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."
"I do," Johnny protested, and Margaret said "You would."
"Don't stop me now, Ellen, when we're so close. I was just about Johnny's age when I nearly saw the truth, and it's taken me all this time to get back to it. I suppressed what I knew because I was afraid it would kill my aunt, but you aren't like her. You love danger and the heights."
"Not danger that involves the children."
"Call it adventure, then. Try not to interrupt me unless you absolutely have to, all right? It's time to look beyond the myths."
He was watching Johnny as if to prompt him to respond, and Johnny did. "What did you think when you were my age?"
"I'll tell you what I might have thought if I'd been brave enough – I might have thought that the idea of God coming to earth in the form of a man was about as likely as some fat old character being able to climb down chimneys."
This time Johnny's giggle was nervous. Ellen was opening her mouth to put a stop to the subject when Margaret said "You don't have to believe it literally happened. A priest said so on the radio."
"Exactly," Ben said, clapping his hands. "It's a symbol. And symbols are ways of disguising what people can't bear to see clearly."
"I wouldn't say it was that simple," Ellen said, but Margaret interrupted her. "What's Christmas supposed to disguise?"
"I believe it's a symbol of how God came to earth in the form of everything on it."
"Why should anyone be frightened to think that?"
Ben didn't answer immediately, and Ellen found she was holding her breath. The hiss of the fire seemed to intensify, though it wasn't quite keeping the cold at bay. Ben's head turned slowly, scanning the three of them, before he spoke. "What do you think God is?"
"How should we know?" Margaret said. "Nobody really knows."
"Do you think he's an old man with a beard who can be in all sorts of places at once, like Father Christmas?"
The children laughed, and Ellen would have liked to do so. "That's how painters used to picture him, isn't it, Ellen?" he said.
"I suppose so."
"So what is he like if he isn't like that? Could he be a bit like a person whose mind is so superior to ours that we can't begin to imagine his thoughts?"
"Maybe," Margaret admitted.
"Something that was there before the universe was made?"
"Yes," Johnny cried, and Ellen felt him start to raise his hand as if he were in school. "The Bible says."
"That's what it says. But people never seem to wonder what it avoids saying."
"Ben, I think it's time -"
"Just listen," he said urgently, and paused. Of course he wasn't telling them to listen to the hiss of the fire in the midst of his silence, and it was Ellen's nervousness which made her seem to hear another sound, a whisper in the surrounding dark. "If something lived in the dark before there were any stars or worlds, let alone any living creatures," he said, "it couldn't have been even remotely like us."
"I didn't mean he would look like a person," Margaret said.
"But dozens of religi
ons imagine God that way. Why do you think they need to?"
"Why do you?"
Ellen thought Margaret had intended that as a retort rather than as a question, but Ben answered at once. "To help us not to remember what we're afraid of, what the human race has invented whole religions to conceal. All religions are like stories people told by the fire when there was nothing but the fire and stories to keep off the cold and the dark, because people couldn't bear to know what was out there beyond the light."
Both children nestled uneasily against Ellen. "Ben, that's enough," she said.
"No, it isn't. It can't be now." He moved so close to the edge of his chair that he appeared to be squatting, and stretched out his hands as if he was offering his audience the dark. "Ever since then we've believed we've progressed beyond our ancestors because they thought the darkness hid something so alien that they peopled it with gods and monsters and demons, but they were right to think so, don't you see? What lived all by itself in the dark was so unlike us and everything we know that it couldn't have created us and the rest of the universe, not consciously, at any rate. I believe we're its dreams, us and everything around us, and you know how unlike reality dreams are. But sooner or later it had to waken, and then -"
Ellen felt Johnny writhe in her hug. He struggled free of her and fled past the tree, which swayed and creaked and seemed to be doing its best to trip him up with its shadows. "Wait, Johnny," his father called in a voice like a gale as the boy fumbled the door open and ran upstairs. "I haven't finished."
"Yes you have," Ellen said as Margaret hurried out of the room, calling to Johnny. Ellen's anger must be constricting her voice, for she could barely hear herself. "What's got into you, Ben? What do you mean by telling them a story like that at Christmas, or any other time for that matter? I think in future you'd better tell me your ideas first so I can be sure they're suitable."
He was still at the edge of his chair, squatting just within the glow of the fire. He looked bewildered by the reaction he'd provoked, and his bewilderment disturbed her more than anything he'd said. She turned away, shivering with rage and grief and undefined fear. She was at the door when he stood up with an odd movement of his whole body which made her think of a mime of sudden growth. "Leave us alone, Ben," she said wearily. "Give me a chance to patch up the damage you've done."
"I need to -"
"Whatever it is, it can wait," Ellen said, and strode out of the room. The sight of the unlit hall dismayed and enraged her. What sort of game was he playing, darkening the house and then upsetting everyone? When she switched on the light above the stairs, it seemed to emphasise the dark beyond its reach. She was tempted to switch on all the lights, particularly at the top of the house, where she sensed the cold and the silence weighing on the roof as if the night had closed wings over the house. She'd no time for such thoughts now; imagination had done the family quite enough harm for one day. She pulled the door shut behind her and ran up to Johnny's bedroom.
Johnny was sitting next to Margaret on his bed, fists clenched, knuckles digging into the mattress. As soon as his mother appeared he jumped up and went to stare at the ranks of plastic soldiers on the dressing-table, and dabbed furiously at his eyes once his back was to her. "Daddy was just being silly," Margaret told him again.
"Exactly, Johnny. It was just another of his stories, one he shouldn't even have told you," Ellen said. "You believe whatever you want to believe that means you'll have a lovely Christmas."
He emitted a loud sniff and swung round, grinning lopsi-dedly. "I knew it was really you and Dad who buy our presents," he said.
