Midnight Sun

by Ramsey Campbell

  "We've put away everything else," Ben responded.

  Margaret sighed loudly. "Boys," she said like someone several times her age.

  "Maybe if your father hadn't stayed that way inside himself he wouldn't write our books."

  Margaret carried the trayful of sandwiches and plates into the front room while her mother followed with the soup. Because this was the largest room in the house it functioned as dining-room and sitting-room and the children's playroom, while the smaller room beside the kitchen was where Ellen and Ben worked. Johnny dropped his car in the box of toys in the corner cupboard and ran to the table to slurp his soup, gazing past her at her charcoal study of Lakeland fells. "When are we going to the mountains?" he said between quick mouthfuls. "You said we could one year."

  "Maybe this year. Your father and I often used to have walking holidays, but then Margaret was born, and by the time she was old enough to keep up with us you'd come along."

  "I like walking," Johnny protested. "I walked all those miles round and round the school field for the starving children."

  "It's a good job you didn't see the food you bought them," Margaret said, "or you'd have gobbled it all up."

  "We'll have to make sure you don't get too far ahead of us, Johnny," Ben intervened. "We don't want you running off the edge of everything. I thought I'd done that once, and your mother had to save me. That was how we met."

  "Tell us the story," Margaret pleaded.

  "How old were you?" Johnny said.

  "More than three times your age, so don't even dream of doing what I did. And your mother was even younger than she is now," Ben said, ducking as Ellen aimed a punch at him. "I'd gone up to Ambleside with my aunt for a week, and I did most of the ambling while she went on coach trips with a retired couple she'd got talking to at the hotel. So the day before we were due to leave for home I decided I was going to walk along the ridges all the way to the next lake, and I almost didn't come back.

  "Maybe it was being up so high there was nothing to get in the way of my seeing, or maybe it was the air up there, which is so clear you can taste how clear it is, but suddenly it was as though a light had been switched on inside everything around me. All the rocks and the grass and the heather looked as if they were made out of the same brightness as the sky and the clouds. That's what I was trying to capture in our first book, where the whole world seems to take a step forwards and greet our hero with its shapes and colours and the rest of it, which shows you how far short I fell of putting what I experienced into words."

  "I liked that bit," Margaret said, and Johnny nodded hard.

  "I remember you did. I wouldn't have left it in otherwise. You two and Mummy are the only readers I try to please, you know. Anyway, that day I got so drunk on what I was seeing that at first I didn't realise I wouldn't be at the hotel in time for dinner if I went back along the top – not that I cared about keeping body and soul together, but I didn't want my aunt to get herself into a state. So I did one of the worst things you can do in the mountains: I followed what looked like a short cut down. And an hour later I couldn't go back up and couldn't see how to go down."

  "Why couldn't you climb back up?" Margaret wanted to know.

  "Because I'd slid down a shale slope. Climbing that stuff is like trying to climb a pile of slates. It looked fine from above, just a narrow path between two walls with lots of tiles sticking out to hold onto, but when I lost my footing halfway down all the tiles I grabbed came away in my hand. So I slid maybe two hundred yards on my bottom towards what looked like a sheer drop, and when I managed to stop myself by digging in my heels and elbows I couldn't have been more than fifty yards from the edge."

  "You shouldn't have gone down that way," Johnny said like a rescuer.

  "My thoughts exactly. Only the other routes had looked a lot more dangerous, and when I'd started down it seemed as if there ought to be an easy way over that edge. You had to be as close as I was then to see that the last fifty yards were even steeper and more treacherous than the path I'd just fallen down. And the only way I'd have been able to see if there was a path beyond the edge would have been to scramble down so far that it would have taken a host of angels to carry me back to safety if there turned out to be no path. So I panicked. I started snivelling and praying to whoever might be listening, and when that didn't get me anywhere I told myself I'd have to climb up the shale. I told myself I'd be all right as long as I planned every move before I made it and only moved one limb at a time. So I started inching myself upwards on my back to get to somewhere I'd feel safe to turn onto my front. And as soon as I moved, half the shale I was lying on slid out from under me.

