Abner was genuinely relieved when Alice told him the good report that the sister had given her on his father’s condition, for it promised him a speedy release from the discomfort of the situation. Alice, who had accustomed herself to examine every shade of expression that he showed, knew that he was rejoicing at the prospect of leaving her. The thought piqued her, for she had forced herself always to behave toward him exactly as if there had never been a moment of embarrassment between them. Her pride would not let the matter rest.

‘You’m glad he’s coming back,’ she said. ‘I know you be.’

‘I’m glad his leg’s joined, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied. ‘That’s only human-like. Besides, it’s best for everybody.’

‘And what about me?’ she asked, passionately.

He would not answer, and she flowed on with a stream of reproaches, telling him that she knew he hated her and couldn’t bear the sight of her, in the hope that he would be driven to say that he did nothing of the sort. Abner remained passive. He knew very well that if he were to lose his temper with her the situation might easily become just as dangerous as if he were tender. The main thing to be avoided with her was emotion of any kind. Life had been made difficult enough for him already simply because he knew that their relation was capable of passionate developments. He knew what passion was, and in spite of himself he could not always banish the thought of Alice from his mind. Admitting this, he had mapped out a course of conduct for himself, and he meant to stick to it until the happy day of his relief.

It was not a fortnight but a month before John Fellows left the hospital. He came back, as the sister had anticipated, with a Thomas’s splint on his thigh and instructions to attend the infirmary as an out-patient in another month’s time. The splint was an embarrassment that he resented, for it compelled him to sit in an uncomfortable position with the right leg extended, but it did not prevent him walking or drinking, and as soon as he had mastered the first of these processes he lost no time in making up for his long abstinence from the second. The rules of the friendly society to which he belonged forbade its members to visit public-houses as long as they were receiving sick pay, so that the invalid was forced to enter the Lyttleton Arms by a back door which he reached by crossing the garden of a friend, and having once solved this problem Fellows managed to put in the day without any difficulty.

Every Friday morning he hobbled down on his crutches to the doctor’s surgery and obtained a certificate by means of which he drew his weekly pay. It was only twelve shillings a week, and he never parted with a penny of it to Alice, so that the household now depended entirely on Abner’s earnings. It puzzled both of them to imagine how he managed to live in a state of fuddled alcoholism on this small sum. They supposed that his old friend the landlord, trusting him, put it on the slate in the hope of being paid when Fellows went back to work. He had always been free with his money, and no doubt his boon companions of the past were ready to treat him as often as they could afford it.

At the end of February he went in to North Bromwich in accordance with the hospital orders and returned without his splint. The doctors had told him that it would now be wise to use the leg as much as possible and suggested that the colliery authorities, who were partly responsible for the accident, should now give him a light job at the pit-head. John Fellows, however, didn’t see the point of this. He had paid into the Loyal United Free Gardeners for more than thirty years and now that he had the chance he meant to get some of his money back by staying on the box as long as they would let him. He could get quite enough exercise for his leg in his clandestine approaches to the Lyttleton Arms. What was more, he would not do a stroke of work until his claim against the colliery was settled. He had consulted a solicitor, and a claim under the Workmen’s Compensation Act was pending.

Abner meanwhile waited impatiently for his release. The presence of his father in the house had eased the awkwardness of his relation with Alice by abolishing the sense of lonely isolation that surrounded it. Alice herself was almost complacent. She did not mind how long John Fellows abstained from work as long as Abner was left to her. At the end of May the doctor refused to continue the farce of signing the miner’s certificates. John Fellows grumbled, but had to admit that he had done fairly well out of the club. He pushed on his claim for compensation, which was settled for fifty pounds. Alice was overjoyed at this windfall, for the strain of her straitened housekeeping had forced her to run up a few small debts with tradesmen. She took the opportunity of asking her husband for money when Abner was in the room.

‘Money . . .?’ said John Fellows. ‘Money . . .? What do yo’ want with money? What’s money to do with me when I’ve a son at work earning a man’s wages? If yo’ want money better ask our Abner. Didn’t I keep him all through his schooling in food and clothes? working day and night? I reckon it’s his turn now.’

‘I bain’t goin’ to keep you in pub-crawling any longer,’ said Abner. ‘You’d best give her some, while you’ve got it. I’m going off to work in Wales.’

