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"Don Dowling! Don Dowling!" I cast my eyes towards the wall and spat the name at it-"Don Dowling!"

The fire within me was well alight and burning out the old Christine.

I was sitting in Mollie's house in the sitting-room. It was a bright afternoon, warm and sunny, and the room was tidy, even attractive.

There was a tray on the table with a teapot on it, and the steam had ceased to come out of the spout, and the tea, I felt, would be very cold now. Mollie had made no attempt to pour it out since I began talking, nor had she interrupted me. It was odd for her, and when she got to her feet and turned her back to me I said, with a tremor in my voice, "It didn't seem like me going for the priest like that, but I didn't swear at him as they're saying, and now Don Dowling has taken on a kind of halo, for it's all over the place that we were going to be married when he found I was going to have a baim and it wasn't his. I could kill him, Mollie, I could kill him I hate him, he has started the tapping again on the wall and he sings sings filthy oh, God Almighty."

It was not the first time I had thought "God Almighty' but it was the first time I had voiced it, and it sounded repulsive and I got to my feet and began pacing the floor.

"Here, drink this. I've laced it." Mollie's voice was cool.

I took the cup from her hand and swallowed it almost in one draught. I had got used, these past months, to the taste of whisky and I liked it.

It not only warmed me, it did more. A glass of whisky could ease the pain inside of me and could make me think in a quiet way, "Oh well, such is life."

The whisky was like a stream of fire running down into my stomach, and I pressed my hand on the rising globe, then sat down in the chair again and turned my eyes towards the empty grate. I was changed. I knew I was changed. That tall, blonde girl who was nice in spite of having a child, nice inside, easy for Christine Winter to live with, even made as she was, more of feeling than of sense, and knowing she would have accepted Martin's wife and become his woman, she was still nice. But she had vanished, dissolved when a plane had hit a hill and out of the wreck had risen a new Christine Winter, and she wasn't easy to live with, except when her nerves were eased and her stomach warmed with a drop of whisky. Sam was coming down from the wood with Constance as I returned home.

The child waved to me crying, "Mummie! Mummie!" then ran towards me, holding out some flowers she had picked. As she thrust them into my hands she said, "I picked them for you." Then catching sight of one of the Campbell grandchildren she asked in the next breath, "Can I go and play with Terry, Mummie?"

I nodded.

"You'll put them in water, won't you ?"

I nodded again.

Sam followed me through the front room and into the kitchen and remarked, "I'll make you a cup of tea, you look under the weather."

I did not want any tea but I did not stop him making it. Then as we sat, one on each side of the table, the cups before us, he made this remark, "I'm leaving, Christine."

In spite of the worry that was eating me I was startled by his news and exclaimed, "No, Sam!"

"I'm not going far but if I dont get away from there he nodded to the fireplace walls which divided the kitchens 'something'll happen that we'll all be sorry for."

"Where are you going?"

He raised his eyes shyly to mine and said, "You'll be surprised," and, nodding his head in the other direction, he said briefly, "Mrs.

Patterson's. "

"Mrs. Patterson's?"

"Aye, I've always liked Mrs. Patterson. She's always been kind to me.

Many a copper she gave me when I was a hairn. The only other one who ever did that was your mother. "

"But she's a Methodist." God! had I not got rid of myself altogether?

Were fragments still sticking to me? Mrs. Patterson was worth a hundred of my Aunt Phyllis, and her a supposedly good Catholic.

"That was a daft thing to say," I now put in.

"They're a fine couple. You'll be better off there." I found I was relieved that Sam was still going to be near.

"Christine, I want to ask you something." He was not sit ting forward in his usual position with his hand hanging between his knees, but was upright in the chair looking straight at me.

"And I'll thank you not to laugh on the one hand, or go for me on the other, and no matter what you might think I'm doing this because I want to, because I've always wanted to. Will you marry me?"

I didn't laugh or go for him, I didn't even speak, but I dropped my eyes slowly from his fixed gaze and groaned inside, Oh, Sam, Sam.

"I know you dont care for me, not in that way, not as you did for him, but we get on together like a house on fire. We always have done.

