Midnight Sun (36 page)

She hadn't quite closed the door to the hall, and making a point of closing it now would only aggravate the children's nervousness. Instead she picked up the next blank sheet and began to sketch a face as Ben's slow footsteps reached the middle landing. She meant to seem unconcerned so that the children would be. The trouble was that the face she was drawing reminded her too much of Ben's, ai.a when she tried to alter it, it began to look nothing like a face. She felt as if she was calling Ben down by drawing him.

His footsteps reached the hall and paced to the kitchen, and she heard the rattle of the window blind. Her pencil was covering the face with patterns like a tattooist's nightmare as the measured footsteps passed the door again and reascended the stairs. Too much time seemed to elapse before she heard the workroom door shut, and the children relaxed so obviously that she had to ask the question which had been forming in her mind. "Has Daddy been doing anything else to frighten you?"

"No," Johnny said at once with a mixture of loyalty and bravado.

"I was scared he was going to get us lost in the woods when we were playing hide and seek."

"He wouldn't have."

"I didn't say he would. Mummy asked if he ever made us scared, if you were listening."

"That isn't what she said."

Even an argument might be welcome now, Ellen thought, if it let them talk out their tension, even if their squabbling chafed her nerves. But the argument trailed off, leaving the silence to mass in the room as the cold had seemed to gather while Ben was approaching. "Shall we have another game?" Ellen said, and tore off the strip of paper on which she'd drawn. "It's Peg's turn to start."

Margaret accepted the page and the pencil balanced on the annual, and stared at the blank sheet as if she could already see an image there. She picked up the pencil reluctantly and drew a head, shading it from view with her free hand. She had been drawing for some time — long enough, Ellen thought, to have drawn more than a face — when her eyes widened as if she was emerging from a trance, and she crumpled the page.

"Don't waste paper, darling," Ellen said, holding out a hand for it. Margaret shrank back in her chair, and Ellen wasn't sure if she was doing so in order to avoid revealing what she'd drawn or because she'd heard the sound which had caused Ellen's voice to waver: the opening of the workroom door.

Ben was coming down again. How could his footfalls sound so large and vague? If he meant to unnerve her, he was succeeding; it must be her nerves which were making the room feel progressively colder. She couldn't take much more of this, and the children had suffered more than enough. His footsteps came into the hall, to the door, and she felt her breaths shake. He paced to the far end of the hall and back again like a jailer, and then the stairs began to creak beneath his soft deliberate tread. As soon as Ellen heard him pass the middle landing she murmured "Would you like to go and stay at Kate's tonight?"

The children gasped with delight, and managed not to clap their hands. "Yes please," they whispered.

Ellen put her finger to her lips and listened until she heard the thump of the workroom door. "Come on then," she said, and tiptoed to the cupboard under the stairs to hand the children their outdoor clothes. She wasn't afraid to have Ben realise they were leaving, she told herself, but she wanted to avoid any argument, which the children were bound to find distressing. By the time they were dressed she had pulled on her boots and was zipping up her quilted anorak with her gloved left hand. "Quietly," she murmured, dismayed to have to do so, and hurried the children to the front door, trying not to let them see that she was alert for any sounds from above. She pushed the strap of her handbag over her shoulder as Margaret turned the latch and tugged at the door, then tugged again. The door was mortise-locked.

"Quick," Johnny pleaded, and clutched his mouth to keep his loud shrill voice under control.

"It's all right," Ellen said, pulling her purse out of her bag and opening it with the other hand — but it wasn't all right, not at all. Her keys were no longer in the bag, where she had dropped them when she'd brought the children home. Ben must have taken them while she was in Johnny's room.

She was struggling not to betray her feelings to the children while her thoughts chased one another — the kitchen door was locked, the windows were, the phone wasn't working and even if communications had been restored it was in the workroom — when she heard a creak behind her, on the stairs. Ben was on the lowest flight, having somehow reached them without her hearing a sound. He was holding up his left hand, displaying her keys beside his pale expressionless face.

All the rage she was suppressing cramped her voice, which came out thin and clear. "Thank you, Ben," she said, and stuck out her hand.

