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The child was quiet now as if he, too, was listening. But her fear must have threaded its way to him, for as she stumbled down the steps, panic swamping her, he let out an ear-splitting scream.

Feverishly she gathered him up in her arms. Somebody must come soon.

Donald would realise how frightened she must be locked in here and come hurrying back. Any minute now he would come hurrying back. He must come soon, he must. This unnatural quietness, this darkness would drive her . She did not finish but hugged the child closer to her and began to rock him.

A short while later, when he had dropped off to sleep again and still there was no sound, she stood up peering into the blackness. Then groping towards the chair she carried it carefully to the side of the steps where the window was, and, standing on it, she began to pick and claw at the packing between the boards.

But Miss Shawcross had done her work well. She might have mixed the paper with cement for all the impression Grace could make on it. She knew there was no possibility of getting out this way. All she was aiming at now was a little slit of lighter night to penetrate this inferno of blackness.

When she found that her efforts were fruitless she got slowly down from the chair and carried it back in the direction of the table. And the quietness that was about her settled in her. It was an awe-filled quietness in which she watched her mind throw off restraint and drag up from its deep chambers repressed recriminations of the last three and a half years. When it began, as it were, handing them to her, she took them and delivered them in low, staccato sentences.

"I hate him!

I loathe him! He's cruel. Ben said he was a cruel bugger, and he is.

A Christian, a man of God. Huh! A man of God. Bloody hypocrite!

Bloody . bloody . bloody. " Her swearing was brought to a sharp stop by the familiar, but now muffled boom of the clock in the hall above striking eight. She looked up only eight o'clock. She felt she had been in this darkness for hours. But why wasn't there any sound? What had happened in the village? Had any of the houses been hit? Oh, if only someone would come soon. She hoped it wasn't him. She prayed it wouldn't be him. For she might do something. She might even kill him.

"Young wife stabs minister. Mind turned through darkness ... no matches ... no matches."

She was still sitting at the table when the clock chimed the half-hour and at the same time the all-clear went. The next sound that came to her was the strokes of nine o'clock. She still hadn't moved.

The swearing was now confined to her mind, like the sound of a gramophone being played in a distant room, unintelligible but still there. She had been in this thick blackness for one hour and a half.

Every body in the village must be dead. Donald must be dead. Some time, perhaps tomorrow morning, somebody would come. She turned her head away on the thought of not being found until tomorrow morning.

She knew that after tonight she would never be the same again, never feel nice inside again, for in spite of her double life she felt herself to be . a nice person still. But when you swore in your mind, you couldn't be nice, and if she was left all night and the swearing got worse, if she was left here until tomorrow morning until the Air Force got round . she shuddered from head to foot. When she heard the sound of footsteps to the left of her she turned her eyes slowly upwards towards the door, and when the key turned in the lock she did not rise and rush towards the steps but closed her eyes against the painful brightness of the torch.

She could say nothing, not even when she heard his voice, slower than usual, different somehow, asking, "Why are you in the dark?"

The torch was lying on the table now, between them, and she was on her feet, her hands gripping the edge of the table, and she leaned forward, crouched over it like some wild animal ready to spring. And the words that came from her lips were thick and guttural.

"You ... you cruel b ... beast ... swine. You ... you locked me in you locked me in!"

"Grace!" His voice was low yet commanding.

"Grace, be quiet. Don't talk to me like that. Why didn't you light the candles?"

"You ... you took the matches."

"Oh my God!" She saw him put his hand to his head.

"You bloody!"

"Grace! Listen to me. Grace!" He had her by the shoulders.

"Be quiet!

Don't dare say such words, do you hear, don't dare! Listen to me.

Something dreadful has happened this night. "

"Yes ... yes ... she flung his hands off her and stumbled backwards.

"I know that. You tried to send me mad, didn't you?"

"Is she all right?" The voice came from the top of the steps and Grace looked up to see the dim outline of Kate Shawcross. There seemed something different about her voice too, there was something different about all their voices.

Kate Shawcross . Kate Shawcross. He wouldn't lock her in, oh no.