‘Work in Wales!’ cried John Fellows. ‘I’ll teach you to talk to your father like that,’ he cried, coming over to him with his head low between his shoulders like an angry bull. When he reached his son he stopped, for Abner had thrown back his elbow. Alice ran to separate them. There was no need for her to have done so, for Fellows knew better than to appeal to force.

‘You’re a fine pair, the two on you!’ he said. ‘And don’t you go thinking I can’t see.’

He went out of the room with the limp that he now cultivated, and it was well that he did so, for by this time Abner was white with rage. He would have followed his father if Alice had not withheld him.

‘Abner, don’t!’ she cried. ‘What did he mean?’‘You know what he meant as well as I do,’ said Abner with a laugh. ‘Still, that don’t matter. I’m off to-morrow.’

But he did not go. Thinking the matter over he could not bring himself to abandon Alice and her child to the desolation that he knew must follow his departure. It even seemed to him that his going might suggest to his father that he had hit the right nail on the head. The fact that, this time, Alice knew better than beg him to stay, also influenced him. By this token she accepted his independence and appealed only to his generosity. She never had a penny of her husband’s fifty pounds. Some of it, no doubt, he owed to the landlord of the Lyttleton Arms: but in any case it became clear that as long as it lasted he could not be expected to return to work. In the meantime he took great pains to avoid crossing Abner, feeling less obligation towards the housekeeping expenses from the fact that his nourishment in these days was mainly liquid and taken elsewhere.

It was difficult to say how long the money would last him. For the present he was managing extraordinarily well and there seemed no reason why he should ever take up work again, although there was now no physical reason why he should not begin. The summer passed without any change in their arrangements. Abner still disliked his work. The prolonged strain of working in cramped positions was beginning to tell on his eyes; but in the lower levels of the pit he suffered little from the extremity of heat which made work above ground almost impossible in the July of that year, and made his father thirstier than ever. Under the new conditions he found it impossible to save money for the needs of the day when he should be free. All his earnings but a few shillings went to Alice every Saturday night, and it was with difficulty that he refrained from breaking into the small store that he had kept intact in his stocking.

On August bank-holiday the men at the pit stopped work. This was the day of Dulston Wake, the principal festival of the black-country year. Each of the small towns that lie like knots on the network of tramways that has its centre in North Bromwich has its own minor fair of swing-boats, roundabouts, and cocoa-nut shies, but none of these have half the significance of Dulston Wake, which is prominent not only by its magnitude but also by the weight of tradition that belongs to it and by the magnificence of its setting. In all his life Abner had never missed it, nor, for that matter, had his father; and when the day drew near it was taken as a matter of course that the whole family should put on its Sunday clothes and go to the Wake together. They left soon after midday, John Fellows already mildly intoxicated, Abner in his blue suit with a white silk neckerchief, and Alice, carrying the baby breeched for the occasion, in her best black costume.

They had to walk more than a mile from Hackett’s Cottages to the terminus of the electric tramway system that had not yet come to Mawne. John Fellows, who had forgotten his limp, led the way at a great pace down Mawne bank, so fast indeed that Alice grew tired by the weight of the child. The day was one of sweltering heat, of the kind in which the people of the black-country prefer to take their pleasures. John Fellows carried a bottle of draught beer in each pocket of his coat and a red pocket-handkerchief escaped from under the brim of his bowler hat. He turned to swear at Alice for delaying the progress of the party, and then, mumbling something under his breath, put on a spurt of ridiculous energy and left them behind.

Abner relieved the panting Alice of her burden, and carried the child on his shoulder. Soon they had crossed the Stour at the bridge by the gun-barrel works and had gained the relative coolness of shade under the chestnuts of Mr Willis’s hanging gardens. They arrived at the tramway terminus ten minutes later than John Fellows to find that he had not profited by his exertions since the trams were overcrowded and a breakdown had disorganised the service. He had taken the opportunity of sitting down on the cinder path and emptying one of his beer bottles, and as fast as he drank beer sweat oozed from every pore of his body. When the tram appeared in the distance he pulled himself up with a grunt and prepared to fight for a seat in it. It was quite impossible for Alice to compete in this kind of scrimmage. John Fellows pushed his way in first and sat fanning himself with his hat while Abner, Alice and the baby were left behind. They did not see him again during the day.

