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Even as she glanced out of the window she was only giving a fragment of her attention to the child who was kneeling on the gravel below beating her little fists as she screamed, for her mind was still full of words, dreadful words, wanting to hurl them at Donald. Then in another second Beatrice had her whole attention, for, following the child's petrified gaze, she saw to her horror what had all this time been eliciting her screams. Stephen was climbing the trellis work that led up to the nursery window. It was used as a support for the delicate tendrils of the clematis, and he was now more than halfway up it. Instinctively Grace's hand went to her throat. She knew she must not shout at him, but the fears and tensions of the last few minutes came over in her voice as she exclaimed, "Stephen!" The boy looked up, startled. Then, pleased to see that she was witnessing his daring feat, he called,

"Look, Mammy, I can climb...." Looking up at her in his moment of triumph his head had gone too far back. As he released his hand for the next pull, he overbalanced, and to a scream that out-did Beatrice's he fell on to the drive.

Grace was out of the room, down the stairs and on to the drive in a matter of seconds. Beatrice's screams had reached the point of hysteria now, but there was no sound at all from Stephen. As her arms went round him to gather him up she was thrust roughly aside.

"Don't touch him!" Donald spoke as if her touch would defile the boy and brought up in her an emotion that bordered on rage. But she had to stand aside to see him lift the child and carry him indoors. As she watched him disappear into the drawing-room with the limp figure in his arms she forced herself towards the telephone, and there rang up David, and as she gave the number she was surprised to hear herself still muttering, "Grievous wrong. Grievous wrong."

At nine o'clock that night Grace phoned Aggie, and when she heard the brisk tones saying "Hello' she said without any preamble, " Stephen's had a fall, Aunt Aggie. They think he might have fractured his hip-bone. He's in the Cottage Hospital. "

"No!"

"Yes, Aunt Aggie."

"And you were to come tomorrow."

"Yes, Aunt Aggie."

"It's fantastic."

"That isn't all. He's found out about the other ... and you'll be pleased to know I'm to be forgiven."

"Aw! Girl."

"He won't let me have the children.... The elastic band has pulled tight again. Aunt Aggie."

"My God!"

Grace's third child was born on 1 January 1944, and she called it Jane. Donald was confined to bed with 'flu at the time, and so any lack of interest he might have shown was not observed.

Stephen did not like the advent of another sister, for it took some of the limelight away from his ironbound leg. Beatrice did not care one way or the other; so Grace seemed to have her daughter to herself. And this state of affairs went on until the child was six months old.

Donald, to Grace's knowledge, had never looked at the baby, and she was glad of that. At least this child would be hers, for Beatrice had long ago followed in Stephen's footsteps and was Daddy's little girl.

But Jane was hers and would remain hers.

With the birth of the child Grace developed a philosophy, perhaps a negative one, but nevertheless it had the becalming effect of acceptance. It was no use, she told herself, she would struggle no more. She would take things as they came what had to be would be.

She had her child it was as if she had only one and Mrs. Maclntyre.

It was strange the comfort that Andrew's mother had brought to her in the past months. It should have been the other way round but no, it was Mrs. Maclntyre, now almost blind but for a faint light in the left eye, who gave her comfort while at the same time killing any hope for future reprieve from the life she was at present leading, for, as Mrs.

Maclntyre said, her sight was now

in the ends of her fingers and these had become familiar over the years with every article of furniture in her home. Moreover, when she stood outside her front door she did not need anyone to point out what lay in front of her. The air on her face, mist-laden, wet, warm or stinging with snow particles, told her how the fells would be looking at that moment. Was there any hope, then, that Andrew would leave his mother alone in the cottage, 'and go and live his own life a little way off, as she would say to Grace?

"But not too far, so that he could look her up betimes?" No, the pattern was already set.

But her new philosophy said: "Don't worry. Wait and see, take it in your stride." That was until the morning of her twenty-sixth birthday, which Donald had not acknowledged. From that day she no longer told herself to take it in her stride: she told herself to fight.

