It seemed that the Doberman was too exhausted to run any further, or else he was waiting for her now that he'd shown her the way out. Except for his panting, each breath etching his ribs, he was standing quite still, his head slightly cocked towards her. "Good dog. Good dog," she managed to croak as she stumbled up to him. She stooped, her back aching like a bad tooth, and coiled the leash around her hand.
She almost lost her grip on it, because she had begun to shiver violently. She could hardly see for her own white breath. "Go on, Golly," she said in a painful dried-up whisper, and then she saw he was shivering too. He was so cold that his black pelt was turning white.
In that moment, as he rolled his eyes and stared beyond her, she realised what she had avoided seeing on the path. All the muddy footprints leading to her had begun to freeze, frost sparkling on them as whatever had caused the dog to bolt had advanced through the forest. Goliath bared his teeth and emitted a snarl which sounded like his shivering made audible, and fled towards the moors, dragging Edna with him.
She tried to hold on and keep up with him – the alternative was too terrible to contemplate. But the world was turning blinding white, or her eyes were, and her face felt as though it was being fitted with a succession of masks of ice. She ran blindly, clinging to the leash, struggling to draw enough breath to tell Goliath to slow down until she could see. Then she fell sprawling, and being dragged over the pine-needles was so painful that her hand lost its grip on the leash. She heard the dog scrambling out of the forest, and then the silence came for her. Ice closed around her body, and she felt as if she was already dead and stiff. She had no words to fend off her sense of the presence which stooped to her, a presence so cold and vast and hungry that her blind awareness of it stopped her breath.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ben seemed determined to be at his best in Leeds. The family hadn't been in the bookshop two minutes before he had charmed the staff, complimenting them on the window display for The Boy Who Caught The Snowflakes, one copy of which looked crystalline with silvery glitter. After that the generously chinned proprietress and her two assistants, both of whom were uniformed in overalls like hers which made them resemble fractions of her, couldn't do enough for the Sterlings, enquiring anxiously whether the chairs at the table where they were to sit were comfortable enough, bringing them and Johnny and Margaret drinks, making sure everyone who set foot in the shop knew there was a book signing, even a diminutive pink-eyed man who was trying to remain unobtrusive while straining on tiptoe to reach the erotica. As customers began to approach the table, Ben brightened further. "Is this for you? You look young enough to me," he told a grandmother who wanted the book inscribed to her grandson for Christmas. He talked to customers about the kinds of book their children liked or, if they were children, about the adventures which were snow and the lengthening nights. "They're our mum and dad, you know," Johnny informed anyone who came near him. Three of Ellen's students turned up to buy a copy each of the book, but it was undoubtedly Ben's show, and she felt happy for him.
The last people in the queue were a reporter and photographer from a local newspaper. The reporter wanted only to check that they lived locally enough to be of some parochial significance. "Let's have your brats in the picture to add a bit of interest," the photographer said, and Ben hugged the family so hard that Ellen gasped. When the photographer said "That'll do" Ben continued to hold on for several seconds, as if he was afraid to let go.
Afterwards they walked through the premature Advent of the city streets. Though Johnny was beginning to entertain doubts about Father Christmas, he wanted to visit his avatar. Ben and Ellen took the children into a department store and waited outside the grotto, whose evergreen plastic entrance was emitting scrawny carols, while Johnny queued and Margaret went off to look at clothes by herself, feeling grown-up. "What do you think?" Ellen asked Ben. "Have we started off well?"
He was looking bemused by the thin singing which seemed to hover in the air. "Are you pleased?" he said.
"I thought we did rather well for beginners."
"If you're pleased, then I am."
"More to the point, the bookshop and the public were, particularly with you."
"The world's ready for me, you think? Wherever I go there'll be children around me? Ben Sterling, magnet of imagination, Pied Piper of the collective unconscious. Myths restored while you wait, tales retold which you'd forgotten you knew, dreams dreamed on your behalf while you sit closer to your fire…"
He was gazing across the cosmetics counter, at his reflection framed in an oval of seasonal glitter, and Ellen felt as if he was scarcely aware of her – as if, perhaps, he was taking refuge in the kind of almost automatic response which he'd produced for the customers at the bookshop. "Just do the best you can on your walkabout next week," she said, "and then it'll practically be Christmas."
"I can't take any responsibility for that."
"Not even for making our first Christmas in Stargrave special? I mean to, for all of us."
"I'm sure this year will be special."
Johnny came out of the grotto just then, wearing his grin which meant he had a tale to tell his parents, and he reminded her so much of his father that her love for both of them seized her deep inside herself. Ben grinned like that sometimes, like a little boy with a secret to share, and she hoped he always would. He was still the person she'd fallen in love with, and she mustn't let herself feel lonely if sometimes that person had to go into hiding inside him. "What was so funny?" she said.
"Father Christmas kept sniffing," Johnny giggled, "and the boy in front of me asked him if he was sniffing the glue that kept his beard on."
"That's how you can tell he wasn't real," Ben said. "A real
Father Christmas wouldn't need chemicals to give him visions. He'd spend the year dreaming of flying over the snow and ice under the stars, dreams like snowstorms that take all year to gather until the days are shortest and it's time for him to rise."
"That could be a book," Ellen suggested.
"What could?" Margaret said, emerging from among the teenage fashions.
"I've already told it once," her father said.
Disappointment and rejection and a shaky resolve not to show her emotions in public flickered across Margaret's face until Ellen came to the rescue. "If your father keeps telling it he may lose the urge to write it," she explained. "It was just the idea that Father Christmas spends nearly all year dreaming of when he'll wake up."
The idea stayed in her mind as she drove out of Leeds. The snow on the moors had all but melted, renewing the colours of the vegetation, shades of moist green which put her in mind of spring. Having at least two books to complete made her feel secure. If by any chance Ben proved not to be inspired by the idea he'd thrown out, she might have a go at writing it herself.
By the time they reached Stargrave, the first stars were glinting above the bridge. The miles of Sterling Forest were composed of night and ice, and seemed somehow to dwarf the lights of the town. The heat of the house welcomed the family, fending off the chill and effacing their breath. After dinner they played Monopoly, using a battered old set of the game, its banknotes crumpled from years of figuring in shops the children pretended to run, one tiny plastic hotel permanently crippled by being chewed and almost swallowed by two-year-old Johnny. Before the game was over, Margaret and Johnny were trying not to shiver. They were overtired, Ellen thought as she hurried them to bed, though perhaps the house was also chilly with a cold which seemed to settle on it from above. Only Ben was unaffected by the chill, unless that was why he grew randy once the children were out of the way. She pulled the duvet over his shoulders as he slid bulging into her, then she rubbed his body hard, trying to keep the chill at bay. When he subsided she held onto him. That didn't seem to keep the chill outside their bed, but soon she was so drowsy that it didn't bother her. She drifted into sleep which felt soft as snow, only to be wakened by a small voice in the dark.