You know that. And I can't see me self ever wanting anything but just to be near you. Don't think I haven't tried to thrash this out of me self I have, but that's how it is. "

He was talking as I had never heard him talk before about himself, and I kept groaning to myself, Oh, Sam, Sam.

"I was fifteen when it came to me how I felt about you, and I thought, Not me an' all, there's enough with our Don and their Ronnie."

So he had known about Ronnie. Sam knew everything. No, not everything.

He didn't know I was so changed that in the dark of the night when lost in the blackness of despair I searched for ways of hurting someone as I'd been hurt, and I never had far to seek. Taking Martin's watch from under my pillow I would grip it between my palms and see myself parcel ling it up and sending it to her. Then out of the darkness she would rise with the little package in her hands and I would watch her open it. I would see her groping at something for support, then quickly search the wrapping for the post mark, and having found it, she would lift her eyes to mine and in her look I would find my compensation.

She would have been paid back for her deception, I would be content.

But when the dawn broke I knew I could never do it. Even in the dark the old Christine would never have contemplated such a mean revenge, but I was changed. Everybody was changed. Except Sam. Sam was unchanging. Sam was the kindest man on earth. Although he was only nineteen I thought of him as a man, for he was a man in sense. If Sam had made this offer some weeks ago when I had still been in ignorance of what had befallen me, then I would have accepted it, because to Sam I didn't appear bad. I knew that. But that road of escape into peace, and even respectability, was closed. Sam did not deserve what I had to offer him.

"And now that I'm on the face and making good money there would be no worry that way, and I'm savin' ; ."

"Sam I forced myself to look into his face " I liiRTyou better than anybody on earth, anybody I stressed the word 'and if I could, I would marry you tomorrow and thank you Sam, thank you from the bottom of my heart for asking me. "

His face showed a mixture of pleasure and disappointment, and he leaned towards me and said, "Well if that's how you feel, what's to stop you?

I wouldn't... I mean ... well, what I want to say is that we could go on just as we are until you felt different." His hand came out and covered mine.

"I know what you mean, Sam, but I can't do it. Anyway you should be going around with some nice girl. You've never had a girl. I feel I'm to blame there, too."

"I've always had a girl." His other hand came out and my hand lay between his two rough palms as he said, "There's not a better girl in the world."

"Oh, Sam." My head bowed in shame before his love. When his next words came to me I knew that I had no power to measure such love as Sam's, for he said quietly, "And there's another side to it, Christine.

Once you're married you'll be sort of safer somehow. Our Don's never spoken to you, has he?"

I made no movement, and he went on, "But he talks, he talks to me ma, and he talks at me and that's bad, for you see I know every shade of him. It would have been better if he had come in here and gone for you, far better. You would have known where you stood, at least as far as anybody can know with him. But I feel all the time that he's brewing something. What, I dont know. You never know with him until it's done. But there's one thing sure, he'll have his own back." He paused and nodded his head slowly as he said, "It's funny but when a man's mad but harmless he's put away, yet when he's bad and harmful he's left to roam. Our Don is bad, Christine. I've said it afore. And bad isn't the right word for him, he's something more than bad. I feel sometimes the earth will never be clean until he's off it. That's why I thought it best for all concerned to put more space at ween us."

At this moment Constance came running into the kitchen and Sam got to his feet, and I got to mine and there the matter rested. Rested for years.

Sam went next door to live and my Aunt Phyllis blamed me and upbraided Mrs. Patterson. She went as far as to suggest that I had corrupted him and that the coming child was his. But what Aunt Phyllis was worrying over most was the loss of Sam's money, not Sam. She wouldn't have blinked an eyelid if Sam had dropped down dead, and I knew this, and Sam knew it. And, as Sam had warned me, Don never forgot. His repayment was to go on for a long time. It had started with the tapping and singing but now it took a more vicious form, and I had my first taste of it one Friday night 194

a few days after Sam had made his home with Mrs. Patterson. It was just on dark, and Dad being on late shift I had locked up and was getting ready to go upstairs to bed when a knock came on the front door. I thought as I went to it, "There's no light showing, the blackouts are all right' - a few weeks previously a warden had come to the door to tell me that a light was showing from the top of the blind.

