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For the first and only time in his life Dad struck me, and the next morning I remembered most of what had happened and was bowed down with shame and resolved to take a strong pull at myself. But the next Saturday night I was in the back room again.

The second time the drink aroused an aggressive fury in me it was all directed against Don Dowling. Vaguely, I remember standing in the kitchen holding the bread knife and telling myself I would burst into the kitchen next door and take him by surprise and he wouldn't be able to lift a hand. I dont're member what stopped me carrying out this intent.

The night that Constance brought up my past again was a Saturday night, but I was feeling happy and at peace with the world. I was crossing the bridge in the late twilight, humming to myself the song they had been singing in the back room earlier on: "Now is the hour when we must say goodbye," and then I saw Constance. She was standing talking to two girls and I saw her deliberately turn her back towards me. But that did not deter me from crossing over to her and demanding in words that I tried to separate, "What ... what-you doing-out at this time anight? Eh? Come on now, away home."

She did not turn and look at me as I mumbled my order, but the other two girls stared at me in a sort of surprised way. I was about to add,

"You, too, you should be at home in bed," when Constance darted away.

I gave an admonitory nod to the girls and walked off, trying to keep my gait steady as I knew their eyes were on me.

There was no evasiveness from Constance once I entered the kitchen; she was standing waiting for me. Her pale skin looked bleached and her brown eyes black and staring, and she greeted me with, "You! ...

you!

You're a disgrace acting like that on the bridge and Jean and Olive in my class. Oh . h. " The " Oh' had a weary sound and she followed it up with, "I hate you. I hate you. Do you hear?"

Somewhere in my head words were gathering fast but I couldn't get them to come down into my mouth. It was as if there was a gap across which they couldn't jump. And then she said, "There's something else I've learned about you. You had another baby, didn't you ?"

All the happiness evoked by my kind friend the whisky was gone.

Although I knew I wasn't sober I was filled with the pain that I endured when sober, only it was intensified now.

"You're a disgrace to everybody, you're no good. What Aunt Phyllis says is right, you've always caused trouble. You've separated Uncle Sam and Uncle Don and broken up her home, and now ... and now ... I won't be able to face them in class on Monday. I hate you, do you hear?" The last was spoken too quietly to be just the outcome of childish anger, it had the stamp of calculation and much thought.

The words had now jumped the gap and were in my mouth ready to fall on her in my own defence, but without a word I passed her and went into the scullery, and she went upstairs to bed, banging the door after her.

Five minutes later Dad came out of the front room and, looking at me where I sat staring into the fire, he said simply, "Well, what do you expect?" I gave no answer, I did not even turn to him, and he went back into the room and closed the door. But he closed it quietly.

After a restless night I heard her get up and go out to early mass, and when she returned I had her breakfast ready as usual. I was alone in the kitchen and didn't speak to her as I placed a plate with egg and bacon on the table. I had turned away to the stove when I heard her whispered "I'm sorry." I didn't say anything, but lifted the teapot and came back to the table, and then she was standing in front of me, her head bowed, and she repeated again, "Oh, Mummie, I'm sorry." In an impulsive movement she flung her arms about me, and I held her tightly to me, saying, "It's all right, it's all right."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry about."

"I'm a beast and ... and I dont care what anybody says about you."

I stroked her hair and looked over her head and out of the window towards the broad sky that covered the fells, and I thought, "Neither do I." But I knew that wasn't true. Then on the spur of the moment I made a decision and, drawing her down to a chair, I sat opposite to her and said, "You're old enough to know what I've got to tell you.

It's true I had another baby, but it was to . your father. "

Her wet lashes blinked at me and her eyes widened, and I said, "Yes, it was years after you were born. But he didn't know you had been born and he came back and ... and' now for the supreme lie 'we were going to be married. You see the war was on and things were difficult, moving about and one thing and another. I was to see him one night and he didn't come, he had been killed that day."

"Someone said he came from the Hill... Brampton."