"I was locked in," she cried.

"Grace!"

With a wild movement she bent down and gathered the child to her, and like someone drunk she went up the steps and into the glorious star-filled night that in comparison with the blackness she had lived in for several eternities was like the brightness of the sun.

As she passed her, Kate Shawcross asked in that different voice, "But why are you in the dark?" and Donald, his voice laden with contrition, answered, "It's me, I must have picked up the matches."

"Oh no, vicar, no!"

Kate Shawcross now ran on ahead into the kitchen, and within a few seconds three candles were glowing. In their light Grace turned her furious wild gaze on them both, her mouth open to speak, and then her lips closed. They were both filthy, their clothes were torn, and underneath the dirt that hid their faces they had the same kind of pallor. As she looked at Miss Shawcross the post mistress suddenly put her hand out to a chair and,

turning it round, sat down, and Donald, going swiftly to her side, said, "I'll get you something."

"No, no, it's all right." Miss Shawcross looked up at Grace.

"It was dreadful! I'll never be able to forget."

Grace turned her eyes slowly towards Donald and he said quietly, "They bombed the village. They were trying for the airfield ... Mrs.

Blenkinsop...."

"Mrs. B.... ?" Grace's lips just formed the word.

"Dead?"

Donald nodded.

Grace hitched the child further to her and sat down.

"And Mrs. Cooper. Poor Mrs. Cooper."

Grace turned her wide staring eyes on Miss Shawcross now. The post mistress head was bent and moving from side to side and the tears were raining down her face.

Stupidly Grace said, "Renee dead?" Then she looked up at Donald again.

"The child?"

"She's all right."

"David?"

"His leg is hurt, they've taken him to hospital. Renee must have just left the child in the shelter and gone indoors for a moment."

"And old Ben Fairfoot." Miss Shawcross was crying unrestrainedly by now.

"Ben? Ben? Dead?"

Miss Shawcross nodded her head deeply.

"And the three Cummings children ... my Sunday-school children, and Mrs. Watson ... Grace watched her head sinking lower now, the tears dropping on to the table from her chin, and all she could say to herself was, " Ben? Oh!

Ben. " It was odd but it was Ben she was most sorry for. Yet he was old and would have died soon, and Renee was young. Renee had fought T.

B.

and conquered it, now she was dead. And Mrs. Blenkinsop, she would never come into this kitchen again. Never again would she say,

"Mornin', ma'am," never again would she give her the gen on the village, the undercover news. Poor Mrs.

B.

But Ben . Ben. Before these dreadful happenings her own ordeal sank away into a pocket and rested temporarily.

"Don't cry, please don't cry." Donald was standing at the side of Miss Shawcross. He did not touch her, not even to put his hand on her shoulder. Grace would not have minded if before her eyes he had taken her in his arms and comforted her, kissed her.

"You must have something to steady you, we must all have something."

He turned round and left the room, his step heavy and slow, and when he returned he brought three glasses and a bottle half full of whisky.

"Drink this." He handed Miss Shawcross a glass three parts full, and when without glancing at it she shook her head, he said, "Drink up."

"I ... I don't usually, Vie ... ar."

"There has been nothing usual about tonight; you must drink it."

Grace watched Miss Shawcross coughing and spluttering as the whisky hit her throat. She watched Donald finish his full glass of raw spirit at one gulp and when almost immediately he replenished it she made no comment to herself, for, as he had said, this was an unusual night.

Picking up her glass and easing the child on to one arm, she rose from the table, and she said no word to either of them as she left the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes later she was sitting in bed, a candle burning to the side of her. She was sitting propped up, staring ahead. Renee Cooper, Mrs. Blenkinsop and Ben. There were others, but these were the three she herself had known, and now they were no more. Had Ben met up with Miss Tupping? She hoped so oh, she hoped so. Perhaps Miss Tupping had already started a garden. Stupid thought, all stupid thoughts, meeting and coming together. All balderdash. When you were dead, you were dead, blown into a thousand pieces. No, no, she mustn't think like that. It was better, more comforting, to think that at this moment Miss Tupping was leading Ben along the grassy path of a beautiful garden, a pattern of the garden that she had left behind.