They waited for twenty minutes in the sun before they found a place in one of those reckless tramway-cars that go roaring like spent shells through all the wastes of the black country. They could not speak for the jolt and jangle of its progress, for the clanging of its bell and the alarming sputter of electric sparks when it swayed on its springs and threatened to jump the rails. In all their four miles of journey they could see no green. They passed through endless streets of grimy brick, baked culverts from which a blast of acrid and lifeless air rushed through the front of the car like a sirocco. Even though the fires of the furnaces and factories had been banked down for the holidays they could still smell the heat which had scorched and blackened this volcanic country on every side.

At last they were jolted through the narrow streets of Dulston, happily without catastrophe, and ejected at the foot of the hill on which its medieval castle stands. Here the crowd was at its thickest. Noisy hawkers sold ticklers and leaden water-squirts and programmes of the fÊte. Tram after tram disgorged its sweaty contents to mix with the cooler occupants of brakes and char-a-bancs. Through the dense foliage of the castle woods that hung limp in the heat like painted leafage in a theatre, the discordant music of competing roundabouts floated down, and beneath it one could hear the low, exciting rumour of the fair, toward which the steady stream of new arrivals was setting. It was a stiff pull up the slope of the castle hill and every one who climbed it seemed bitten with an infectious speed. At the top of it the crowd thickened beneath the constriction of a narrow Norman arch and then burst and scattered into the huge central courtyard where gray ruins looked down upon this modern substitute for the tourneys of the middle ages.

Abner and Alice were caught up in the excitements of the fair. He soon added to his burdens by knocking down three cocoa-nuts. At a shooting-gallery to the admiration of Alice he smashed thin globes of glass spinning above a jet of water. For his prize he chose a brooch of imitation gold: a heart pierced by an arrow and surmounted by the word ‘Alice.’ She laughed and pinned it in the neck of her black bodice. She marvelled at the sureness of his hand and eye. There was no one in all that crowd whom she would have chosen for her escort rather than him. She rejoiced, for the first time in many months, to find him a happy and natural companion, only wishing that she could forget the fact that John Fellows also was there, drinking, no doubt, in one of the canvas marquees that the firm of Astill had erected in each corner of the courtyard. Once, and only once, she spoke her thoughts. ‘I wonder where he is, Abner. . . .’ she said. He only laughed at her.

‘I’ll find him if you like.’

‘Oh, don’t be soft, Abner,’ she said. ‘I was only wondering. . .’

They spent their coppers at a dozen booths, seeing the fattest lady and the smallest horse in the world, the riders of bucking bronchos with woolly trousers and slouch hats, who were even better shots than Abner; and the lady of mystery, who divined the name and age of Alice and the dates on Abner’s football medals and told them that their married happiness was threatened by a dark woman. To this seeress Alice protested blushing Abner was not her husband. ‘Well, my love,’ said that lady, pointing to the baby, ‘that bain’t nothing to boast about.’ The crowd in the tent laughed, and Alice was annoyed with Abner for laughing with them. ‘You ought to have told ’er,’ she said crossly as they emerged. ‘It’s enough to take my character for life!’

By this time the cause of the mystery lady’s speculations was getting tired and peevish. Abner took him for a ride on one of the galloping roundabout horses, but the motion only made him sick, and so they left the courtyard and sat resting in the tepid air under the shadow of the castle beeches, undisturbed by any but casual lovers who had sought the same kind of privacy.

‘I think it’s awful the way they be’ave!’ said Alice, hugging the baby to her breast as though she thought he might be corrupted by the sight of so much unbridled passion. It came natural to her to adopt this pose of modesty in Abner’s company. She expected him to agree with her; but he only laughed, and this set her thinking of the dark episode of Susan Wade and wishing she knew what actually had happened. ‘You didn’t ought to laugh,’ she said, ‘it bain’t decent.’

But Abner was too contented to pursue the argument.

The child slept for an hour, and Abner sat smoking beside them. He went back to the fair-ground and brought her a cup of tea. Thus refreshed they returned to the castle courtyard. The sun was setting; the uppermost storeys of the ruins were tinged with warm and mellow light, but the crowded space beneath them had grown cooler. Hissing flares of naphtha were lighted. Swing-boats soared out of the pit of the ruins into the glowing sky. The crowd, released from the burden of heat under which it had laboured, began to pluck up spirits. There was a good deal of friendly horse-play, from which Alice shrank into the protection of Abner’s bulk. Little John did not seem much the better for his sleep. He was tired and irritable, and frightened by the squirts of water and the feathered teasers. It seemed as if they would have to take him home. ‘But I did want him to see the fireworks!’ Alice said regretfully. Already two monstrous fire-balloons had ascended and drifted away till they showed no bigger than the moon.

