Midnight Sun

TWELVE

That morning Ben awoke feeling that his life was about to change. The impression resembled a trace of some dream he couldn't quite recall. The children raced up past him to the bathroom while he descended as if he was counting the stairs. Ellen snatched his plate of breakfast out of the oven and pulled off her threadbare oven glove to blow on her fingers, and he thought that his sense of imminent change must relate to her interview. He gave her a long hug to make up for almost forgetting and to wish her luck, and kissed her fingers. "You be careful of yourself."

He was finishing breakfast when she took the children off to school. Oddly, once he was alone his impression felt stronger, though still as indefinable. As he brushed his teeth he found himself gazing into his eyes in the bathroom mirror, until he wondered what on earth he was expecting to see. He let out a sigh which blurred his reflection, and hurried downstairs to leave a note for Ellen in the car.

The day wasn't as cold as the grey sky seemed to promise. By the time he reached Milligans, having run for the bus and been hemmed in by commuters fat with winter coats, he felt as if his expectancy had been sweated out of him. Dominic was changing the window display, taking books to the door and blowing fake snow off the tops of the pages. "Good riddance. Next Christmas this will be one shop that turns away this kind of rubbish," he said, patches of his squashed face flaring almost as red as his wiry hair. "Books that nobody would buy for themselves, which these television personalities wouldn't put their name to if they weren't sure that everyone knows they don't really write this trash."

The tinsel flakes glittered in the slanting sunlight as they fell into the gutter, and Ben felt a memory gleam and darken, so swiftly that he hadn't time to glimpse it. "Don't look so dubious," Dominic said, widening his eyes until his high forehead was a mass of ridges. "You're an evangelist compared with these soulless swine. Here, help me cast them out of the window."

When a clock above the roofs began to chime nine, Dominic turned the placard hanging on the door to announce that the shop was open. "We're on our own this week, old pal. Fiona's mumsy says she isn't well. If you want my opinion it's how they bring them up these days, all fashion and fast food and flabbi-ness. People would be queuing up for my father to open the shop when you and I were at school, but that was when schools taught you how to read and made you sweat."

"They'll be back once they've got over their Christmas spending."

Dominic began to prowl the shop in search of books he could grab off the shelves. "I came into the business because I thought books still helped educate people, but the last thing the public wants these days is to be made to feel it can improve itself. At least it sounds as if there's some point to this new book of yours, giving children a hint of the mess we've made of the climate."

Magic is the point, Ben wanted to retort – the magic of imagination, of language which awakens dreams, of rediscovering the child in oneself and seeing through its eyes – but that would only provoke another monologue from Dominic. "Here's to more winters like we used to have," he said, which seemed safe, and set about parcelling books for return to the wholesaler.

Once customers began to appear, Dominic cheered up. Two students exchanged book tokens for textbooks, and then a slow fat man with a clownishly red nose came in, emitting a loud sniff every few seconds as he peered at the spines of books. While he was paying for a thesaurus, painstakingly writing a cheque before tearing it up and sniffing nine times in the course of making a fair copy, a grandmother went to the children's section to choose a present. Ben watched her approach his and Ellen's last book, pass it by without examining it, rest her hand on it as she retraced her steps, pull it off the shelf and read the blurb, hold it in her hand as she scanned the shelves again, touch an Enid Blyton and take that to the counter, filling its space on the shelf with the Sterlings' book. "Never mind," Dominic said afterwards, "we sold one of your books last week."

Soon his mother arrived with two bowls and spoons and a panful of porridge. "You boys have this to keep you warm," she said, trying to bustle despite her arthritic limping. "The doctor's been, Dominic. Your father has to go for a stroll every day, and when that doesn't tire him he'll be able to come back to the shop. Just now and then, but you know how happy that'll make him."

"God willing, Mother. Leave the pan and I'll bring it home with me."

