; having worked himself up into such a fury, this young woman’s appearance and relative good humour had clearly thrown him.

‘What... what are you doing?’

‘I wondered perhaps, if you thought the bell might have been broken? As you can hear...’ She paused, giving the bell a short blast. ‘It’s not. It’s not broken.’

Hal shifted about on the step, embarrassed.

‘I’m guessing you’re after my dad? He’s -’

But before she could finish Hal had brushed past her into the hallway of the house.

‘Kirkham! Kirkham!’ he thundered.

She turned and watched Hal stomp inside, looking both surprised and amused by this rude little man.

And soon enough her father appeared, appalled to see a member of staff in his house at all, let alone one that was shouting to such a degree. For a moment the two men simply stood and stared at each other. Then, with a discreet, open-palmed gesture, Kirkham managed to usher Hal from the hallway towards an adjoining room, closing the door behind them.

Sam and Morris came to a halt at the house.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Ha!’ Sam coughed by way of a response as they caught their breath on the front step.

Meanwhile, inside, a storm was raging, and even though his speech was filtered by the intervening walls to the extent that it was impossible to decipher individual words, the intensity of Hal’s vitriol was unmistakeable - a foot-stamping, arm-waving, frothing kind of fume.

‘Goodness me. That little fellow seems pretty upset,’ she said from her position against the door frame, arms folded across her front: a stance that was comfortable, not guarded in any way.

‘He gets like this,’ was Sam’s awkward, smiled reply. ‘Sorry.’

She smiled back and shrugged, and Sam looked at his shoes and clenched his fists, an attempt to formulate something further, something droll, or even halfway entertaining. Eventually, though, he had to admit some kind of small defeat; he had nothing, his mind gone blank.

‘Um. Do you smoke at all?’ Sam held forth a mangled pack, a straight-armed gesture almost if he were presenting a fine bouquet.

‘Ta very much,’ she said, helping herself.

They left Morris to loiter at the front door and over to a small wooden bench.

‘I’m Megan, by the way.’

They both sat.

‘Sam. Nice to meet you.’

Megan lit her cigarette and passed the lighter back to Sam.

‘Your friend looks very nervous. It’s funny, he’s so big, you’d almost think he’d be immune to all this. To normal stuff, you know. Bother and that.’ She leaned forward a little so that her hair fell to drape the sides her face. Away by the house, Morris crunched across the snow, pacing up and down outside the front door, head down, hands buried to the wrist in trouser pocket.

‘Morris? I know what you mean. He is very solid, isn’t he? Guess he’s worried about Hal. He can be a little unpredictable.’

‘Well, it sounds like he can look after himself,’ she said, head turned towards the house.

Sam nodded, exhaling, the smoke almost the same colour as the sky.

After several minutes a door opened, then slammed. Opened again. Then Hal appeared, storming out through the front of the house at quite some speed.

‘Dickie! Dickie!’ Hal called as he went by, and such was the cracked, appealing tone of his voice, that Sam stood up quite suddenly and made to follow him.

‘I thought your name was Sam?’ Megan asked, a little confused.

‘It is,’ he said, turning and looking down at her. ‘I don’t know why he... he’s ill, I think. Bye.’

‘Bye,’ she called, waving as she watched him lope off across the snow.

After he had gone a little way Sam looked back over his shoulder, back towards the house. Kirkham had arrived at the front door, engaged in a series of expressive gesticulations, while opposite him stood Morris, palms raised, the peacemaker. Of course, it was Megan that was the object of his stare; she remained huddled on the bench, legs crossed, cigarette poised between the fingers of her right hand as she gazed in the direction of her father.

‘She knows my name,’ Sam thought to himself. ‘She knows my name...’