Ice Diaries (23 page)

As we reached the door, Morgan held out
his arm in front of us and stopped. “Someone’s coming,”
he muttered. “Turn the torches off. Don’t move.” We
stood in the utter blackness, listening. I could smell Archie’s
aftershave and hear his breathing above the faint scratchings of
rats. Then I saw a small bobbing light approaching from our left, the
chemist’s where we had been, and heard soft footsteps. The
shadowy figure of a man appeared in the snow tunnel, and Morgan
jumped him. The man’s torch fell and rolled to one side.

Morgan yelled, “Tori! Light!”
I shone my torch on the newcomer – Hong – being careful
to keep the beam out of Morgan’s eyes. They punched and grabbed
at each other, dodging and kicking. Not many of the punches landed,
they were both too good at evasive action. Then Hong got hold of
Morgan and tripped him. They crashed to the ground, Hong on top. They
grappled, and I couldn’t tell who was winning. Hong lay
sideways across Morgan, awkwardly thumping his head. Morgan twisted
like a snake and they were upright again, crouching, each trying to
get the advantage. I noticed Archie was gripping my arm. Suddenly
Hong threw a punch. Morgan’s foot lashed out unbelievably fast
and connected with Hong’s jaw. He fell like a tree, bounced and
lay still. Morgan knelt and started going through his pockets.
Torchlight flashed on another sled key. Hong groaned and stirred.

Morgan gripped the neck of his jacket.
“Where’s your sled?”

“If I tell you, he kill me.”

“I’ll kill you if you
don’t. Or maybe just break your arm, which comes to the same
thing. Where is it?”

Hong said nothing and Morgan punched
him. Archie said, “You shouldn’t hit a man when he’s
down,” which was the first time I’d ever heard that
phrase used literally.

“He’s only got to tell me
where his sled is and I won’t.” Morgan’s attention
went back to Hong. He hit him again. “Mike won’t know you
told me.”

“Building south of Bézier.
Not far. Roof sticks out.”

“That’s the truth, is it,
because if it’s not you’ll regret it.”

Hong nodded and Morgan got to his feet,
rubbing his knuckles.

“Are you all right?”
Archie’s voice.

“Yeah,” said Morgan.

“I meant him.” Archie
stooped beside Hong as he propped himself unsteadily on one elbow and
spat.

“Leave him if you want us to go
and get Eddie. He’ll be okay.”

Archie picked up Hong’s torch and
handed it to him. “Can you get yourself back on your own?”
He nodded sullenly, and Archie levered himself uncertainly to his
feet. None of us was having a great evening, but poor old Archie was
having a truly rotten time dealing with one difficult choice after
another, struggling to do the right thing.

Snow whipped in my face when we came
out of the doorway at the top of the stairs and turned towards my
erstwhile home. My legs ached as I wearily plodded behind Morgan, my
feet in his tracks like Good King Wenceslas’s page. A snippet
of the carol went round and round in my head, and I couldn’t
remember the rest;

“
Sire, the night is darker
now, and the wind blows stronger;

Fails my heart, I know not how; I
can go no longer.
”

I had a bad feeling we’d find
Eddie dead under a mound of snow, and if he was dead, then Morgan
would have killed him. I didn’t like the thought of Morgan
being a killer. And I’d bear some responsibility for not going
with Archie to help him twenty minutes earlier because I was afraid
of Mike. I prayed he would be alive and without frostbite. We rounded
the corner of Bézier. The fire was almost out, just a few
small flames tenaciously licking the wooden floor of the balcony,
spitting at the snow. A great scorch mark stained the building right
to the top. All my panes of glass had cracked, and some of them
fallen out. There was a horrible smell of burnt things that are not
supposed to burn. Puddles of sticky black goo were all that remained
of my solar lights. The inside of the flat wasn’t gutted, but
smoke had blackened the parts near the windows and, open to the
elements, it was no longer fit for human habitation. I wanted to cry.
I looked towards where Eddie had been. Nothing, no human-shaped heap
of snow.

“Tori!” Greg’s voice,
from inside my flat. An indistinct shape waved at me. We made our way
across the balcony and through the twisted glassless door, and saw
Eddie next to him huddled on the sofa in front of the glowing window
of my stove.

