that whenever she began to drowse the silence lurched towards her, stopping her breath. She felt suspended between sleeping and consciousness by the silence which was displaying her heartbeat, making it seem both to be growing louder and quicker and to have detached itself from her. Then she realised that not all the soft dull sounds were her heartbeats. Some of them were at the window.
Her eyes sprang open. For a few seconds she was dazzled by the tree; then she saw Ben watching her awaken. His smile widened, glistening as if his mouth was full of ice. 'It's here,' he said.
Angered by the shiver which his words sent through her, she pushed herself out of her chair and stumbled to the window. She wasn't fully awake yet; she had to grope among the folds of the heavy curtains in order to locate the gap. The patting at the window sounded as impatient as she was. Chilly velvet snagged her fingernails, and then she found the opening. She parted the curtains and stuck her head between them.
The night flocked to meet her. It was snowing so heavily that the lights of the town appeared doused. Flakes almost as large as the palm of her hand sailed out of the whiteness and shattered on the window. She had never seen snowflakes so crystalline; in the instant before each of them broke and slithered down the glass, they looked like florid translucent stars. She peered past them, wiping her breaths from the window, and managed to distinguish a glimmer of the lights of Stargrave drowning in white. Beyond the town and the railway line, a mass like veils as tall as the sky was dancing on the moors. She was gazing entranced at the snow, feeling her breaths becoming slower and more regular as the colourless onrush appeared to do so, when a dim figure rose out of the snow and came towards her.
It was Ben's reflection. His face was a featureless pale mask which seemed to be trying to swarm into a new shape. She turned to him so as to dispel the illusion, and found he was closer to her than she'd realised. His eyes and his smile looked illuminated by the snow. 'Shall we get them?' he said.
'What?'
'You mean who.'
'It can wait until the morning, Ben, surely. If we wake them now they'll never go back to sleep.'
'Maybe they're still awake. At least we can go and see.'
As soon as she let the curtains drop, he padded through the shadows which rooted the tree to the floor. She caught up with him on the stairs, but the snow was ahead of them, thumping softly and insistently at the windows of the children's unlit rooms. The breathing beyond the ajar doors told her that Margaret and Johnny were asleep. 'They can have a surprise tomorrow,' she whispered.
'That's true,' he said with an odd shaky smile. 'Let's go and watch.'
When he ran upstairs she made to quiet him, but he must be tiptoeing. Apart from the sounds at all the windows the house seemed hushed as a snowscape; even her own footfalls sounded muffled to her, and she felt as if she was in a dream. She joined Ben as he opened the workroom door.
The night was beyond it, swooping luminously towards the house. When he took her hand and led her to the window, Ellen felt as if she was walking into darkness much larger than the room. The snow must be rushing down from the moors above Stargrave, but it looked as if it was rising from the forest in a ceaseless wave and homing in on the house. She was hardly aware that her hands were grasping the far edge of the desk so as to have something to hold onto. There were so many patterns in the air that she felt dizzy, almost disembodied – so many patterns moving in so many different directions that they seemed to be taking the world apart before her eyes. The whiteness streamed out of the forest like the seeds of an unimaginable growth; the sky seemed to sink towards her, an endlessly prolonged fall. She felt as though everything, herself included, was slowing down. Stars of ice exploded on the windows, and she thought that soon she might be able to distinguish the shapes of the flakes in the air.
She was distantly aware of her breathing and of Ben, resting his chin on her shoulder as if she had acquired a second head. When he commenced stroking her, his hands moving down her body with exquisite slowness, those sensations felt distant too. She thought he was describing patterns on her skin, patterns which seemed part of the dance of the snow; he might almost have been using her body to sketch what he was seeing. As his fingertips moved down her thighs she opened like a flower. Her flesh had never felt so elaborate, so capable of growing unfamiliar.
She wanted to reach for his hand and lead him to their bedroom, but the flood of snow was blotting out her thoughts, and she couldn't let go of the desk. She pressed her spine against him as he lifted her skirt and slipped her panties down. When they fell to her ankles, her distant feet moved automatically to kick away the garment, and then his penis reared up into her.
It was so cold that she gasped and began to shiver uncontrollably with shock or pleasure or the all- embracing chill. Patterns surged out of the night, his fingers roamed intricately over her as he rose higher and higher within her, waves of shivering spread to the limits of her body and seemed to pass beyond them. When he came, it felt like ice blossoming. She pressed her lips together for fear that the cry she was battling to suppress would bring Margaret and Johnny to see what the matter was.
Her shivering abated somewhat as he dwindled gradually within her. Her skin was tingling so much it felt unstable as a bubble, and her legs continued to shake. When she closed her eyes and leaned back against him the onrush of patterns lingered on her eyes. 'Let's go to bed. I'm cold,' she said.
'Yes, that's enough for now.' He took hold of her so firmly that she felt safe in keeping her eyes closed as he guided her away from the window. 'It's going to be colder,' he said.
THIRTY-EIGHT
At first Ellen knew only that she couldn't move. The weight which had gathered on her torso was so massive that it was forcing her arms and legs wider, as if her limbs were straining to become symmetrical. She felt as though she was turning into a sign – of what, she didn't know. In a moment she realised that the mound which was weighing her down was herself.
If she was pregnant, so was everything around her. Stargrave and the trees and crags and moors were swollen with a new life which was taking shape in utter silence, the silence of the life it was supplanting. If she succeeded in moving or even in making a sound, might that at least slow down the change?
She became aware that Ben and the children were somewhere close to her, though she couldn't hear them breathing. She had to rouse them. She drew a breath which shuddered through her, and the convulsion of her body went some way towards releasing her from the paralysis. She was able to raise her head shakily, despite the burden which was sprouting from her face.
It took her some time to see that the white glow was emanating not only from her surroundings and from the sun in the black sky but also from herself. Then her dazzled eyes adjusted, or reverted to a state sufficiently familiar to let her see with them, and if the sight which met them couldn't make her cry out, nothing could: the sight of Ben and the children and herself.
Though the cry stuck in her throat, it wakened her. She was lying in bed, arms and legs splayed, a mound which must be of the quilt looming over her. There were no sounds at the window; the silence seemed as profound as it had been in her dream. Despite the stillness or because of it, she felt as if something immense was surrounding the house. 'What is it?' she wanted to know.
She wasn't aware of speaking aloud, but Ben answered from beside her, sounding fully awake. 'The last day,' he said.
His response made so little sense to her except in terms of her dream that she felt as if she hadn't wakened after all. Now that she knew he was there she wasn't afraid to go back to sleep, so long as the dream wasn't waiting. Sleep claimed her almost at once, and then there was only stillness until Johnny and sunlight came into the room. 'It's snowed lots,' he said excitedly. 'Come and look.'
'I know it has, johnny. Just let me wake up.' She was trying to decide to her own satisfaction what had happened last night. She and Ben had made love in front of an uncurtained window and a blizzard; no wonder she'd felt so cold and so odd. She heard Ben on the floor below, telling Margaret to come to her bedroom window. It was a day for the family to be together, Ellen thought, not for her to muse in bed. 'Let's see what the night's brought,' she said, and Johnny ran the curtains back.
For a moment she could see only whiteness beneath the sky, and she felt as if she was back in her dream.
