"The builder. I think most of Stargrave knew."
"Probably everyone but me."
"Didn't any of your friends at school ever mention it?"
"I didn't let outsiders get that close to me. A family trait, I suppose it was."
"Do you think it bothered your family that so many people knew?"
"About old Edward? I should think it must have. They weren't that strange."
"Would that be why they kept people at a distance?"
"That and not wanting to mix with the herd." He dug his elbow into the pillow and propped himself above her. "What are you getting at? What's the mystery?"
"I was just wondering – if they felt like that about Stargrave, what kept them there?"
She was suddenly afraid she'd probed too deeply or too clumsily into his memories, because a cold glint appeared in his eyes. "What do you really want? Have you had second thoughts? Are you trying to put me off going back?"
"Of course not, Ben."
"Because if you've any doubts, then we'll just have to stay where we are."
"I do want us to move. I'm sure the people there will make us feel at home. I just wanted to be certain that you do."
"Then stop worrying." He stroked her cheek so gently that at first she didn't realise he was wiping away a tear. "I didn't want to say before," he said, "and I can't tell you why I feel this because I don't know myself, but I feel as if it'll make a new man of me."
"Can't I keep the one I married?"
"Wait until you test the new improved model," he said with a wink, and traced her spine with one finger to give her a delicious shiver. When his hand settled on her bottom she nestled against him, and almost at once she was asleep.
The event of the week was an offer from Kerys Thorn – twenty thousand pounds as an advance against royalties for their next two books, to which Ember would buy world rights. "It's meant to show how much faith we have in your books," Kerys assured the Sterlings when they called her, Ben holding the receiver between his face and Ellen's. "We'll be acting as your agent, since you haven't got one. Let me send you a contract and if there's anything in it you don't like, give me a call."
"Sounds fine," Ellen mouthed, and Ben said "Sounds fine." The contract arrived three weeks, later, and Kerys sounded quite relieved that they were asking for changes. "You keep the media rights by all means and double your number of complimentary copies. I'm here to keep you happy if I can."
By then Ellen had written an icily polite letter thanking Sid Peacock for his consideration and hoping that he would be pleased to learn she had received a better offer. She had also returned to Stargrave to see how work on the house was progressing, since Dominic Milligan had asked Ben to avoid taking days off. The newly plastered walls downstairs and the floors stripped of their worn carpets made her footsteps sound as though she was walking through a series of vaults. She heard Elgin's men shifting like large birds on the roof, and once she thought she heard a voice from somewhere even higher. It must have been one of the builders on the roof, but for a moment she thought it was calling her by name. Perhaps that was why it reminded her indefinably of Ben, though the shrill voice had sounded nothing like his.
Stan Elgin offered to redecorate the house for her. Choosing carpets and wallpaper and paints in Stargrave made her feel she was already part of the town. Next day in Norwich she learned that a married couple, both teachers, had made a bid for her home. The pattern of her life and the family's was falling into place, but she couldn't help feeling wistful on behalf of the house where the children had always lived. She wondered if Ben shared her melancholy, he seemed so preoccupied that she decided not to ask.
Soon she felt happier. An elderly couple signed a lease for Ben's aunt's house, and Dominic Milligan interviewed a young woman who he thought would be perfect for the shop. She hadn't started work there when it was time for a last check of the Sterling house.
It seemed transformed. The exterior had been painted red as autumn, except for the woodwork, which was bright yellow. Ellen switched on the central heating and strolled through the house, smelling the newness. The only addition about which she might have had second thoughts was the wallpaper in the corridors and over the stairs, patterned with pines so dark you had to gaze at them to make sure they were green, but she would learn to live with it. "Here's to you, Stan Elgin," she said aloud, and thought she heard an echo more or less repeating her last word, though it didn't sound like her voice. On second thoughts, it must have been a voice calling someone from above the house.
The teachers had obtained a mortgage and wanted to move into the Norwich house in six weeks. Preparing for the move took the Sterlings as long: wrapping in newspaper anything which might be fragile, packing cartons until they were piled nearly to the ceiling in the rooms their contents had occupied, Ben having to lift them down again to write on each carton which room in the Stargrave house it was bound for, Ellen trying to persuade the children that they had outgrown at least a few of their toys and books… In the midst of all this Ben managed to complete the text of their new book, which he finished rewriting and sent off to Kerys the day before they would leave Norwich.
The morning was bright and cold, the sort of spring day which feels poised to revert to winter. Johnny insisted on helping the removal men to load their huge van, and then stood panting to watch his breath appear. "We're leaving our breath behind," he said. Margaret gazed at the daffodils blossoming beside the garden path and ran into the house to hide her tears, and Ellen let her stay in there until it was time to check that nothing had been overlooked. Once Ben had strode through the rooms as if he could hardly wait to leave, Ellen dabbed at the girl's eyes and coaxed her downstairs from her denuded room. "It's been a good little house, but the new people will look after it. Just you wait until you see how snug we're going to be, though. It's like being in a cocoon," she said.
THE GROWTH
"Daddy's pattern, heart and brain, Sprinkle with the golden rain For the rising of the Star."