“Thank goodness,” Archie
murmured, hurrying over. “Bless you, Greg.” Eddie’s
white bandage was now red and his eyes, which had always been rather
piggy, were so swollen he could barely see out of them. His nose was
bleeding copiously and must have been extremely painful; but apart
from his bruises he was a normal colour and breathing through his
mouth, so it could have been a lot worse.

Greg turned my way. “I saw the
flames and came in case you needed me, then I found Eddie. He’s
not very well. I think perhaps he’d better stay at my flat,
when he’s had a rest and can walk there. Do you want to too,
Tori?”

“Ah, thanks, Greg, I might take
you up on that. I’m so pleased you rescued Eddie. I thought
he’d be done for, lying in the snow.”

“He could stay with us,”
Archie volunteered. “We’ve got more space than Greg, and
I’m sure Nina would be happy to nurse him. Though he really
needs a doctor …”

“Neither of you need bother,”
said Morgan. “Bastard set fire to Tori’s flat. I’m
going to take him to the Elephant and Castle and dump him. Where’s
your sled, Eddie?”

Eddie had sat apathetically while we
discussed his immediate future, and now flinched and gave Morgan a
hangdog look. There was no fight left in him. “South of here,
low building with an overhanging roof.”

Morgan turned to go.

“I’m coming with you,”
I said quickly. “You need me to drive one of the sleds.”
I didn’t want to stay in the remains of my flat, particularly
with Mike around somewhere.

Morgan smiled at me. “I wasn’t
going to leave you behind.”

Archie said he’d stay with the
others till we got back.

“Hang on.” I ran and got
the champagne bottle out from under my bed and gave it to Greg, just
in case. “If Eddie looks like getting aggressive, hit him with
this.”

For a few minutes I didn’t say
anything. I’d definitely had enough of walking, and my leg
muscles were protesting, but at least the snow was falling less
thickly than before.

After a while I said, “I’m
glad Eddie’s okay. I was afraid he’d be dead.”

“He can’t have been
unconscious very long. Archie must have turned up just after we left,
Greg soon after that. He was lucky.”

There was a pause, while I tried to put
my muddled thoughts into words. All I came up with was, “Doesn’t
it worry you, beating people up when it may kill them?”

“Yes and no. It’s different
in the cage where there are rules and a ref and a medic standing by.
D’you think I should have let Eddie carry on throwing petrol on
the fire, or given Hong what he came for?”

“No … I just wasn’t
sure how I’d feel if you’d killed him.”

He glanced at me. “I probably
killed a few people when I was in the army.”

“That’s different …”

“I’m not so sure. A life is
a life. You’ve taken a man’s future away from him.”

We’d reached what had to be the
right building, barely one storey sticking out, long and low with a
pagoda-like flat roof. We walked down its length, turned right at the
corner and there they were, two sleds side by side half-covered in
white drifts. There was a Snowmobile Fairy after all, and she’d
smiled on us. My heart lightened and I did a little dance in the
snow. Morgan picked me up and whirled me round – his foot
slipped and he fell into the soft powder with me on top of him. We
kissed, a thorough kiss that belonged indoors with fewer clothes and
plenty of time. I felt warm and tingly right down to my toes.
Eventually he released me and we got up, brushing off snow and gazing
at each other.

“What was that for?”

“Because we’re the best.
And we’ve got transport again.”

He flipped me a key, and we each rode a
sled back to my flat. It was nice not to be walking. Greg and Archie
helped Eddie over the balcony railing and on to the back of Morgan’s
sled, then Greg went home. Archie got on behind me so I could drop
him off at the Barbican. After that we headed through the driving
snow and the dark towards the Elephant and Castle.

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

Strata won three awards when it was
built; the 2010 Carbuncle Award, ‘for the ugliest building in
the United Kingdom completed in the last twelve months’, and
two rather more favourable ones, the names of which I’ve
forgotten. It used to be referred to locally as Isengard after the
fortress in Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
, or the Razor,
though it more resembles an enormous electric shaver. I’d never
seen it in real life. It’s triangular in section, with two
walls curved and one flat, and a 45 degree slice off the top. At the
apex, three wind turbines sit in round holes, designed to provide 8%
of the power consumed by the building. Much was made of this green
aspect at the time; now London consumes no power at all and has the
carbon footprint of an unwashed ant with sedentary habits …