  "I can still remember how it sounded as it slid over the edge – like bones rattling. I remember what frightened me most was how long I might be falling. I was clenching my fists so hard I felt as if I was holding two handfuls of rock, only they were my nails, and digging my elbows and the back of my head into the shale so hard they ached for days. And just about the moment I realised I hadn't slipped after all, I heard a voice."

  "It was Mummy," Johnny cried.

  "I told you I needed an angel to save me. Though I have to admit that what she was saying wasn't exactly angelic."

  "Words to the effect of 'Is some silly sod trying to start a landslide up there?'" Ellen recalled.

  "To which my response was to ask if she could see a way down for me, though I had to shout so loud because of the wind I was afraid that was enough to start me sliding. She told me there was an easy climb down on my left, in the angle of the overhang, she said. And I thought she must mean my right, because all I could see to my left was shale that looked practically vertical. We almost got into an argument about which left she meant, and I'd have asked her to climb just high enough to show me which way she was coming, but I suppose that was more than my masculine pride was worth. So all I could do was trust her and crab myself down on my back to where she said I'd be safe. And I was nearly at the edge when I slipped and felt myself going head first towards the drop."

  "But you were saved," Johnny insisted.

  "Yes, because your mother had realised I might need help and she was coming up as I went sliding. She caught my shoulder and held me up while I managed to get one leg round and stand on the first step, and after that it was just like walking down a staircase onto a ledge as wide as this room. Mind you, I didn't take in much of that until my arms and legs stopped shaking. We sat on the ledge and chatted for a few minutes and discovered we were both on holiday from Norfolk. Then she asked me if I'd like her to walk down with me in case I got into any more difficulties. And of course I said no, being a man."

  Ellen remembered him striding unsteadily but determinedly away down the uneven path. Sometimes Johnny reminded her of what had seemed at the time to be her last sight of his father. Once Ben had stumbled, flailing his arms, at a point where she'd needed to take care on her way up. She'd started after him, both anxious for him and glad when it had seemed he'd given her an excuse to follow him, until she had seen him regain his balance. She'd watched him out of sight before sighing and returning to her study of the fells, only to discover that frustration had interposed itself between her and the view she was trying to sketch. She'd pushed her pad into her rucksack and made her way down to the hostel, wishing that she had suggested to whatever his name was that they should meet in Norfolk, blaming herself for not having suggested it, surprised at herself for expecting that of him so soon after his mishap on the shale, snorting at herself for having missed her chance.

  "You mightn't ever have met again," Margaret said accusingly to her father.

  "Then you wouldn't be here to tell me off. Believe me, all the way down I was berating myself for being so eager to show off, and trying to think of a reason to go back. But you'll have to wait for the next instalment. You've school in the morning and it's time for baths and bed."

  Later, as Ellen lay naked under the duvet with him he said "After you saved my life that day, did you see me ne
arly miss my footing oh the way down?"

  "I couldn't have seen you any clearer if I'd had a telescope."

  "I was sneaking a look at you, that was why I slipped. For years I used to dream of how you looked, all by yourself with your pad and pencil and the mountains. And sometimes I'd dream of you appearing like the good fairy of the mountain when I thought the shale had finished me off."

  Ellen rolled onto her side and laid one leg over his. "I'm a bit more substantial than a fairy, you'll have noticed."

  "Rather. I was remembering how you looked in jeans, you realise. Pretty tight, they were," he said, running a finger along the inside of her thigh. "That was another reason I hoped when Milligans got the poster for the exhibition that it would turn out to be yours. But I was only hoping to carry off the artist, not the art."

  "I couldn't have let you pay for that picture when I saw how much it meant to you."

  "Remember how your boyfriend tried to convince you that justified raising the price?"

  "And went off in a huff when I told him it was the picture I'd been working on when you and I first met." She closed one hand gently around Ben's penis. "Hugh wasn't such a bad sort really. He was there when I needed him at art school, to tell me I mustn't be shy of promoting my work. And he put in a word with a friend of his father's which got me into Noble's, even though I was going out with you by then. He couldn't have foreseen the trouble I'd have there. I think he always wanted me to do more with my talent than he thought he could do with his."

