"It looks as if your father's gone out looking for us," she said.
She fumbled in her pocket and managed to extract her keys without dropping them as she picked her way along the track. She would feel better once she was home, she promised herself. She could only assume it was the way her vision was struggling to grasp the obscured shape of the forest which had caused the patterns to reappear in the snow, stretching across the common and up to the ridge. She hurried the children towards the house, gripping the key to the front door so hard between her finger and thumb that she could feel the chill of the metal through her glove. But she hadn't reached the front step when the door of the dark house swung open. "I was just coming to get you," Ben said.
FORTY-ONE
For the moment all that mattered was to get the children and herself inside and shut the cold out. Ellen pushed Margaret and Johnny into the hall with her clumsy magnified hands and stamped her feet on the doorstep. She could hear snow scattering around her boots more clearly than she could feel her soles thumping the step. She swayed into the house and fell against the door to close it, and found that she could see nothing but the glimmer of Ben's face. "Someone switch on the light, for heaven's sake," she said.
Ben didn't move. She couldn't distinguish his expression or even his features, just the pale blur which the icy glow through the panes of the front door made of his face. She closed her eyes, because the dim glow was causing his face to appear to shift restlessly. The switch clicked, and the light turned her eyelids orange. She forced them open at once.
He was at the foot of the stairs, between her and the children, one of whom had switched on the light. His face was blank except for an ambiguous gleam in his eyes. "There you are," he said.
She didn't know if he was greeting them or alluding to the light, but she assumed his tonelessness was intended as a rebuke. "I meant to come home earlier," she said, "but I couldn't face the walk without some fuel inside me. Take your wet things off, you two, and jump into a hot bath. You could be making us a hot drink, Ben, while I persuade my fingers to work."
"Whatever keeps you happy," he said, turning away so quickly that he sent a cold draught through the hall. Surely whatever surprise he had in store for the family could wait a little longer — he needn't act like a disappointed child because they'd kept him waiting. She would go to him in a few minutes to make friends with him.
The children piled their outer clothing by the front door and raced upstairs as the kettle on the cooker began to creak with heat. Ellen sat on the stairs and levered one of her boots off with the other, tugged off the latter with her cumbersome hands and then trapped the gloves in her armpits so as to pull her hands free. She flexed her fingers and unzipped her anorak as they began to tingle painfully, and staggered on her shivery legs to lean against the hall radiator. The next moment she recoiled from it, for it was even colder than she was.
The thought of going out again to find Stan Elgin, or waiting while Ben did so, almost made her weep. She hobbled to the kitchen, trying to wriggle her fingers and toes. When she stepped off the carpet onto the linoleum it felt like stepping barefoot onto ice. She tiptoed rapidly to the boiler, only just keeping her balance. Then she wavered, and her heels struck the linoleum. The heating hadn't failed; it was switched off.
She spun the timer wheel and heard the warmth surge through the house, then she stumbled backwards and lowered herself onto the nearest bench. "When did you turn off the heating, Ben? What were you thinking of?"
He was at the window, his palms flat on the metal of the sink. The shape towering outside the window seemed to be in the process of merging with the smaller figures, whose positions looked more symmetrical than they previously had. "Us and the children," he said.
Had he been so preoccupied by their absence that he'd switched off the boiler without thinking? "We're here now," she said to placate him. Hearing water in the bath overhead, she braved the linoleum so as to reach the hall. "Is the water hot?" she called.
"Yes," Johnny and then Margaret said.
"What do you want to drink? Hot fruit juice or hot chocolate?"
"Hot blackcurrant," they responded virtually in chorus.
"That's what 1 was going to make for them," Ben murmured. "We don't want them going to sleep."
"Coffee for me," Ellen said, and padded into the living-room to find her slippers. She eased her feet into them with a sigh of anticipation and held onto the radiator to feel the warmth spreading through it and through her, then she turned and sat against it until the heat was deliriously unbearable. She dug the keys out of her pocket and dropped them into her handbag beside her chair, and marched back to the kitchen, where Ben was pouring hot water into the children's mugs. "I'll take them their drinks," she said.