And there would be a lonicera hedge, a high lonicera hedge. She could see Ben and Miss Tupping standing before it and Ben would say, "Well, here's one he won't cut down." She was thinking stupidly, spitefully.

She mustn't think like that; it had been a dreadful night for him, for all of them.

She heard Donald returning from taking Miss Shawcross down to the village. She waited to hear him come upstairs and go into his room, but some little time elapsed before the sound of his footsteps came on the stairs. A few minutes after his door had closed on him it opened again, and then hers opened. He opened it as he knocked.

Slowly he crossed to the side of the bed, and when he was standing above her he muttered thickly, "I'm sorry, Grace, very, very sorry. I did wrong. For-for forgive me."

She looked up at him. Like Miss Shawcross he was crying. Whether he would have cried without the aid of the whisky she did not know but she realised with a start that he was tipsy, quite tipsy, and he looked both pathetic and ludicrous. She said flatly, "It's all right, it doesn't matter."

"But b-b-but Grace, I'm sorry."

She moved restlessly against the pillow.

"It's all right, I've told you. Anyway, in comparison with what happened tonight, it's nothing."

Yet even as she spoke she knew that the terror she had experienced in the blackness would remain with her for a long time. She did not think it would take twenty years to conquer it.

"Grace. Grace." He was bending over her now, his hands on the bed.

"It's all right, I've told you, Donald. Go to bed; you'll feel better in the morning."

"I - I can't go to bed, not by myself. I keep seeing them. I want comfort, Grace. Let me lie ... lie in your arms."

"No, Donald, no. You won't get to sleep." She moved away in the bed and put her hand out in a protesting movement as he bent further over her.

"Go to bed. Please.. Please, Donald."

"Oh, Grace, Grace. I'm unhappy. Grace."

She closed her eyes against the wave of revulsion that swept over her when she saw him slide to his knees, but when from that position his arms groped for her, her eyes stretched and she said firmly, "No!

Donald, no! "

"Grace ... oh. Grace." He had hold of her.

"No, Donald, no! I tell you no!" She was shouting now.

"Ssh! Ssh! You'll ... you'll waken the nipper. Just let me ... me lie ... lie here with my head on your breast like this."

"No. No, I've told you. Donald ... Donald, do you hear me? Get away!" Oh God! God in heaven! An unusual night he had said. What an ending to an unusual night!

She closed her eyes tight and the clock in the hall struck ten.

Grace had a new cook. She was not only a cook but a general help too, and full time. Her name was Peggy Mather. She was twenty-eight, big and of a surly disposition, and she was Miss Shawcross's niece. Why she had chosen to evacuate herself to this out-of-the-way village Grace did not know. The reason she gave was that she was fed up with the raids on the Tyne. Yet she showed no fear when the air-raid warnings went, and no matter what anybody else did she went stolidly about her work. What had really brought her from Newcastle to live with her aunt whom up to date she had rarely visited. Grace did not know and did not care, she was only too relieved to have her in the house, for now added to the household were David Cooper and three-year-old Veronica.

Young Dr. Cooper was no longer young Dr. Cooper. His small, slim stature had always made him appear years younger than he was, but the night of the raid had banked the years on him with one blow, and now he looked a man of fifty, not thirty-eight. After only three weeks' stay in hospital he had returned to the village, and in spite of protests plunged straight away into his practice; and as there was only a heap of rubble where his house had stood he had accepted without protest the invitation from the vicar to make his home with them.

It was in the morning-room at Willow Lea that he held his surgery. The expensive Persian carpet that had covered the hall had been taken up, chairs lined the walls between the doors, and the table was laden with old magazines.

Grace cast her eyes on the untidy jumble on the table as she crossed the hall towards the morning-room with a small tray in her hand. It always irritated her to see books and magazines thrown down open, but when a patient's turn came he or she just threw the reading material on to the table, never thinking.