‘Come on then,’ said Abner. ‘I’ve had enough of it if yo’ have. Let’s get back before the trams is crowded.’

He took the baby from her arms and she, almost unwillingly, followed him.

At the end of the courtyard, near the Norman archway by which they had entered, stood a boxing-booth, inside which the show was just on the point of beginning. The proprietor, a heavy-jowled ruffian in a sweater, whose board proclaimed him to be an ex-welter-weight champion of Bermondsey, had collected a crowd round his platform by inveighing, in the intervals between ringing his bell, against the sporting reputation of the black-country. At the back of the platform two of his staff, a nigger and a Hebrew, were sparring gently like kittens at play. It seemed that the reason for his resentment was his failure to get the Dulston audience to do anything but watch him and his pets. What he wanted, he said, was sport . . . just to see what the local talent was made of.

‘Sport?’ he said, ‘you don’t know the meaning of the word in this gord-forsaken ’ole. When I puts up this tent in Durham or Middlesborough or Wales, they flock into it, flock in . . . ready to take a turn with the boys and give a little exhibition. Frightened to use your fists, that’s what you are here. What the hell’s England coming to? That’s what I want to know. It’s enough to make me sick, you people! It’s enough to make me want to take down the saloon and burn the whole bleedin’ bag of tricks, damme if it isn’t, an’ the boys waiting here for a bit of sport.’ The nigger had stopped sparring and was grinning insolently at the crowd, among the younger women of which his strangeness exercised an attraction. Nobody, however, seemed inclined to enter the booth.

‘Come along, Abner,’ Alice whispered, tugging at his arm.

The proprietor rang his bell again. ‘Now, for the last time,’ he said. ‘Just commencing! If you haven’t the spunk to put on the gloves yourselves, come and see a pretty exhibition of scientific boxing. And I give you my word this is the last time I ever bring my entertainment into the bleedin’ black-country!’

‘Good job, gaffer,’ said somebody.

The laughter of the crowd made the big man lose his temper. ‘Good job, is it?’ he cried. ‘I’d ask the gentleman that made that remark to come up here and say it to my face. Ever hear the name of Budge Garside? That’s mine! ’Ere, I’ll give five pounds’—he pulled out a leather bag of money and jingled it—‘I’ll give two pounds to any of you chaps that’ll stand up to me for six rounds. That’s what I think of the bloody lot of you. Men! There’s not one of you black-country chaps worth the name. All you’re fit for, as far as I can see, is to carry the babby about and ’old the missis’s ’and. Yes, sir, it’s you I’m talkin’ to!’

Everybody looked at Abner. Alice again tried to pull him away. ‘That’s right, my dear,’ said Garside, encouraged, ‘take ’im ’ome before ’e gets ’is pretty face spoiled!’

Abner shook himself free from her hand and shoved the baby into her arms.

‘Come on, gaffer,’ he said, ‘I’m game.’ He moved forward through the crowd. Alice, clinging to him desperately, tried to hold him back, but the people made way for him, and even helped him forward, swarming up on to the platform after him. Garside, pleased with the result of his stratagem, shook hands with him. ‘That’s the spirit I like,’ he said thickly. ‘Come on in and strip. Let’s have a drink to start with.’ They disappeared together into the tent. Sixpences rattled into the wooden bowl that the negro held to receive them. Men and women poured into the booth anxious to see what kind of battering the representative of the district would get. The little Jew pushed back the crowd and held up a piece of boarding with the words ‘House Full’ painted on it, while the negro fastened the strings of the tent door.

