"Who's that?"
Silence met her, and she wondered if he had been talking to himself. She had almost reached the workroom when he responded "It's for you. The publishers."
He was holding the receiver away from his face as if he resented its presence. "Alice Carroll?" she mouthed.
"Nobody else."
Ellen lifted the receiver from his hand and perched on one corner of the desk. "Hello, Alice."
"Ellen. Glad I could get you. Half the calls I've tried to make this morning, the lines have been down with the snow." She paused. "Do you happen to know if I've offended your husband in some way?"
"Not that he's told me," Ellen said, hoping that would make Ben look at her. He continued to gaze at the forest, so intently that his eyes appeared unfocused; he hadn't moved except to lay the hand from which she'd taken the receiver palm down on the desk, fingers splayed, so like his other hand that she could imagine the two were symmetrical. "Why do you ask?" she said.
"Just that he didn't seem interested in discussing the new book."
He didn't regard it as his, Ellen thought, but couldn't he see that even if she had written every word of it, it would be his too? "I think you may have called while he was trying to bring something else to life," she said, and suppressed the panic which made her nervous of saying "Tell me about the book."
"I was supposed to go to a party last night, but the snow put paid to that, so I read what you sent me. I thought I'd call rather than write you a letter so near Christmas. I wanted you both to know that the rewrites are exactly what the book needed. As a matter of fact, as far as the text goes, I think it may be your best book."
Ellen was dumbfounded. "I mean," the editor said, "once you've illustrated it."
"Thanks for saying so. Thank you," Ellen said, still unsure how she felt. "Have a good Christmas."
"Many of them."
Ellen said goodbye awkwardly and leaned her back against the window so as to look into Ben's eyes. "She likes the book now."
"I'm pleased for you."
"For us, Ben, us."
He grasped his chin and turning his head, met her eyes. "It'll always be us, I promise," he said.
She had the disconcerting impression that even now his thoughts and his vision were somewhere else. She mustn't pester him if he was trying to work. "I'm here if you want me," she told him, and went downstairs, wondering why Alice Carroll's praise hadn't assuaged her nervousness. Perhaps her nerves needed time to recover.
She listened to the radio while she wrapped presents, wrote cards in response to some of the morning's mail, copied changes of address into her address book, iced the Christmas cake, made beefburgers for dinner. She had to keep searching the stations for programmes of carols. Between the stations, and sometimes between the carols, the radio would fall so silent that she could imagine it was stuffed with snow. The news reports were about little else but snow: several motorways rendered impassable, towns and villages cut off, worse to come. Whenever she heard how the snow was advancing she glanced out of the window, but the sky and the horizon were clear.
Ben didn't want coffee or lunch. Surely he wouldn't disappoint the children by not going to the play. "Will you be ready in a few minutes?" she called as she reached for her coat.
"For anything," he called in a windy voice which seemed to fill the house. Almost at once he ran downstairs and grabbed her by the hand, and would have pulled her out of the house immediately if she hadn't reminded him to put on a coat. As he urged her along the path beside the allotments and sneaked through a gap in the churchyard hedge near the school, he seemed close to dancing. "Nearly there now. Not long now," he told her, so unnecessarily that she laughed, as they ran through the shadow of the forest. Given his mood, she couldn't resist asking "Has it been a productive day?"
He smiled so widely that her own face ached in sympathy. "Wait and see."
A makeshift stage stretched across the school assembly hall, two sets of tables and chairs representing an inn beside a cardboard stable scattered with hay in front of a tall length of plywood painted with palm trees and a night sky. The plywood masked the classrooms where the performers were audibly hiding. Heads kept poking around it, searching for their parents. Margaret leaned out and flashed Ellen a smile which was trying to appear unconcerned, Johnny grinned as if his face might stay like that throughout the performance, and Ellen crossed her fingers for them. At least now she had a reason to be nervous.
By the time the play commenced, it was dark outside. Stars gleamed through the high windows behind the audience as Johnny's teacher dimmed the lights. Mrs Hoggart struck up "Silent Night" at the piano, and the voices of the unseen children began to sing.
In the first scene Margaret acted her role of a difficult customer at the inn with such vehemence that Ellen came close to tears. She wasn't the only mother whose voice wasn't quite steady as they joined in "Once in Royal David's City". Joseph was holding his tablecloth robe so high above his ankles that he must have tripped during rehearsal. Mary rocked the baby Jesus ferociously throughout the inn scene, and at one suspenseful moment appeared to be about to drop him, though he looked as if he would bounce. The innkeeper forgot most of his lines and was prompted so loudly that his parents in the audience kept echoing the prompter. By now Ellen was suppressing both laughter and tears, and several of her neighbours on the bench were having the same problem. It was a relief when the onstage cast and the choir invisible began to sing "We Three Kings of Orien' tar" and the parents could join in. She wondered if the heating had broken down; though the children might be too busy to notice, their breaths were faintly visible.
The kings brought in their treasures, a box piled with chains painted gold followed by two jars which Ellen suspected had contained bath salts, and then Johnny and the rest of his year scurried squeaking around the hall before subsiding somewhat reluctantly in front of the hay. Everyone sang "O Come All Ye Faithful", and the lights came up so that parents could photograph the players. As Ellen took half a dozen photographs Ben smiled oddly at her, as if he thought her actions were somehow redundant, though the pictures would bring back memories in years to come. "Be quick changing," she called after Johnny and Margaret, and rubbed her arms through her coat to keep warm.
Mrs Venable was apologising for the chill, which had obviously caught her and the heating unprepared, when the children began to reappear from behind the night sky. One of Johnny's friends pointed up at the windows, and a chatter of excitement multiplied as children crowded into the hall, buttoning their coats and clutching their costumes in plastic bags. "Well, that seems to be the explanation," Mrs Venable said, following their gaze. "The snow's here at last. Don't catch cold on the way home. I'll have the heating seen to for tomorrow."
Johnny ran to his parents, squeaking "Come on" at his sister, who was chatting importantly with some of her friends. His voice was so high that it sounded as if he hadn't stopped playing the mouse. Ellen wiped away traces of the whiskers which had been drawn around his mouth, and let herself be tugged along the corridor. But the families already in the schoolyard had halted there, blocking the doorway, and the buzz of excitement had become a growing mumble of bewilderment. Frost sparkled on the concrete of the schoolyard and the bricks of the school walls, but that was all. Of the whiteness which had loomed at all the windows facing the forest, there was no sign.