Midnight Sun

EIGHTEEN

An envelope from Elgin's was waiting on the breakfast table. The estimate was so low that at first Ellen thought she was misreading it; it wasn't much more than a tenth of the amount which the sale of one of their Norwich houses should realise. It only meant they could afford to improve the Sterling house, she told herself, but she wanted to see what the secondary school was like. She called the number Kate West had given her, and the school secretary told her she was welcome to look around. She packed her case and checked out of the hotel.

As the car passed between the first crags Stargrave vanished. For a couple of miles she was surrounded by crags like arcs of several concentric stone circles too large to be seen as a whole, or like fragments of something whose original shape could only be guessed at after centuries of weathering. They made her feel as if the landscape had tried to form itself into a pattern above the forest. Fifteen minutes out of Stargrave the crags dwindled into a mile-wide border composed of hundreds of crumbled rocks, beyond which the moors spread like a tartan of heather and limestone and grass pinned with stony sheep. Apart from the sheep and the cry of a curlew, the only sign of life was a glinting dot ahead. It proved to be a green double-decker bus coming back from Richmond and now bound for Leeds. The driver waved to her, the bus shook the Volkswagen with its tail-wind, and then she lost sight of it until the gleam of its windows in the mirror caught her attention. As the bus disappeared over the horizon towards Stargrave, she heard the shriek of a bird overhead, so lofty that it sounded thinned by the air. For no reason she could grasp, she imagined the bus toppling over the edge into a gulf dark and deep as a night sky. "Save your imagination," she told herself, and shrugged off a sudden chill.

Richmond was a huddle of brown brick and slate which reminded her of a great nest of moorland birds. She drove down into the busy streets, heading for an obelisk balancing a stone globe on its snout, and parked near the school. As she crossed the deserted yard she heard an orchestra more or less agreeing on a key. A lanky schoolgirl in a skimpy uniform, who was relaying a message from classroom to classroom, directed her to the headmistress, an ample quiet-voiced woman who gave Ellen coffee and quizzed her about Margaret and Johnny before showing her around the school. The pupils seemed bright and happy, and Ellen was impressed by what she saw of the teaching and its results. "If you're thinking of enrolling your daughter," the headmistress said, "I'd ask you to let us know soon."

Ellen could no longer see a reason to procrastinate. "I'd like to put her name down," she said, and immediately felt liberated from her doubts.

She could always cancel the enrolment if she changed her mind, she thought as she drove south through the Vale of York, but why should she? Hours later she drove out of an ashen sunset into Norwich and was greeted by the lighting of the lamps as she turned along her street. The sound of her car door brought the children running along the path. "Are we going to live there?" Margaret cried, and Johnny echoed "Are we?"

"Let me into the house at least. Hasn't anyone a kiss for me?"

Johnny trotted into the house with her case, and she followed with Margaret clutching her hand and chattering about her day at school as if she couldn't bear the silence that was letting her question linger. "I wouldn't mind a cup of tea," Ellen called, dropping herself onto the front-room couch.

"We heard your tongue hanging out ten minutes ago, didn't we, kids?" Ben responded from the kitchen. Soon he paced in with a brimming cup in each hand, and gave her a kiss so prolonged she was afraid the cup he'd given her would spill. "Did you drive straight home today?"

Ellen would have liked to relax before the excitement began, but you shouldn't have children, she thought, if you wanted to relax. "I had a look at the secondary school."

Margaret jumped and widened her eyes as if her whole body was performing a double-take. "Was it good? Will I like it?"

"Now, Margery, I haven't said we're going there."

Margaret clenched her fists and her face, and slumped into a chair. "Oh, Mummy…"

Ellen took pity on her. "How do you feel now, Ben?"

"About Stargrave? The way I said I did before you went."

She handed him the builder's estimate and saw that he was pleasantly surprised. "Listen, you two," she said, "I want to be sure you realise what it would be like to live there, not just to visit. Think how much smaller than Norwich it is. Think of all the places you wouldn't be able to go…"

That was as far as she got before the children leapt up and danced around the room and then flung themselves on her and hugged her. "When are we moving?" Margaret cried.

"Not for months at least." When the children let go of her and grabbed each other's hands to dance in a ring, she turned to Ben. "Well, that seems to be decided."

"It was time we moved up in the world."

He seemed contented, but she wished he would express himself more directly. Later, too exhausted by her driving to do more than lie next to him in bed, she said drowsily "Do you know how they found Edward Sterling?"

"Deep in a forest that hadn't even grown yet."

"I don't mean when he died, I mean when he had to come back to England."

"Somewhere under the midnight sun where only the mad and the English would go."

"What do you think he was looking for?"

"Someone who could tell him the oldest story in the world, maybe," Ben said, and smiled dismissively. "I don't really know. I always thought of him more as a legend than a relative. He was a folklorist, and from what I remember of the book he was writing when he died he'd been researching the lore and legends of the midnight sun. As far as I can remember, the book doesn't say what he found at the end."

"Did you know they found him with no clothes on?"

"I didn't, but maybe I should have guessed. The way I heard it from my granddad he could hardly wait to be thawed out before he fathered him. Edward must have been a randy old cove for the cold to have affected him that way. Who told you the story?"

"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.