Snowstop Read Online Free PDF Page A

diary, which he later showed with inane pride: ‘1545 hrs. Baby born. Seven and one half pounds. Call her Jane. No, Sally.’
    â€˜Oh, I don’t really remember.’
    From then on she tried to keep out of his way, but they were married in six months, drawn moth-like to the flame of zodiacal coincidence, which ever since had kept them in a firm matrimonial grip, or prevented them ever getting to know each other. Occasional quarrels were not enough, she thought, to justify his glib assertion that ‘We disagree so much that we get on like a house on fire.’ All the same, their meeting at the hostel seemed as fated as any arranged marriage, and they had either never been unhappy enough to separate, or at times too unhappy to separate, while the casualty rate among their friends had been so appalling that they knew no one who was married for the first time.
    A black pantechnicon stalled in a bank of mist beyond some cottages, only one rear light visible and no blinkers going. She was so distracted by a man crossing the road that her car glanced the side of the stationary vehicle. To pull up would have left her half on the road, and being just over the summit of a slight rise there was the likelihood of cars overtaking at suicidal speed and crashing into hers. The only safety was in going on, wanting no argument with men who might be even more unpleasant because she was a woman. The barely audible glancing suggested that any damage was little more than superficial to both parties. She wondered in fact whether any contact had been made at all, and that she hadn’t imagined a touch of the car against the stalled and lurking monster.
    Nevertheless, she was trembling, no lights anywhere but her own, snowed-up hedges like loaded camels by the roadside ready for the trip to some Samarra of the North Pole. The weather babble had not prepared her for a blizzard. Or maybe it had, for she had kept the radio on most of the day, but hadn’t taken in the vital words. The flash of a bare tree frightened her more than the thickening carpet in front, though from confidence that the car would get her anywhere, she was afraid of becoming entombed.
    Stuff and nonsense, she laughed, going back to baby language in a crisis. Trundle trundle great big teddy bear car, are you going very far? Far enough, on such a night, the engine sturdy and the dashboard bright. There were no lights in houses passed, dead walls side on to the road, and any that could be seen were as dim as if those inside already sat around a candle.
    Snow made the world raw, sent everybody back to the cave age, and though kids might think it fun, all in all she did not like to be out, which was hilarious when you mulled on how the country seized up in six inches of snow. Even Mrs Thatcher’s true-blue Britain hadn’t solved that one, though you’d think it wouldn’t be so difficult, with so many people on the dole.
    Islands of snow, in which shores were indistinct and flattening at the glass, were pushed aside by wipers turning more and more sluggard. A corridor of winter trees dropped bomb pies from overweighted branches. Or the wind flicked them, hard to say what the hell in such an ambush, catapults at all angles turning the air to chaos.
    Brakes on, the wheels locked, windscreen showing what she hardly dare drive into, feet controlled by the strutwires of instinct. A group of buildings dimly along the road, but could she slide the bumps that far? Lights called her on to keep going, play the feet and hands, piano and violin to win even a metre, a few rolls forward.
    How safe the place was, good or bad, she couldn’t know. It wouldn’t have to matter, she had to weave along the snow, white woolly ruts building around the tyres The gates came close, she grazed the post and then after more manoeuvring was in, following the PARKING sign and across the courtyard between two other vehicles forming the dead end of a white glove thrown