The telephone had rung as Donald was crossing the hall and he picked it up, and as she went into the drawing-room she heard him say, "Oh, hello, David', and then a long pause and, " I'm very sorry'. A few seconds later he was standing in the drawing-room. She was gathering some papers up from the table, her back to him, when she realised he was looking at her. This hadn't happened for a long time, not since the night in the nursery. She turned and faced him.

"David has just phoned. He tells me He paused, " They have heard that'

his voice sank 'that Bertrand Parley's been killed in action. "

She allowed him to hold her gaze as she thought: Oh, poor Bertrand .

poor fellow. But as she looked at him her mind told her why he was giving her the news of Bertrand Parley's death in this way. He thought, he actually thought, that Bertrand was the father of the children. No bubble of laughter rose in her at this revelation only a faint sense of wonder at the knowledge that this could prove that he knew nothing about Andrew. And yet against this supposition was the fact that he had never once mentioned anything concerning the bomb being dropped. Nor had he ever spoken of its effect on Mrs.

Maclntyre.

She turned from him and sat down on the couch, and it took all her control, when he stood in front of her, his gaze directed down on her as he said, "I'm sorry. You know that, don't you?" not to cry out,

"Don't be such a bloody fool!" This was the first time she had sworn inside her head for a number of weeks, and it brought the usual feeling of sick revulsion against herself and she cried out at it, "No not again, don't start that again." After a long, silent moment Donald left her and the spate of words died away.

But that very afternoon they returned in force. It was when Donald looked at the child for the first time. Not only looked at her but took her up in his arms.

She was standing at her bedroom window looking towards the sand-pit.

The pram was near the edge of the pit and she saw Donald coming towards it to tell the children as always that he was at hand again, for never did he return to the house, even after an absence of only an hour, but he made his presence known to them. Stephen was not in the pit but sailing a boat on the small fish pond some distance away, and on the sight of Donald he sprang up with the hampered agility of the iron supporting his leg and made a dash towards him, and once again, perhaps for the fourth or fifth time that day, he was lifted up high.

Then it was Beatrice's turn, for whatever Stephen had she must have too. Even if she hadn't demanded it Donald would have seen that she got it. It was with one on each side of him that he walked towards the pram and, standing in front of it, looked down on the gurgling, fat and anything but pretty face

of Jane. He stood for a long time like this while the children jabbered and talked and prodded their sister in various ways. Then through the open window Grace heard his voice remonstrating with them gently, "Now, now, Stephen, you mustn't be rough. No, Beatrice, no, not like that." When she saw him bend slowly forward and pick the child up into his arms her stomach seemed to turn over. The sensation was similar to that created by an enema sickly sweat-making. And what followed next did nothing to lessen this sensation. She saw her husband carry the child to the garden seat, where, placing her on his right knee and putting his arm about her, he took hold of her right hand, then with his left hand he drew towards him Stephen's right hand and placed Jane's podgy fist in it. Then, taking hold of Stephen's left hand, he joined it to Beatrice's left with his own. There was now formed a circle and the circle was almost encompassed by his two arms.

The ritual had been accomplished without a word. Daddy was showing them a new game and the children's faces were alight. Words were not necessary.

The feeling in Grace's stomach had brought a weakness to her legs, and she leant against the stanchion of the deep window-sill and in the silence of the room she talked to him, spitting out the words, "You won't do it! No, by God, not with her you won't! You shan't take her from me. No, Donald, I'll play you at your own game.... You ... I You

...I You ... I You're inhuman, you must be. Oh the cruelty.. You ...

I You...! You...!..."

