A REALLY COLD SPELL

There's a lot of talk about the cost of heating these days...

It was the bleakest night of her life.

April Grey lay in her bed and watched as, through a gap in her almost drawn curtains, an icy pattern formed and slowly spread until it was out of sight behind the curtain. Outside a frozen moon sent its chilling warning to one and all. For some, the end of the world was nigh.

Downstairs, her husband Denis rattled some pans in the kitchen then was silent. He’d have settled down for the night, no televison, the cost of electricity forbade it. He slept down there because his arthritic bones could no longer manage those stairs. If he tried to go up, sitting on his bottom and edging upwards step by step, he ended up in so much pain it was unfair, so he slept on the settee with half their bed covers whilst she kept the other half.

Maybe a few coats? The thought struck her like the promise of candy might strike a child.

Which brought about a new chain of thought as she struggled to sit on the edge of her freezing bed before teetering to the top of the stairs. As a child she’d known frost on the inside of windows. She’d scratched her name in it while brother Billy had done what most small boys seemed to like doing and etched an image of his genitals in the frost, for the fun of doing it.

Down the stairs she went, slowly, it felt as if her bones had frozen together. There were several coats on hooks at the bottom of the stairs, hers and Denis’s, and she grabbed the big one he liked to go out in and carried it into the front room.

“This might help,” she croaked at him.

“Nothing can help,” he sighed back at her, his wheezing voice barely making it into the room.

“It’s so frigging cold,” she nodded, shivering herslef, and spread the coat over him where he lay. “It’ll most likely warm up soon. I thought this might help.”

“Can’t you light the fire?” he almost begged her.

“It’s gas, and there’s no way we can afford to pay what we owe let alone what switching it on would do to the bill,” she said, “you know what it is. Times are hard. We were warned by the Government.”

“The Government? Pah!” he said.

“They do their best, but it probably can’t be easy easy. Now you just be cosy and I’ll go back upstairs. There’s not room for the two of us on that settee.”

“There was when we were younger!” he reminded her.

“A lot of things were easier back then,” she sniffed. “Good night then, love, and sweet dreams.”

She returned to the coat rack and selected her heaviest coat, which wasn’t really heavy at all, and struggled back up the stairs.

She shouldn’t have left the bed to go down the stairs because the cold had got into it while she was gone and it felt as if it was actually made of ice.

“Maybe I could put a bit of heating on,” she thought, “they can’t know we’re freezing to death.”

Once she wouldn’t have even considered it. Once she would have balked at the idea of spending money she knew she didn’t have. Back then it would have been a question of honesty and decency. And her own mum had been the same. Have it when you can afford it, and not until then, that wise old woman would have said.

But we’re freezing to death, a voice inside her head said. It wasn’t her own voice, but the devil’s. Evil and trying to make her do the unforgivable, and get into debt. Mum had warned her about Satan and his wicked ways. He would talk her to a place in Hell soon as look at her because she’d always known that was the sort of thing he did.

Hell where the fires blaze… hell where it’s never cold…

Slowly she made her way back to the stairs, and down them. Tip-towing, hoping Denis wouldn’t hear her, Denis who had ears that could hear a fly fart they were so keen.

She went to the central heating boiler and stood in front of it. There was a button there, and she just had to press it. Then the place would warm up, the ice on the inside of the windows would melt away and everything would be rosy.

It would be better than freezing to death. At eighty, she was too young to die. She knew she was. And so was Denis at eighty-one. They were both too young to freeze to death. The Government would know that. They’d be forgiven. Probably even be given medals for bravery in the face of frost.

She stood there, staring at the button. Press it, and a little red light would come on, the boiler would burst into life and the radiators would start to glow with warmth. Everything would be right. Everything would be perfect.

But what if a policeman came and knocked their door? Came for the back money they owed for last quarter’s bill? Policemen were so threatening these days. She was scared of upsetting them because if she did there was no telling what they could do to her. Lock her up, probably, in a cold cell with no chance to drape her coat over her freezing body…

What was it the man in the Government said? Keep the money coming in so that the share holders were happy, then everything would be okay.

What are share holders, anyway?

She didn’t know but supposed she was glad they were being kept happy.

So what should she do? Press the button or let it be and creep back up to her bed and her warm winter coat?

That would be best. That would be safest. There wouldn’t be a policeman scowling at her if she just left that button alone and went up to her bed and tried to get a bit of sleep, would there?

It was a long way back up the stairs and she felt even colder. And so did her bed when she reached it. Not even her coat made it feel any warmer. The cold bit into her. The patterns it had etched on the inside of her windows blurred into a mishmash of swirling shapes in her mind even when she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

And the patterns became, to her freezing mind, like gigantic flakes of snow that would pile up over her, ice on ice, snow on snow, and something gave up inside her, something thought what the heck, let’s just let go, and, obediently, she let go.

Down stairs Denis felt just the same. Cold, he was, colder than ice. And lying still. That was best. It didn’t burn up any energy, did it? Just lie still and wait for summer.

The next day or maybe a day or two after that a policeman knocked her door. Someone had said there might be something wrong. And he found them, he on the settee downstairs in the living room, cold and dead, and she on her bed upstairs, just as dead.

“There’s been a crime here,” he muttered into his walkie talkie, “one hell of a crime, but the criminals are beyond our reach, sod them. I’d go to London and lock the b******s up if I dared, but who am ? Nobody, these days, that’s who I am.”

It was a quiet funeral, and the crematorium was very hot indeed. Shareholders in gas and other fuels were basking under a brilliant blue sky, somewhere the sun always shines and girls dance semi-naked for their delight.

And not one of them thought how Denis and April might be thought of as two dead people who paid for their sunshine break.

© Peter Rogerson 08.04.22