But there was no light in the front room now. When I opened the door there was a man standing on the pavement. He was in army uniform, a private, and all I could take in of him in the dusk was that he was thick-set and had bulbous eyes. But when he spoke I knew he was from these parts, perhaps the North Tyne.

"Hallo," he said, and the '0' was dragged and brought his lower lip out with it.

"Hallo," I replied quietly. There was a pause, during which he grinned at me. Then he said, "I'm right, aren't I? You're Christine Winter?"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"Aye, well--' his grin broadened 'can I come in?"

I had the door in my hand. Instinctively I drew it closer to me and asked swiftly, "What do you want?"

He gave a little laugh and replied, "Well that's a question, isn't it?

You'd better let's come in and I'll tell you. "

I pulled the door closer still and said, The father's asleep, I'm going to bed. "

"Your father?" he repeated, and as he screwed up his eyes I asked sharply, "Who are you?"

"Oh--' his voice had a cold sound now 'it doesn't matter who I am. I was given your name and address. Seems like I'm not very welcome the night. But custom's custom I suppose? Still, I can come another time.

Fd better book, eh? "

As if I had been prodded from behind I jumped back and banged the door shut, then staggering into the kitchen I stood with my face buried in my hands. Later, as I lay staring into darkness, I told myself I couldn't go on. Yet as I said this I knew that I was not strong enough to make an end of it. I even had to face the fact that if Don Dowling had not made his appearance on the river bank that morning I still wouldn't have drowned myself. I hadn't that kind of courage. I hadn't any kind of courage. The new Christine hadn't any more courage than the old one; all I was equipped with now was a i95

kind of angry defiance. Yet I knew that I was going to need courage, for Don, as Sam said, was remembering. As the night wore on and I could not sleep there came over me a longing . an intense longing for a drop of whisky.

Following on this incident I was afraid to answer any knock on the front door, and when one evening a few days later, there came a sharp rat-tat I went upstairs and peered down from behind the blind on to the heads of two men, both in uniform, and thought stupidly, I'll kill Don Dowling. The rat-tats came at intervals over the following weeks and always at night when Dad and Sam were on the late shift.

I told Sam nothing about this, nor Dad. The humiliation was so great that I could not bear to speak of it. Besides, I was afraid of what Sam might attempt should I tell him. To help steady my nerves and calm, to some extent, my fears, I began fortifying myself in the evening with a glass of whisky. Two glasses, when I could afford it, ensuring me a night's heavy, dreamless sleep. If I had more than one during the day, which I sometimes managed at Mollie's, my tongue was loosened and I became confidential and found relief in talking, talking about anything. And Mollie listened and never said to me as she did to Doddy, Tor Christ's sake shut your trap! "

Whisky was scarce and I could only get it through Mollie, and she got it because she had a number of pals in the know. One particular evening I had been to Mollie's and when I came back I had a couple of glasses of whisky in my bag, and was comforted somewhat to know that I would sleep that night, a sound sleep, without thoughts bursting through and dragging me into wakefulness.

After Dad had bidden me good night and gone into the front room, I made the whisky hot and took it immediately, not taking it upstairs to drink as I usually did, and it got to work even before I was undressed, and as soon as I lay down I fell asleep.

How long I had been asleep I dont know, but I was roused by the sound of Don Dowling singing. I turned on my side and put my head under the clothes, but the insistence of his voice brought me on to my back again, and wearily I opened my eyes. He must be roaring drunk to sing in the street like that. Even with my room being at the back I could hear him dearly. I heard him banging on the front door, then his voice told me he was going through the front room and into the kitchen. I did not hear Aunt Phyllis speaking, but I could hear him yelling replies. Some time later there came the sound of his heavy steps on the stairs, then of his bedroom door crashing open and his voice almost in my ear yelling a parody on a well-known song, a dirty parody as usual. He raved on for about half an hour, then abruptly his voice ceased, and in the quiet that followed I went to sleep again, and I dreamed, as I had done often of late, that I was drowning, and it was al ways in the same place, in the river between the shelves of rock, and I never seemed to be surprised that the river was running through my bedroom. I had come to the point of the dream where I screamed and clutched at an invisible hand when I was brought sharply awake not only by the sound, but the feeling of someone in the room. I swung up on to my elbow, whispering, "Is that you, Constance?" There was no answer.