Brenda looked at him: “Who’s worrying?”
“Cow,” said Bill pleasantly. “Soon be at the caff. Can’t stay long, though. The drifts are getting up. There won’t be many more trucks going through after me. Not tonight.”
The girl was pressed against Jerry’s body, but there was little heat to be gained from her; it was as though she could insulate herself from him. He began to worry, for he was normally attractive to women; however partisan the lorry girls might be, this one was hostile in an unusual way. So she’d been messed about by a couple of drunk undergraduates. So what? He found himself angry in return.
“Theer,” said the girl suddenly. There were lights beside the road a few yards ahead. The tanker was moving cautiously up the narrow road so that when she spotted the caff Bill could turn in easily.
“Let me buy you a drink. A meal or something,” Jerry said, as the vast engine was quiet. “Bill. And you, Brenda.”
Brenda pushed past him contemptuously. She said nothing as she jumped into the howling night.
“A cup of tea then,” said Bill. “You all right to get out?”
Jerry remembered how he had been hauled in by the man, a limp and frozen bundle desperate for warmth.
“I’m all right,” he said.
They got down, Bill jumping lightly, Jerry lowering himself tortuously on to his sore ankle. Bill waited for him in the whipping shock of the wind and snow.
He shouted something above the wind. “She’s a cow…always on the hills… still, she’s company on the run!”
The caff was a single-storied building roofed in white-grey concrete panels that sloped away to take the edge off the prevailing wind. The rest of the building was much older—it was built massively from blocks of the local gritstone, green and weathered from exposure to years of howling gales. In be junction of two pinnacles of rock where the caff was built, the wind boiled up the snow so that it danced as if in a tornado’s grip. Snow had drifted to the side of the building nearest the inker to a depth of three feet, up to the windows. It was an odd place to find a caff, but it seemed to suit the couple who ran it. It did a fair business. Not tonight, however. There wasn’t another lorry or car in the big park.
Jerry hobbled his way to the door and pushed inside.
Brenda was already drinking. She was in the act of lighting a cigarette when they came in.
“Shut door quick!” she yelled. “It’s bloody frozen! And I’m not staying here long either!”
Raybould himself was at the counter, hidden from view by a large coffee urn except for the top of his bald head which shone damply in the white neon lighting. He emerged as he heard the door slam shut.
“Hello, Bill!” he called. “You look like Father Christmas—and you look perished,” he added to Jerry.
“I got stuck walking,” said Jerry. “I can’t get back to Sheffield—”
“That you can’t! Road’s blocked t’other side of Hathersage! Just got it from Radio Sheffield!”
“Found him near frozen,” said Bill. “He’d been up Toller Edge.”
Jerry didn’t want a discussion of his encounter with near-death. He shivered, the hot delirium he had felt in the cab returning once more.
“So have you a bed for the night?” he stuttered.
“Aye! You as well, Bill?”
“No. Brenda and me’s pushing on.”
“l wouldn’t,” Raybould said. He was glancing from Bill to Brenda with a wet excitement in his slightly bulbous blue eyes. Jerry could see his nose twitching, as if he were on a strong scent. His features were small, clustered in the middle of his face—eyes, nose, mouth, all scrunched together, alert like a stoat’s.
Brenda saw the look he gave her and snorted. She took her tea across to the big coal fire that blazed furiously into the brick chimney; she sat on a low chair beside a big brass coal-scuttle that Jerry didn’t recall seeing before. But it had been summer then, so perhaps it had been out of sight; there was no call for such a fire when the High Peak was warm and friendly. The two men, Raybould and Bill, talked about the state of the roads to Manchester; Bill was confident that his big red tanker would get through. He wouldn’t stop to put on chains, just for a cup of tea. And he wouldn’t let Jerry pay after all.
“No need for that, lad,” Bill said. “I was glad to help. Doesn’t need paying for. How’s the ankle?”
“Fall, did you?” called Raybould. “We get a lot of broken legs. Those buggers who do the climbing. You’d think they’d know what they were about, what with ropes and helmets and that. But they’re always falling off. We buried one over Christmas.”
Jerry’s heart lurched. He was back on the face momentarily, sick with the realisation that the rock jug had been knocked off and that he’d committed himself to going up. He saw Brenda’s thin smile. She had ungenerous but pretty red lips turned both up and down in an expression 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