Alice was left alone in the crowd outside clutching the baby nervously in her arms. She could not have borne to see Abner fight. All she could do was to wait patiently outside and listen in agony for any sounds within. She could hear very little but the buzz of conversation. Even when she crept round to the side of the tent and put her ear to the canvas the sounds that came to her were indistinct, unreal, and blurred by the nearer rumour of the multitude, the hiss of naphtha flares, the creaking of swing-boats, cracks of rifles, and above all the raucous blaring of the steam organs and the shriek of their whistles. If only she could have heard something she would have been happier. She could not bear to think of Abner’s white flesh being bruised, and yet, curiously enough, she was thrilled and proud of him. Her distaste for violence couldn’t get the better of her exultation in her man’s virility. She stood at the side of the tent tensely listening. A rocket screamed into the sky; there was a moment of relative silence from the crowd in which she thought she heard a sound of dull thuds mingled with another pattering noise. The rocket burst into a shower of gold amid a salvo of ‘Oh’s!’ The crowd, noisily streaming towards the ramparts, from which they could see the fireworks against a blacker sky, jostled her, passing between the boxing-booth and the next tent. Six rounds! It could not last much longer. Why had he left her so roughly? Why hadn’t he taken her with him? Of course you couldn’t take a baby into a boxing-booth—not even a black-country baby—but there was no reason why he should have pushed her aside like that. She wouldn’t forgive him that roughness in a hurry! But she knew that she would: she would forgive Abner anything as long as he did not disregard her. The crowd still streamed past her. Showers of starred rockets and tadpoles of fire were bursting above her in the velvet sky. A whole battery of maroons shook the ruins. He would be sorry to have missed the fireworks! If he were badly knocked about she still had some of Mrs Moseley’s ointment left—a fine thing for bruises or broken skin. That was the night, she remembered, when he had come home drunk: the night when, for a moment they had gazed into each other’s eyes. She knew how dangerous the emotion of pity was. A set-piece suddenly sputtered out of the darkness. Letters of fire began to form themselves. What would they say? GOD SAVE . . . ‘The king,’ of course. Little John began to cry, saying that he wanted to go to bed. ‘Yes, my precious!’ she crooned, ‘mammy’ll take you home.’ Six rounds. . . . She suddenly remembered how a young pitman at Mawne had once been killed in a boxing-booth by a knock-out blow on the chin. A knock-out blow . . . she remembered old Mr Higgins talking of it. But Abner was strong. Nothing of that kind could possibly happen to him. Even so, she couldn’t get the sinister picture of Budge Garside with his heavy jowl out of her head. He was such a deadly-looking customer! Suppose . . .A sound of cheering came from inside the tent. She ran round to the front, wishing to goodness that John would hold his noise. The curtains opened. The negro came out with another signboard: ‘Just Commencing.’ People surged out of the tent laughing and talking together. A bold girl burst out laughing in the nigger’s face. Alice took hold of the sleeve of one of the men who came out alone and looked as if he were sober. ‘Tell us what’s happened?’ she gasped; but he only stared at her and shook his head and went on straight forward as if he had mistaken her motive for accosting him. The tent emptied. After a moment she saw Abner shaking hands with the giant in the door. He didn’t seem to notice her, and when he came down the wooden steps and she called his name he did not look pleased to see her. His lip was cut and his forehead still damp from a vigorous sponging. She took his arm; she wanted to show him how glad she was. He was too dazed to resent this familiarity, simply saying: ‘Come on out of this!’ In the gate of the courtyard he stopped. ‘Wait a jiff,’ he said, ‘You’d better take the two quid.’ He gave her the coins and then, suddenly realising the tiredness of her face in the lamplight, asked her to give him the kid. ‘I reckon this is a man’s job,’ he said with a deep laugh.

This time they caught their tram without difficulty. They spoke very little, and in whispers, for John had fallen asleep in his mother’s arms, and even if he had wanted to talk, Abner would have known better than to risk waking him. As a matter of fact he had taken a good deal of punishment from Garside’s left. On points he would have been thoroughly outmatched and nothing but his stubborn will had kept him on his feet until the end of the sixth round. The mild elation that had sustained him when he left the booth had now faded, and in its place he began to feel the effects of the terrific hammering that he had undergone. His lip was beginning to swell and his body felt cold in spite of the sultry weather. He dozed in the corner of the tram-car, and when they came to the terminus and Alice roused him by a touch on his sleeve, he felt it an unreasonable effort to pull himself together and carry the child up Mawne bank. The creature was still asleep and hung a dead weight on his shoulder. Rather than wake him when they reached Hackett’s Cottages Alice carried him upstairs and laid him still asleep in his cot.

When she came downstairs again she found Abner in the washhouse bathing his face in cold water. ‘Don’t do that, Abner,’ she said, ‘let me see to it proper.’ She took Mrs Moseley’s ointment and some strips of linen from the cupboard, but he wouldn’t let her touch him, saying that he was tired as a dog and would rather turn in. She gazed at him sorrowfully, knowing that she could not drive him and fearing to persuade. He rallied her weakly: ‘If you stand lookin’ at me like that yo’ll be late for the funeral,’ he said, and then, softening, ‘You look dead tired yourself. Put the light out and leave the door open.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never done that. I shall wait up for him.’

