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Dus Kate want any coke? I mustn't talk Geordie. Oh no, it isn't refined. You've shut my mouth for years, haven't you? But no longer, no longer. The children mustn't hear me.

The children . our children. Oh, that's funny. Our . our . OUR

children! Stay where you are! If you come near me I'll tear you to bits, I will! I will . I' She was screaming now, her arms hooked, her fingers clawed. When she felt her nails tear at his flesh the laughter stopped in her and she was enveloped by fury alone.

Once again she was on the bed, glaring up now into his blood-spattered face. He was holding her from all angles. One of his knees was pinning down her legs, with one hand he was gripping her two wrists, while with the other he kept her mouth shut. He was visibly worn out and was showing it when the door burst open and David came into the room. But he did not release his hold on her, he merely turned his face silently towards the doctor.

Grace became still as, over the rim of Donald's hand, her eyes beseeched David, calling loudly to him.

"Let her go."

"You must give her something first." Donald's voice was thick.

"I will in a minute. Let her alone."

"But..."

"Leave her alone." The words were more like a bark, and Donald, after a moment's pause, lifted his limbs one after the other cautiously away.

And when he stood at the foot of the bed wiping his face with his handkerchief, Grace hitched herself up into a sitting position and, grabbing at David's hand, started again, "He's ... he's a devil, David a swine ... a bloody swine. You said I should...."

"Now, now. Grace." David's voice was quiet.

"But, David, David, I can't stand any more.... I'm going away ... I'm going away now, tonight. I must

get away. I'll take Jane. He's got Stephen . I'll never have Stephen. David, Stephen doesn't like me, he doesn't. My son doesn't like me. Oh, I must get away. I'm going. You . you bloody . I'

"Now, now, stay where you are." David took one hand swiftly out of his case on the side of the bed and stopped her from rising, at the same time speaking to Donald over his shoulder, saying, "It would be better if you went."

When Donald did not move. Grace with another spurt of energy made to rise from the bed, and David, holding her hard now, said soothingly,

"Now, Grace, be still. Lie quiet and let's talk this over ... eh?

Look, stay still just a minute. Do that for me, will you? "

After a moment he took his hands away but kept his eyes on hers as he went to his bag again, but Grace was staring past him now at Donald, and although she didn't move she began to talk once more. First in a low mixture of abusive swearing, then suddenly her voice rose almost to a scream, and David, the syringe in his hand, said, "Quiet, quiet; they'll hear you in the village. Grace. " He smiled tenderly down on her.

"Let them, let them, David.... They laugh about the vicar's wife in the village, do you know that? I'm one of the war-time jokes ... the vicar's wife locked herself in the cellar the night of the raid.

Everyone eke turned out to help but not her, oh no. She dropped the key and couldn't find it. That's rich, isn't it? She dropped the key and couldn't find it. And when the lights went out, there were no bloody matches either . for why?

"Cause the vicar had swiped them, that's how it goes, the vicar had swiped them. Serve her right. Oh!"

She put her hand quickly towards David's.

"That hurt, David. What is it? What are you doing? I'm going away..

Kate Shawcross set that yarn around, but he told her. You told her, didn't you?" She leaned forward, glaring at Donald.

"Dear Kate. Dear, dear Kate. When I'm gone you'll have her here, won't you? She likes this house, I can't leave it a minute but she's up here.... Oh, I know, I know. I've got a spy, too. You'd like to know who it is, wouldn't you?" Her voice was becoming quieter.

"Oh yes, you would, so you could take it out on him an' all." She did not mention Mr. Blenkinsop, and she addressed herself now to David, but with her glassy stare still on Donald.

"D'you know what his latest is, David? You'll never guess, not in a month of Sundays, you'll never guess. The sadistic swine. He's going to ask Andrew to come and do the garden ... just like that." She snapped her fingers.

