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I knew from a very early age that my Aunt Phyllis loved Don and didn't love Sam. Sam was always getting smacked and pushed around, and he was put to bed without a light. And he used to raise the house and Aunt Phyllis wouldn't go up to him she called it training. But we always knew when Uncle Jim came in, for we heard his heavy steps on the stairs, and we knew he had lifted Sam up. Then one day I saw a funny thing in Aunt Phyllis's. I dashed unannounced into her kitchen, and there she was sitting with her feet on the fender, her skirt tucked up above her knees, and in her lap was Don, and his mouth was at her bare breast. She jumped up so quickly that Don fell on to the floor. Then she went for me for not knocking and said "Get out!" But as I was retreating through the back door she called me in again and gave me a big slice of cake. She was a good cook in the pastry line, but she was never generous with her food like my mother. And then I remember she told us both to go out on the fells, and I forgot the incident until years later.

The happiness of our house was such that at times it became unbearable.

In class, when I would think of our kitchen, I could smell the bread baking and see the face of my mother as she dished out a meal. I could even smell the particular meal I was visualizing, and this would bring the saliva dripping from my mouth, and there would come over me a desire to shout and yell for joy. This being impossible, I would hug myself. But always when I hugged myself I wanted to leap from the ground, to let free a strange kind of feeling from inside of me. This feeling had nothing to do with the earth, but seemed to find its metier when I was in mid-air or when, as in dreams that came later, I flew through the air.

One night as we sat round the table eating our usual big tea, our Ronnie, gulping on a mouthful of food, looked across at my mother and said, "Did our Christine tell you she got the cane the day?"

"No." My mother leant towards me.

"What did you get the cane for?"

I looked down at my plate and, moving my bread around the dip, said,

"She said I was dreaming."

"You weren't paying attention," said my mother.

"That's your biggest fault and you've got to get over it."

"What were you thinking, hinny?" asked my father, with a twinkle in his eye.

I returned the twinkle and said, "Home, and this." I pulled my nose down at my plate. Then we all threw ourselves this way and that, rocking with laughter, until my mother said, "Now, now, get on with it." Then she added, "If you dont pay attention, you'll never be clever."

Somehow I didn't care if I wasn't clever.

To share in our happiness, or rather, I think, to make it complete, there was Father Ellis. Every week, winter and summer, Father Ellis came up the hill to visit us. It was mostly on a Friday. Sometimes in the summer he would call in twice during the week, because he used to cut across Top Fell to visit Mrs. Bertram in her little farm in the next valley. But always he would have a cup of tea and a great shive of hot, lardy cake with butter on it. I always hurried home on a Friday so that I could sit close to his side and listen to him talk.

Very often I couldn't understand half of what he was saying to my mother and dad, but I always got a feeling of comfort from his presence. And from looking up into his face I learned to appreciate beauty, for he had a beautiful face. He was young, and eager, and full of life, and brimming over with humour. This humour took the form of jokes, nearly always against himself or the Church, and Pat and Mick were the two figures on whom he based his kindly derision. I loved Father Ellis with a love that outshone every other affection in my life at that time, as did many an older girl. And he had a special love for me I knew, for we never met but he took my hand and said something that warmed my being.

Father Ellis never stayed so long in Aunt Phyllis's as he did in our house, and it was a sore point with her. Although she i3

never came into the open about it she would make such statements as,

"Gallivantin' about, that's all that one does, leaving Father Howard to do the work. Talk's all he's good for!"

Then one day Uncle Jim went to the priest about Aunt Phyllis. I was about eight at the time, and I remember her coming into our kitchen.

Her face drawn and grey, she stood confronting my mother, saying,

"Going to the priest! Telling the priest that, the filthy swine." My mother had pushed me out of the door with the order to go and bring Ronnie to his tea, and that night I was woken again with the voices coming through the wall. And when about a foot from my face something crashed into the wall, I jumped out of bed and stood on the mat biting my lip, not knowing what to do. And as I stood there I heard the front room door open downstairs.