‘Well, you women takes the biscuit!’ said Abner.

He left her there, and rolling up in his blankets soon fell asleep. It was not often that he dreamed, but on that night his dreams would not let him be. From the very moment that he first slept he seemed to be fighting, fighting with Budge Garside on a platform of creaking boards with a rope barrier round it, lit by hissing naphtha flares. Every moment he grew more exhausted; but he had to go on fighting in spite of the violent jabs of Garside’s fist over his heart. The crowd in the booth, whose faces could not be seen for tobacco smoke, were laughing at him, and this filled him with an angry determination to go through with it. The round seemed endless. He waited for the umpire’s bell to save him, but the umpire had vanished. And now he was fighting all three: Garside with his broad, shaggy chest, the small-headed negro, and the little Jew who skipped about like a flea. He hadn’t bargained to take on all three at once, but there was nobody to whom he could appeal, and so he had to go on boxing as well as he could in this hurricane of six fists. He thought of Alice and the baby whom he had left outside. If he were knocked out, as he surely must be in a moment, she would have to look to herself. That couldn’t be helped. Suddenly he heard her calling from outside the tent: ‘Abner . . . Abner!’ He tried to call back to her, just to show her that he was still keeping up, but no voice would come through his cut lips. Garside landed a terrific blow on the point of his chin. He woke. . . . He supposed he was awake. But the voice that he had heard in his dream still followed him. She was calling ‘Abner . . Abner!’ He tumbled out of bed, pulled on his trousers, and ran downstairs. The mild light of the kitchen dazzled him.

In the corner, beyond a pile of overturned furniture, he saw Alice cowering, and above her John Fellows. In the struggle which he had not heard his father had ripped her bodice and torn away the gilt brooch that Abner had given her. Now he had her at his mercy, holding her by the hair, shaking her from time to time like a terrier with a rat and making her scream with pain. Abner had never seen such terror in a human creature’s eyes. When she saw him she cried for his help. ‘Abner . . . Abner . . . make him give over. Tell him I done nothing!’

‘Abner,’ said John Fellows savagely. ‘Abner . . . there’s a bleedin’ side too much Abner in this ’ouse! You’ll get out of it quick, the pair of you.’

‘Loose her!’ Abner shouted.

‘Loose her?’ John Fellows laughed. ‘I reckon I’ve let her go too much as it is. Give me the slip, the two of you. Took her off into the woods, tickin’ and tannin’, you dirty devil! Give her joolry! Give your own mother joolry! An’ what happened when I was on my back in the hospital?’

‘Leave go of her!’ said Abner, coming nearer.

‘In the very bed you was born in,’ cried John Fellows. ‘Yo’re a fine bloody fossack! Out you go, the both of you! Joolry! Give me the slip, would you? No — fear! Gerrup, I say!’

He pulled Alice up from her knees. Her sobs rose to a scream. ‘John, you’m killing me!’

Abner took him by the arm.

‘Lay hands on your own father, would you? Take that, you . . . !’ He hit Abner full on his bruised mouth with all his strength. Alice, released, ran to the other side of the room and stood panting, her hands clutching at her torn bodice. The baby started crying upstairs.

Abner put his hand to his mouth. His lip was bleeding again. He pulled himself together. ‘You’re boozed,’ he said. ‘Get on upstairs!’ He tried to lead his father to the door, but John Fellows was not to be put off. ‘Boozed!’ he said, ‘and what would drive a man to booze worse nor a bad wife? No, yo’ don’t get out of it like that. What’ve you done to ’er?’

‘I never touched her,’ said Abner.

‘Never touch ’er, an’ give her joolry!’ Fellows scoffed. ‘Maybe I’m boozed, but I’m not too boozed to put you to rights.’ He launched a savage blow at Abner’s face, and encouraged by the fact that Abner did not return it, followed it up with another. Alice, crying ‘Oh!’ ran to the door. ‘Stay where yo’ are!’ Abner shouted. John Fellows closed with him, lashing out viciously. He had been something of a boxer in his day, and his attack was so violent that Abner found it difficult to defend himself. Fellows fought like a tiger cat, with boots and finger-nails and teeth. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Abner’s throat. It was as if all the suppressed malice of seven years had been suddenly released. Then, suddenly, he dropped Abner and flew at the frightened Alice. Abner stopped him with a blow under the right ear. He crumpled up and fell on the floor like a sack.

