Margaret accepted the page and the pencil balanced on the annual, and stared at the blank sheet as if she could already see an image there. She picked up the pencil reluctantly and drew a head, shading it from view with her free hand. She had been drawing for some time – long enough, Ellen thought, to have drawn more than a face – when her eyes widened as if she was emerging from a trance, and she crumpled the page.
"Don't waste paper, darling," Ellen said, holding out a hand for it. Margaret shrank back in her chair, and Ellen wasn't sure if she was doing so in order to avoid revealing what she'd drawn or because she'd heard the sound which had caused Ellen's voice to waver: the opening of the workroom door.
Ben was coming down again. How could his footfalls sound so large and vague? If he meant to unnerve her, he was succeeding; it must be her nerves which were making the room feel progressively colder. She couldn't take much more of this, and the children had suffered more than enough. His footsteps came into the hall, to the door, and she felt her breaths shake. He paced to the far end of the hall and back again like a jailer, and then the stairs began to creak beneath his soft deliberate tread. As soon as Ellen heard him pass the middle landing she murmured "Would you like to go and stay at Kate's tonight?"
The children gasped with delight, and managed not to clap their hands. "Yes please," they whispered.
Ellen put her finger to her lips and listened until she heard the thump of the workroom door. "Come on then," she said, and tiptoed to the cupboard under the stairs to hand the children their outdoor clothes. She wasn't afraid to have Ben realise they were leaving, she told herself, but she wanted to avoid any argument, which the children were bound to find distressing. By the time they were dressed she had pulled on her boots and was zipping up her quilted anorak with her gloved left hand. "Quietly," she murmured, dismayed to have to do so, and hurried the children to the front door, trying not to let them see that she was alert for any sounds from above. She pushed the strap of her handbag over her shoulder as Margaret turned the latch and tugged at the door, then tugged again. The door was mortise-locked.
"Quick," Johnny pleaded, and clutched his mouth to keep his loud shrill voice under control.
"It's all right," Ellen said, pulling her purse out of her bag and opening it with the other hand – but it wasn't all right, not at all. Her keys were no longer in the bag, where she had dropped them when she'd brought the children home. Ben must have taken them while she was in Johnny's room.
She was struggling not to betray her feelings to the children while her thoughts chased one another – the kitchen door was locked, the windows were, the phone wasn't working and even if communications had been restored it was in the workroom – when she heard a creak behind her, on the stairs. Ben was on the lowest flight, having somehow reached them without her hearing a sound. He was holding up his left hand, displaying her keys beside his pale expressionless face.
All the rage she was suppressing cramped her voice, which came out thin and clear. "Thank you, Ben," she said, and stuck out her hand.
She thought she would have to go up to him. Surely then he would be forced to hand over the keys, unless he wanted to forfeit the children's trust for ever. When an expression too swift to read crossed his face, and he came towards her with increasing speed, she braced herself. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't that he would place the keys in her hand. She almost dropped them, for they were so cold that her hand jerked.
As she turned towards the door, hating herself for dreading that he would change his mind and grab the keys, he spoke. "We'll all go out," he said. "I won't talk unless you ask me to. You'll see."
FORTY-THREE
"We don't want you with us after you locked us in the house. I'm taking the children to Kate's and then you and I are going to have a long talk. I think you need treatment, Ben. Maybe you've been working too hard, but I think you'd better stay away from the children until you've seen someone who can help.”
Ellen heard herself say all of this, as though the silence had intensified to a point where her thoughts were audible; she could even hear the sob which she mightn't be able to smother. But she mustn't risk starting an argument now, when she was so close to letting the children out of the house. If she had to pretend that nothing was wrong in order to deliver them safely to Kate's, then she would. She hugged them swiftly and murmured "Not a word" and slipped her key into the mortise-lock.
The key hadn't finished turning when she hauled at it to move the door while her gloved hand grappled with the latch. Metal scraped metal, and the door swung inwards. Even the iciness which immediately reached for her felt like a release. When Johnny faltered, staring past her into the hall, she could have hit him; there was no reason to hesitate, nothing outside except snow. "Don't dawdle now, Johnny," she said low and urgently.
Margaret had already stepped over the threshold onto the footmarked marble path. He joined her, but looked back at once. "Daddy hasn't got his coat or boots on."
Ellen gestured Margaret to open the gate. "That's Daddy's problem."
Margaret's face stiffened as if her emotions were too violent or too confused to express. "He'll catch pneumonia if he comes out like that," she said.
Ellen felt grief swelling in her throat and behind her eyes, but she forced it back. "Then he'd better stay at home."
"I'll get dressed if it'll keep you all happy," Ben said in a voice which filled the hall like a parody of Christmas cheerfulness. "I'll catch up with you."
Ellen's grief withered as soon as he began to speak. Did he really believe he could keep them happy when it was his fault that they were the opposite? She marched down the treacherous path as if she was trying to break through the mist of her breath. She was at the gate when he called "We'll go along the common."
Ellen glanced back. He was leaning out of the doorway, his hands gripping the lintel. He looked poised to chase after her. Initially the route along the common would take her and the children away from the houses, but it was marginally the shorter route to Kate's. "Best foot forward," she told the children, and turned uphill.
The house and the snow image swollen by its huddle of worshippers went by, and then there was only an expanse of snow between her and the trees. The forest looked as if it was crouching, poised to move and change; it looked like an explosion of whiteness frozen in the moment before it engulfed everything around it. She had to turn her eyes away, because the depths of the forest drew her gaze, showing her rank upon rank of trees forming from the darkness as if they were advancing to meet her, disclosing shapes which must surely be tricks of her imagination. Now she'd glimpsed them she seemed unable not to see them; if she let her gaze rest on the common she couldn't fend off the impression that the forest was bordered by patterns on the snow, patterns which developed the shapes she thought she had distinguished in the forest. She tried concentrating on the sky, but its blackness was ominously close, not so much relieved by the unsteady stars as emphasised by them. "Doesn't matter, can't matter," she heard herself think, and squeezed the children's hands. Their gloves and hers made them feel more distant than she would have liked, but their trusting grasp helped her ignore everything except the need to see the children to Kate's. She didn't let go until she reached the corner of the allotments and turned along the narrow path above the town.