She thought she would have to go up to him. Surely then he would be forced to hand over the keys, unless he wanted to forfeit the children's trust for ever. When an expression too swift to read crossed his face, and he came towards her with increasing speed, she braced herself. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't that he would place the keys in her hand. She almost dropped them, for they were so cold that her hand jerked.

As she turned towards the door, hating herself for dreading that he would change his mind and grab the keys, he spoke. "We'll all go out," he said. "I won't talk unless you ask me to. You'll see."

FORTY-THREE

"We don't want you with us after you locked us in the house. I'm taking the children to Kate's and then you and I are going to have a long talk. I think you need treatment, Ben. Maybe you've been working too hard, but I think you'd better stay away from the children until you've seen someone who can help.”

Ellen heard herself say all of this, as though the silence had intensified to a point where her thoughts were audible; she could even hear the sob which she mightn't be able to smother. But she mustn't risk starting an argument now, when she was so close to letting the children out of the house. If she had to pretend that nothing was wrong in order to deliver them safely to Kate's, then she would. She hugged them swiftly and murmured "Not a word" and slipped her key into the mortise-lock.

The key hadn't finished turning when she hauled at it to move the door while her gloved hand grappled with the latch. Metal scraped metal, and the door swung inwards. Even the iciness which immediately reached for her felt like a release. When Johnny faltered, staring past her into the hall, she could have hit him; there was no reason to hesitate, nothing outside except snow. "Don't dawdle now, Johnny," she said low and urgently.

Margaret had already stepped over the threshold onto the footmarked marble path. He joined her, but looked back at once. "Daddy hasn't got his coat or boots on."

Ellen gestured Margaret to open the gate. "That's Daddy's problem."

Margaret's face stiffened as if her emotions were too violent or too confused to express. "He'll catch pneumonia if he comes out like that," she said.

Ellen felt grief swelling in her throat and behind her eyes, but she forced it back. "Then he'd better stay at home."

"I'll get dressed if it'll keep you all happy," Ben said in a voice which filled the hall like a parody of Christmas cheerfulness. "I'll catch up with you."

Ellen's grief withered as soon as he began to speak. Did he really believe he could keep them happy when it was his fault that they were the opposite? She marched down the treacherous path as if she was trying to break through the mist of her breath. She was at the gate when he called "We'll go along the common."

Ellen glanced back. He was leaning out of the doorway, his hands gripping the lintel. He looked poised to chase after her. Initially the route along the common would take her and the children away from the houses, but it was marginally the shorter route to Kate's. "Best foot forward," she told the children, and turned uphill.

The house and the snow image swollen by its huddle of worshippers went by, and then there was only an expanse of snow between her and the trees. The forest looked as if it was crouching, poised to move and change; it looked like an explosion of whiteness frozen in the moment before it engulfed everything around it. She had to turn her eyes away, because the depths of the forest drew her gaze, showing her rank upon rank of trees forming from the darkness as if they were advancing to meet her, disclosing shapes which must surely be tricks of her imagination. Now she'd glimpsed them she seemed unable not to see them; if she let her gaze rest on the common she couldn't fend off the impression that the forest was bordered by patterns on the snow, patterns which developed the shapes she thought she had distinguished in the forest. She tried concentrating on the sky, but its blackness was ominously close, not so much relieved by the unsteady stars as emphasised by them. "Doesn't matter, can't matter," she heard herself think, and squeezed the children's hands. Their gloves and hers made them feel more distant than she would have liked, but their trusting grasp helped her ignore everything except the need to see the children to Kate's. She didn't let go until she reached the corner of the allotments and turned along the narrow path above the town.

The view of the streets was less reassuring than she had hoped. The streetlamps and the lit windows seemed dimmer than they should be, and yet there was no sign of mist except for her breath and the children's. "Not now, Johnny," she snapped as he prepared to scoop a handful of snow from the top of an allotment fence. "Just keep your mind on where you're going. We don't want you wandering off the path."