  Ben slipped one arm beneath her shoulders as his penis began to push her fist open. "No need for either of us to feel the way he did, as I hope Kerys and the rest of them at Ember managed to persuade you," he said, and kissed her breasts.

  "I wouldn't paint those pictures if you didn't make me see them."

  "I wouldn't write the books if I didn't have your pictures of them to look forward to."

  "You know that's not true," she said, though she liked the idea. As she felt her nipples swelling, she took hold of his chin and raised his head so that she could look into his eyes. "Do you think this one could really be the book?"

  "The book," he intoned like a footman announcing royalty, and then grew serious. "I think if Kerys has her way we're going to be in every bookshop in the country."

  "Only the country?"

  "And the towns, and the airports, and that hotel in Grasmere where the paperbacks in the revolving bookstand looked as if the dust was holding them together."

  "We never did go back there after we were married to flash our certificate at the manager. I still think he rang the fire alarm that night to catch me coming out of your room. And I'm sure that old lady sent her poodles down to trip him up, because she tipped me a look that was as good as a wink." Ellen gave Ben a long deep kiss, feeling his tongue rough on hers, and opened her thighs around his. "It would be grand if the book does soar, wouldn't it? The children would be so pleased."

  "So would the bank manager."

  "He'll have no reason to complain once I get back into advertising. And listen, I truly don't mind working in it for a while, so stop worrying. Wherever I go I'll come back the same."

  "That's all I'll ever want," Ben said, and eased himself into her. She hugged him and slowed down his rhythm with hers, waves of warmth growing in her before the flood. Afterwards she laid her head on his chest, breathing in the smell of the two of them, before drifting off to sleep. Sometimes she liked this kind of sex best of all, the kind which was so gentle and familiar it felt like stability made flesh. If their books raised their life to new heights, it mustn't leave this behind. "Not too far," she murmured drowsily to Ben's sleeping face.

  ELEVEN

  The night before her interview at Ballyhoo Unlimited, Ellen leafed through her portfolio and was impressed by hardly anything. She had already preferred her illustrations for Ben's books, but now she saw that it wasn't just a matter of her having developed her skills: nearly all the work in the portfolio was dated. Admittedly some of the assignments – a teenage fashion store, a chain of discos which had been meant to light up the winters of half a dozen Norfolk towns but which had winked out before Johnny was born – would inevitably have dated, but why should she expect the agency to take that into consideration? She quite liked the work she'd done on the campaign to advertise the houseboat holiday firm, but that wouldn't be enough. She pulled out all the material which seemed stale to her, gazed wistfully at her depleted portfolio, and came to a decision. "I'm going to show them Broads Best."

  Ben glanced up from copying changes of address from last year's Christmas cards. "I should hope so. It's your work."

  "It isn't quite that simple."

  "Then it should be, and if anyone can make it so, you can. And if you ever bump into Sid Peacock you can tell him from me to insert himself up himself and twist."

  "I can't imagine ever seeing him again," Ellen said on her way to the back room. Beside the desk in front of the large window which in daytime gave the room all the light it could hold, one shelf of the deep bookcase contained a few copies of each of the two Sterling books, Ben's battered electric typewriter, pots of Ellen's brushes bunched like withered blossoms waiting for the spring to return their colour to them. A pile of folders of her work occupied the bottom shelf. She extracted the Broads Best folder and took it to the desk, where she rested her elbows on either side of it without opening it. She was suddenly afraid that it would prove to be less inspired than she remembered it to be.

  It hadn't seemed inspired only to her, judging by Sid Peacock's behaviour. He was the head of what he liked to call his department of Noble Publicity – an office in which he'd worked with Ellen and an older man called Nathan, who was gay and who openly loathed him. Sid, who was three years older than Ellen, had borne his wide tanned face and Oxford accent like presents he was offering the world, and smelled of aftershaves with savage names. Whenever the agency bosses had assigned him a campaign he would call a brainstorming session, draining Ellen and Nathan of their ideas and usually preferring his own. Three years of this and no promotion had begun to frustrate Ellen, but there had been no other opening for her in Norwich. Then the agency had acquired the Broads account and she had lost her innocence.

