Midnight Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

fellow with no respect for books or people," Mr Milligan told Ben as he ushered him into the shop. "Read whatever you think you might like so long as your hands are clean."
    That was how Ben spent much of the summer. He read all the fantasies and myths and legends he could find, partly because he knew his aunt wouldn't quite approve, and some of the science fiction Dominic liked, which led Ben to the astronomy books. The measurements of space and time, the photographs of far stars and of points of light which proved to be composed of thousands of stars, filled him with an awe which felt like the edge of a delicious panic. Sometimes he was glad when Mrs Milligan rescued him from these thoughts by bringing him a bowl of cereal or a fried-egg sandwich from the house. Otherwise Mr Milligan could be relied upon to provide some diversion, reading aloud to prospective customers or trying to dissuade people from ordering books he disapproved of or disentangling authors' names and titles from their memories, whenever Ben's thoughts threatened to grow too large and dark.
    When he lay in bed at night, however, there was nothing to distract him, especially once he was back at school and it was growing dark by the time he went to bed. Soon there was an autumn chill in the air, and he felt as if the summer had failed to keep it away, just as the daylight couldn't hold back the nights. As the nights lengthened, it seemed to him that the dark grew larger. He didn't know why the increasing cold and darkness should make him apprehensive; he wasn't even sure if praying every night in front of the photograph of himself and his family helped. Each night the reflection of the sky in the dressing-table mirror beyond the photograph seemed darker. Once he thought he saw the sky go out, having failed to hold back the starry emptiness, and he prayed as hard as he could.
    Each night he crept out of bed to pray after his aunt had tucked him up, and he didn't realise she'd heard him until she took him to Father Flynn. That Sunday was the day the clocks were put back in order to bring the night forward an hour. Perhaps that was why the church service seemed so remote from him, the priest and his assistants performing their slow ritual motions while their prayers and the responses of the congregation fluttered under the arched ceiling like trapped birds. After the service he tried to sidle unnoticed out of the porch, but his aunt steered him in front of the priest. "Thank you for a lovely mass," she said.
    "One tries to do one's best, Miss Tate." The priest bared his small even teeth in a smile which concealed his gums, and gave
    Ben's head a token pat. "I don't need to tell our young Ben that, do I?"
    Ben had been afraid that the priest would see from his face that his attention had been wandering during the service, and now his panic started his thoughts chattering: a lovely mass of coconuts, a mass of pottage, a mess of a mass ... "I want you to know I admire the way you've borne your cross," the priest was telling him.
    "Actually, Father, that was what we wanted to talk to you about," Ben's aunt said. "The tragedy, that is."
    Ben hadn't wanted to talk to him about anything. "My door is always open," the priest said.
    His house must get cold in the winter, Ben thought, and struggled not to smirk — but nobody was looking at him. "I always have a pot of tea after mass, and like everything else in this life, it's better shared," the priest said.
    The presbytery was at the end of a street in which twinned houses placed gardens between themselves and a row of discreet shops. An elderly housekeeper with beads as big as acorns rattling around her stringy neck opened the door. "One more for the pot," the priest said breezily, "and I think there might be an order for a glass of milk."
    One chair faced several in the front room, before a tiled fireplace in which a coal fire was crackling. Records were stacked beneath an old gramophone in one corner. "You sit