"He didn't come from the Hill, he came from France."

Her lashes blinked again, and she said with something like pleasure.

"Then I'm half French?"

"No, just a little bit, he was half French."

I looked at her and her quivering lashes. She was pondering this last news. She seemed pleased that she was partly French. It was odd but there wasn't a facet of her character that I could trace to myself.

She had the kindliness of Dad, and very much to the fore were traits that reminded me sharply of Ronnie, for she was always reading and scribbling. Her scribbling took the form of rhyming and making up songs. It was this that led to Don buying her the piano.

From that Sunday we came close together for a time, and I made a great effort to moderate my Saturday night diversion. If my effort had been accepted and let go at that, all might have been well and I may have improved steadily, but from the time I cut my visits to the back room of the Crown she and Sam became so solicitous that they never left me alone for five minutes. They combined to be kind, and their kindness oozed with protection, and it was the protection that I wanted to kick against. I wanted to throw my arms wide and press my self out of this second triangle in which I was living. Some times I thought I would go away and leave them all, but this never got further than a thought, for each in their different ways held me. I had no strength of character.

I was still tied by my feelings, and so the monotony of my days went on un relieved even by my hate of Don Dowling.

This monotony was bred, I think, because I was prevented from loving, loving with my body, and not because of lack of interest, for things were happening and swiftly. First, Sam left the pits and took over a small holding across the river. Every now and again he had given Mr.

Pybus a hand in his garden. The old man had four acres of land, two greenhouses and a four-roomed cottage. He lived alone, and when he told Sam he was going to sell and asked if he was interested it was as if he had offered him a gold mine Sam had now been working at the coal face for ten years, and for the last three years had done a lot of overtime. He had saved the greater part of his money. One day he came to me more excited than I had ever seen him in his life and said,

"Christine, I'm going to buy Mr. Pybus's cottage and the small holding

"You are, Sam?" I asked in surprise.

"Aye. Yes, I am that. And I'll make a go of it. It's what I've been waitin' for for years, praying for. Oh, Christine." He had put his hand out and grabbed mine.

"Think, working in the open all day."

"But won't you miss the big money, Sam?"

"I'd rather have a crust and fresh air and the sky for a roof than any fortune that could be offered me for working down the pit."

And then he had turned from me and gone to the window and, looking up at the sky, had said softly, "No more darkness."

Sam did the business very thoroughly. He took out a mortgage on the house, then set about furnishing it. And he insisted on me going round with him to choose the necessary furniture. He bought most of it in the second-hand shops, and although he would say such things, "Well now, I'll need some kitchen chairs, and a comfortable chair or two, and a table and a couch," he seemed to have no preference when confronted with numbers of chairs and tables and couches but left the picking to me. I must say that I enjoyed furnishing Sam's house. But even before he went into it I was feeling the miss of him. And I remember wondering with a pang if he had got tired of his role as guardian; there was a limit to patience, even such as his. The break in the triangle that I had longed for had come about and I didn't like it.

Whether Don was riled by Sam's venture and was determined to show him, or, as he gave out, his side-line was doing so well that he could afford now to have only one job, and that a well-paying job into the bargain, he, too, left the pit. Whatever his new job was it was certainly of a leisurely nature, for his car was outside the door at all hours of the day, except when he would go away for a week at a time, buying, so I understood from Aunt Phyllis's loud chattering with the neighbours.

Then there was Constance and her rhyming. Since the piano had come into the house she was always picking out tunes and fitting the words to them. I wanted to suggest to her that she should take piano lessons but I couldn't bring myself to do it, for at times I wanted to smash the thing to smithereens. These times would be when, through the front-room curtains, I would see Don Dowling standing in the street talking and laughing with her.

Dad was very proud of her literary efforts and he said to her one day,

"Why dont you send them rhymes to the ma gaines or write a song and try it in a song contest?" and she did, but she had them all returned with polite little printed slips. Every so often she sent out little batches, and the printed slips came again and again, yet she did not seem to mind these rejections It was an exciting game to her, which occupied most of her spare time She didn't bother very much with the lads, and one day I thought I had found the reason, and the discovery filled me with such horror and hate that I think I be came insane for a time. Anyway, I did more harm than good with my reactions.

