Snowstop Read Online Free PDF

down from she didn’t know where.

FIVE
    After setting out on the road Daniel never wanted to stop, though he hated driving at night, and therefore would like to do so as soon as practicable. The simplicities of life are all that matter, he mused, if only we can find them and keep them pure. The plan was to deliver the van in Coventry, and hope they would have a car to get him home by midnight. What, he smiled, could be purer than that?
    The heater worked. He took off his cap and, bald head perspiring, managed a look at the mirror: pale thin face, bushy greying moustache. White-blue eyes blinked before returning to observe the road. As if there was a slow fire in the clouds, though he couldn’t smell the smoke, a flake of grey came down like burnt paper, the remains of God’s manifesto floating oddly into ashes. Too cold for snow, he had thought, but it wasn’t. A few more became moisture, their weight bursting bounds to make runnels, a system of watery freelanes till he turned on the wipers to a cleanliness that was almost next to a God he couldn’t afford to believe existed.
    Leafless trees were tinselled with hoar frost. To look backwards and check that the cargo hadn’t shifted would be perilous, even more so if a shadowy ice patch caused him to skid and jolt. The prime-timing mechanisms were fail-safe, they had said, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they? ‘We’re professionals,’ they smiled, ‘none more so, by now.’ He knew those icy smiles that meant death if you didn’t take them seriously. ‘We get what we need and we know what to pay for. The Libyans and the Czechs are the technological tops in the business.’
    Danger was one of the simplicities of life right enough, pure and unadulterated on this leg of delivery, fail-safe never sufficiently safe no matter what they said. But the amount of time between him and Coventry was not hard to live with, two hours of over seven thousand seconds, each a possible full stop on the future. Which particular white-scorched second would it be? The purity of that speculation was also hard to beat, good for a sweat and a fairly wry smile on any part of the trip.
    He would be back at his teacher’s slog in the morning, you had better think so, someone else would drive the van to London or wherever, and he would be waiting to hear the radio squawk on about another pinprick of death and injury for the Cause in terms of terrorist atrocity, whereas he and all who so nobly fought knew that if there were enough of such attacks the elephant of oppression would eventually bleed to death and let them go their justified way to freedom and self-government.
    Oil and grit coated the screen with a subtle paste, melted flakes not enough to take it off. Pressing the button to ease the squeaking wipers, no liquid shot out, connections to the bottle blocked. He slowed, not wanting to stop and wipe with the rag but, his prayer answered, more snow came, melting till he saw clearly again.
    The van ran easily, maintaining the ruts, soothing rhythmical bumps under the treads. He had an easy score to keep, not like those clear-eyed heroes who sniped from blocks of flats or drove a laden car of mercurial juice to outpost or point of ambush. Mayhem was their purpose, and bloodshed their policy. If he looked in the mirror again his eyes might encounter the tactical success of visionary technicolour.
    More than the heater was making him sweat, more than the promise of a terrible explosion. Those who set bombs or fired Armalites had neither the imagination nor the intellect to appreciate the picture of reality they created. Reality for them was planning in cold blood and watching television, whereas for him the spectacle on the screen was no reality at all, his TV being reality itself.
    He regretted that his courage wasn’t tested directly, but even so, the load was itching his feet, and he wanted to speed up time, and be floating