As we approached, thirty-odd storeys
loomed over us, and I noticed lights shining all along the snow line,
with lit windows here and there for six or seven levels above –
I got quite excited, not having seen electric lights for a year.
Morgan circled the building and stopped next to a huge brightly-lit
window, one of a row divided by white panels. Two sleds were parked
outside, Serena’s and what must have been BJ’s. Peering
through the condensation trickling down the glass, I recognized the
communal hall Serena had described. You could see where walls had
been removed to make it into a big open L-shaped space. People sat
around tables chatting, or milled at the bar, or played table
football. Some had laptops. Two women behind a counter served
steaming food. A man strummed a guitar. There was an area with sofas
and violet Arne Jacobsen swan chairs, children running about, and
three people juggling in a corner.

“That’ll do,” said
Morgan. “We’ll leave him there.”

We parked the sleds outside and walked
to the only entrance, an incongruous panelled door fitted into a
window space blocked with boards. It wasn’t locked, and led to
a small room leading on to the Hall. We passed a noticeboard with
handwritten cards, and I hung back to take a quick look. You could
have a hot bath for 60g (how I’d love that) or a professional
wash, cut and blow dry for 20g. What was a ‘g’? Gold
something? Water cost 3g a litre. Among offers of babysitting, odd
jobs and things for sale were adverts for Indian Head Massages 5g,
hand-made jewellery, weed at 8g a gram, and Tarot or rune readings,
3g. I saw what Serena had meant when she called the people here
time-warp hippies. I caught up with the others.

Inside was warm, with smells of cooking
and humanity and a buzz of music and conversation. Faces nearest to
us looked up. David sat on a far sofa talking to a woman in a red top
I guessed must be Katie. She was okay-looking, a bit big on the hips,
with the expression of one who knew her own mind. Though I was no
longer keen on David, I can’t say I felt much enthusiasm
towards her. A carrycot lay on the seat beside them. Morgan headed
purposefully in their direction. Eddie shuffled behind making
horrible sniffing and snorting noises, with me bringing up the rear.

Morgan stopped in front of David. “Hi
doc.” David glanced up and as he recognized Morgan his smile
disappeared. “I’ve brought you your patient back.”

David’s gaze moved to Eddie,
whose pulped face and bloody clothes looked much more striking in the
bright light, and his expression morphed from suspicion to outrage.
He jumped to his feet. “Did you do this?”

“Yes,” said Morgan, simply.

David’s voice went up. “What
kind of Neanderthal are you?” People nearby stopped talking and
turned to listen and stare. “D’you know how much damage
you did to his nasal bones and septal cartilage the first time and
just how tricky it was to align? Without anaesthetics? The one thing
he didn’t need was more trauma to the same site.”

Morgan turned to study Eddie. “Yeah,
he does look a mess, doesn’t he? I guessed he might need a bit
of medical attention. That’s why I brought him back to you to
sort out. Plus if I’m honest, we’d had enough of him.”

David looked at him with revulsion.
“Mike was right. You’re a psycho.”

Morgan took a step forward and said
amiably, “If I am, what are you going to do about it?”

Katie got to her feet and grasped
David’s arm. “Don’t talk to him.”

I felt it was time I joined this
conversation. “Eddie threw Molotov cocktails at my windows. If
Morgan hadn’t hit him I’d have done it myself. Less
efficiently, obviously.”

“Are you Tori?” Katie took
a firmer hold of David’s arm, apparently more worried I might
whisk him off and have my way with him than that Morgan would resent
being called a Neanderthal psycho and beat him up.

“Yes. And I am now homeless
because of what Eddie did to my flat.”

“Hi guys!” A voice behind
me made me turn. “What are you doing here? D’you fancy a
drink?” Serena, wearing jeans and a sloppy sweater. I was quite
pleased to see her. I realized I liked her a lot better than anyone
else I knew in the room, apart from Morgan. But hanging around where
Mike lived was asking for trouble.

“That would be nice, but we have
to go – we only came to drop Eddie off.”

Serena did a double-take at Eddie’s
face; I could see her decide to say nothing about the state he was
in. Avoiding our eyes, David took him away, Katie following with the
carrycot. I’d failed to tell him about Mike threatening Morgan.
I’d also missed the opportunity to check out little Tessa’s
sweetness rating. Probably lower than my godchild-elect’s.