Algernon Blackwood, The Starlight Express
NINETEEN
Ben dreamed of being surrounded by ice under a featureless sky. On every side of him a flat blank whiteness radiated to a perfectly circular horizon. Either the ice or something in it was aware of him. He was gazing into the ice on which he stood when it began to shine with a light colder and more pale than moonlight as whatever was beneath rose towards him, and he awoke in the dark.
He didn't cry out, but he turned to Ellen, his mouth opening before he made out that she was asleep. All at once he had so much to tell, but he was suddenly glad that he would have to keep it to himself, at least for now. He eased himself away from her and tiptoed out of the bedroom.
It was on the top floor of the house, above the children's bedrooms. Next to it was the guest room and beyond it the workroom which used to be the attic. He stood in the dark, listening to all the breathing in the house, feeling enlivened by the chill which had settled into the core of the house as it waited for the central heating to switch on, and then he inched the workroom door open.
As soon as he was in the room he saw the forest. The twilight before the October dawn must already have reached it, because as he made for the desk at the window he was able to distinguish ranks of trees, patterns developing from the dark. He sat at the desk and gazed into the forest and let thoughts manifest themselves to him.
If the anticipation he had begun to experience couldn't be put into words, the insight which had wakened it could be. He felt as if he was growing up at last. As a child he'd half believed that Edward Sterling had discovered a ritual which kept the midnight sun alight, and even as an adult he'd found the idea imaginatively appealing, but now he saw that it was nonsense: no human action could affect the sun. Edward Sterling might have witnessed such a ritual, but it made no sense to deduce that he had then set off to discover its source. If he had found anything significant in the unpopulated frozen wastes, it could only have been the reason for the ceremo
ny – the reason why people were afraid the midnight sun might fail. if only Edward Sterling had written down what he had found! But the last words he'd written had apparently been his last wish. Once he had been fit enough to travel after being brought home to England he and his wife Catriona had journeyed north. Stargrave had apparently been intended only as an overnight stop. Perhaps the late December cold had affected his mind, because he'd risen in the night and headed for the moors, shedding his clothes as he walked. In the morning his naked corpse had been found in the centre of a grove of ancient oaks. His limbs had been flung wide as if he'd been trying to embrace the night or had been crushed by it; his eyes had been wide and pale as ice, and he might have been smiling or gritting his teeth. He'd broken his nails in the process of scratching two words in the earth in front of him: "trees grow". The way Ben's grandfather had told the story one night just before Christmas, those who found the corpse had had to snap the strings of frozen blood which bound the fingers to the marbly earth.
Could it ever have been so cold in Stargrave? Ben had never previously wondered who had told his grandfather the story – one or other of the searchers, or his mother, Catriona – and now it was too late to enquire. He was inclined to wonder if Edward Sterling's message had been merely a delirious reference to the grove in which he'd lain. Catriona had taken it as a plea, and by the time Ben's grandfather was born she had used much of her legacy to buy the Sterling house and to plant the forest which over the decades had hidden the grove from the world.
Ben gazed out of the window while feeble sunlight ventured down the crags and was seized by the forest. When he heard the children beginning to stir on the floor below he sneaked back to bed. Their sounds made him feel somehow less awake than he had been while musing at the desk, and he continued to feel that way as Ellen wakened drowsily and snuggled against him, as Margaret and Johnny made the house sound full of children, as the family took turns in the bathroom to get ready for a walk before Sunday lunch.
A small sun like a coin whose heat had seared away its features hung low in a sky suffused with blue. Autumn had extinguished the brightest colours of the moors beyond the railway, and not only the vegetation but also the houses of Star-grave appeared to be seeking to merge chameleon-like with the ancient limestone. As Ben opened the new gate in the garden wall a wind like the first stirring of winter set trees dancing and brought him the scent of pines. The whisper of the forest made him feel as if he and the trees were about to share a secret. Then a dog barked, and he sighed and turned to look.
It was Mrs Dainty's Doberman. Edna Dainty was the Star-grave postmistress, a dumpy muscular woman whose red hair was growing white. She came stumbling up the track, leaning backwards and heaving at Goliath's leash. "Don't pull, don't pull."
"Ideal day for a run, Mrs Dainty," Ben said over the wall.
"Golly," she cried, and the dog halted, panting. "You've put your nail on the head there," she agreed.
"Are you for the woods?"
"Too blowy up on top for me today. It's an ill wind," she added in case that had some relevance, and almost fell on her face as the dog surged forwards. "Excuse me for shaking my legs, but you know old dogs."
"Can't be taught?"
She peered at him, obviously suspecting a verbal trap, and then lurched away, dragged by the dog. Her voice dwindled up the track, crying "Golly, don't pull."
Ben held the gate open for the family. "If they're going to be in the woods I'm heading for the moors."
Johnny looked disappointed, and said to Ellen "When can we mark some more paths in the woods?"
"Better ask your father. He's the pathfinder."
"No more this year, Johnny, I shouldn't think."
"We've only made titchy paths," Margaret protested.
"We've plenty of summers ahead of us, Peggy. And don't you want to keep some of the forest for just the family to walk in?"
