After the glare of the snow, the hall was as dark as the forest must be. She heard the tree creak, and then light streamed down from the top of the house. Ben had opened the workroom door. "Only me," she announced.
Wood creaked above her, disorienting her until she realised he was leaning on the banister. "Where are they?" he demanded.
"At Kate's. I thought we might like to be on our own for a while."
"How long for?"
"They're having lunch there," Ellen said, trying to blink her eyes clear. Of course it was the stairwell that made his voice sound as large as a wind. "Come down. Whatever it is, you can tell me."
"Whatever what is?"
"Whatever's been making you so secretive lately."
She waited, but he didn't stir. She couldn't tell if he was arrested by her words or if his thoughts were somewhere else, but he seemed unlikely to come to her, and so she started up the stairs. "I don't know why, Ben, but it's making me nervous."
"I was too. It won't be for long now, I promise."
She felt as though she was dreaming the conversation, it was so difficult to grasp and so isolated by the silence. She didn't speak again until she was on the stairs leading to the top floor. "What won't?"
"Ellen…" It sounded like a plea. He clenched his fists, and she saw him shudder from head to foot. She was running to hold him when he swung towards her, his face blank. "If you need me to talk, I will when the children are here. Better collect them before it's dark," he said, and went into the workroom, closing the door behind him.
THIRTY-NINE
"Better collect them before it's dark…" He couldn't have meant anything by that, Ellen told herself, yet it had left her feeling more on edge than ever. She felt as if he'd trapped her in the dimness with her doubts, and she might have pursued him into the workroom if she hadn't been overcome by a fit of shivering as she noticed how cold the house was. Ben must have let the central heating lapse. Breathing hard into her clasped hands, she ran down to the kitchen.
The timer on the boiler had switched off the heating shortly after breakfast. Had he been too preoccupied to turn it on again, or could he have gone out of the house? She thought he might have been moulding a face on the snow giant beyond the window, except that the marks on the spherical head didn't add up to anything she would have called a face; she wasn't sure what the pattern, which appeared to have emerged from the way the ball of snow was formed, reminded her of. She spun the wheel to override the timer and listened to the twangs of metal as heat coursed through the house. She stood by the boiler until she felt unfrozen enough to move away, then she went into the living-room.
The tree was dark. She switched on the bulbs and tried the television. The transmitter must be snowbound; the screen showed an endless fall of white. She was hoping Kate had been mistaken about the radio, but all it emitted was a stream of static which sounded constantly about to shape itself into a voice. She gave up and sat listening to the silence and her thoughts.
At least now she felt certain that she knew why she was on edge, and perhaps she could persuade herself that she had no reason to be: whatever Ben's secret was, it surely couldn't be anything bad if he insisted on telling the children at the same time he told her – but why must he be secretive at all? She had only to ask him, except that might spoil the surprise; she was almost sure that underlying his mysteriousness was a boyish eagerness to astonish. In that case, why was she still nervous? Her thoughts and feelings chased one another until she had to close her eyes and rest her head on the upholstery of the chair. She didn't know what made her open her eyes and glance past the tree to the doorway.
Ben was watching her from the foot of the stairs. She couldn't see his face for the dazzle of the tree, only a pale blur. "I didn't mean to wake you," he said at once. "I was just seeing where you were. You sleep while you have the chance. I can get the children."
"I wasn't sleeping, just resting my eyes," Ellen said, but he was already retreating upstairs. "You needn't leave me alone unless you want to. We can always talk."
He faltered and then came to her, so slowly that he reminded her of a child trying to frame an excuse. "We don't have to," she said, almost laughing at his reluctance but not quite able to do so. "We can do whatever you want to do."
"Nothing much we can do now except wait."
He walked past her and stood at the window, gazing towards the blanched town. His face was so expressionless that she thought he was hiding impatience. "Let them have a few hours with their friends," she said.
He stretched out his arms and pressed his hands against the panes. "They may as well."
What on earth was there in his response to make her shiver? Just one reassurance, she promised herself. "It's going to be a pleasant surprise, isn't it?" she said.
"What is?"
"Whatever you're keeping from us."
"Keeping from you…" he said oddly, and pushed himself away from the windows. The patterns which his hands had left there shrank and faded from the glass. They didn't much resemble the marks of hands, but she was concentrating on his face, which looked pleading. "Trust me," he said.
"I do, Ben, you know that." Surely he meant it as an affirmative response to her question; what else could he mean? All the same, she was shivering. "I'm cold," she said.
"It's the shadow of the forest. It's reached the house."
The explanation wasn't especially comforting. His sitting with her and holding her would have been, but she oughtn't to have to ask. "I'm going up," he said.
"To do what, Ben? What's keeping you up there?"
He halted in the doorway with his back to her. He was so still, and paused for so long before he spoke, that she held her breath. At last he said "How did telling that story feel to you?"
"Our book?" Presumably his question was an answer of sorts, or a stage on the way to one. "Like remembering things I'd forgotten I knew. Like letting the story use me to tell itself."
"That's it. The children will be fine with us to guide them." He paused again as he set foot on the stairs. "Be sure to let me know if you're going out."
"Why do you ask that?"
"So I won't need to start wondering who's in the house."
His demand had angered her, but she couldn't sustain anger in the face of his response; it was just another feeling to add to her confusion. She listened to his footsteps climbing the silence, the occasional muffled creak of a stair, the distant thud of the workroom door, the isolated sound of her own sigh. If he was going to play the solitary artist, so could she. She shoved herself out of her chair and, sprinting to the top floor, pushed the work? room door open. "I'm just getting my sketch-pad.”
Ben was at the desk. Beyond him a sun like a mirror of ice was lowering itself through the white sky towards the forest. His hands were upturned on the desk as if they were reaching for something he saw, unless he was gazing at them. In the pale light they looked drained of colour. "Work in here if you like," he said.
Even though the skylight under which her drawing-board stood had acquired a thick lid of snow, she would have stayed if there had been so much as a hint of invitation in his voice, but she felt he was barely aware of her. He seemed more interested in the white blur which was hovering above the forest and which, she told herself, couldn't possibly be the reflection of his face. "There's more room downstairs. I'll make lunch soon," she said.
"Not for me."