Ben was at the desk, his head raised towards the dazzling forest, resting the palms of his hands on either side of the handwritten book. For a moment she thought she glimpsed movement in the forest. Perhaps snow had fallen from one or more of the trees, though the stirring had seemed much larger; perhaps his breath had made the view waver and immediately settle back into stillness. She was halfway across the room when a floorboard creaked beneath her feet. He turned to her, a dazed expression on his face. "Now I'm ready," he said.
As she went to stand beside him she saw that he'd written the end at the foot of a paragraph and had followed the words with an exclamation mark in which an elaborate star took the place of a full stop. "I'm glad," she said and hugged him, rubbing his shoulders and arms to warm him up. She hadn't rid him of the chill, which was enough to make her shiver, when the phone rang.
TWENTY-FIVE
And they all lived happily ever after,
Ben wrote, and sat staring at the words, his pen hovering above them like a bird of prey. They seemed to mean nothing except that the story was over, and he could see that there were too many of them. The pen swooped to cross out
all
and
ever after,
and was hesitating above
happily
when he shrugged and moved his hand away from the page, the blunt end of the pen rapping the desk. They were only words, only a way of releasing him from the task of manufacturing a tale for Alice Carroll. He wondered why he didn't feel released from the preoccupation which seemed to have walled up his senses ever since he'd learned of her attitude to his work.
He made another change and smiled, or thought he did. Arid
they lived happily for a while.
That ought to be realistic enough for her, and he wouldn't pretend that it didn't ring true to him. He wrote the end and let out a long breath. Now there was nothing to keep him from the story with which he'd emerged from the forest, the story of the presence which had been imprisoned by the midnight sun.
He was inking an ironically large exclamation mark after the capitals when the thought of the forest drew his attention to the window. The shapes which the snow had made of the trees seemed like a promise — of what? Perhaps of a resolution of the story which his solitary walk in the forest had suggested to him and which was all he could remember of the walk. It wasn't the first time he had become so engrossed in his imagination that he'd lost all awareness of his surroundings, and he wondered why in this case it should make him nervous. What was called for, he decided — both to revive his ideas about the midnight sun and to show him where he'd got to in the forest — was another walk. He capped the pen and laid his hands on the desk to raise himself. Now I'm ready, he thought, and the thought was like a soundless voice which rendered time meaningless. He didn't know how long he had been poised at the desk when he heard someone enter the room.
He turned and saw Ellen. Though he couldn't imagine who else he might have expected to see, the sight of her was somehow disappointing. Guilt made him speak the only words he could find in his head, though he wasn't sure what they referred to: "Now I'm ready."
"I'm glad," Ellen said, and set about rubbing his shoulders and arms, presumably to rid him of the tension she assumed had been involved in finishing the book. When the phone rang he grabbed it, feeling like a wrestler released from a hold by the bell. "Who's this?"
"Mark Matthews at Ember. Am I taking you away from anything? Shall I call you back?"
From what? Ben thought. He gazed at the forest as if it might tell him what Ellen and the publicist had interrupted, and couldn't think why he was doing so. "It doesn't matter," he said.
"Would you like to hear what we've set up?"
Ben thought of the setting up of an image, an idol. "Go on," he mumbled.
"We've appearances for you in Leeds and Norwich."
Ben was tempted to hand Ellen the phone while he tried to grasp his unmanageable thoughts. "Appearances?"
"Yes, at bookshops. Signing your books. Are you sure it's convenient to talk just now?"
Momentarily Ben thought this referred to Ellen's presence, then he realised that the hint of reproach in the publicist's voice was directed at him. "I said so. When would they be, these appearances?"
"Leeds is a week today and Norwich the Friday after."
Ellen was smiling, and with an effort Ben appreciated why. "We'll both be available to sign the books in Leeds," he said.
"I'll let the bookshop know. Will lunchtimes suit you?"
"Whenever."
Mark Matthews promised to put the details in a letter, and Ben was lowering the receiver towards the cradle when Ellen stopped him. "Anything in London?"
"Anything in London, my wife wants to know."
