Ash Road by Ivan Southall Read Free Book Online Page B

There was a gap between the page of a newspaper and real life. It wasn’t distance; it wasn’t time; it was the difference between what happened to other people and what happened to oneself.
    But the siren still blew. It swelled and faded and swelled again, and Peter realized that he was faintly unnerved, at a loss, as if suddenly cut off from the normal and unthinking processes that would have continued to impel him up the hill towards the house. He had stopped moving. He had almost stopped breathing.
    Fire would be very dangerous on a day like this. There was no sign of fire nearby, but perhaps he had been smelling smoke for a while without realizing it. He could see a clear horizon at about five miles in the south and the west, and a hazed horizon of about twenty miles in the east. His eyes spanned that vast arc of country in a few seconds, and there was nothing vaguely like a smoke cloud. Only in the north was his horizon shortened by the brow of the long hill. There could have been a fire in that direction, for the sky there looked different; it was brighter and whiter, and though he avoided the sun there was something odd about it. He sensed that there was a veil across it, like the filmiest of silks or chiffons. And the wailing siren told him what it was.
    He shivered. It was a strange feeling, almost like a vision. He saw a horizon of fire and a sky of fire. It was so real that he could almost feel its flashing heat: a wave of heat so fierce that his eyes actually watered. He saw the hills in flames, the trees burning like a forest of gigantic tapers, even though at the same time he saw them as they really were, dusty green and brown, wind-tossed, as he had seen them on rough days in January ever since he could remember. What a stupid thought it was; what a terrible thing to think up; almost like wishing it to happen. But what a sight it would make; what an incredible spectacle it would be: the earth burning, the sky burning, people fleeing. He could see the black figures silhouetted against the flames, running grotesquely with their arms waving over their heads. But now he was separate from it himself; he was seeing it, but he wasn’t in it. It was like watching a film on a screen. You knew it wasn’t real and the actors couldn’t get hurt, even when the fire overtook and overwhelmed them.
    But the sound he could hear was the siren still wailing, a sound with a strange ability to drift about in the air; at one moment close and immediate, a few moments later distant and far away; like a ship on a violent sea heaving into sight then vanishing into troughs.
    â€˜Peter!’
    Perhaps the sound was a trick of the wind, that horrid wind roaring in the timber, blustering against him, raising puffs of dust from every area of dry ground, imposing upon the birds extraordinary patterns of flight, flaking leaves from trees, snapping dead twigs from high branches and throwing them to the earth.
    â€˜Peter! Peter, come here!’
    He had heard his grandmother’s voice the first time, really, but the effort of acknowledging it had been beyond him. He turned and saw her standing near the hen-house. ‘Coming,’ he called, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. It was an invasion of his privacy; almost like an interruption in the middle of reading a long-awaited letter. Her demanding voice seemed to have destroyed something.
    â€˜Hurry on. Hurry on,’ she shouted.
    â€˜Oh golly,’ he groaned.
    â€˜What is it, Gran?’ he called. ‘What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Can’t you hear the siren? It’s a fire. You’ll have to go home.’
    He felt suddenly bereft; something he valued greatly seemed to have been taken from him. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘not that. Whatever for?’
    A motorcycle howled up the long hill trailing a billow of orange-coloured dust. It flashed past Peter’s vision, through the trees, and roared on up the hill and over it. He