"Christmas has already started in our house." Kate led her into the main room, where symmetrical angels had been unfolded and hung from the cornice, and slid the double doors open to the dining-room. "Scotch is the answer to this kind of weather."
"I'm glad something is."
"Don't go imagining this is the kind of winter you've got to look forward to for the rest of your life. It can be cold here, but it's never been like this."
Ellen's face and ungloved hands were already aching with warmth. Kate poured out single malts and clinked glasses with her. "Here's to coping with the winter. We always have."
"How's Terry managing with the van?"
"With the van, not at all. He's been out all day with one of Elgin's wheelbarrows, delivering books to the old folk. You can't keep a good librarian down."
"Here's to him."
"And to whatever keeps us all going. Children, and people in general. And pictures and stories that need you and Ben to put them on paper." Kate squinted at their empty glasses. "Well, that saw that off. Better have one for the road, or not for the road if you want to stay longer."
She was heading for the cabinet when the doorbell rang. "Would you see who that is, Ellen? It must be important if they're out on a night like this."
Was it Ben? Perhaps a drink or two would help him relax. Ellen opened the front door, hoping to see him. But it was Terry, about to prod the button again with the key which his gloved fist had proved too cumbersome to wield. "Another minute out there and you'd have had to defrost me in the microwave," he said, shouldering the door closed. "How are your pipes?"
"Pretty healthy as far as I'm aware. How about yours?"
"I don't mean your innards, I mean at your house." He fumbled his gloves off and winced as he wriggled his fingers. "I met Stan Elgin by the church, Kate. Some of the houses on the top road are already frozen up. He's going round to tell folk to keep their heating on overnight. I said I'd tell our street once I get warm."
"I'll do it if you like, love. You've been out enough."
"I'd much rather you stayed in, at least until we see how tomorrow is. And Ellen, if I were you I wouldn't wait much longer before you take the children home, unless you're planning to stay over, which you're certainly welcome to do. Right, Kate?"
"Any time."
"It wasn't that bad when I came," Ellen said.
Terry clasped his hands together and raised a glass of the malt to his lips. "I'd say the temperature has dropped several degrees in the last half-hour."
Ellen downed her Scotch and went to the foot of the stairs. "Say goodbye, you two. Time we were going."
She was sorting out their boots from the chaos under the stairs when all four children stampeded down. Margaret was glittering like a fairy on a tree. "Look, Mummy, Ramona says I can have her party dress now it doesn't fit her."
"You're lucky to have such a good friend. Better not wear it on the way home. You can dazzle your father with it when we're safely shut in."
Margaret ran upstairs in a whirl of spangles which reminded Ellen of snow dancing in the wind, and Kate went to the kitchen to fetch a bag for the dress. Stefan and Ramona were playing pat-a-cake, clapping at each other's hands in a pattern so complicated they lost the rhythm and collapsed with laughter. "You try it, Johnny," Stefan said, and when they'd had enough: "I'm sorry I forgot to sort out my monster cards for you. I'll give you all the spares next time, cross my heart and hope to die."
Kate reappeared as Margaret came downstairs, and folded up the dress for her before slipping it into the bag. "Ellen, if you want to borrow any extra clothes to keep the cold off you and the children, just say."
"We'll survive, don't worry. You look after yourselves," Ellen said. Once the children were as insulated as she could make them she urged them out onto the path. "I'll be in touch," she told the Wests, smiling at the sight of the four of them crammed together in the hall, and shut the door quickly to keep in the warmth.
Even before the strip of light on which she was standing vanished, Ellen felt the night close in. It felt as if there was nothing behind her but darkness and a cold so profound that the air itself seemed to ache. "Off we go, Sherpa Peg and Sherpa Johnny," she said.