I was doing afternoons at Dr. Stoddard's and didn't usually get in the house until six, but this day I had accidentally cut my hand with a glass and the doctor, having dressed it, insisted that I go home. It was about five o'clock when I got in, and I felt a bit sick and went straight upstairs with the intention of lying down. The sun at this time of, the day was filling the room and shining on to the bed, and as I went to the window to pull the curtains, my eye was drawn down to Aunt Phyllis's back yard. There stood Don Bowling and Constance. Don had his arm round her waist and in his hand was a little box, and her two hands were round the box. It was as if hell had opened and engulfed me. Yet I did not seem to be taken by surprise. It was a case of "And the things they feared came upon them." This is what I had feared. I flew down the stairs and through the kitchen and to the scullery door, and there, gripping the front of my coat in an effort to steady myself, I called, "Constance Constance!"

There was no sound of running footsteps down the next yard, and as I waited, the sweat breaking out all over my body, I heard our front door open and she came through the front room into the kitchen. I glared at her across the length of the room.

"Where've you been?"

"Why?"

"Never mind why, where've you been?" I felt forced to ask the road I knew.

"Well if you want to know I've been talking to Uncle Don."

"Talking! Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"That box, where is it? What's in it?"

Slowly I watched the red flooding her face and her soft young mouth becoming tight as she said, "Well if you know so much, you'll know what's in it."

On this I rushed across to her, and gripping her by the shoulder, cried, "Give it to me. Give it to me this minute."

"She pulled herself roughly from me crying, " No, I won't, it's my birthday present. "

She looked startled, and I saw her mouth drop open and her eyes widen and it came to me that she might not even be aware that he had had his arm around her. Perhaps I was putting into her mind things of which she had never even thought, but in my fear I could not stop myself from galloping on and I shouted, "If I see him near you again, or if you let him touch you, I'll kill you, do you hear, I'll kill you."

And now she blinked her eyes and peered at me through narrowed lids as if seeing me from a different angle. Then she gave an infuriating little laugh and said, "Uncle Don's right again ... you're jealous. I asked him what the trouble really was between you and him and he said you were jealous because he threw you over after ... after the other baby was born."

"Oh, my God!" I groaned the words aloud, and they seemed to drain me of all my strength, all my wild, angry strength, and when she said,

"Well, why else would you be going on like this? We were doing nothing!" I replied in a weary voice, "Then if you were doing nothing why didn't you come through the back yard and into your own. I saw you from the bedroom."

Her colour deepened and she said lamely, "Well, Uncle Don knows how you go on if I'm in there, and so he told me to slip through the front way."

Clever. Oh, how clever. The devil wasn't in it, he was an infant by comparison.

After this incident there came between us a rift, and daily it widened.

If I had told Dad of my fears he would have been unable to comprehend, he would have thought that my mind had become twisted. It was not in him to understand such evil, such long-calculated evil as was in Don Dowling. And if I had told Sam he would have blamed himself for having moved away from next door. Though he came across the river nearly every day to see me, and this fact set Aunt Phyllis's tongue wagging afresh, he had not now any spare time in which to sit around, for he worked practically from dawn to dusk.

On one of his visits he must have noticed I looked unusually harassed, for he said in his casual way, that would have belied his words of any forethought had I not known him so well, "You know, Christine, I was standing on a chair in the bed224 room the other day fixing the sash at the top of the window and I could see the roofs of all the houses in the street and a bit of the top windows an' all. It was a nice discovery. I didn't feel so far away as it were." He had then dropped into his old position, his hands dangling, and he seemed to talk to them rather than to me as he went on, "If ever you wanted me and couldn't get across you could jamb something in the top of the window I'd be able to see it say a towel or something."