He switched on the radio to hear an old 'Black Sabbath' song:
'What you get and what you see
Things that don't come easily
Feeling happy in my vein
Icicles within my brain.'
"Good ol' Ozzie. But it's not drugs I need," he thought to himself.
There was a flurry of snow across the road. Once more the snow seemed to float up to the Land Rover.
"The snow did me proud," he mused, "things like that don't come easily to me these days but the snow certainly brought me something this year."
He sung on with the record:
Don't you think I know what I'm doing
Don't tell me that its doing me wrong
You're the one who's really a loser
This is where I feel I belong.'
A laugh, perhaps a little forced, "well it's not been me that's a loser. No, that was something special". His face became serious, sad and wistful, "Shame it couldn't last though." It was a blow, her going like that, more than he realised.
'Crystal world with winter flowers
Turns my day to frozen hours
Lying snowblind in the sun
Will my ice age ever come?'
His thoughts went back, remembering.
He had been coming up the pass, miles already from the town by the lake, when he had seen her. The windscreen wipers of his battered old Land Rover had been working hard trying to keep the snow from obscuring his vision - not that it was easy to see beyond the Land Rover anyway. The snow was falling thick and fast. As yet he was not concerned but even a Land Rover can have difficulty in too much snow. It was a relief to crest the summit. There would be no going back that day and the worst of the inclines was over. It was a fairly straight couple of miles to the farm now.
A warm kitchen and a cup of tea - 'Scordy,' in the local dialect. He would have to prepare it himself, there was no one waiting for him back at the farm.
Willet Dodd, 33 year old Cumbrian farmer, was not a bachelor but a divorcee. He still did not know quite what had gone wrong all those years ago. It hurt, it still hurt. Since school he had loved that girl and then one day he had come home to find her gone. It was not that she was an outsider. True, she had not been brought up on a hill farm, rather in the town, yet she should have known the score. Perhaps it was the loneliness, perhaps it was the emptiness all around, perhaps it had just been him. She had gone and her note had said how much she hated it all.
He had never understood what she meant by 'it all.' Had never seen her again. One morning she had been there, central to his life: the next gone.
She was not Mrs. Dodd anymore, was not even down in the town but the other side of the world apparently remarried and with kids. It still hurt and Willet was still alone. How he had wanted the old farm, where generations of Dodds had come and gone farming the land, alive with the sound of children, laughter and... Mary.
That had been years before and he had just kept on farming. Sheep, his dogs and him. And he had made a living, a lonely living but a living nonetheless and it was not as if he was exactly friendless. Other farmers, friends from school. Good friends whom he saw now and then. Perhaps down at the pub for an evening. Good to meet up at the Kirkstile, Britannia or down in the town.
The Land Rover purred and it was warm enough inside. The path of the road was still clear enough in his headlights, though the tarmac had long disappeared under cover of white snow. The wind that had been blowing as he had climbed the pass had dropped and the snow eased so it was just slowly falling, a little hypnotic in the myriad floating specks of white gently making their way to the ground in the light of his headlights.
And then he saw her. Willet braked, carefully though, so not to slide. It would neither do to skid off the road or into her. She looked a poor little thing, right done in. Willet surmised she had come out and up onto the fells for a run, a long run perhaps up ____ and along the Edge and then back down the pass or perhaps even further.
The girl had stopped in the glare of the headlights and Willet had jumped out into the snow with his dogs leaping from the back as if to round up the stray female. The girl looked frozen. Running shoes, singlet and little thin running shorts - not the clothing for a blizzard even with the inner warmth of the runner. Her fair hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her skin had that tight look from being really cold. Willet was pretty sure if he touched her thigh or arm they would be cold to the touch. And they were worth touching. Even with her face pinched from the cold, and she not exactly looking her best, he could see she was an attractive lass. An attractive lass in next to nothing. Good for a farmer to see but not like that, not half frozen. It was not safe for her to be out, not one little bit - dangerous in fact still miles from anywhere.
"Hop in," he said, opening the passenger door. It was not an offer or a request but a command. Willet was not going to debate the issue and the girl was too tired, too exhausted by the cold to do anything but obey. The wet noses of the dogs, their breath showing in the cold air pushed her towards the Land Rover.
"You shouldn't be out in this," he said climbing back into the warm cab. It was rather stating the obvious. The girl sat, hunched up, holding her legs. He could see her running things were soaked, a mixture of sweat and fallen snow warmed by her body to liquid and then considering returning to ice. She needed to get those wet things off and be wrapped in a towel. Even with her clearly in distress Willet could not help wondering what she would look like with those wet scraps of clothing removed before the towel came. He could see her nipples were like peas with the cold. Despite her predicament he felt a familiar hardening in his trousers. He smiled at her. The smile was meant to be encouraging and reassuring. In part it was him smiling at himself, at his typically male reaction.
