Maggie Gee - The Ice People

Words tumbled out, a river of protest. ‘They aren’t monks. Not real monks. I was having a look round, I went to the wrong door, the room was full of bones. Dirty yellow bones, with these foul dried shreds … Maybe that sausage we were eating at dinner. Dad, please listen. And in another room, there were all these documents, passports, birth certificates, from so many countries, piled on a desk. I think they were stolen, they take them from travellers. She promised me she would follow you — she knew they wouldn’t let you go out together —’

‘We can’t leave Briony in there, helpless.’

‘She isn’t helpless. She’s got that big gun. It’s in her bag. The great big black one.’

I was speechless for a moment. ‘But that won’t help her. She can’t bloody shoot —’

‘Dad, she wasn’t just lucky, last night. Briony was Wicca’s Weapons Officer. She was exArmy. Then she quarrelled with Juno —’ I seemed to be losing my grasp of all this, but I dimly remembered something Sarah told me, ‘our Weapons Officer’, I hadn’t believed her — ‘Dad, let’s go .’ He was pulling my arm. ‘Dad, come on. We’ve got to start the car. You start it, I’ll drive, she can jump in the back.’

I’d occasionally let Luke take the wheel on straight stretches of road, because he wanted to learn — No, this was all wrong. I had to go and get her. Get another gun, and go in to find her. I couldn’t shoot lefthanded, but I’d wave it around — I ran to the car, every step hurting.

I started the engine and left it running, pulled open the back door on a wave of pain and began to search for the canvas bag. Briony had moved it when she got out the shotgun — women always have to move things around — and then my hand touched the icy canvas of the bag and I yanked out the Kalashnikov, triumphant. I loaded it lefthanded, switched it to auto –

And saw her coming, backing out very fast from the blaze of snow and light at the door. Mygod, she was shooting. One blast then another. It was like the mountain cracking, like bolts from the gods, the darkness exploding, and I hefted the Kalashnikov and ran towards her, but she screamed, ‘Go! Get Luke away! Get in the fucking car, Saul!’

I couldn’t lift my gun with my right. I changed it, awkwardly, to the left, and shot off a burst to the side somewhere. At least this way they would think she had cover, two lots of noise, two guns blazing –

By now Luke had started the car and was driving it round in a big erratic loop, the back door flapping open like a damaged wing. But what was he doing? Mygod, he was going too near the house. At any moment they’d be shooting back. He was going to fetch Briony, of course –

In that split second my choice was made, and ever since I’ve had to live with it. Of the two of them I had to save my son, and I ran after the car. I banged on the side, scrambled in, and wrenched at the wheel. Thankgod that the car was lefthand drive: I changed his course, away, back to the road. I don’t suppose he knew what I was doing, the deafening noise, the snow, the darkness, and now the robed figures were shooting back, and Briony was down on one knee, mygod she was good, aiming, pumping, then she was backing, zigzagging, shooting from the hip, great flashes of fire bursting from her arms and jolting her each time she shot –

And then her course became strangely erratic. She looked as though she were dancing, ducking. A terrible slowness took over her steps. She held on to the gun, she was staggering, falling, and just before she fell to the ground –

Ohgod. Ohgod. This I never forgot. I have never been able to remember this without a stab of grief and guilt, although I think I am immune to guilt.

At the very last moment she turned, and stared, and she called something, and I think it was ‘Saul’ — be honest, bastard, it was ‘ Help me, Saul ,’ it was, godforgiveme, a faint call for help, after saving our lives, she knew she was dying, and she wanted, then at the last, not to die. She hoped after all that someone might help her, after a short lifetime when no one had helped her, and I loved her, didn’t I? I’d have to go –

But our car was already veering away, things happen too fast, and chances are lost, it was already too late, I know that it was, they were slamming her with bullets that jerked her about like a broken doll, the shame, the horror, and I saw out of the corner of my eye, as I yelled at my son to drive off down the mountain, that half her face had been blown away.

Briony. Briony.

She called for help, in Roncesvalles Pass, but it was too late, and no one came.

Iwas mad, and ill, for days, maybe a week, after Briony died, and my memories are dreamlike, tiny bright clearings in fogs of despair–

I was saved by my son. He saved me. I had thought I was saving him.

Of all the deaths, hers was the worst.

(That’s why I feel nothing but a turning of my stomach when I think about what happened to Chef. I quite liked the feeling there were two of us around, two grizzly beards, two oldtimers — I didn’t mind him, but he wasn’t a friend, I wouldn’t call him that, he hardly gave me the time of day when I went in to collect the scraps. When I first arrived I tried to talk to him about the Parisian restaurants I’d known, about Lapérouse with its private booths, its rosy rooms and red jewels of beef, where Sarah and I once had illicit sex and managed to get our clothes straight by dessert — but he cut me off, he was sour and grumpy. ‘I don’t want to know about your life,’ he said, ‘You don’t want to know about mine, pigé? This is our life. This vile pissoir .’ … He can’t have expected me to save him.

It happened on the other side of the airport. Perhaps I guessed but I’m busy, you see, I’m an old man and time is short — perhaps I guessed, but I stayed in the shadows. They made the fire flatter and neater than usual, more like a bed, a burning bed. They brought him out as it was getting dark, it was a brilliant night after a bloody sunset, the first stars were just coming out, the flames were starting to glow dull orange. He looked smaller than he was, carried by the boys. He was a big man, fat, who ate as he cooked. He ate too much, they said, they claimed — He had dark red cheeks and a great pot belly and knots of grease in his thick grey beard, I saw him every day, I remember him well, but last night he looked shrunken, and his face was gashed. I think he’d been ill; that was why he stopped cooking. Here no one is allowed to be ill.

He had an apple in his mouth. His mouth was forced open; the fruit was like a tongue, a great round tongue, smooth and bursting. It came from his store, where he kept the best things the expeditions brought back, to serve at celebrations. A yellowred apple, which caught the light. They brought him past me, as close as they could, so I had to look at him. Much too close. ‘You say goodbye,’ Kit croaked at me. ‘You say goodbye to your skivey friend. Monsieur bloody fucking fatboy Chef. Now he feed us again, don’t he? What you think? Huh?’

I try not to think about him at all. But I did feel sick. And — well, nervous. That massive belly must have spat and crackled — it hung on the air, the smell of meat.

Just two more days, and I’ll be back to my tasks, and then no one can say I’m skivey –

No, I think they’ve already decided.)

My health is good, I am rarely ill, but after Briony died my system crashed. Exhaustion, pain, a raging fever — most of my memories of those days must be real, but they don’t join up, they don’t make sense.