His Coldest Winter by Derek Beaven

Author:Derek Beaven
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

HE LOOKED FOR Paul outside, but couldn’t find him. He plunged down homeward alone, taking the steep, overhung lane, feeling himself already sinking like a body in a lock, the surface closing over him, the beloved fingers of current plucking him away. Every turning in the town recalled some detail: the chemist’s in the High Street, its flasks glowing red and blue in the window, where he’d come to buy her a bottle of aspirins; the new post office for her letter to her parents; across the road the almshouses, which had led up to Geoffrey and Louisa’s, that day he’d gone to find her, the night they’d escaped from the gang. Cynth had walked out of his account, and it wasn’t just losing a girlfriend: he knew her, she was everything. It was suddenly so tempting to flirt with the figure of death, to stroll beside him in his mind, courting that ultimate pain relief.

Twilight pooled on the plank bridge. He came on to the tow-path and began his detour over the gates. A trail of footsteps in the gathering dark caught his eye, seeming to take a short cut across the ice. Not far from where Paul had stepped out that morning, he stopped and climbed down the bank. Sure enough, a woman, or maybe a child, had made the crossing directly to the paddock and straight to the tunnel, walking over the surface of the canal.

He stepped further out and his shoe crunched the top crust. He listened intently for deeper sounds. The day had nudged above zero, but the temperature was falling fast and the ice surely still thickening. He took a step further. There was a creak. He thought of all the warnings – about the false sense of security, the sudden sickening give. The sunken dark gave back a glimmering emptiness. He took another step. Another. One further, until the ice cracked again. He stood stock-still and looked up. He was almost at the centre. A seagull, far inland, was the fading sky’s only movement. The gated sluice fifty yards away to his left splashed noisily into the one patch of moving water.

Only then he remembered the barges. They’d broken this swathe right here under his feet and left just days for a layer to form thick enough to support him. He swung round, equidistant between hedge and paddock. The ice murmured ominously. He dared not move.

He had to. It was the choice again, going on or back. His blood thumping, he inched forward, holding his duffel bag out to the side as though to spread the weight. But each time his shoe even touched the crust it would shatter through, and each time he shifted balance the ice was beginning to groan. All at once it was fracturing, bending, giving way, and he ran ahead blindly, feeling the cold water at his ankles, as he slipped and tumbled on to the further shelf, struggling up when he heard that, too, start to give, scrabbling desperately forward until he fell at last on to the thickened safety of the shallows.

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