"Do we need lights on a night like this?"
"If we want to make sure I don't fall downstairs."
"I don't want that to happen to you."
"Or anything else bad, I hope."
"Nothing bad, I promise," he said, switching on the light above the hall. "Only wonderful."
She smiled at him, but his gaze was somewhere else. As she went downstairs he stayed outside the bathroom. She glanced up from the hall and saw him watching her over the banisters. He looked nervous and eager. "Try and contain yourself for just a few more minutes," she said.
All the way along the hall she saw the figure towering outside the kitchen window. She switched on the fluorescent tube as soon as she could. The glare made the figure appear to step forwards, and she closed the blinds. They turned the kitchen even whiter, white as the inside of an iceberg. She didn't know why she should be troubled by that, nor by the liquid whisper which had started outside the drawn blinds, growing louder: it was only the sound of the bath emptying into the drain. "Nobody wants dinner for a while, do they?" she shouted along the hall. "You two have been kept supplied with sweets this afternoon, if I know Kate and her mob."
She heard the bathroom door open. "Your mother says you've had enough to eat," Ben said. "There are more important things than eating."
"Close the door, Daddy," Margaret protested. "You're making us cold."
"Hurry up and get dressed, then. Don't keep us waiting."
He really oughtn't to imply that Ellen shared his impatience, but who else could he have meant? At least she was about to learn what they had been waiting for, and that should put an end to this wretched nervousness. She heard Johnny thundering to his room, crying "Eeeyowww" like a jet plane, and then there was silence until Margaret said "Daddy, you don't need to keep standing there. I'll be down as soon as I'm dressed."
"Daddy looks like the guard in that prison film we saw."
"Except I'm here to unlock you," Ben said, and Ellen wondered what he could mean. "Don't fuss at them, Ben," she shouted. "Let the poor girl take her time."
"I'm just putting on my slippers," Margaret announced, and moments later she and Johnny ran downstairs. Whenever Ellen saw their scrubbed pink faces after they'd had a bath she thought they looked heartbreakingly vulnerable, almost newborn. They must be racing down because they wanted to hear what
Ben had to tell them, but as Ellen saw him switch off the lights upstairs and follow them quickly and silently she could have imagined they were running away from him. "Anybody for another drink?" she said.
Ben sighed like a wind through a distant forest. "No thanks," Johnny said, and Margaret shook her head.
Ben reached the foot of the stairs and stood between it and the front door. "We'll go by the tree," he said.
He didn't move until Ellen had followed the children into the living-room, but then he was in the room almost before she knew it, and closing the door behind him. As she sat with the children on the sofa and put her arms around them he turned off the overhead light and strode past the lit tree to the window. He'd pulled back one curtain before she realised what he was doing. "Leave those shut, Ben, for heaven's sake. You'll be letting all the heat out of the room."
He hesitated, staring at the reflection of his face, which looked as if it was emerging from the snow, a blurred face half the size of Stargrave. "I thought you'd be able to watch while I talk."
"We'll use our imaginations. Close the curtain, Ben, please."
By the time he did so, the room felt significantly colder. Ellen pushed herself off the sofa and turned on the gas fire, which began to whisper and creak and brighten as Ben went to the chair facing the sofa. He sat back, his hands flat on the arms, his face caged by shadows, his eyes gleaming. He was silent for so long that Johnny started giggling. "Tell us, Daddy," he spluttered.
"I was just thinking how to lead you into it."
Johnny's giggles trailed off, crushed by his father's unexpected seriousness. "If I ask you a question, Johnny, will you trust me?"
"Yes," Johnny said with just a hint of dubiousness.
"Do you still believe in Father Christmas?"
Johnny giggled. When his father stared at him, eyes gleaming, he mumbled, "I don't know."
"What do you think?"
Ellen felt the boy snuggle against her as if he was trying to hide. "Ben," she said.
"It's part of growing up." His eyes turned towards her like shifting fragments of the night sky. "What about you, Margaret?
What have you got to say?"
"I think you should leave him alone."
"Too late for that. I meant, do you still believe?"
"You know."
Of course she had seen through the myth years ago, and had been pretending ever since for Johnny's sake. If Ellen sympathised with her, did that mean Ellen didn't want him to grow up? "Ben, if this is your idea of a Christmas surprise…"
"It's just a way of getting there. I'm trying to make it easier for everyone."
She indicated Johnny. "Then what's happened to your imagination, Ben?"
He sat forwards, and she felt as if the dark had also moved towards her. She was wondering why her question should have provoked him to react so ominously when Johnny said, "We were talking at playtime and some of my mates were saying Father Christmas is just your parents buying presents and hiding them."
Either he was bracing himself for the next question or Ellen was so nervous that she fancied he shared her apprehension. "What did you say to that?" Ben said.
"I said I thought I saw you once, at the end of my bed last Christmas."
"Your mother and I thought we might have wakened you, but we decided you were still asleep." Ben sat back like a king on a throne. "Time to wake up, Johnny. You'll be glad you did."
Ellen felt as if she was hearing his words in a dream, they seemed so unlike him. She hugged Johnny, and was about to intervene again when his father said "I remember how I felt when I found out. I was disappointed too, buc at the same time I saw that I'd known the truth for a while and hadn't been letting myself realise. That's how people are."
Johnny had to learn sometime, and he wasn't unduly upset as far as Ellen could judge. Ben's next words seemed so poised, so secretly eager, that she couldn't help growing tense. "Why are people, do you think?"
"Like that?" Margaret said. "Because they want to think nice things."
"Rather than the truth, you mean? Do you think we should be afraid of the truth?"
Johnny wriggled, and Ellen loosened her hold on him. "No," he said loudly.
"That's it, Johnny. I'm proud of you. However frightening the truth may seem we have to face it, because being afraid of it won't make it go away. Being afraid only shrinks our minds and makes people invent myths small enough for them to cope with."
Ellen's instinct was to keep quiet, but she felt as though the dark was forcing her to speak. "I don't see what this has to do with Father Christmas."
"I wasn't talking about him." Ben crouched forwards. "I told you that it was only the first step. I'm talking about Christmas itself."
Ellen thought she must have misunderstood him, until his unwavering stare made it plain that he'd meant what she feared he had. "Let's discuss your ideas another time, Ben. The children don't want to hear them."
"I do," Johnny protested, and Margaret said "You would."
"Don't stop me now, Ellen, when we're so close. I was just about Johnny's age when I nearly saw the truth, and it's taken me all this time to get back to it. I suppressed what I knew because I was afraid it would kill my aunt, but you aren't like her. You love danger and the heights."