"Not danger that involves the children."
"Call it adventure, then. Try not to interrupt me unless you absolutely have to, all right? It's time to look beyond the myths."
He was watching Johnny as if to prompt him to respond, and Johnny did. "What did you think when you were my age?"
"I'll tell you what I might have thought if I'd been brave enough – I might have thought that the idea of God coming to earth in the form of a man was about as likely as some fat old character being able to climb down chimneys."
This time Johnny's giggle was nervous. Ellen was opening her mouth to put a stop to the subject when Margaret said "You don't have to believe it literally happened. A priest said so on the radio."
"Exactly," Ben said, clapping his hands. "It's a symbol. And symbols are ways of disguising what people can't bear to see clearly."
"I wouldn't say it was that simple," Ellen said, but Margaret interrupted her. "What's Christmas supposed to disguise?"
"I believe it's a symbol of how God came to earth in the form of everything on it."
"Why should anyone be frightened to think that?"
Ben didn't answer immediately, and Ellen found she was holding her breath. The hiss of the fire seemed to intensify, though it wasn't quite keeping the cold at bay. Ben's head turned slowly, scanning the three of them, before he spoke. "What do you think God is?"
"How should we know?" Margaret said. "Nobody really knows."
"Do you think he's an old man with a beard who can be in all sorts of places at once, like Father Christmas?"
The children laughed, and Ellen would have liked to do so. "That's how painters used to picture him, isn't it, Ellen?" he said.
"I suppose so."
"So what is he like if he isn't like that? Could he be a bit like a person whose mind is so superior to ours that we can't begin to imagine his thoughts?"
"Maybe," Margaret admitted.
"Something that was there before the universe was made?"
"Yes," Johnny cried, and Ellen felt him start to raise his hand as if he were in school. "The Bible says."
"That's what it says. But people never seem to wonder what it avoids saying."
"Ben, I think it's time -"
"Just listen," he said urgently, and paused. Of course he wasn't telling them to listen to the hiss of the fire in the midst of his silence, and it was Ellen's nervousness which made her seem to hear another sound, a whisper in the surrounding dark. "If something lived in the dark before there were any stars or worlds, let alone any living creatures," he said, "it couldn't have been even remotely like us."
"I didn't mean he would look like a person," Margaret said.
"But dozens of religions imagine God that way. Why do you think they need to?"
"Why do you?"
Ellen thought Margaret had intended that as a retort rather than as a question, but Ben answered at once. "To help us not to remember what we're afraid of, what the human race has invented whole religions to conceal. All religions are like stories people told by the fire when there was nothing but the fire and stories to keep off the cold and the dark, because people couldn't bear to know what was out there beyond the light."
Both children nestled uneasily against Ellen. "Ben, that's enough," she said.
"No, it isn't. It can't be now." He moved so close to the edge of his chair that he appeared to be squatting, and stretched out his hands as if he was offering his audience the dark. "Ever since then we've believed we've progressed beyond our ancestors because they thought the darkness hid something so alien that they peopled it with gods and monsters and demons, but they were right to think so, don't you see? What lived all by itself in the dark was so unlike us and everything we know that it couldn't have created us and the rest of the universe, not consciously, at any rate. I believe we're its dreams, us and everything around us, and you know how unlike reality dreams are. But sooner or later it had to waken, and then -"
Ellen felt Johnny writhe in her hug. He struggled free of her and fled past the tree, which swayed and creaked and seemed to be doing its best to trip him up with its shadows. "Wait, Johnny," his father called in a voice like a gale as the boy fumbled the door open and ran upstairs. "I haven't finished."
"Yes you have," Ellen said as Margaret hurried out of the room, calling to Johnny. Ellen's anger must be constricting her voice, for she could barely hear herself. "What's got into you, Ben? What do you mean by telling them a story like that at Christmas, or any other time for that matter? I think in future you'd better tell me your ideas first so I can be sure they're suitable."
He was still at the edge of his chair, squatting just within the glow of the fire. He looked bewildered by the reaction he'd provoked, and his bewilderment disturbed her more than anything he'd said. She turned away, shivering with rage and grief and undefined fear. She was at the door when he stood up with an odd movement of his whole body which made her think of a mime of sudden growth. "Leave us alone, Ben," she said wearily. "Give me a chance to patch up the damage you've done."
"I need to -"
"Whatever it is, it can wait," Ellen said, and strode out of the room. The sight of the unlit hall dismayed and enraged her. What sort of game was he playing, darkening the house and then upsetting everyone? When she switched on the light above the stairs, it seemed to emphasise the dark beyond its reach. She was tempted to switch on all the lights, particularly at the top of the house, where she sensed the cold and the silence weighing on the roof as if the night had closed wings over the house. She'd no time for such thoughts now; imagination had done the family quite enough harm for one day. She pulled the door shut behind her and ran up to Johnny's bedroom.
Johnny was sitting next to Margaret on his bed, fists clenched, knuckles digging into the mattress. As soon as his mother appeared he jumped up and went to stare at the ranks of plastic soldiers on the dressing-table, and dabbed furiously at his eyes once his back was to her. "Daddy was just being silly," Margaret told him again.
"Exactly, Johnny. It was just another of his stories, one he shouldn't even have told you," Ellen said. "You believe whatever you want to believe that means you'll have a lovely Christmas."
He emitted a loud sniff and swung round, grinning lopsi-dedly. "I knew it was really you and Dad who buy our presents," he said.
For a moment Ellen was able to think that nothing else was wrong – that the past half-hour had been simply an unusually problematical episode of family life, the sort of confrontation which would prove to have left them with a better understanding of one another. Then Johnny's face stiffened, and the way his gaze edged reluctantly towards the door jolted her heart. She could hear what he was hearing: slow footsteps ascending the stairs.
FORTY-TWO
"It's only your father," she said. Perhaps Ben's footsteps were deliberate because he was taking time to frame an apology, or perhaps he was having to force himself to approach now that he realised how thoughtless he had been. He must be trying to muffle his footsteps so as not to unsettle the children further, but his tread only sounded ominous, soft and ponderous, somehow enlarged. Ellen saw the children shiver, and felt suddenly colder herself. Keep going, she willed him, go up to the workroom. But his footsteps halted outside the bedroom door, and there was silence except for a sound she couldn't bear to hear – the tiny chattering of Johnny's teeth. "What do you want, Ben?" she said.
"To talk."
The children glanced imploringly at her. "What about?" she demanded.
There came a soft thump at the panels of the door, and the children flinched. Ben must be pressing himself against the door, because his response caused the panel which was level with his face to buzz like an insect struggling out of a nest. "Can you hear me, Johnny?" his blurred voice said.