"A syndicated interview the day before Norwich. You can do it over lunch on us."
"Couldn't the interviewer come up here and see us?"
"Couldn't the interviewer come up here and see us."
"Howard Bellamy never goes out of town except for the absolute top names, but his interviews do. I read a piece of his in the in-flight magazine on the way back from Frankfurt this year."
Ellen bent her head closer to the receiver, and Ben handed it to her at once. "The only problem is that we can't both be there," she said. "Even if our children were invited, they'll be at school."
"Having kids is a career decision, Mrs Sterling," the publicist said, adding swiftly "Let's hope one day Howard Bellamy will come to you. Meanwhile, I'm sure I can fix you up with some of your local press, assuming you want them."
"They'll be welcome." Ellen kissed Ben on the forehead, apparently so that he wouldn't resent her next words. "I hope you didn't think my husband was rude or not interested. He'd just finished a new book when you rang."
"That's what we like to hear. Tell him we're all delighted. He deserves a break by the sound of it. I hope this little tour of ours will be some fun for him."
"It better had be," Ellen said, so vehemently that Ben might have felt uncomfortable if his vision hadn't been full of the bright stillness ahead of him. Even if they didn't know what they were talking about,.he thought, perhaps they had hit on the truth. Perhaps some time away on his own would allow whatever was building up within him, so intensely that its presence seemed to underlie the entire transformed landscape, to make itself clear to him.
TWENTY-SIX
During the next week the thaw made progress. On some days the uphill streets turned into streams of melted slush in which children stamped their boots, while the gutter of Market Street became a miniature torrent. Those days were punctuated by the thud of snow slipping from roofs and the shrieks of children who'd stood underneath. Once the sun sank beyond the forest, however, the afternoons grew chill, and in the mornings the garden walls would be lichened with frost, the bedraggled plants would be seeded with it. Snow lingered on the moors and crags, but close to the road the paths were marshy. The only place from which the snow seemed hardly to have shifted was the forest, a situation which suggested that the paths in there would be relatively firm underfoot. Edna Dainty had had enough of being dragged through mud and slush, and so she decided to take the dog into the forest for its Thursday walk.
Thursday was early closing day. At one o'clock the post office was so crowded she had to struggle between the customers, all eight of them, in order to lock the door against latecomers. "The postal authorities should find you somewhere ampler," old Mr Brice said, placing one hand on his heart as he let her by and unfolding the other as if he was presenting her with the door.
"They wouldn't have the nerve to cram us in here if this was Leeds or Richmond," Mrs Tozer said, and went back to counting her pension out loud.
Mr Waters, who always glowered at Edna's dog, looked up from peering suspiciously at the soles of his shoes. "It was just the same when I was down the mines. You could spend your whole life shouting and the bosses wouldn't hear."
"Out of sight, never mind," Edna said, sidling back to the glassed-in counter. Alfie was off with a cold, and Cath tended to grow flustered when she was faced with a queue. Edna doled out pensions and commiserated with the recipients — not all of whom seemed to welcome her homilies — and persuaded Mr Waters to wrap a parcel full of presents for his grandchildren more securely. Mr Brice insisted on letting all the women in the queue precede him, bowing low to them and fingering his military moustache, though when he reached the counter he wanted only to stamp a postcard to his niece in Edinburgh. Edna managed to usher him out of the shop as he suggested at length that he should draft a petition protesting about the inadequacy of the premises for all her customers to sign. She closed the door and leaned against it and then mimed running so as to hasten Cath. "Let's be off with you while the going's good."
Once Cath had gone, trailing perfume which always smelled strongest when she was flustered, Edna let the blinds down and tidied the shop, smoothing out information pamphlets crumpled by toddlers and replacing them in the rack above the chained ballpoint, collecting bits of perforated margin, some of which stuck to her fingers as she flicked them at the wastebin. She checked Cath's ledger entries, counted the money in the drawer, boxed it and locked the cash-box in the safe. As she let herself out of the shop, the minute hand of the clock behind the counter had almost finished its halting climb towards two o'clock.