She only meant that the longer grass beside the obscured path would slow him down, but Margaret glanced uneasily at the forest. Her glance seemed to bring it more alive, and Ellen felt as though an unseen presence was pacing them, keeping to the dark beneath the trees. Had Ben sneaked up there? But the presence seemed larger, not pacing them so much as staying abreast of them without moving. It was the forest itself, of course, because now she could tell that the presence was at least that large, and if it seemed vaster and yet somehow contained by the forest, she had to blame her overwrought imagination. Thank God, she and the children were nearly at the end of the allotments, in which the mounds and intricate spires of snow had assumed shapes almost impossible to relate to the growth they presumably hid. Just a few hundred yards and the family would be alongside Church Road, and she would be able to assure herself that the lights weren't as dim as they looked.

Johnny was picking up speed. She squeezed Margaret's shoulders and murmured "Don't slow me down." She didn't want the children straying out of arm's reach, though at least they weren't ouc of sight behind her. She was about to glance back to see if Ben was following when she realised fully what she was seeing ahead.

The allotments gave way to the back gardens of Church Road, most of which were crisscrossed with deep footprints, carvings in marble. Icicles turned clothes-lines into spiny half-translucent insect shapes; toothed slabs of snow overhung the roofs as if they might fall on anyone who strayed too close. That much was normal, but wherever she looked Stargrave appeared to be embalmed in snow and ice. Icicles had massed around each streetlamp, turning them into crystal fruit, and every window was thickened by frost. Where the rooms were lit, the muffled light showed the frost as a glass tapestry of patterns very similar to those she had tried not to see in the snow.

The appearance of the town mustn't matter, nor the silence. She was suddenly more afraid that unless the family kept moving, they would be unable to move for the cold, which was rendering her almost senseless. "Go on, Johnny," Margaret complained. "You're holding us up."

He was shading his eyes with one gloved hand like a boy explorer. "What is it, Johnny?" Ellen said, wincing as the cold twinged her teeth.

"Something funny at the church."

Before she could tell him to move, or focus her eyes on it, Ben said "Go and see what it is. We could all do with a laugh."

Ellen swung round and almost went sprawling. He was only a few paces behind her. As soon as their eyes met he gave her an apologetic smile whose tentativeness made it into a plea, but how could she respond to that when the trail of his footprints indicated that he had been dancing behind her, weaving a pattern of steps in the snow? She was furious with herself for having failed to be aware of his approach. "1 didn't mean that kind of funny," Johnny told him.

"You want to see though, don't you?"

"Yes," Johnny said as if he was almost sure he did.

"We'll race there," Ben declared, and was past Ellen so quickly and effortlessly that she didn't realise his intention until he grabbed Johnny's hand and ran with him towards the churchyard, Johnny squeaking and nervously giggling as he skidded along the path beside his father's trail of footprints, which were extravagantly large and oddly shaped. Ellen felt as if panic had kicked her in the stomach. She had to restrain herself from shoving Margaret aside and sprinting after Johnny to drag him away from his father. She would catch up with them at the church, and meanwhile she couldn't think of anywhere Johnny would be safer. "Let's go and see what the fuss is about," she said in Margaret's ear, and urged her past the school.

Was the pattern of the children's footprints in the schoolyard really as symmetrical as it looked? She couldn't spare it more than a glance, because Ben was already pushing Johnny through the gap in the churchyard hedge and following him through it. She dodged around Margaret, through snow and long grass which felt to her numb feet like a single hindering medium, and ran along the path, shattering Johnny's footprints. She flung herself through the gap in the hedge, dislodging a whispering trickle of snow — less of it than she would have expected, as if it was frozen fast to the twigs — and skated to a halt when she saw Johnny and his father.

They were standing hand in hand among the graves and gazing at the church, which was dark. At first she wondered why the stained-glass window with its image of St Christopher appeared to be glowing, and then she saw that the window was covered with frost, transformed by it. The boy perched on the saint's massive shoulder and supported there by his great hand was cocooned in whiteness; the girl who was holding his other hand was almost invisible except for the upper part of her face, in which her eyes gleamed with no light behind them. The saint's own face was hidden by a circular excrescence composed of icy filaments, a mask which resembled both a fungus and a parody of radiance and which appeared to be using his arms to reach for the children, and it made Ellen shudder. As soon as Margaret sidled through the gap in the hedge, Ellen hurried her towards the gates which led onto Church Road. "Too cold for standing, Johnny," she called, striding towards him and his father.