"As if he was a serf, so he can torment me and make me pay for my--'

Her voice was cut off on a gulp as her mouth was once again compressed but this time vertically as David gently pressed her cheeks together and said, " There now, no more of it. And why shouldn't Andrew Maclntyre do the garden, eh? Although I don't see where he'd get the time. " He shook her face gently as he stared down into her eyes, compelling her to silence.

"Andrew's a good gardener, none better, which I've often thought is an odd thing in a farmer. Now, now," he pressed his hand tightly across her chest, 'lie still, you'll feel better in a minute. You're going to sleep now. There now, there now.

Lie still, that's a good girl, that's it. "

It was some minutes later when he released his hold on her and she lay limp looking at him. Her lips moved slowly as she said, "David ...

Jane ... I want Jane."

"Jane will be all right. There now, close your eyes. Jane will be all right. I'll see to Jane."

When her eyes were closed David stood watching her, and when her hand slid off her chest he raised her eyelid and let it slowly drop back into place. Then turning towards Donald, he said briskly but without looking

at him, "I must phone for an ambulance." He rapidly arranged the instruments in his case before closing it.

"An ambulance?" Donald was still mopping the bleeding scratch on his face.

"Yes, an ambulance." David now looked straight at him and asked pointedly, "You don't think she can stay here, do you?"

"No, no." Donald's voice was flat.

"Where will you send her?"

"To Rockforts if I can get her in."

"Rockforts?" Donald's eyebrows moved upwards.

"Yes, Rockforts, where else? I suppose you are aware that something has snapped."

Donald said nothing, only stared at David, and as David returned his look he saw the protective skin close over the vicar's eyes. He had seen this look before and he wanted to shout at the man, "For God's sake come clean! Come into the open. Isn't this lesson enough for you?" But he knew the futility of such an appeal. If the girl on the bed hadn't been able to get through the barrier there was little chance that he would succeed. The man's pride and ego were a protection stronger than armour plating.

"What are they likely to do with her?"

David was moving towards the door as he said, "Put her to sleep, I should suppose, for as long as she can take."

"And then?"

David was at the door, and he turned and confronted the minister and said flatly, and now without the semblance of any sympathetic feeling for the man, "Try to undo twenty years of strain, I should think... "

The straightening of Donald's body did not check his closing remark, for as he turned from him he said, "And I wouldn't count on her coming back here. In fact, I would go so far as to say the knowledge that she v have to return will be about the one thing that will t her back to normality...."

But here David was wrong, for a year later G returned to Willow Lea.

Yet, as David had foretold, it was the knowledge that she was not going to return to the house that helped Grace's recovery. She always looked back on the first three months at Rockforts as her initiation into hell. For the first week there she had slept; she would wake and be given food, then go to sleep again, and this pattern seemed to go on for years in her mind. But when finally they allowed her to wake up and she realised where she was, the shock wiped out any good the long sleep had achieved. She became a bundle of visibly trembling nerves.

She was in an asylum, she was going mad . if she wasn't already mad, she was going mad. Nothing could convince her otherwise; even the electric-shock treatment only succeeded in dulling the fear for short periods. Until she came under the youngest of the three resident doctors. She took to him because he was not unlike David, or rather as David had once been. Brown- headed, slight of stature and bouncing with energy. It was he who first took the now intensified fear of swearing away from her. What was swearing, anyway? She could swear if she wanted to, it was her only weapon, that's why she had used it. He encouraged her to talk about her childhood. He came to know Jack Cummings and the coal depot. But it wasn't until he learned about Andrew that he saw the whole pattern, and the pattern became clear-cut in outline when she hesitantly told him of her first meeting with Andrew on the night she had tried to lure her husband by standing naked before him.

Another thing the young doctor managed to reassure Grace about was that her power to love would return to her, for now all feeling had left her, all feeling of affection and love. She thought of Andrew, but not with love, only with fear because she felt she loved him no longer. She had no feeling for anyone, not even Jane. And she couldn't cry.

