A damburst of light from what seemed like an enormous furniture van flooded his eyes, a burning of pupils and orbs that forced him to drop gear but, as if the juggernaut needed to see from one county to the next, its driver flicked on reinforcements, one high-intensity beam after the other sweeping the way clean.
King of the road, the black pantechnicon trundled on, a bandstand blast of its klaxon responding to the squeak of terror from Daniel’s horn as he expected the van to be struck along the edge like a box of matches. He swung clear in time, and the length of a lay-by sent him safe along a band of gravel.
He wanted to chase the vehicle, stop it somehow, and murder the driver. He might even know him: one of the dimwitted pig-ignorant kids now grown up whom he had laboured to educate and civilize. He cursed the driver because on the swerve Daniel had screamed in fear at the explosion he thought was inevitable, and now above the noise of the engines he imagined the driver and his mate or mates laughing at his panic, gleeful at what they had done, nothing in front but heaven’s white light, a joke to last the rest of their shabby lives.
He had failed the test, except that he had survived and therefore had not, needed to steady himself with a couple of doubles, but the stench of his breath would tell them, and booze on active service was punishable by injury or worse, the rules stipulating nothing less than the whitest probity.
The engine was throaty, but healthy enough, yet gave a roar on him pressing the clutch, as if the plates needed looking at. He increased speed, hating the pestilence of swarming flakes sent to torment him alone.
Asking where Daddy had gone his mother told him: ‘He’s dead and buried.’ If she had said only: ‘He’s dead,’ he would have understood, but dead and buried showed his father in a coffin and never entirely dead, struggling in the dark and unable to breathe.
Ribbed snow lay where no car had made a mark. If they had, it was soon covered. The sides of the road could no longer be seen, though he glimpsed a tree, all but its head buried, cold arms and rags of white scurrying in the wind.
He couldn’t tell her of his horror in case she thought him soft like his father. When she questioned him as to how he felt he knew she would like to hear about his terrifying worries, even if only to show that he loved her and was for ever part of her. But he had never talked to her openly, as afraid of her as if his father had been born again in him.
A scuffing along the belly made the van feel like a boat speeding through turbulent water, every mile saturating his underclothes with sweat. He crossed from rut to rut, sculpting new ones, a skidding zigzag yet staying afloat. She died because he had never spoken. Dig your own grave, and others fall in. She had fed him, bought his books and clothes, but she dug the grave, fell in first. She dug her own grave right from the start, ran from her family and was cast off because they were Catholic. After his Protestant father was sent to jail she went back to the Church, though never to her family. You didn’t need to dig your own grave. Others would do it for you.
Wheels fought the deeper snow. He hadn’t thought so gloomily on other trips, only by himself in his room, but when called to action he regained clear thinking, a purposeful alacrity. Maybe the snow was an intimation that he was going to die. Their intelligence section hadn’t accounted for the weather, or the task was so urgent they knew they could rely on him to get the stuff through. But a white-out was different and, after a nervous unforeseen slewing across the road, a snowbank pulled him into a lay-by and wouldn’t let go.
He jerked the van back and forth in its soft jaws, raced the engine, swore, banged the dashboard — and maligned God. Attacked by the impossible, he closed all systems, and sat a few minutes through the silence he imagined his father enduring in the coffin. He pulled painfully at his moustache so as to stay in the world and think, while a white veil covered the windscreen.
There was a light in the distance. He couldn’t tell how far off, whether house or farm. He would shelter and use the telephone, though it seemed no longer a matter of getting through but of saving his life, so he fought his way along the road like a swimmer, bitter cold pushing wet and then icy against ankles and knees, abandoning an amount of explosive that, if touched off, would at the worst blow the empty road apart.
SIX
Eileen took a Michelin map from the glove box, its colours suffused by the light of his torch. ‘I suppose we’re heading for Bakewell?’
The car trundled under a railway bridge. ‘That’s right.’
A winding valley of snow caught in the mainbeam didn’t like their attempt at straightening. ‘I could buy a tart,’ she said.
More traffic, so he dipped the headlights and slowed, put them on again, but again had to dip. He seemed to have been in the car for ever. In the office or at home he could go the regular time between meals, but when motoring he felt sick if he did not eat every hour or so. Every feeling should have been coloured and distorted by the fatal fracas at home, but it wasn’t. He could forget for minutes at a time that it had happened, which made him happy and afraid in turn, a rhythm slowly changing him to a state of weary indifference. ‘The shops will be closed,’ he told her.
She supposed he didn’t want to talk, but what the hell? ‘When I was at school we put on plays.’ He smiled at her embarrassment at having been to such a place. ‘I liked acting, though. I got second prize one Christmas because I helped to stitch the clothes as well. My part wasn’t big. All I had to do was run onto the stage with my hair flying and arms akimbo — that’s what it said: arms akimbo! I thought I was supposed to be Dumbo the Elephant! — and then I had to shout at the top of my voice: “Fire! The place is burning down, and you’ll all be killed if you don’t leave by the nearest available exit!” That was my part. By the time I’d finished they’d all pushed by me, and I still stood there, as if I was sniffing the smoke. Then I ran off. It was a comedy, and because everybody laughed at me I got second prize.’
Snowflakes drove horizontally, ones and twos burning up into the beams like moths, drops of water on the windscreen tackled by the wipers. He was glad when she became too fascinated by the sight to talk. Then they ran in dozens, like soldiers on patrol searching out weak points along the runway of lights. ‘I’ve always hated the stuff, even when I was a kid. Others loved it and ran out in it to play, shouting and squealing, as if it weren’t cold. But I got chilblains, and hated it.’
Legions of flakes pelted in, the space in front shaped like a cone, the steering wheel at the narrow end. He made tracks along the whitened road, hard to see the edges or gauge the true lie of the camber. Caution was coated with anxiety as he slowed and hoped the tyres would grip. ‘It’s like a canal of milk,’ she said. ‘We should have brought our skis.’
‘It’s not thick enough.’ Now he was glad of her soothing chat. Gwen would have implied that the weather was his fault, which in a way it would have been, since he had been aware of its advent before turning into the hills. ‘But I forgot mine. Why didn’t you bring yours?’
‘They’re at the cobblers,’ she said, ‘being soled and heeled.’ Headlights burned from behind, so he slowed enough to let the car race on into the storm. ‘The suicide club. The world’s full of ’em, especially up North.’ She took off her jacket. ‘It’s as warm as toast in here. I was going to learn to drive once, but my boy friend had to sell his car because he was on the rock.’
He thought of Gibraltar. ‘The what?’
‘The rock and roll — the dole. He only got twenty-five quid for it. A real old cronk, all rusty and no MOT. But he wouldn’t teach me how to drive. I think he hated me. He didn’t even want me to talk. He was bone idle, though. Even when he had a job he took the day off whenever he felt like it. He would sit all the time. When he wasn’t sucking fags he was supping ale. And when he wasn’t supping ale he was sucking fags. And when he wasn’t doing both at the same time he was shouting at me. He was bored, I suppose. He didn’t even take much notice of me when we went to bed.’