The new phase was given its seal on the Sunday following this ritual of possession, for Donald preached a sermon on "Forgive us our trespasses'. She was sitting in their pew, Stephen on one side and Beatrice on the other, and Donald, standing above her in the pulpit, asked the congregation how could they expect to be forgiven for their shortcomings if they did not forgive others, and not just for small sins, but for grievous sins. The sin of unfaithfulness had been bred like a germ through this war, but sins, like germs, must be attacked and exterminated. Yet who would think of exterminating the man because he carried in his body the germs of, say, influenza. No, you could kill the germs and save the man. So it was with sin. And he told them they were incapable of forgiveness unless they became humble.... Grace was rearing inside. Unless you were humble. My God! Humble!

Donald humble! And these poor Air Force fellows in the congregation and those girls. They would all be thinking he was at them. She wanted to turn to them and say, "Don't worry, it's not you he's getting at."

Forgiveness . unless ye become as little children . humility.

She looked straight at him, but he did not once let his gaze rest on her. Humility. What about stealing? Practised, calculated stealing.

Not the stealing in a passion- inflamed moment of another man's wife.

That was a clean thing, almost a virtue, compared with the daily, hourly, sucking in to himself the lives . the whole lives and emotions, the loyalty and love of two children whom he was determined now made into three. Humility!

She just had to see Aunt Aggie.

When later that same day she made a flying visit to Newcastle she flung her arms wide as she asked Aggie, "What can I do? I feel helpless against such ... such wiliness. Oh, I could go, but ... but it's Stephen."

In reply Aggie made a statement which was not an answer.

"The unnatural swine," she said, 'blast him to hell's flames. "

As one nerve-strained day melted into another Grace fought Donald in every way she could to resist his usurping of Jane. The conflict was all the more intense because no mention of it was made by either of them.

The ill-effect of the situation on Grace was added to when she had to face the fact that never would she be able to take Stephen away from Donald. She might as well drain off the boy's blood and expect him to live as separate him from the man he called Daddy.

The whole pattern of her life was becoming unbearable; only the sight and touch of Andrew could have brought her easement. But Andrew was in Italy. From North Africa and Sicily he had gone to Italy. His letters from there awaited her at Aggie's every Saturday morning, but they nearly always ended with, "It won't be long now, it's nearly over, it's near the end."

When the end finally came, hope for a time brought colour back into her face if not flesh on to her bones and she thought continually, "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow." But it was many months later, and peace an accepted thing, before she saw Andrew.

One Friday night, at six o'clock, Peggy Mather, in the act of putting on her coat and wrapping a scarf around her head against the snow buzzard that was raging, heard the telephone ring, and she was about to pull the back door open to leave when she heard it ring for the second time. She stopped. The vicar was making so much bloomin' noise in the nursery with those hairns that he couldn't hear the bell. And where was she? she wondered. She stamped across the kitchen and through the baize door into the hall, and when the phone rang again she picked it up and said, "Hello?" After a moment she put it down and went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled in her loudest voice, "It's for you ma'am!" Never once did she use the word ma'am without giving it a telling quality.

Grace was in the bathroom tidying up after having bathed the children, and she only just heard the call. When she got to the top of the stairs Peggy Mather, from the folds of her scarf which she was now pulling over her mouth, muttered, "Phone."

"Thank you, Peggy." Grace screwed up her face and cast her eyes in the direction of the nursery, from which were issuing high-pitched, gleeful yells.

When she took up the phone Aggie's voice came immediately to her saying, "Hello there, you been asleep?"

"No, Aunt Aggie, but there was so much noise going on upstairs I couldn't hear the bell."

"How are you?"

"Oh ... you know ... as usual."

"How are you off for beef for the weekend?"

"Beef, Aunt Aggie? Well ... Grace shook her head as she repeated, "

Beef? Not at all, we've had mutton for the last four weeks. I'm sick of the sight of it. Can you get me a piece of beef? "

"Yes, a prime bit, real Scotch." Aggie laughed at this point and added, "And not from under the counter either."

Grace was smiling into the phone. Aggie sounded happy, even excited; she was always digging up something on her rounds. She knew so many people. But a piece of beef!

"Grace."

"Yes, Aunt Aggie?"

"Hold on to something, I've got a surprise for you. In fact it's the Scotch beef in person."