My mother and dad slept in the front room. Ronnie slept in the bedroom across the landing, and I had a tiny little room to myself. I was just going to get back into bed when I heard Aunt Phyllis's door crash closed and I went to the window and looked out. We never drew the curtains as no one could see you at the back except the birds swinging across the sky. I peered down into the yard, then over the backyard wall, and saw the dark, hunched figure of Uncle Jim striding fell wards Then from next door came the sound of Sam crying, and this rose into a quick crescendo punctuated by the sound of slap ping. Aunt Phyllis was smacking Sam's bottom. But why? Sam couldn't have done anything. He was only frightened of waking up in the dark. I found it impossible to get back into bed so went out on to the landing.

Ronnie's door was closed, but from the bottom of the stairs came a gleam of light and I knew that my mother was up and had lit the lamp in the kitchen. As I crept down the stairs I heard her voice saying, "Go after him. Bill," and my father answering, "No, lass it isn't a thing a man wants to talk about." Then he said, "Some women dont want a man.

Phyllis is made that way. The only thing she ever wanted was a baim, and just one baim at that. She'll drive him mad. But he was wrong to go to the priest, for now she's put up the couch for him in the front room."

As I reached the kitchen door, Sam's yelling reached even a higher pitch, and I saw my mother strike the table with her fist as she said,

"But why has she got to take it out of the hairn?" I gave a shudder with the cold and they both swung round startled.

"What you up for, child?" demanded my mother.

"I couldn't sleep. They woke me. It was a bang against the wall. And, oh, Mam' - I stuck my finger's in my ears 'she's still walloping Sam."

"Come away in here and have a drink of tea." My father gathered me into his arms and sat me on his knee before the fire, and, leaning forward, he poked the dying embers into a glow again. When my mother handed him a steaming cup of lea he did not immediately take it from her, but putting up his hand he touched her shoulder, covered with an old blue serge coat that she wore over her nightie, and never has any music held such depth of feeling or voice such sincerity as his as he murmured, "Lass, we should go down on our bended knees and thank God that we match."

For answer, my mother thrust the cup into his hand, saying, "Bill!

Talking like that! We've got big ears, me lad. " I knew the big ears were meant for me.

"Little pigs have big ears," was a frequent saying of hers when she didn't want Dad to talk in front of us. Now he only smiled gently, and pouring some of the tea into his saucer he blew on it for me before I drank.

The following day I waited for Sam coming out of the Infants, and taking him by the hand I led him home. When we were half-way up the hill, Don's voice hailed us, and we stopped and waited for him. And when I wouldn't join in a race down to the river he walked behind us, chanting in a teasing voice:

"Sam, Sam, the dirty man, Washed himself in the frying pan, Combed his hair with a monkey's tail, Scratched his belly with his big-toe nail."

I could feel Sam's hand getting stiffer and stiffer within mine. Then suddenly he tore himself from me and, swinging round, sprang on Don.

Don, even at this age, was big and stolid, and the result was that poor little Sam seemed to bounce off him. Anyway, he is fell on his bottom in the middle of the road, and when I solicitously went to pick him up, he turned on me, too; then scrambling to his feet, he ran off, not towards home, but on to the fells. When I was about to follow him Don's arms went about me and pinned me to him, my back to his chest. And his voice was still laughing as he said, "If you'll come down to the river with me I won't touch him when I get in; if you dont I'll belt him. "

I went down to the river with him. When we reached it, he decided to plodge, and with a "Come on!" ordered me to take off my shoes and stockings.

