"I thought there were birds moving about in there," Johnny said.
When had she last seen birds around Stargrave? But she couldn't feel a wind either. Presumably she was too cold. She stumbled past another cottage and began to sing:
"God rest ye merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Saviour Was born on Christmas Day…"
Of course, she thought, the echo was under the railway bridge, even if it seemed to be behind them and around them, more like a stealthy chorus, a whispering which seemed enormous and yet on the edge of inaudibility. It must be the bridge which turned the echo of her last words into a sound like muffled icy laughter. She peered along the road at the lightless mouth and the hint of whiteness at the far end of the tunnel, and looked away quickly. Her eyes were misbehaving again; the whiteness had appeared to lurch forwards into the tunnel. "Nearly there now," she said firmly, and stepped off the road onto the track past the lit and curtained cottage. Then she sucked in a breath to suppress whatever comment she might have blurted out. As far as she could see, their house was dark.
"It looks as if your father's gone out looking for us," she said.
She fumbled in her pocket and managed to extract her keys without dropping them as she picked her way along the track. She would feel better once she was home, she promised herself. She could only assume it was the way her vision was struggling to grasp the obscured shape of the forest which had caused the patterns to reappear in the snow, stretching across the common and up to the ridge. She hurried the children towards the house, gripping the key to the front door so hard between her finger and thumb that she could feel the chill of the metal through her glove. But she hadn't reached the front step when the door of the dark house swung open. "I was just coming to get you," Ben said.
FORTY-ONE
For the moment all that mattered was to get the children and herself inside and shut the cold out. Ellen pushed Margaret and Johnny into the hall with her clumsy magnified hands and stamped her feet on the doorstep. She could hear snow scattering around her boots more clearly than she could feel her soles thumping the step. She swayed into the house and fell against the door to close it, and found that she could see nothing but the glimmer of Ben's face. "Someone switch on the light, for heaven's sake," she said.
Ben didn't move. She couldn't distinguish his expression or even his features, just the pale blur which the icy glow through the panes of the front door made of his face. She closed her eyes, because the dim glow was causing his face to appear to shift restlessly. The switch clicked, and the light turned her eyelids orange. She forced them open at once.
He was at the foot of the stairs, between her and the children, one of whom had switched on the light. His face was blank except for an ambiguous gleam in his eyes. "There you are," he said.
She didn't know if he was greeting them or alluding to the light, but she assumed his tonelessness was intended as a rebuke. "I meant to come home earlier," she said, "but I couldn't face the walk without some fuel inside me. Take your wet things off, you two, and jump into a hot bath. You could be making us a hot drink, Ben, while I persuade my fingers to work."
"Whatever keeps you happy," he said, turning away so quickly that he sent a cold draught through the hall. Surely whatever surprise he had in store for the family could wait a little longer – he needn't act like a disappointed child because they'd kept him waiting. She would go to him in a few minutes to make friends with him.
The children piled their outer clothing by the front door and raced upstairs as the kettle on the cooker began to creak with heat. Ellen sat on the stairs and levered one of her boots off with the other, tugged off the latter with her cumbersome hands and then trapped the gloves in her armpits so as to pull her hands free. She flexed her fingers and unzipped her anorak as they began to tingle painfully, and staggered on her shivery legs to lean against the hall radiator. The next moment she recoiled from it, for it was even colder than she was.
The thought of going out again to find Stan Elgin, or waiting while Ben did so, almost made her weep. She hobbled to the kitchen, trying to wriggle her fingers and toes. When she stepped off the carpet onto the linoleum it felt like stepping barefoot onto ice. She tiptoed rapidly to the boiler, only just keeping her balance. Then she wavered, and her heels struck the linoleum. The heating hadn't failed; it was switched off.
She spun the timer wheel and heard the warmth surge through the house, then she stumbled backwards and lowered herself onto the nearest bench. "When did you turn off the heating, Ben? What were you thinking of?"
He was at the window, his palms flat on the metal of the sink. The shape towering outside the window seemed to be in the process of merging with the smaller figures, whose positions looked more symmetrical than they previously had. "Us and the children," he said.
Had he been so preoccupied by their absence that he'd switched off the boiler without thinking? "We're here now," she said to placate him. Hearing water in the bath overhead, she braved the linoleum so as to reach the hall. "Is the water hot?" she called.
"Yes," Johnny and then Margaret said.
"What do you want to drink? Hot fruit juice or hot chocolate?"
"Hot blackcurrant," they responded virtually in chorus.
"That's what 1 was going to make for them," Ben murmured. "We don't want them going to sleep."
"Coffee for me," Ellen said, and padded into the living-room to find her slippers. She eased her feet into them with a sigh of anticipation and held onto the radiator to feel the warmth spreading through it and through her, then she turned and sat against it until the heat was deliriously unbearable. She dug the keys out of her pocket and dropped them into her handbag beside her chair, and marched back to the kitchen, where Ben was pouring hot water into the children's mugs. "I'll take them their drinks," she said.
"I'll bring yours up to you."
"Don't you want to let us out of your sight?" Ellen said smiling.
"Nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"I should say not." She would have stayed with him to prove he had no reason to sound so defensive if the children hadn't been waiting for their drinks. She squeezed his waist and carried the mugs to the bathroom.
Only Margaret's head was visible above a white mound. At the other end of the bath Johnny was brandishing the fingerless wads of white his hands had become. "No need to use quite so much foam in the bath," Ellen said, blowing the foam off his right hand and kissing his fingers before giving him and Margaret their mugs. "Careful, it's hot," she said.
At least the bathroom had heated up, but the landing must be taking longer, because as Ben came in with her mug the room immediately grew colder. He closed the door and leaned against it, which kept the heat in but also made the room feel unusually claustrophobic. "We aren't going anywhere," Ellen said, which prompted him to smile, though he was gazing at the unrecognisable blur of his face in the steamed-up mirror rather than at her. He looked capable of standing there until the children climbed out of the bath. She drank her coffee unhurriedly and collected the children's mugs. "I'll take these down. Don't stay in the water too long or you might find yourselves stuck in the ice," she said.
She thought she was going to have to ask Ben to move away from the door. She wasn't even sure that he would hear her, his gaze was so bright and blank. When he reached behind him and closed his hand over the doorknob, she had to tell herself not to be ridiculous: of course he didn't mean to prevent her from opening the door. There, he'd pulled it open and was sidling around it to wait for her on the landing, which was unlit once more. "Aren't you going to put on the light for me?" she said.