‘Abner . . . you’ve done him in!’ Alice cried.

He fell to his knees and listened for his father’s heart. The impulse still fluttered there. ‘No . . . he’s only stunned. I reckon he’ll wake up sober,’ he said. Alice stood trembling and sobbing in short gasps: a strange, mechanical noise. Abner remained bent over his father’s body in silence.

‘Johnnie’s crying . . . bless his little ’eart!’ she said. He took no notice of her. ‘Put the rug over ’im. Leave him here till ’e comes to.’

‘Abner, ’e spoke something awful! ’E said you’n me had been going together while he was away. ’E took up this brooch. . . . A thing like that!’‘I don’t want to ’ear what he said.’

‘’E said our John wasn’t his child . . . said I’d always been rotten bad. . .’

John Fellows gave a groan.

‘Hark, ’e’s coming round,’ said Abner.

‘An’ I never done nothing! . . . nothing!’

‘You’d better look to the babby.’

‘Poor lamb! Nothing, I never done, Abner . . .’

‘I know you done nothing. You don’t take no notice what a man says when ’e’s boozed. You look to the kid, while I get my clothes on.’

‘Yo’ bain’t goin’ to dress?’ She picked up the alarm clock that Fellows had knocked down from the mantelpiece. It was still going, with a harsh metallic click. ‘It’s not two o’clock yet.’

But he had gone. Left alone she glanced fearfully at the form of her husband. For a moment he lay quite still. Then he shuddered, rolled over and began to snore. The baby was still wailing upstairs. If only John Fellows had been dead! But that would have been murder. What was Abner doing? She could not live without Abner. She went upstairs to his room and tapped at the door. Candlelight glinted through cracks in the boards. He answered angrily, she thought, but she came in.

‘What are you doing now?’ she whispered.

‘Putting two-three things together.’

‘What’s up now?’

‘I’m off out of this.’

‘Going?’ she cried. ‘Abner . . . you can’t go and leave me like this. Not with him!’

He laughed. ‘I can’t take you along with me. Not likely!’ He went on pulling out clothes from his wooden box. She broke down altogether.

‘Abner . . . Abner, don’t go and leave me. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’ He put on his scarf. ‘Abner, only stay along with us for a bit. . .’

‘I’ve stayed too long as it is.’

She tried to put her arms round his neck, but he pushed her away. ‘It’s lucky I’ve got a bit of money put by for a start,’ he said, fumbling in the mattress for his stocking. ‘I’ll give you what I can spare.’Then suddenly he swore violently. He had found the stocking, but it was empty. He turned furiously on Alice: ‘You devil, you took it!’

She fell at his feet, imploring him to believe that she knew nothing about it. ‘I’ve never told you a lie, Abner,’ she said.

His rage made him unreasonable. ‘You’re like the rest on ’em! Twenty pounds! What have you done with it?’

‘I swear I never seen a penny of it, Abner. It must be there. Look again.’

He had ripped the bed to pieces, but there was no money. Suddenly light dawned on them both. They had found the explanation of John Fellows’ continued affluence. Thinking of this, they could not doubt where the money had gone.

‘That’s the worst turn he ever done me,’ he said, pulling on his cap.

Even now she could not believe that he was going. ‘Not till the morning,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me with him like that in the dark.’

In the kitchen Abner again examined his father, who now appeared to be sleeping peacefully. ‘He won’t remember a word of it when he wakes,’ he said.

Again she implored him not to leave her, but now she could see that entreaties were useless and that his mind was made up. It was the most awful parting in her life: as final and annihilating as death. For more than three years she had lived for him and very little else. He opened the door. It was a bland summer night, the sky full of soft stars and the country of a breathing sweetness.

‘So long, then, Alice,’ he said.

She could not speak. She put up her arms and kissed him for the first time in her life. He did not then push her away; but she felt that he was only compelling himself to tolerate her embrace. ‘I never touched that money,’ she said hastily.

‘I know you never did,’ he replied. ‘So long . . .’

His shadow disappeared into the darkness. She shut the door of the kitchen. John Fellows lay on the floor snoring, and upstairs the baby still cried.