"I'll bring yours up to you."
"Don't you want to let us out of your sight?" Ellen said smiling.
"Nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"I should say not." She would have stayed with him to prove he had no reason to sound so defensive if the children hadn't been waiting for their drinks. She squeezed his waist and carried the mugs to the bathroom.
Only Margaret's head was visible above a white mound. At the other end of the bath Johnny was brandishing the fingerless wads of white his hands had become. "No need to use quite so much foam in the bath," Ellen said, blowing the foam off his right hand and kissing his fingers before giving him and Margaret their mugs. "Careful, it's hot," she said.
At least the bathroom had heated up, but the landing must be taking longer, because as Ben came in with her mug the room immediately grew colder. He closed the door and leaned against it, which kept the heat in but also made the room feel unusually claustrophobic. "We aren't going anywhere," Ellen said, which prompted him to smile, though he was gazing at the unrecognisable blur of his face in the steamed-up mirror rather than at her. He looked capable of standing there until the children climbed out of the bath. She drank her coffee unhurriedly and collected the children's mugs. "I'll take these down. Don't stay in the water too long or you might find yourselves stuck in the ice," she said.
She thought she was going to have to ask Ben to move away from the door. She wasn't even sure that he would hear her, his gaze was so bright and blank. When he reached behind him and closed his hand over the doorknob, she had to tell herself not to be ridiculous: of course he didn't mean to prevent her from opening the door. There, he'd pulled it open and was sidling around it to wait for her on the landing, which was unlit once more. "Aren't you going to put on the light for me?" she said.
"Do we need lights on a night like this?"
"If we want to make sure I don't fall downstairs."
"I don't want that to happen to you."
"Or anything else bad, I hope."
"Nothing bad, I promise," he said, switching on the light above the hall. "Only wonderful."
She smiled at him, but his gaze was somewhere else. As she went downstairs he stayed outside the bathroom. She glanced up from the hall and saw him watching her over the banisters. He looked nervous and eager. "Try and contain yourself for just a few more minutes," she said.
All the way along the hall she saw the figure towering outside the kitchen window. She switched on the fluorescent tube as soon as she could. The glare made the figure appear to step forwards, and she closed the blinds. They turned the kitchen even whiter, white as the inside of an iceberg. She didn't know why she should be troubled by that, nor by the liquid whisper which had started outside the drawn blinds, growing louder: it was only the sound of the bath emptying into the drain. "Nobody wants dinner for a while, do they?" she shouted along the hall. "You two have been kept supplied with sweets this afternoon, if I know Kate and her mob."
She heard the bathroom door open. "Your mother says you've had enough to eat," Ben said. "There are more important things than eating."
"Close the door, Daddy," Margaret protested. "You're making us cold."
"Hurry up and get dressed, then. Don't keep us waiting."
He really oughtn't to imply that Ellen shared his impatience, but who else could he have meant? At least she was about to learn what they had been waiting for, and that should put an end to this wretched nervousness. She heard Johnny thundering to his room, crying "Eeeyowww" like a jet plane, and then there was silence until Margaret said "Daddy, you don't need to keep standing there. I'll be down as soon as I'm dressed."
"Daddy looks like the guard in that prison film we saw."
"Except I'm here to unlock you," Ben said, and Ellen wondered what he could mean. "Don't fuss at them, Ben," she shouted. "Let the poor girl take her time."
"I'm just putting on my slippers," Margaret announced, and moments later she and Johnny ran downstairs. Whenever Ellen saw their scrubbed pink faces after they'd had a bath she thought they looked heartbreakingly vulnerable, almost newborn. They must be racing down because they wanted to hear what
Ben had to tell them, but as Ellen saw him switch off the lights upstairs and follow them quickly and silently she could have imagined they were running away from him. "Anybody for another drink?" she said.
Ben sighed like a wind through a distant forest. "No thanks," Johnny said, and Margaret shook her head.