I was nothing loath to do this for I loved pledging, but we had a special place for pledging and this wasn't it. Here the river wound round the bend, and the curve was strewn with rocks, which if you were agile enough you could use as step ping stones, but beyond the rocks the water tumbled and frothed. It was too deep for pledging. When Ronnie stood in this part it came up to his shoulders, so when Don, gripping my hand, pulled me on to the stepping stones, I cried, "Eeh!

no, Don. not down there! It's too deep. "

Although I had played by the river since I had played at all, I was still unable to swim. The reason for this was simple; my mother had forbidden me to go into the water with the boys other than for a plodge. Sometimes when they swam I would stand on the bank yelling and laughing and shouting at them as they dived and plunged and larked about. Even Sam at six could swim, and for a bathing costume he had a pair of little white pants that kept slipping down and which were sometimes pulled down purposely by Don who would pretend it was just carrying on;

I had strict orders from my mother that I was never to go into the water with the boys, and that if they went up to Pol lard's bum I hadn't to go with them at all. I knew that this was because a lot of boys gathered at Pollard's burn at the week-end and swam with nothing on. But now Don was pulling me towards the deep water and I screamed at him to stop, for already the bottom of my dress and knickers were wet, and the water, spurting from between the stones, was stinging my legs like pins and needles.

My arms about his waist I cried, "Don! Don! Let me go back."

He stood perfectly still in the water, and looking down at me, he said, "Well, if I do, will you promise never to wait for our Sam any more?"

"Yes ... yes, I promise, Don." I would have promised anything to get out of that swirling water.

"Swear."

"I swear, Don."

"Cross your heart."

I released one trembling arm and religiously crossed my heart somewhere in the region of my collar bone. But now, having given him the assurance that he wanted, he did not let me go back towards the bank but, his face becoming stiff, he said, "You heard me mum and dad row last night, didn't you?"

I looked at him and nodded once.

"It's none of your business." He grabbed me roughly by the shoulder.

"No, Don," I said, 'no, it isn't. "

"I'd like to shoot me dad... string him up."

"Don!" My horror and amazement made me forget my fear for the moment, and I gasped, "I like your dad, he's nice."

You! "

Petrified, I felt myself being pressed backwards and was on the point of screaming when our Ronnie's voice, coming from the bank, shouting,

"What you think you're up to? Let her go!" surprised Don so much that he did let me go, and I overbalanced and, yelling my head off, fell on my back into the water.

I hadn't time to go under before Don's hands gripped me, and, pulling me upwards, he dragged me to the bank, where Ronnie, already in the water, demanded angrily, "What you think you're up to, eh? Frightenin'

her!"

"I wasn't frightenin' her, we was just playin'."

"Playin'! She was cryin' ... scared." He turned his head towards me.

"Weren't you?"

I gulped, but did not answer him. Instead, I said, The mam'll pay me.

look at me pinny! "

They neither of them looked at my pinny but stood staring at each other. They were both of about the same height, only Ronnie wasn't half as thick as Don. The next moment they i7

were rolling on the ground, punching and using their knees in each other's stomachs.

"Give over! Give over!" I yelled at them.

"Oh, give over!" And when they didn't I turned and ran, and never stopped until I reached the kitchen, there to cry out that our Ronnie and Don were fighting.

But my mother took no notice of this, only of my wet state. And stripping me, she said, "You'll go to bed without any tea for this."

Then the river and the fight were forgotten. Even sending me to bed was forgotten, for my dad came in, and from the first sight of his face my mother knew what he was about to tell her.

She stood at one side of the kitchen table and he at the other, and, putting his bait tin slowly and definitely down and speaking to it, he said, "I wonder if it'll be the last time I'll use thee, lad?"

I saw my mother swallow twice before she said, "How many?"

"Over a hundred," he replied.

My mother's eyes moved down to the table, across it, then came to rest on the bait tin, on which my dad still had his hands. Then throwing up her head and putting her hands behind her back to adjust the strings of a fancy little apron, which she had made herself out of the skin of a summer frock and which she usually wore from a Friday tea-time until Sunday night, she exclaimed, "Well, and now we know. So we can get on with it," And as she went about, putting the water into the big tin bath that stood before the fire, she talked of her plans for the future as if they had been long arranged in her mind.

"You can apply for a bit of that land at the wood edge for an allotment. That'll keep us going for veg, any way."

I watched her disappear into the scullery and heard the bucket being dipped into the wash house pot, and as she poured the steaming water into the bath she announced, "And I'll go back to Mrs. Durrant's."