Margaret stayed close as Ellen skidded downhill, one hand poised to support herself on the encrusted garden walls. Johnny would have skated down to Market Street if Ellen hadn't stopped him; though there was no traffic, she preferred to keep him with her in the dark. Eventually they reached the level road, where marble replicas of cars were parked beneath the streetlamps. More of the shops were closed, their decorations gleaming from the unlit interiors as though frost was developing on them, and the windows of the few lit shops were opaque with trapped breaths. The only sign of life was the confusion of footprints preserved by ice on the pavements. As Ellen led the way into the road, Johnny began to sing:
"Snow in your ears
And snow up your nose,
Snow in your eyes
And snow for your toes…"
"Shut up, Johnny, I'm cold enough as it is," Margaret complained. "What sort of stupid song is that?"
"About a snowman. It just came into my head."
"We'd never have known."
"Don't you listen to her, Johnny. I expect she's wishing she'd made it up herself." Nevertheless Ellen was glad that he'd fallen silent, whether from pique or because he'd run out of ideas; the song had reminded her of the snowmen she'd passed on the way down the hill. She'd been too busy keeping her footing to spare them more than a glance, but she had the impression that there had been something odd about their rudimentary faces – as if, she thought now, they had all been sketches of the same image, trying to make it look more like a face. "What do you want to sing, Margaret?" she said to quiet her nonsensical thoughts.
"I don't feel like it. I'm too cold."
"What's your favourite carol?"
" 'Silent Night', I suppose."
"Mine too," Ellen said, and began to sing it, raising her voice to encourage the children to participate. Johnny did so halfway through the first chorus, and Margaret picked up the next line. By then, however, Ellen was finding phrases in the carol uncomfortably appropriate. It was increasing her awareness of her surroundings, of the calm which didn't seem as holy as she would have liked, the brightness where the snow reflected the glare of the lamps leading into the outer darkness, the sense of being surrounded by sleep as if she and the children were part of a dream. If their singing had brought someone out of a house or even to a window she would have felt less isolated, but every door stayed closed, and not a curtain moved. Once she thought she heard a fourth voice joining in, but surely it was an echo; it sounded too close to be inside a house – too close for her to be unable to see where it was coming from. Perhaps it was Stan Elgin, though if he was nearby she wondered why she hadn't heard him going from door to door.
The carol took the family as far as the last streetlamp. They were singing "Slee-eep in heavenly peace" as they left the light behind. To their left the snowbound landscape stretched to the edge of the silenced world, to their right it swept upwards to the vast snowy efflorescence which was the forest, up further to the icebergs of the crags. The sky was black except for the random patterns of stars – so black that she could imagine that the stars were flickering because the dark was overtaking them. She felt the heat draining out of her body into the sky and the landscape.
As they trudged past the outlying cottages, Margaret broke into song. Ordinarily "The Holly and the Ivy" would have been a good choice for a walking song, Ellen thought, but just now she would have preferred not to be reminded how the song took ancient traditions and tried to disguise them as Christian, traditions whose age was no more than a moment of the ancient darkness overhead. Besides, not only did the carol emphasise the stillness rather than relieving it, but Ellen's impression that there were more than three voices had returned. She blamed her imagination until Margaret's singing faltered and the girl began to peer at the swollen hedges which glow
ed like a moon in a cloud on both sides of the road. Didn't her behaviour suggest what the icy whisper must be? "It's just wind in the hedges," Ellen said.
"I thought there were birds moving about in there," Johnny said.
When had she last seen birds around Stargrave? But she couldn't feel a wind either. Presumably she was too cold. She stumbled past another cottage and began to sing:
"God rest ye merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Saviour Was born on Christmas Day…"
Of course, she thought, the echo was under the railway bridge, even if it seemed to be behind them and around them, more like a stealthy chorus, a whispering which seemed enormous and yet on the edge of inaudibility. It must be the bridge which turned the echo of her last words into a sound like muffled icy laughter. She peered along the road at the lightless mouth and the hint of whiteness at the far end of the tunnel, and looked away quickly. Her eyes were misbehaving again; the whiteness had appeared to lurch forwards into the tunnel. "Nearly there now," she said firmly, and stepped off the road onto the track past the lit and curtained cottage. Then she sucked in a breath to suppress whatever comment she might have blurted out. As far as she could see, their house was dark.
"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
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