that was between a snarl and a look of amusement: Then she turned away and began tracing the pattern along the edge of the brass scuttle.
Jerry fought against the flood of delirium that threatened to overcome his senses. He unlaced his boots, controlling his shaking hands only with difficulty. He inspected his ankle. There was a soggy feel about the tendons on the outside of if the swelling had just started.
“I’ll be all right in a day or two,” he told Bill. Raybould noticed his condition at last.
“Best get yourself dry!” he said. “Brenda, come away from in front of the fire. Put your jacket over the chair. Come on Brenda!”
But she wasn’t listening. Jerry could see her caressing the brass fire-bucket with gentle lascivious movements. T-R-U-E he spelt out on the fingers of her left hand. The long, thin fingers were tracing hypnotic patterns in the firelight; the metal was red and brassily yellow. She stared down, quite intent on her game. Jerry saw Raybould’s face set in an expression of unequivocal lust; in the summer he tried to chat up the girl-walkers, though not when his wife was about. It was their long brown legs that fascinated him. Jerry’s senses began to swim away from him as the glittering brass and the heat and the girl’s insidious movements hypnotised him. He heard the conversation as if through a series of transparent curtains, faintly, distantly.
“Come on, Brenda,” ordered Bill Ainsley. “We’ll get off now.”
Still she didn’t look up.
“That bloody brass tub!” said Raybould. “She always sits over it! Brenda!”
“Wrap up! Get off!” she added, as something white and angry rushed towards her. “Bloody pest!”
Jerry’s eyes had begun to close. He blinked awake as he heard a faint yipping sound: Yip-yip-yip! Yap! Yip-yip! He looked at his feet and saw a white blur, red mouth open, white fragile teeth bared: it was—a chicken? A chicken! Yipping at the lorry-girl, who glowered back at it, snarling her own vicious answer. Jerry shuddered. The chicken had little curls all over its body. Yip-yip! it went. Yip-yip-yip!
“Not a barking chicken!” he said in anguish. “There isn’t such a thing.”
“A barking what!” Bill said. “Lad, you’re bad!”
“Come out, Sukie!” Raybould said, and Jerry realised that he was looking at a frightened and angry white miniature poodle, all thin bones and fluff. “Leave her alone, Sukie!”
The poodle backed off and went to the door leading to the kitchen.
“Barking chicken!” laughed Bill Ainsley. “Coming, lass?” he asked Brenda.
“You could stay,” Raybould offered.
“Oh no she couldn’t!” called a woman from the doorway at the back of the counter. “I don’t want her sort here. Sukie! Go back!” she ordered the poodle.
It was Raybould’s wife, a tall, thin woman of about fifty; she looked at her husband, daring him to repeat his invitation. Brenda stared at the woman. Jerry saw a strange expression in her eyes again, that dreamy, unfocused emptiness he had first seen when he was in a half-conscious state himself. She touched the brass bucket again with her tattooed hands, once, twice. Then she grinned at Bill as any teenager might, jumped to her feet and slouched to the door. Mrs. Raybould watched carefully. Sukie yipped twice in triumph.
“So you’re all right?” Bill asked Jerry.
“No need to worry,” Jerry said. “I’m fine. If you hadn’t got out—”
“Aye, well,” Bill said. “No harm done.”
“If you ever get to the Furnaceman’s in Sheffield—Townsend Street—I’d like to buy you a drink.”
“Aye. All right, lad.”
He called his goodnights and ushered Brenda out into the blizzard. Jerry knew he had been lucky. He sat close to the fire and saw his sweater and anorak begin to steam.
Mrs. Raybould crossed to him:
“Why, you’re wet through! You’re shaking! Sam, get him a blanket! He’ll have to dry off! How about something to eat, if you’re staying? You are, aren’t you? Well, you’ll have to. There won’t be any going back to Sheffield, not tonight. And if that A57 stays open Manchester way, it’ll be a miracle! Now, Sam!”
Raybould went for the blanket.
“Bacon and sausage?” Mrs. Raybould said. “You’ve been in here before, haven’t you?” She petted the little poodle bitch, which sniffed at Jerry.
“A few times.”
“You were with some climbers.”
“That’s right,” Jerry said. The bitch inspected his ankle. Mrs. Raybould did not object. Jerry was suddenly violently hungry. “I could do with that bacon and sausage. And some eggs.”
“Tea and bread and butter,” Mrs. Raybould decided. “You had a girl with you.”
“Yes,” said Jerry. The woman hadn’t been anything like so agreeable when he and Deborah had called in for a meal one day in August. The food was stale, warmed up probably.
“Those lorry girls,” Mrs. Raybould grumbled. “Come in and sit all night with a cup of tea. Especially her. He doesn’t mind. Sukie hates her! Hurry up, Sam!” she called. “I’ll get your meal.”
Jerry leaned forward towards the coal fire and saw what the girl had been entranced by. Around the rim of the coalscuttle was a row of figures. They seemed to dance in the yellow and red flames. Raybould came up behind him.
“Here’s a blanket—get your things off.” Jerry closed his eyes, swaying with drowsiness. He had been near death and he was drunk with heat. “You’re a teacher, aren’t you?” Raybould asked.
Jerry managed to get the soaking tee-shirt off. Then the corduroy trousers. He felt the rough army blanket on his skin.
“Just out by yourself, then?”
“That’s it.”
Jerry didn’t want questions about his escape from death; it was too close, too real. He pointed to the figures:
“I haven’t seen this before.”
“The old scuttle fell to bits, so I use this. It’s heavy to hump about.”
“The engravings are good.”
“Should be. It came from the Castle.”
Jerry blinked in the glare as a burst of blue-red flame shot up the chimney. It had been an odd sort of day, what with the blizzard coming up and the girl hating him. He was aware that he had not recovered from the effects of the climb and the gradual freezing in the drift. It was a sign of complete exhaustion when you had fantasies like thinking you were boozing at the Furnaceman’s when you were lying face down in the snow; and thinking that Sukie was a chicken because she was white and stood on her hind legs yipping at Brenda. He talked more or less to reassure himself that he was able to:
“It’s