  Broads was the oldest brewery in Norfolk, and its directors had wanted to give it a new image. Everyone at the agency had been delighted to have the account – at least, until Broads had turned down all the proposed campaigns. The directors didn't like spacemen drinking their ale in free fall, they didn't care for anything involving computers, they especially disliked the idea of associating their product with pop stars or film stars, either current or nostalgically revived. After several rejections Sid had stormed into the office. "It's like talking to mummies. Why the hell did they bother coming to us if they think they know more than we do about what's up to date?" And Ellen had begun to wonder if the agency was missing the point – if they couldn't make the future of the brewery by delving into its past. She'd thought she remembered something she'd once heard about the ale, and over the weekend she had tracked it down in a history of Norfolk.

  Something you may not know about Broads Best, she'd scribbled on her pad, and then Ten things you may not know… On Monday Sid hadn't seemed particularly impressed but told her to come back to him if she managed to develop the idea. On her way home on Friday she'd seen a jigsaw in a toyshop window and had realised how the campaign could work, and she'd been so eager to show him that she'd arranged to meet him in the office on Saturday morning. She'd let him hug her to express his enthusiasm for her idea, but when he'd tried to give her breasts a clammy squeeze she'd poked him in the stomach. "Let me see your work when it's finished," he'd said like a spinsterish schoolmaster, flinching out of reach.

  Her growing anger at her memories of him made her open the folder on the desk. Her designs still looked as impressive to her as they must have looked to Sid. This man once said it was England's proudest ale was the first thing people might not have known about Broa
ds Best, printed above a tenth of the picture which the other nine slogans gradually assembled, her portrait of Henry VIII with a tankard in his hand. But when she'd taken it to Sid he'd grimaced at it. "I used to think it would be clever to advertise tartar control with a toothbrush getting rid of Genghis Khan. Too clever by half," he'd said, and she had felt so disappointed and vulnerable that she didn't wonder why he told her, as if he was doing an undeserved favour, that he would show her idea to their boss.

  She ought to have realised what Sid was up to. Nathan would undoubtedly have warned her, but he'd been on holiday in Marrakesh that week. A few days later, when the junior partner had congratulated her on helping Sid visualise his idea for the Broads Best campaign, she had been too stunned to argue, and by the time her rage had been clamouring to be articulated it would have seemed too like an afterthought, a lie. Besides, she had seen enough of the partners to be pretty sure that they would have regarded the Saturday incident as negligible and would probably have dismissed her accusation as an attempt at revenge. Worst of all, Sid's self-righteous look had made it clear that he would have treated her more fairly if she had given in to him.

  She'd let herself believe that the whole sordid incident had become irrelevant once Sid Peacock had moved to an agency in London and she had become pregnant with Margaret, but now she saw that she ought to have laid claim to her work for later use. Perhaps she still could, she thought as she took the folder to show Ben. "Would you hire me?"

  "You bet I would, and so would anyone with any sense."

  "Yes, but you're married to me."

  "Anyone with any sense would be," he said, and made a face at having contradicted himself. "As soon as my aunt's home and can sit with the children we'll go out for dinner. We'll have plenty to celebrate."

  In the morning Ellen walked the children to school, Johnny racing ahead to each intersection and glancing back for her to tell him he could cross, Margaret holding her hand and chattering about fashions, records, changing schools next year, a classmate who was rumoured to have been off school with her first period… The children were plenty to celebrate, Ellen thought, and so long as the family was happy, what else mattered? Sometimes she worried that they wouldn't grow up normally with a writer for a father and an artist for a mother, but they kept reminding her that it seemed unlikely. At the school gates they each gave her a fleeting kiss and ran off to join their friends, and she walked home to prepare dinner before heading for the interview.