Midnight Sun

TWENTY-SIX

During the next week the thaw made progress. On some days the uphill streets turned into streams of melted slush in which children stamped their boots, while the gutter of Market Street became a miniature torrent. Those days were punctuated by the thud of snow slipping from roofs and the shrieks of children who'd stood underneath. Once the sun sank beyond the forest, however, the afternoons grew chill, and in the mornings the garden walls would be lichened with frost, the bedraggled plants would be seeded with it. Snow lingered on the moors and crags, but close to the road the paths were marshy. The only place from which the snow seemed hardly to have shifted was the forest, a situation which suggested that the paths in there would be relatively firm underfoot. Edna Dainty had had enough of being dragged through mud and slush, and so she decided to take the dog into the forest for its Thursday walk.

Thursday was early closing day. At one o'clock the post office was so crowded she had to struggle between the customers, all eight of them, in order to lock the door against latecomers. "The postal authorities should find you somewhere ampler," old Mr Brice said, placing one hand on his heart as he let her by and unfolding the other as if he was presenting her with the door.

"They wouldn't have the nerve to cram us in here if this was Leeds or Richmond," Mrs Tozer said, and went back to counting her pension out loud.

Mr Waters, who always glowered at Edna's dog, looked up from peering suspiciously at the soles of his shoes. "It was just the same when I was down the mines. You could spend your whole life shouting and the bosses wouldn't hear."

"Out of sight, never mind," Edna said, sidling back to the glassed-in counter. Alfie was off with a cold, and Cath tended to grow flustered when she was faced with a queue. Edna doled out pensions and commiserated with the recipients – not all of whom seemed to welcome her homilies – and persuaded Mr Waters to wrap a parcel full of presents for his grandchildren more securely. Mr Brice insisted on letting all the women in the queue precede him, bowing low to them and fingering his military moustache, though when he reached the counter he wanted only to stamp a postcard to his niece in Edinburgh. Edna managed to usher him out of the shop as he suggested at length that he should draft a petition protesting about the inadequacy of the premises for all her customers to sign. She closed the door and leaned against it and then mimed running so as to hasten Cath. "Let's be off with you while the going's good."

Once Cath had gone, trailing perfume which always smelled strongest when she was flustered, Edna let the blinds down and tidied the shop, smoothing out information pamphlets crumpled by toddlers and replacing them in the rack above the chained ballpoint, collecting bits of perforated margin, some of which stuck to her fingers as she flicked them at the wastebin. She checked Cath's ledger entries, counted the money in the drawer, boxed it and locked the cash-box in the safe. As she let herself out of the shop, the minute hand of the clock behind the counter had almost finished its halting climb towards two o'clock.

Her cottage was three minutes' walk away up Church Road opposite the post office. Before she came in sight of the house, Goliath started barking, having recognised her footsteps now that the pavement was clear of snow. He was at the front window, his paws on the sill and his nose pressed against the glass, and next door Miss Bowser was imitating his stance. "He's just having his day," Edna called, and when Miss Bowser turned haughtily away: "Speech is free in this country, even for dogs."

Before she unlocked the front door she began shouting "Down" to prevent the Doberman from knocking her over as he came bounding to greet her. When she slapped his glossy black flank he gave a yelp of pleasure and dashed into the front room to dig the remains of his latest rubber bone out from beneath the sofa. It and the armchairs had obviously taken turns to bear his weight; one of the chairs looked positively drunken. "Bad boy, what happens to bad boys?" she cried, but took pity on him as soon as he started fawning. "If folk don't like sitting where you've sat, they can take their bottoms somewhere else."

The dog ran into the kitchen and dropped the bone into his basket so as to fetch his leash, turning so fast that he sprawled on the linoleum as if it had suddenly iced up. "Wait there. Sit. Stay," she said, but she was in her bedroom when he raced upstairs and lolled his tongue at her in the dressing-table mirror. She poked a few whitening strands of her red hair under her Balaclava and made a wry face at herself. "That'll do for the world."

Goliath's first jerk on the leash dragged her off the doorstep and onto the pavement, slamming the door as she went. The battle for supremacy continued all the way to the edge of Star-grave, Edna yanking at the leash whenever he seemed disposed to linger. Once they were past the newsagent's she let the dog squat by the roadside, then ignored him so successfully that she almost lost her balance when he lurched towards the track which led to the woods.