"Besides," Ellen told the children, "you won't have time to make another path if you want to be in the Christmas play, and go to Young Dalesfolk with Stefan and Ramona every Thursday, and all the way to Richmond every Friday for the swimming club, and help me keep our garden tidy…"
"And play with all your other new friends,'' Ben added as he led the way to the main road. Their talk of the woods was aggravating his own frustration, but he'd had enough of Mrs Dainty and her apparently inexhaustible supply of misheard cliches for one day. "They're just words," he said under his breath as he ushered the children across the road to face any oncoming traffic.
They hadn't met any by the time they reached the newsagent's. All summer Stargrave had been packed with tourists, driving up from Leeds to tramp the moors or basing themselves in the hotel or the dozens of houses which offered bed and breakfast for the season. Now just three climbers, two in bright orange and one in blue which rivalled the sky, were visible above the town, moving so slowly they looked frozen to the crags.
Most of Stargrave was indoors. Passing a row of houses, Ben saw successive images of a space battle on their televisions, as if he were reading a comic strip. The clank of swings thrown over their metal frames drifted down from near the school. One of Johnny's schoolmates ran home from the newsagent's, a Sunday paper flapping in his hand. The tourist information centre in the converted railway station was still open; Sally Quick, whose name always sounded to him like advice and who had exhibited Ellen's paintings all summer in the information centre, waved at the Sterlings through the window. Beyond the deserted square and the estate agent's, old Mr Westminster was rooting weeds out of his front garden, chortling vindictively whenever a weed lost its grip on the soil. He was often to be seen driving his rusty Austin through Stargrave, shouting "Baa, baa" at anyone who crossed the street in front of him. "Rub my back, somebody," he greeted the Sterlings, then emitted a hum which was half a groan as he stooped to fork the earth.
"Race you to the top," Margaret told Johnny as soon as they were over the stile. They chased along the grassy path towards the crags, on which the blue and orange insects appeared scarcely to have moved. A wind set the moor trembling, the gorse and heather and countless tufts of grass interspersed with mounds of moss and lichen, and as Ben heard the wind enter the forest all the sombre colours of the moor seemed to leap up. Ellen clutched his hand as if she was sharing what he saw. "I really think that getting married and having the children and coming here to live may be the best things we've ever done," she said.
"Good. I'm glad," Ben responded, feeling as if she'd interrupted a thought he was about to have.
"Don't you agree?"
"I can't imagine living anywhere else." In case he hadn't matched her enthusiasm he added "Or with anyone else."
"I should hope not. That part of your imagination's all mine." She cupped her hands to her mouth. "Be careful where you climb," she shouted to the children, but the wind flung her voice back at her. "Don't climb until I'm there," she shouted, and ran up the path.
As Ben watched her take their hands and lead them towards the sky, three figures growing smaller in the midst of the luminous moor, he experienced a rush of love and satisfaction on their behalf. The children had never been happier at school, and both Johnny's handwriting and Margaret's spelling had improved. Ellen's latest paintings showed a new toughness mixed with her old sensitivity, and she'd joined Sally Quick's moorland rescue team. As for himself, he was beginning to feel as though the whole of his life between running away from his aunt's and finally returning to Stargrave had been no more than a prolonged interlude, most of which he had to make an effort to remember. The only problem was that he couldn't write.
At first he'd assumed that the excitement of coming home was distracting him. As soon as the air had begun to smell of autumn he'd taken himself to the desk every morning and kept himself there until he'd written at least a paragraph, but he felt as if the story wouldn't come alive. He was nervous of telling it to the children in case the act drained it of whatever energy it had. He was beginning to wonder if having signed
a contract in advance was making him afraid that he couldn't deliver, but he thought more than that was involved. As he sat at the desk each morning and gazed into the forest, he felt as though an inspiration or a vision larger than he could imagine was hovering just out of reach.
"Climb with us, Daddy," Johnny was calling, and Ben relinquished his thoughts with a sigh. By the time he arrived at the children's favourite crag, which Margaret had immediately compared to a giant loaf nibbled by giant mice, the family was halfway to the top. The wind tugged at Margaret's clothes as she followed her mother up the zigzag path worn into the rock, and Ben clambered after her in case she needed help.
Johnny danced on the flat summit and chanted "I'm the king of the castle" while the others hauled themselves over the edge to join him. Having wavered upright, Ben planted his feet well apart before he surveyed the view. All he could see were another few distant slopes and isolated farmhouses. Even if the view had anything extra to offer, his anxiety in case the children strayed too close to the edge was distracting him.
From the foot of the crag they walked across the moor to the common between the forest and the town. A faint path which Mrs Venable forbade her pupils to use on the way to and from school led through the grass above the schoolyard and churchyard and back gardens of Church Road. As the road curved downhill, half a mile of allotments took the place of gardens beside the path, and ended near the track which led past the Sterling house.
As the Sterlings reached the track, Mrs Dainty stumbled out of the woods onto the further stretch of path, mopping her forehead with her free hand. "Thank the heavens it was you I kept hearing and you stayed there long enough for me to find you."
"We've only just got here, Mrs Dainty," Ellen said.
Midnight Sun Page 13
