"Good. I'm glad," Ben responded, feeling as if she'd interrupted a thought he was about to have.
"Don't you agree?"
"I can't imagine living anywhere else." In case he hadn't matched her enthusiasm he added "Or with anyone else."
"I should hope not. That part of your imagination's all mine." She cupped her hands to her mouth. "Be careful where you climb," she shouted to the children, but the wind flung her voice back at her. "Don't climb until I'm there," she shouted, and ran up the path.
As Ben watched her take their hands and lead them towards the sky, three figures growing smaller in the midst of the luminous moor, he experienced a rush of love and satisfaction on their behalf. The children had never been happier at school, and both Johnny's handwriting and Margaret's spelling had improved. Ellen's latest paintings showed a new toughness mixed with her old sensitivity, and she'd joined Sally Quick's moorland rescue team. As for himself, he was beginning to feel as though the whole of his life between running away from his aunt's and finally returning to Stargrave had been no more than a prolonged interlude, most of which he had to make an effort to remember. The only problem was that he couldn't write.
At first he'd assumed that the excitement of coming home was distracting him. As soon as the air had begun to smell of autumn he'd taken himself to the desk every morning and kept himself there until he'd written at least a paragraph, but he felt as if the story wouldn't come alive. He was nervous of telling it to the children in case the act drained it of whatever energy it had. He was beginning to wonder if having signed a contract in advance was making him afraid that he couldn't deliver, but he thought more than that was involved. As he sat at the desk each morning and gazed into the forest, he felt as though an inspiration or a vision larger than he could imagine was hovering just out of reach.
"Climb with us, Daddy," Johnny was calling, and Ben relinquished his thoughts with a sigh. By the time he arrived at the children's favourite crag, which Margaret had immediately compared to a giant loaf nibbled by giant mice, the family was halfway to the top. The wind tugged at Margaret's clothes as she followed her mother up the zigzag path worn into the rock, and Ben clambered after her in case she needed help.
Johnny danced on the flat summit and chanted "I'm the king of the castle" while the others hauled themselves over the edge to join him. Having wavered upright, Ben planted his feet well apart before he surveyed the view. All he could see were another few distant slopes and isolated farmhouses. Even if the view had anything extra to offer, his anxiety in case the children strayed too close to the edge was distracting him.
From the foot of the crag they walked across the moor to the common between the forest and the town. A faint path which Mrs Venable forbade her pupils to use on the way to and from school led through the grass above the schoolyard and churchyard and back gardens of Church Road. As the road curved downhill, half a mile of allotments took the place of gardens beside the path, and ended near the track which led past the Sterling house.
As the Sterlings reached the track, Mrs Dainty stumbled out of the woods onto the further stretch of path, mopping her forehead with her free hand. "Thank the heavens it was you I kept hearing and you stayed there long enough for me to find you."
"We've only just got here, Mrs Dainty," Ellen said.
"If I was hearing some other lost soul whispering in there, may the dear Lord see them out before it's dark. The dog only had me off the path as far as you are from the church, and I thought we were gone for ever."
"There you are," Margaret said to her parents. "We need to make some more paths."
"I wouldn't ache my head with that if I were you, lass," Mrs Dainty said. "There won't be many besides me walking in there till spring. There's not many can take the chill."
"Thank you, Mrs Dainty."
Ben didn't think she heard him as the dog yanked her away, but Ellen heard. "What were you thanking her for?"
"Showing me where I can be alone to work out my story."
"I expect all you need is not to feel under pressure. I won't need to start painting for six months. You do whatever your feelings say you have to, but don't get lost in there."
"How could I?" Ben said, and waited until she turned away before following her and the children to the house. He heard the forest creak and whisper behind him, and shook his head at himself. Finding his way into the book had to be his only reason to spend time in there. It wouldn't help him in his task to feel that he was using the book as an excuse to be alone in the woods.
TWENTY
The cold wakened him before dawn. He couldn't tell whether it was the night which was cold or only himself. When he put one arm around Ellen, she shivered in her sleep. Though he didn't feel the need to shiver, the cold was making him restless. He padded into the workroom and watched the stars flickering above the forest, and wondered how many of the crystal sparks were ghosts of dead stars, their light kept alive by the gulf they had to cross, just now, when the night was darkest, the mass of trees looked like a distillation of the space between the stars. He would have switched on the desklamp if he'd thought of so much as a phrase, but his nervous exhilaration seemed for the moment to have nothing to do with writing. He watched until the forest began to glimmer and then to glow faintly as the stars went out. It was the dawn, but it looked to him as though the starlight was settling into the forest, impregnating the silvery branches.
The click of the central heating reverberated through the pipes and brought him back to himself. Soon the family would be about, and he didn't want the bother of explaining why he had been sitting naked at the desk; he hadn't even realised until now that he was. By the time he'd bathed and dressed himself the family was still asleep. He brought Ellen a cup of tea, and sang softly in the children's ears to rouse them.
He was brushing his teeth after breakfast, gazing into his eyes as if they could tell him a secret, when he heard Ellen losing patience with the children. "Try and get a move on instead of arguing. You know I need to be quick on Mondays."
She taught an art class at a college outside Leeds twice a week. A niece of Sally Quick's was a student there and had persuaded Ellen to take the class. "I'll walk them to school," Ben told Ellen as he went downstairs. "I need to get away from the desk."
"Any joy this morning?"
"Nothing on paper to show for it. It's in here," he said, tapping his forehead. "I just need to give it room to breathe."
"If you go in the woods will you stay where we've marked?"
"If it keeps you happy," he said, feeling guilty as he saw how prepared she was to believe him. There was no point in troubling her when he knew what he was doing. He wanted to make sure nobody distracted him from his imagination, that was all.
When he opened the front door the October cold settled on him. The flowers in the garden were dusted with frost, the cobwebs on the spiky wall had turned into webs of spun glass. He felt entranced by the clarity of his surroundings, the cold made visible. When he reached the newsagent's and a newsboy with an empty shoulder-bag dodged into the shop, the furnace blast from the heater above the door almost shocked Ben into the roadway. Johnny was being a steam engine while Margaret strolled with two of her friends and pretended that her father wasn't there. As the horde of schoolchildren converged on the school, they seemed to him to be drawn towards the forest. The sight made him think of some fairy tale, perhaps one he had yet to tell.