As she stumbled onto the muddy track she thought she saw movement at the Sterling house, perhaps among the crowd of snow figures beyond the house and its long shadow which lay diagonally across the track. No, the Sterlings were being celebrities in Leeds and had taken their children with them. She didn't begrudge them their popularity, even if they'd gained it just by writing and drawing a few books. She was rather glad that Ben Sterling was away, because whenever she encountered him she felt he was lying in wait for her to commit some verbal blunder. "We've had enough of folk who want to tell us how to speak, haven't we, Golly?" she said.

Her husband Charlie had wanted to. When he'd taken early retirement after the railway through Stargrave had been closed down, he hadn't seemed to want much else. He would sit on the sofa with one leg up, his slipper dangling from his toes, and read yesterday's paper which he begged from Miss Bowser even though he knew that embarrassed Edna. Before long the only domestic activity capable of enlivening him had been correcting Edna's speech. "It's wood you can't see for trees, not woods," she remembered him saying. "Not out of the wood yet, not woods." He'd been so busy listening for phrases he could pounce on that he had ceased to hear the sense of anything she'd said to him. Soon she'd had enough of being nervous of opening her mouth, and so she'd invented a response: she'd misquoted every phrase she could get wrong. Almost a year of turning purple and spluttering and thumping the furniture must have taken its toll, because one summer day he'd announced that he was moving to a railway workers' retirement home. Apart from the divorce papers, which she'd signed so zealously that the pen nib broke, and a yearly Christmas card which she tore up without opening the envelope, she'd heard no more of him. If she found it difficult to break the habit of saying her phrases wrong, that wasn't her tough luck. What the world needed was more variety, not less.

As she walked through the shadow of the Sterling house, she shivered. The shadows of the crowd of snow figures lay across her path like a spillage of water frozen black. The sunlight made those heads which had any features left appear to watch her sidelong as she passed, made blank white heads seem to turn soundlessly towards her. She ignored them and stalked up the track to the edge of the woods.

Spiny branches which reminded her of fishbones were beginning to gleam through the snow on the spruce trees. Here and there rays of sunlight solidified by mist touched up the colours of fallen needles. The forest was weighed down by frozen snow and stalactites of ice, a weight which seemed to trap the silence. Goliath halted abruptly, dragging his mistress to a standstill at the entrance to the paths. "Don't do that, you'll have me falling," Edna complained. "What can you hear?"

The dog was poised to run, ears cocked, left front paw raised. She wrapped the leash twice around her hand while she strained to hear, but even when she pulled the Balaclava away from one ear the silence of the woods seemed absolute. "It was just an old bird," she said loudly. "Don't you dare run."

Goliath looked cowed as soon as she opened her mouth, and more so once she raised her voice. She had to tug at the leash before he would trot beside her onto the path. "We'll go the green way," she said.

That was the shorter of the walks, and apparently the more popular: when the paths diverged, most of the few footprints stayed on it. The path was muddier than she'd expected, but at least the footprints made the forest seem more inhabited, not that loneliness need bother her when she had Goliath with her. "Let's put our feet forward," she told the dog as she marched along the edge of the path.

He wasn't pulling ahead today. Soon she began to grow impatient with having to urge him onwards. The path would bring them out of the forest in less than an hour, well before dusk, but they hadn't reached the halfway point when she caught herself wishing there was a short cut. Goliath had started to unnerve her by hesitating for no reason she could see and pricking up his ears, though to Edna the silence seemed more intense than ever, so much so that she had to restrain herself from tugging the Balaclava away from her ears.

The further she progressed into the forest, the fewer the. shafts of sunlight became. The mottled treetrunks gleamed darkly under their burden of snow, the weight and stillness of which felt like a snowstorm gathering overhead. If any part of it should give way and break the stillness, she was afraid she would make a fool of herself, though by now it felt too cold for any of the snow to shift. She considered turning back, but what on earth for? She ought to be ashamed of herself. "We're nearly on our way out," she said.

She felt compelled to raise her voice to relieve the oppressive stillness; but apart from causing Goliath to flinch, she succeeded only in emphasising it. Never mind, the path at the limit of her vision was beginning to curve away from the depths of the forest. She halted so as to wrap the leash more securely around her hand, because her voice seemed to have made Goliath more nervous. "I wasn't shouting at you, Golly. I don't know what I was shouting at," she said – and then she saw it hadn't been her voice which had disturbed him.