Dominic watched her out of sight and carried out the pan to empty it into a waste-bin once the street was relatively deserted, grimacing at Ben as he did so. Ben often wondered when he'd begun to turn into this staid intolerant man, middle-aged before his time – but wasn't he disliking Dominic's version of those aspects of himself he would rather not acknowledge? He went back to the mechanical task of certifying books unsaleable before consigning them to their fate, and had achieved a kind of drowsy trance as he worked when Dominic roused him. "Isn't that your wife?"

Dominic was unpacking a carton of books. For a moment Ben thought he'd misidentified the artist responsible for the cover of the book he was holding, and then he saw that Dominic was gazing past it through the window. Ellen was on the far side of the street, waiting to cross over. She must be eager to tell him about the interview; she was still wearing her grey suit and white blouse and her grandmother's brooch at her throat. He made for the door, waving his clasped hands above his head, but as she dodged between two vans he let his hands drop. Whatever her news was, he could see from her face that she wished she didn't have to tell him.

Her oval face was rounder since she'd had the children. She still wore her black hair long despite the traces of grey which had started to appear. Sometimes at rest her face seemed almost plain, but never when her feelings reached her large blue eyes and wide mouth. Now the dullness of her eyes dismayed him. He closed the door behind him and went quickly to her. "Never mind, love. It's their loss."

"What do you mean?" She looked momentarily shocked by him. "Oh, the interview. I'm not sure about that, I need time to think. But listen, Ben – "

He grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her out of the path of a van which was reversing onto the pavement. Not the children, he thought, feeling as though ice was massing in his stomach. "I'm listening," he said.

"Shall we go somewhere there aren't so many people?"

"Tell me here, for Christ's sake."

"Your aunt died last night, Ben."

"Aunt Beryl?" he said stupidly, knowing that she was the only aunt he had. "Who says so?"

"The police heard this morning, and one of them has just been to the house." She led Ben into the shop, stroking his hand with both of hers. "He said there are no suspicious circumstances, but they'd like you to call in at the station when you're able."

"Happy New Year, Ellen," Dominic said, and saw her expression. "Sorry, er, I – "

"We've just learned that my aunt's dead," Ben told him.

Dominic touched his own forehead, navel, left shoulder, right shoulder. "May she rest in peace. She was a fine woman, a great loss to us all. Would you iike time off? I can manage on my own if I have to."

"Thanks, Dominic. I'll go and see the police, at any rate. Maybe I'll be back this afternoon."

His grief began to reach him as he followed Ellen to the car. He'd felt relieved when his aunt had gone to stay with friends for Christmas and the New Year – relieved that the family was spared the usual two days of sustaining polite conversation and being determinedly convivial. She'd seen the Christmas cards the children had painted for her, he thought, but they wouldn't be making her any more birthday cards. He'd never thanked her for bringing him up, and now it was too late. He gulped and clenched his fists and managed not to weep until he was sitting in the car, where Ellen put her arm around him. Eventually he mumbled "Let's find out what there is to know."

He blew his stuffed nose as she eased the car into the traffic. "Did the police say how it happened?"

"I don't think she could have suffered much, Ben. Apparently she had hypothermia."

"How could she have? What did her friends think they were up to?"

"She wasn't with her friends. She was in the town where you were born."

"Stargrave? What would she have been doing there?"

"I never thought to ask."

His eyes were aching, his mouth tasted of grief, his incomprehension felt like a storm which wouldn't break. He hurried into the police station while Ellen parked the car. A policeman who looked incongruously like a doorman was at the enquiry desk. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Ben Sterling. You had a report that my aunt died up north. I wonder if you know what she was doing there."

If he found it strange that this was Ben's primary concern, he kept his opinion to himself. He tramped away into an office where typewriters were clacking. By the time he reappeared with a sheaf of papers in his hand, Ellen had joined Ben and was squeezing his arm.

"Your aunt is the lady who was found in a place called Star-grave?"

"She must be, but I don't understand why she was there."

"I believe the police there have established that she was visiting her house."

Ben felt dizzy, and grasped the edge of the counter. "What house?"

The policeman scrutinised the topmost paper. "The house she's apparently been letting for a good many years. If you'd like to follow me," he said.