"Dieting to get ready for Christmas?"
He didn't answer. The room felt as though it was filling with a stillness which she lacked the energy to break. She grabbed her sketch-pad and some pencils and retreated to the dining-room, where she switched on the chandelier above the table and sat facing the window. The shadow of the forest was oozing down through Stargrave; some of the windows on Church Road were already lit, and the covering of snow had begun to shine dully in the gloom. She flipped the pad open at the first unmarked sheet and picked up a pencil without knowing what she meant to draw. It seemed not to matter so long as she marked the snowy blankness of the page.
Perhaps she could draw an image which would help bring Ben's story alive. She drew a disc a third of the way down the page to represent the midnight sun, taking her time to describe as nearly perfect a circle as she could, then she sketched a forest of pines and spruce low on the page. The picture didn't amount to much as far as she could see, and so she began to raise trees above and behind the first trees, drawing the branches in increasingly intricate detail, until they looked more like shapes of frost than trees and then, as she elaborated the next rank, like neither. She found the image disconcerting, and its appearance when she hadn't realised it was in her mind was more so. She turned over the page, having thought of a new subject: the crystal from before the beginning of time.
Of course it was Ben's idea, not hers, and she found that she didn't know how to give it life. She let the point of the pencil rest on the centre of the page, until the very blankness of her mind seemed to start it moving. It drew a minute line and crossed it with another, then divided the angles between them and separated the end of each line into halves which flowered like frost, then it returned to the centre and divided the angles again… Long before it finished she lost count of the number of tiny precise movements it described, but when at last it faltered she saw that she'd drawn a crystal or a symbol of one, a shape so small and pale it was well-nigh invisible, yet so complex it hinted at patterns beyond imagining. She gazed at it until she thought she understood how it might grow, and then she recommenced drawing.
She didn't know how long it took. At first she kept glancing at the window as the shadow of the forest seemed to loom at it, until she grew engrossed in her task. The more she drew, the more she felt that the pattern was already there before her, waiting to be deciphered. The shape of the page frustrated her, but what else could she use? She felt as if she would be unable to let go of the pencil until every inch of the paper was taken up. At last she finished, and put one hand over her aching eyes for a good few minutes before she examined her work.
It was exquisitely detailed and yet by no means clear. All the lines were as faint as her first drawing of the crystal. The pattern made her think of ripples frozen in the instant they reached out of sight, but what kind of ripples, in what medium? It made her think of the centre of a spider's web so wide it might be infinite. She gazed into it, trying to grasp what it should mean to her, until she had to squeeze her eyes shut to rid herself of a sense that it had fastened on her vision. It was behind her eyelids too. She turned her eyes towards the window in the hope that doing so would clear them, and realised with a start how long she had been at the table. Outside it was nearly dark.
Was Ben collecting the children from Kate's? Could Ellen have been so engrossed that he'd left the house without her noticing? She stood up quickly, almost tripping over the legs of the chair, and ran into the hall. "Ben, are you up there?"
There was silence, but it didn't feel as though she was alone in the house. "Are you still there, Ben?"
She was lifting her coat from the post at the foot of the banisters when the floor at the top of the house creaked, and she heard his voice. It sounded distant, and either she misheard his words or he meant them as a joke, but at least she knew where he was. "Are you coming with me to fetch the children?" she called.
"You'll come straight back, won't you?"
"I expect so."
"Then I'll wait here."
Perhaps he'd fallen asleep at the desk; he seemed to be struggling to control his voice. "Will you be all right by yourself until we get back?" she shouted.
"I'll make sure I am."
He sounded more determined; his voice was larger and stronger. "We won't be long," she promised. She wriggled her hands through the sleeves of her coat and zipped it up as she opened the front door. She took one step into the twilight, and her teeth began to chatter.
FORTY
Except for the misty blur above the trees, the sky was clear. The night was closing around Stargrave, darkness spreading over the horizon beyond the railway to meet the shadow of the forest. Both of the lonely farmhouses she could see on the moors were lit. Their yellow windows were brighter and steadier than the star which flickered in the depths of the rising night, but it was the darkness which Ellen felt coming into its own – the darkness, and the lurid glow of the snowscape, and above all the cold. The temperature must have fallen several degrees since she had last been out of the house. She felt as if a claw of ice had seized her face. She thrust her hands into her gloves and hurried down to the main road, stumbling over footprints.
By the time she reached the shops, the cold was close to overcoming her ability to think. Each breath stung her nostrils, each step struck chill through her boots. The snow on the pavements was trodden down, and walking was treacherous with frozen slush. Most of the shops were open, their windows grey with condensation, but they had few customers. A family with a terrier on a leash crossed the square, their footfalls sounding compressed, their heads hanging low as if they'd been defeated by the cold. "Watch you don't fall," the woman with the terrier said, and Ellen saw that they were only attending to their steps.
As she turned along Hill Lane, she faltered. The mass of white above the streets – the common and the forest which was almost indistinguishable from it except for the hint of shapes of trees – was glowing. It put her in mind of an enormous crumpled page which was illuminated from within, and it appeared not to be entirely blank: she thought she saw patterns extending from the dimness beneath the trees onto the edge of the common. She made herself concentrate on the street she was climbing. Poring over her drawing must have affected her eyes, but she had to ignore that for the children's sake.
Soon she couldn't see beyond the town for the streetlamps, which seemed to huddle together as they approached the common. Nearly all the houses had at least one downstairs window lit. Their illumination shone through curtains and Christmas wreaths and lay on the pavement or in gardens, exhibiting snow. A door opened ahead of Ellen, and a woman hurried across the street to deliver a saucepan covered with a steaming cloth to an ageing neighbour. "Don't leave it open, we'll catch our deaths," a man protested as the woman dashed back into her house. The door slammed, and then the street was deserted apart from Ellen and several figures poking their white heads over garden walls.
By the time she reached Kate's and Terry's house her face felt like a frozen mask. As she stepped onto the short path, the roses on the trellis over the gate shed snow on her. She heard Johnny and Margaret laughing as she picked her way along the icy path beside a snowman surrounded by footprints. She dragged one hand out of her pocket and prodded the doorbell, and Kate ran to let her in. "You look as if you could do with something to warm you up."
"Don't open any Christmas spirit just for me."
"Christmas has already started in our house." Kate led her into the main room, where symmetrical angels had been unfolded and hung from the cornice, and slid the double doors open to the dining-room. "Scotch is the answer to this kind of weather."