Her cottage was three minutes' walk away up Church Road opposite the post office. Before she came in sight of the house, Goliath started barking, having recognised her footsteps now that the pavement was clear of snow. He was at the front window, his paws on the sill and his nose pressed against the glass, and next door Miss Bowser was imitating his stance. "He's just having his day," Edna called, and when Miss Bowser turned haughtily away: "Speech is free in this country, even for dogs."
Before she unlocked the front door she began shouting "Down" to prevent the Doberman from knocking her over as he came bounding to greet her. When she slapped his glossy black flank he gave a yelp of pleasure and dashed into the front room to dig the remains of his latest rubber bone out from beneath the sofa. It and the armchairs had obviously taken turns to bear his weight; one of the chairs looked positively drunken. "Bad boy, what happens to bad boys?" she cried, but took pity on him as soon as he started fawning. "If folk don't
like sitting where you've sat, they can take their bottoms somewhere else."
The dog ran into the kitchen and dropped the bone into his basket so as to fetch his leash, turning so fast that he sprawled on the linoleum as if it had suddenly iced up. "Wait there. Sit. Stay," she said, but she was in her bedroom when he raced upstairs and lolled his tongue at her in the dressing-table mirror. She poked a few whitening strands of her red hair under her Balaclava and made a wry face at herself. "That'll do for the world."
Goliath's first jerk on the leash dragged her off the doorstep and onto the pavement, slamming the door as she went. The battle for supremacy continued all the way to the edge of Star-grave, Edna yanking at the leash whenever he seemed disposed to linger. Once they were past the newsagent's she let the dog squat by the roadside, then ignored him so successfully that she almost lost her balance when he lurched towards the track which led to the woods.
As she stumbled onto the muddy track she thought she saw movement at the Sterling house, perhaps among the crowd of snow figures beyond the house and its long shadow which lay diagonally across the track. No, the Sterlings were being celebrities in Leeds and had taken their children with them. She didn't begrudge them their popularity, even if they'd gained it just by writing and drawing a few books. She was rather glad that Ben Sterling was away, because whenever she encountered him she felt he was lying in wait for her to commit some verbal blunder. "We've had enough of folk who want to tell us how to speak, haven't we, Golly?" she said.
Her husband Charlie had wanted to. When he'd taken early retirement after the railway through Stargrave had been closed down, he hadn't seemed to want much else. He would sit on the sofa with one leg up, his slipper dangling from his toes, and read yesterday's paper which he begged from Miss Bowser even though he knew that embarrassed Edna. Before long the only domestic activity capable of enlivening him had been correcting Edna's speech. "It's
wood
you can't see for trees, not
woods,"
she remembered him saying. "Not out of the
wood
yet, not woods." He'd been so busy listening for phrases he could pounce on that he had ceased to hear the sense of anything she'd said to him. Soon she'd had enough of being nervous of opening her mouth, and so she'd invented a response: she'd misquoted every phrase she could get wrong. Almost a year of turning purple and spluttering and thumping the furniture must have taken its toll, because one summer day he'd announced that he was moving to a railway workers' retirement home. Apart from the divorce papers, which she'd signed so zealously that the pen nib broke, and a yearly Christmas card which she tore up without opening the envelope, she'd heard no more of him. If she found it difficult to break the habit of saying her phrases wrong, that wasn't her tough luck. What the world needed was more variety, not less.
As she walked through the shadow of the Sterling house, she shivered. The shadows of the crowd of snow figures lay across her path like a spillage of water frozen black. The sunlight made those heads which had any features left appear to watch her sidelong as she passed, made blank white heads seem to turn soundlessly towards her. She ignored them and stalked up the track to the edge of the woods.
Spiny branches which reminded her of fishbones were beginning to gleam through the snow on the spruce trees. Here and there rays of sunlight solidified by mist touched up the colours of fallen needles. The forest was weighed down by frozen snow and stalactites of ice, a weight which seemed to trap the silence. Goliath halted abruptly, dragging his mistress to a standstill at the entrance to the paths. "Don't do that, you'll have me falling," Edna complained. "What can you hear?"