The fire in him could not be put out by snow, though the vicious wind might extinguish it before shelter was reached. He knew he would not die, the blaze giving no say in the matter, a question of live now and perish later if you must, because if the police didn’t kick him into a catatonic state or put him in a place for so long that he would wish he had died, then the people waiting in Coventry would track him down and, as the awesome phrase had it in order to terrify, ‘blow him away’.
So up and over the powdery snow, into a stinging veil of wind that whoever was caught in it felt it was out to get them and nobody else. Followed by a woman so close he sometimes fancied he could hear her breathing even above the tigerish rage of the gale, he couldn’t see her when he turned, the sound being his own. As he scrambled hands and knees to the summit of the wave, no energy to spare for looking back, she was the last person in his life, and he must go on loving her for that.
He was the only person in her life, and she had nowhere else to go because her own sort had cast her out, and there was no turning back except that she didn’t know how the move had been made, always the blinding light of non-comprehension, snaring her in like a moth trap, the process then carrying her along. She had followed mutely after a kiss, overcoats and galoshes quickly sought in case someone should try to hold them back, then the door closing fatally behind.
Floundering with frozen hands he used an interior compass to try for the lay-by where he had left his van which the unthinking bikers had brought to the hotel, didn’t know why he wanted to get to that blemished spot, but followed the markings of the road between wall tops visible now that his eyes were accustomed to the darkness through swirling snow.
Map and compass would be useless in this continent of wild attacks from every direction. He had done orienteering on Dartmoor in winter for the school. A boy in a stream netting specimens had lost a shoe, sucked off by the current. Daniel splashed in bare feet to rescue it, and gave the boy his own dry socks and shoes after yanking him clear. The boy never realized his peril, and Daniel hoped he would not lose his own feet from frost-bite before reaching safety.
He saw flashes as of light bulbs breaking because of too much light, eyes as exhausted as his limbs, eyes unmercifully bombarded that could take no more, pain so great he kept them closed as on and up and through, he had to get there, though no longer knew where there was, nor what he would find.
Sally had to draw back so as not to collide with his hunched form, wondered whether he wouldn’t collapse before reaching a farm. She was freezing alive, starting to burn in a fire, wasn’t tired yet dreaded ice and fire in collision forcing her to stop. Reality had come back after leaving the hotel and its awful people, life had meaning again, the urge to win through. Never had she thought to meet such types (didn’t they call them ‘punters’?) who wouldn’t show the vaguest comprehension of a man like Daniel, no sympathy with ideals which, though leading to unjustified violence, needed to be forgiven. Faced with the unfamiliar, they turned into killers set on murdering him and her as well, so better go into the snow, Daniel had said, as they stood by the window.
She followed him towards the door, the storm drawing her fatally because she wanted to find out whether she could defeat what the elements were able to throw against her. And as for whether she had done right, now that she had done it she must believe that she had.
Absence of landmarks sapped his power, and he didn’t know if he would recognize the lay-by when he reached it. He prayed to the moon, a different man to the one who had been in charge of explosives for the Cause: rational, courageous, certain of himself, unthinking you might say. Wherever the moon was, knowledge of its existence permitted him to go on, praying to it because it was the last ally he could have.
Hope pulled him as if with a rope attached, told him that in a few days he would be back at school, no one living to connect him to the explosion. Those in the hotel couldn’t possibly get the van out of the courtyard, and would be obliterated. Even the men in Coventry would hardly blame him for his failure. Life must go on, but what about the woman behind, who was the only witness?
THIRTY-TWO
If allowed to go on working they would use that reserve of strength which should only be kept for the final effort, so Keith signalled a way back to shelter. ‘The snow’ll need clearing again in half an hour,’ Lance said as they went in. ‘Look how it’s coming down.’
‘It’s only dusting,’ Wayne told him. ‘We’ll scuff it away with our toecaps. It won’t stop the tyres.’
Arms of light went up the walls and across the ceiling like rapid columns on an army map, flames arrowing almost to the mantel shelf. Lance unzipped. ‘Where did all that wood come from?’
Alfred, a hump of grief near the fire, reached for another broken chair and threw it on as if it were the imp from hell that had caused all his troubles. Fred had given up on spinning out his supply of fueclass="underline" the wood pile had melted down, and he was rummaging for half planks and bits of old beam, the remnants of builders’ rammel coated with dust and congealed whitewash which gave off spectacular tongues of green flame.
‘He’s already cleared the spare room.’ Parsons was encouraged and made cheerful by this systematic gutting of the hotel, and nodded towards Alfred. ‘I expect he’ll start on the stuff in here next.’
‘Not if I know it.’ Fred laid soup plates and spoons on three tables put together, which Enid had spread with the whitest cloth from one of his personal cupboards in a box room off the kitchen. Where the devil did she find the key? he wondered but, saying nothing to her about it, turned on Alfred and Parsons. ‘You two are like a pack of barmy schoolkids. You should have a bit more respect for other people’s property. Not that I expect you to understand a thing like that, though.’
‘At least Alfred’s making the place a bit more cheerful.’ Parsons spoke to Keith so that none of the others could hear. ‘We took a kitchen knife off him half an hour ago. He would have done a tidy bit of damage with a weapon like that. Aaron jumped him from behind. It was quite a scuffle.’
With such people the administration of the crisis took on its own momentum, Keith smiled. The bomb maniac and his woman would die in the snow, and good riddance. And that lunatic who’d had his father die on him had given himself the duty of keeping them halfway warm, lips jabbering out the list of his misfortunes.
I must be a fool, Alfred said to his own picture not far in front of his staring eyes, and feeling an intense conviction he hadn’t noticed in himself for a long time, to get so upset at seeing my father’s worn-out carcass tipped unceremoniously into the snow, when I was wanting him dead during the drive here. That’s the proof you love somebody, when you wish every day they would kick the bucket. His, after all, sudden departure for the happy hunting grounds had put the kaibosh on Bognor, and no mistake. I won’t break my heart twice a day from now on wondering if they’re doing the right thing by him, or forget to post off the monthly cheque. When this bit of bother’s over I’ll give him a decent burial, and then get back to happy working days.
He took the leg from a chair and hit the frame of one already on the fire. Sparks singed his face but he let them fade out rather than take any trouble in brushing them off, then threw the rest of the chair on, telling the sparks to be more careful with his skin next time round. The fire was a wolf trying to come for them out of the snow, flames its arms, sparks its claws, a raving animal which would stay in its place only for as long as plentiful wood was slung into its jaws, and he thought about the even more than halcyon days now that his father had departed. Funny how you didn’t imagine dying yourself till your father had copped it, God in Heaven’s way of letting you know for sure that one day the same would happen to you.