For a moment Ellen was able to think that nothing else was wrong – that the past half-hour had been simply an unusually problematical episode of family life, the sort of confrontation which would prove to have left them with a better understanding of one another. Then Johnny's face stiffened, and the way his gaze edged reluctantly towards the door jolted her heart. She could hear what he was hearing: slow footsteps ascending the stairs.
FORTY-TWO
"It's only your father," she said. Perhaps Ben's footsteps were deliberate because he was taking time to frame an apology, or perhaps he was having to force himself to approach now that he realised how thoughtless he had been. He must be trying to muffle his footsteps so as not to unsettle the children further, but his tread only sounded ominous, soft and ponderous, somehow enlarged. Ellen saw the children shiver, and felt suddenly colder herself. Keep going, she willed him, go up to the workroom. But his footsteps halted outside the bedroom door, and there was silence except for a sound she couldn't bear to hear – the tiny chattering of Johnny's teeth. "What do you want, Ben?" she said.
"To talk."
The children glanced imploringly at her. "What about?" she demanded.
There came a soft thump at the panels of the door, and the children flinched. Ben must be pressing himself against the door, because his response caused the panel which was level with his face to buzz like an insect struggling out of a nest. "Can you hear me, Johnny?" his blurred voice said.
"Yes," Johnny admitted, and obviously felt compelled by the silence to raise his voice. "Yes," he called.
"I didn't mean we'd disappear when it wakes up, if that's what you were afraid of. I only meant we'll change."
For a moment Ellen couldn't believe what she was hearing. She stalked to the door, keeping her fury concealed so as not to alarm the children further. She snatched the door open, slipped through the gap and closed it in a single movement made deft by rage. "Have you no sense, Ben?" she said, too low for the children to hear. "Don't you care what you're doing to them? What kind of Christmas do you want them to have?"
He raised his hands as if he meant to seize her out of frustration.
His face was blank. "The kind I'm looking forward to," he said.
She felt as if the air was turning colder, as if he was somehow towering over her though his face was level with hers, but she wasn't to be intimidated. "If that has anything to do with what you were saying downstairs, I suggest you go and write it and get rid of it that way. But keep it away from the children, I'm warning you."
A flicker of bewilderment passed over his face, and he stretched out his hands to her. "I'm here when you need me."
He looked as if he was trying to appear reassuring but couldn't quite remember how. Ellen wanted to hold his hands and not relinquish them until she'd discovered what was wrong with him, but she couldn't let him win her over so easily when she was standing between him and the children. "We need you as you've always been," she said.
"And ever shall be, amen."
He gave her an unsteady smile in which she thought she saw a plea, and she was just able to take the frail joke as an indication that he hadn't really changed deep down. "That may do for me, Ben, but what are you going to tell the children?"
"What they still have to be told."
A shiver so violent it felt like a spasm carried her out of his reach, shaking her head, slashing the air with her nails to prevent him from following. "Don't you dare come near them when you're like this. If you do I'll take them out of the house, I swear it."
"Where do you imagine you'll go?"
She wasn't going to argue with him. "Enough, Ben. More than enough, if you want us to stay together. Just leave the children alone until you're sure you can keep those ideas to yourself."
When she grasped the knob of Johnny's bedroom door and held onto it, he shrugged and headed for the dark at the top of the house. "Should be prepared," he was muttering. He sounded grotesquely like a boy scout, and she wanted to believe that a kind of reversion to boyishness was at the root of his behaviour, that inhabiting his imagination for the sake of his writing had rendered him temporarily unable to appreciate that some of his fancies should be kept from the children until they were older. When she heard the workroom door close softly, she looked into Johnny's room. "Let's go downstairs. It's too cold up here for sitting around," she said.
As the chil
dren hurried past her, both of them glanced nervously towards the workroom. He'd better stay up there until the family could trust him, Ellen thought in a fury of dismay at the change which had overtaken their life. She shepherded Johnny and Margaret down to the living-room, where the gas fire was cooling, its porcelain creaking as if it was settling into a new shape. She switched on the overhead light, and the tree withdrew its shadows into itself. "Say if you're hungry, you two," she said.
"I'm not," Johnny said untypically.
"Sorry, Mummy, neither am I."
"So long as you regain your appetites in time for Christmas dinner," Ellen said with a jokey fierceness which was intended to conceal her grief. Since it didn't quite work, she grabbed the nearest source of distraction, the remote control for the television. "Let's see if the world's still out there," she said.
She rather wished she hadn't said so. Every channel was swarming with white particles which appeared to be settling into patterns that drew her vision into them. She tried the radio, only to find that it was emitting a noise which sounded like exactly the same hiss of static and which made her think of an oppressively amplified snowfall. When she'd switched off both sets, the silence seemed to blanket her thoughts. She took a deep breath. "Well, what shall we play?"
"That game where we have to draw bits of a drawing and not see what it looks like till the end," Johnny said.
"All right," Margaret said as if she was indulging him.
Ellen went along the hall for paper. As soon as she opened her pad on the dining-table, the patterns she'd drawn earlier fastened on her vision. She blinked hard and slowly, and leafed onwards to the blank sheets, two of which she tore out and brought to the living-room. "You can start, Johnny, since it's your game."
Johnny found one of his annuals on which to rest the page. He sketched a head and folded that strip of the paper before passing the sheet to Margaret for her to add a neck and shoulders. Ellen was appending an upper torso to the hidden features when she remembered what the surrealists had called this game: "the exquisite corpse". It was surely much older than the surrealists, she thought, but that didn't strike her as particularly reassuring. At least the game was cheering Johnny up. She folded the page and gave it to him so that he could giggle over drawing a stomach. Eventually the page returned to him for the feet to be added, and then he unfolded the drawing.
Midnight Sun Page 28