As she finished speaking and loosened her grip on the leash in order to adjust her glove, the dog turned his head and stared past her. His grey lips peeled back from his teeth, and he began to snarl and shiver. The next moment he bolted, snatching the leash out of her hand, and fled into the woods.

"Golly, come back," she cried in a voice so small she could hardly believe she had spoken out loud. As much as anything, it was the utter stillness behind her which made her terrified to look. The dog vanished among the trees, and she turned her head, though her neck was trembling.

At first she could see nothing to fear, which meant that everything around her seemed poised to reveal that it was to be feared. She was surrounded by the forest and its countless scaly legs, its green bones showing through its marble flesh. She felt as though the stillness was an elaborate pretence. The muddy path, the only sign of life, looked like an intrusion, a trail leading straight to her. The thought seemed to focus her terror; something else was wrong with the path, and she dared not see what it was. "Golly," she screamed, and heard the dog bark.

"Wait," she cried, and ran towards the sound, skidding on fallen needles. Clouds of her breath, and the flicker of sunlight and shadow, interfered with her vision as she ran. When Goliath barked again she saw him through the trees about a hundred yards ahead. "Stay," she shouted hoarsely, stretching out her gloved hand, so desperate for reassurance that she could feel the leash in her grasp.

He almost did as he was told. She was within a few yards of him when he bolted. This time he halted in sight of her, but only just. "Bad boy, stay," she screamed, and stumbled after him, flapping her hands to fend off the trees which were growing closer and more numerous and cutting off the sunlight with their vault of snow and ice. Surely he would wait for her this time; as he stared back towards her, he looked cowed enough. As she lunged for the leash he fled again and halted, sides heaving, at the limit of her vision ahead.

"It isn't a game," she wailed, and immediately realised that he didn't think it was. He must know where he was going – surely he was leading her out of the forest – but why couldn't he wait for her to catch hold of the leash? Perhaps he was afraid, in which case please let it be only of her. She lurched after him, too winded to shout, terrified to look anywhere but straight ahead.

She lost count of the times he waited until she was almost within reach. Soon she had no voice, and her lungs were labouring. In the midst of the silence which clung to her ears, the voice of her mind was incessantly repeating "Can't see the woods for the trees." It felt like an act of defiance, a last assertion of herself, an attempt to blot out some awareness which was capable of paralysing her. She was keeping her attention on Goliath, but she thought that the shapes of the trees above her, or the frozen snow which hung from them, had at some point begun to seem unnatural – so regular that she was afraid to look.

Now Goliath bolted before she was within twenty yards of him. She floundered after him, trying to call to him, but her mouth only gaped as though she was drowning. Then she gasped feebly, the nearest she could come to a sigh of relief. He'd halted almost at the upper edge of the forest; above the trees beyond him she could see hints of crags and moorland. Surely she'd imagined the symmetry of the forest; the trees between her and the dog appeared ordinary enough. Once she was out of the forest she would be able to look back.

It seemed that the Doberman was too exhausted to run any further, or else he was waiting for her now that he'd shown her the way out. Except for his panting, each breath etching his ribs, he was standing quite still, his head slightly cocked towards her. "Good dog. Good dog," she managed to croak as she stumbled up to him. She stooped, her back aching like a bad tooth, and coiled the leash around her hand.

She almost lost her grip on it, because she had begun to shiver violently. She could hardly see for her own white breath. "Go on, Golly," she said in a painful dried-up whisper, and then she saw he was shivering too. He was so cold that his black pelt was turning white.

In that moment, as he rolled his eyes and stared beyond her, she realised what she had avoided seeing on the path. All the muddy footprints leading to her had begun to freeze, frost sparkling on them as whatever had caused the dog to bolt had advanced through the forest. Goliath bared his teeth and emitted a snarl which sounded like his shivering made audible, and fled towards the moors, dragging Edna with him.

She tried to hold on and keep up with him – the alternative was too terrible to contemplate. But the world was turning blinding white, or her eyes were, and her face felt as though it was being fitted with a succession of masks of ice. She ran blindly, clinging to the leash, struggling to draw enough breath to tell Goliath to slow down until she could see. Then she fell sprawling, and being dragged over the pine-needles was so painful that her hand lost its grip on the leash. She heard the dog scrambling out of the forest, and then the silence came for her. Ice closed around her body, and she felt as if she was already dead and stiff. She had no words to fend off her sense of the presence which stooped to her, a presence so cold and vast and hungry that her blind awareness of it stopped her breath.