Ben reached the foot of the stairs and stood between it and the front door. "We'll go by the tree," he said.
He didn't move until Ellen had followed the children into the living-room, but then he was in the room almost before she knew it, and closing the door behind him. As she sat with the children on the sofa and put her arms around them he turned off the overhead light and strode past the lit tree to the window. He'd pulled back one curtain before she realised what he was doing. "Leave those shut, Ben, for heaven's sake. You'll be letting all the heat out of the room."
He hesitated, staring at the reflection of his face, which looked as if it was emerging from the snow, a blurred face half the size of Stargrave. "I thought you'd be able to watch while I talk."
"We'll use our imaginations. Close the curtain, Ben, please."
By the time he did so, the room felt significantly colder. Ellen pushed herself off the sofa and turned on the gas fire, which began to whisper and creak and brighten as Ben went to the chair facing the sofa. He sat back, his hands flat on the arms, his face caged by shadows, his eyes gleaming. He was silent for so long that Johnny started giggling. "Tell us, Daddy," he spluttered.
"I was just thinking how to lead you into it."
Johnny's giggles trailed off, crushed by his father's unexpected seriousness. "If I ask you a question, Johnny, will you trust me?"
"Yes," Johnny said with just a hint of dubiousness.
"Do you still believe in Father Christmas?"
Johnny giggled. When his father stared at him, eyes gleaming, he mumbled, "I don't know."
"What do you think?"
Ellen felt the boy snuggle against her as if he was trying to hide. "Ben," she said.
"It's part of growing up." His eyes turned towards her like shifting fragments of the night sky. "What about you, Margaret?
What have you got to say?"
"I think you should leave him alone."
"Too late for that. I meant, do you still believe?"
"You know."
Of course she had seen through the myth years ago, and had been pretending ever since for Johnny's sake. If Ellen sympathised with her, did that mean Ellen didn't want him to grow up? "Ben, if this is your idea of a Christmas surprise ..."
"It's just a way of getting there. I'm trying to make it easier for everyone."
She indicated Johnny. "Then what's happened to your imagination, Ben?"
He sat forwards, and she felt as if the dark had also moved towards her. She was wondering why her question should have provoked him to react so ominously when Johnny said, "We were talking at playtime and some of my mates were saying Father Christmas is just your parents buying presents and hiding them."
Either he was bracing himself for the next question or Ellen was so nervous that she fancied he shared her apprehension. "What did you say to that?" Ben said.
"I said I thought I saw you once, at the end of my bed last Christmas."
"Your mother and I thought we might have wakened you, but we decided you were still asleep." Ben sat back like a king on a throne. "Time to wake up, Johnny. You'll be glad you did."
Ellen felt as if she was hearing his words in a dream, they seemed so unlike him. She hugged Johnny, and was about to intervene again when his father said "I remember how I felt when I found out. I was disappointed too, buc at the same time I saw that I'd known the truth for a while and hadn't been letting myself realise. That's how people are."
Johnny had to learn sometime, and he wasn't unduly upset as far as Ellen could judge. Ben's next words seemed so poised, so secretly eager, that she couldn't help growing tense. "Why are people, do you think?"
"Like that?" Margaret said. "Because they want to think nice things."
"Rather than the truth, you mean? Do you think we should be afraid of the truth?"
Johnny wriggled, and Ellen loosened her hold on him. "No," he said loudly.
"That's it, Johnny. I'm proud of you. However frightening the truth may seem we have to face it, because being afraid of it won't make it go away. Being afraid only shrinks our minds and makes people invent myths small enough for them to cope with."
Ellen's instinct was to keep quiet, but she felt as though the dark was forcing her to speak. "I don't see what this has to do with Father Christmas."
"I wasn't talking about him." Ben crouched forwards. "I told you that it was only the first step. I'm talking about Christmas itself."
Ellen thought she must have misunderstood him, until his unwavering stare made it plain that he'd meant what she feared he had. "Let's discuss your ideas another time, Ben. The children don't want to hear them."