It was not until she had been at Rockforts for six months that the desire to regain complete normality began to stir within her. But even so she had no desire to go back into the world. She had a very nice private room; she walked for long periods alone in the grounds; and the thought that she would one day have to leave this place became as frightening in its way as when she first realised that she had come into it.

Andrew was the first person she saw from that other world, for her past life appeared now as if it had been lived in another world, and she was amazed at her reaction to him. She sat on the seat by the stream that ran through the grounds, her hand in his, but no thrill of love stirred in her. She felt dead inside. It was as if she had had an operation and the organs that registered emotion ripped out of her.

Vaguely she felt comforted in Andrew's presence, yet strangely undisturbed by his nearness, or his sadness.

When some time later she asked to see the children, only Beatrice came.

Stephen was at college and Jane was at boarding school. But Beatrice came and their meeting roused in Grace the first stirrings of maternal feeling again, accompanied by one of surprise, for Beatrice, never demonstrative, flung her arms around her neck, and not only kissed her again and again but hung on to her while the tears streamed down her face. Grace could not help but be touched, yet she did not cry with her.

It was during Beatrice's third visit, when once again with her arms round Grace's neck and the tears streaming down her face, that she begged her to come home. Because . because . and then it had come out in a garbled rush. She wanted to get married, she must get married

. she must . she must. Grace had pressed her away and looked at her, and then she knew the reason for Beatrice's need of her.

She did not send for Andrew; it was David she sent for, David would know.

Yes, David said, Beatrice was pregnant and the shock had caused Donald to have a heart attack. He was in hospital. It was the first time anyone from outside had spoken of her husband to her for a year, and David assured her that should she come home again she would not be likely to meet Donald, for he was in a bad way and there was a possibility that he might never come out of hospital.

It was some time before the fear of returning to the house itself even knowing that Donald was no longer there was overcome. But as the days went on Beatrice's happiness became more and more important to her.

And on the day she said to herself, "She is Andrew's daughter, not his'

on this day she informed the doctor of her decision then phoned David, and wrote to Andrew.... Andrew received the letter when he returned home from work. Mrs. Maclntyre took it from the mantelpiece and handed it to him immediately he came in the door. It was the first letter Grace had written him since her illness, and before pulling his coat off he sat down and read it. After a moment he said quietly, "

It's from Grace. "

Mrs. Maclntyre was standing by the table, her almost sightless eyes bent towards him.

"I had a feeling it might be," she said.

"She's coming home."

"Back to the house?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Andrew ... why?"

When Andrew told her she sat slowly down, but did not speak, and after a time he put his hand across to her and said, "Don't. Don't cry."

"But... but she's had enough. Why has this to happen an' all? It's as if there's a sort of... influence there ... in that house, holding her there, bringing her back to it. I thought now that ... that you and she would have made a fresh start."

"I'm thinking that the sins of the fathers are not waiting for the third and fourth generation, we are both going to pay in this by being kept apart until we die."

"Don't talk like that."

"Well, I can't stand the thought of her going back there. I imagined she would have gone to the cottage, for a few months anyway, with Aunt Aggie having it all fixed and waiting.... Funny." He moved his head slowly from side to side.

"I don't feel any concern about Beatrice. I suppose that's unnatural."

"No. No, not at all." His mother wiped her eyes.

"It's just because you're so concerned about Grace.... I suppose it's that Spencer boy you were telling inc about."

"Yes, it'll be him all right and I can't say anything against him, for who am I to pick holes in that direction, anyway."

"It was different with ... Mrs. Maclntyre did not finish and, as her voice trailed off, Andrew's head came up and he said, " What is it? "

He got to his feet and went and stood by her and again he said, " What is it? "

Her two hands were pressed tightly on her stomach, her head was bowed and the sweat was oozing out of the pores of her forehead. He put his arms about her, and when at last she was able to speak she pointed towards

the ceiling and said, "Tablets in the top drawer ... in a bottle."