Ben smiled behind them in the dark. At least they had all had a glimpse of what he'd seen. The swarm of whiteness which had appeared at the windows, like moths drawn to the light or to the children and their parents in the school, had been shifting stealthily, restless to settle into a pattern, to show them its face. The waiting which his life had been was almost over. His stories had kept his instincts alive until it was time for those instincts to grow clear. His aunt had been unable to destroy them, and she had been too late to sell the Sterling house to prevent it from passing to him. He could see his life, and it was irrelevant except as a thread leading here through the dark.
Now he understood the panic which had brought him racing home from promoting the book. It hadn't meant that he would never see Ellen and the children again; deep down he'd been afraid that he might no longer know them. But the change he'd sensed gathering was taking its time, though his life seemed full of signs of it – the fragments of ritual scattered through his Stargrave childhood, the midsummer day when snow had kissed his hand like a promise in the churchyard, his books which were by-products of the rediscovery of ancient truths. It would be here soon, and he mustn't be afraid. 'Just as long as we're together,' he sang and taking Johnny's free hand, danced with the family up the track to the house. Tomorrow would be the shortest day of the year.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Thank heaven for Christmas, Ellen thought – for the way the season had revived Ben. Now that he'd returned to the family, the old enthusiastic Ben who liked nothing better than to make her eyes and the children's light up, she could admit to herself that one reason for her nervousness had been a secret fear in case his introversion wasn't only a side effect of his work. Now she was able to laugh at herself and at him as he sketched an elaborate sign in the air with the key before unlocking the front door and flinging it wide as if he was ushering the family into somewhere much larger than a house. The tree in the living-room creaked, long fingers of shadow rearranged the traces of coloured light which lay on the hall carpet as though a rainbow was dying there, and all of Ellen's senses seemed to waken: she smelled the pine and listened to the whisper of falling needles, which sounded for a long moment as if it wasn't contained by the room, as if the tree had brought the edge of the forest into the house, a forest as large as the dark. For a moment, as she shivered, she thought she could see her breath. 'Here we are,' Ben said as though he was announcing their arrival, and switched on the light in the hall.
Ellen let out a sigh, which she couldn't see after all. 'That was strange. Maybe it comes of helping tell your story. I was imagining the kind of thing you must imagine sometimes. Can it be a bit unnerving until you see how it can be turned into a book?'
'A bit unnerving?' He gave her a smile so encouraging it looked manic. 'However it feels, I'll be here. It can only bring us together.'
'Good for it, then,' Ellen called after him as he followed the children into the living-room, saying 'Leave the television off, Johnny. Open up your mind to something bigger.'
'I want to see what the weather man says.'
'We don't need him to tell us what's coming. Can't you feel it out there?' When Johnny darted to the curtains and peered between them, only to turn away in disappointment, his father said 'We'll have to wake your imagination up.'
'Go on then.'
'Let's see what we can bring alive between us. Remember the idea I had about the midnight sun? Let's try to imagine what the sun kept dormant and tell one another over dinner.'
When Ellen reached into her imagination while she grilled the burgers she'd made earlier, she found she was fixated on the cold which felt like a presence beyond the window blind, ready to invade the kitchen whenever the heat wavered. She could imagine the snow figures crowding towards the window, mounting one another until they stood outside the glass like a faceless totem-pole, waiting for her to raise the blind and see them. She caught herself thinking that the blind appeared whiter than usual, as if something paler than the strips of plastic were at the window. She turned away and felt the cold like a prolonged chill breath on the nape of her neck. 'Take some plates, you two,' she called.
'You interrupted me while I was having inspirations,' Margaret complained as Johnny marched into the kitchen, looking too preoccupied to have heard the call. Ellen finished preparing a salad and sent it through with Johnny while she followed with the burgers in their buns. 'Well,' Ben said at once, 'what do you think was under the midnight sun?'
'You go first, Johnny,' Margaret said.
'A bit of the cold that'll come when the sun goes out.'
'No,' Margaret said, 'a bit of the cold there used to be before there were any stars.'
'Maybe just a single crystal.' Ben's eyes were brightening. 'Where's the rest of it, do you think?'
'It went away when everything got made.'
'Or it's out where there's nothing but dark,' Margaret said.
Johnny bit into his burger and chewed fast. 'What's it doing, then?'
Ellen felt as if the three of them were waiting for her to speak. More disconcertingly, she felt that they were waiting for her to say what they had already thought themselves, because all that she'd heard so far were ideas which had occurred fleetingly to her when she was in the kitchen. She'd taken part in plenty of brainstorming sessions while she was working in advertising, but never one in which all the participants seemed to speak with the same voice. 'It's dreaming,' she said.
'Not quite. Not only that,' Ben said. 'It must dream of perfection, of recreating everything in ways we can't begin to imagine.'
'It's only a story, remember,' Ellen told the children, 'for our next book.'
Ben was obviously delighted by their having shared their fancies. Throughout the meal he kept smiling as if to encourage the family to continue imagining or even to ask him some question. After dinner he followed her and the children into the kitchen and loitered, gazing at the blind as if he could see through it, while they helped her with the washing-up. 'How shall we pass the time now?' he said.
'Play a game,' Margaret told him.
'Ludo,' Johnny cried.
'That's an old word,' Ben said, and brought the battered game from in the cupboard under the stairs. He seemed fascinated by the patterns the counters made on the board as the play progressed, and Ellen couldn't recall ever having seen a game bring them so frequently close to symmetry. When Johnny's eyelids began to droop she announced that the game in progress would be the last, and was taken aback when it was his father who protested. 'No rush to break up the party, is there? It's going to be a long night.'
'With Christmas on the other side of it, and we don't want people being too tired to enjoy that.'
For a moment Ellen thought he was about to disagree, but what was there to contradict? When at last the game was over, Margaret said 'I'm going up now, Johnny.'
As soon as Ellen headed for the bedrooms to say goodnight to the children, Ben came after her. Of course he wanted to bid them goodnight too, yet his behaviour seemed indefinably childlike; surely he wasn't trying to avoid being left by himself. She kissed Margaret and Johnny, snuggled their duvets under their chins, turned out the lights in their rooms. Ben murmured 'Get some sleep now' with an urgency he ought to realise would be counter-productive, and lingered in the dark with them until Ellen was downstairs. 'Another game?' he said as he came down.
'I'd just like to sit and look at the tree for a while.'
'We both will.' He switched off the overhead light and sat on the edge of a chair. Shadows of branches patterned his face, reflections glinted in his eyes like shards of ice. He was gazing so intently into the depths of the tree that he made her feel as if she was overlooking something in there. 'Do you want to talk?' she said.
'No need.'
It must be a trick of the light which caused the needles on the branches to appear identical wherever the bulbs illuminated them. The pattern drew her gaze into the unlit depths, and she felt as if the branches were reaching for her until she closed her eyes. That was more peaceful, almost enough to send her to sleep, except
