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"There's no need for us to fight, is there ?"

I wanted to say, "I'll fight with you as long as I have breath," but I was afraid. I was not only afraid for myself and Con stance, I was afraid for Sam. Whenever I had got Don Dowling's back up somebody had suffered. It had been the animals at first, the poor animals, then Sam and his burnt hands and feet. And still Sam, for there was a feeling against Sam in the town now. Don had done what he had promised. Even my dad was not quite the same to Sam. He had tackled him about the pit episode and Sam had denied it, but his denial had not been convincing, perhaps because I was present. I must not, I knew, add to the burden that was already Sam's, so I said evenly, "It takes two to make a fight and I dont feel like it today."

He laughed.

"Good enough. By the way, I bought a smasher of a car yesterday."

"What can you do with a car," I asked, 'you can't get petrol? "

"I look ahead, Christine. I'm always looking ahead. The war's on its last legs. I got this car for a hundred and twenty. The minute the war's over I bet I can ask three hundred for it. It's a Wolseley, dark blue, a beautiful job. I'm leaving the pit as soon as this business is finished."

"Are you? What are you going to do?" I was rolling out some pastry.

"I'm going in with Remmy. I haven't done so bad already. I've got quite a little bit tucked away, you know."

At this I wanted to retort, "Then you want to give some to your mother," for I knew Aunt Phyllis had to depend mainly on Sam to keep the house going, but all I said was, "That's nice."

"I've got ideas, big ideas. I'll even leave Remmy behind shortly."

"Oh?"

"I was looking at a house on Brampton Hill the other day."

In spite of myself my eyes swung to him and I exclaimed, "Brampton Hill?"

"Aye, and why shouldn't I? Me and the likes of me are as good as anybody up there. Anyway half of them are empty now, and most of the others have been requisitioned and will go for a song. They won't have the money to keep them up the present owners. Things'll be different after the war. By! they will that, and not afore time. It'll be a case of the mighty brought low." He paused, then added, "Anyway, I'll have to have a house some time, I'm thinkin' of getting married."

I had turned to the pastry, but now again I was looking at him.

"Married? Who to?"

"Oh, just a lass."

"Oh, I'm glad, Don." And I was glad.

"Well, so long." He smiled at me, then went to the front- room door and called to Constance, saying, "What! you haven't opened them yet?"

When he passed me again he remarked, "You've got her scared1 told you you were like your mam." He laughed teasingly, "So long again."

"So long, Don."

I could not help feeling swamped with relief, for if I had thought about him in the last forty-eight hours it was to tell myself that he could not spoil my happiness in any way, and yet, knowing Don, I had still been fearful. And after all, there had been no need for fear, he was going to be married. It seemed that everything was working together for my good, the tide had turned at last. I sang, not under my breath, but right out loud, and I was carolling, "You May Not Be An Angel' and thinking of Martin when Sam came in. I stopped immediately and greeted him with, " Well what do you think of the news? "

He blinked an enquiring blink and said, "I've never heard any, not since last night. I wasn't up for the eight o'clock."

"I'm not talking about the wireless, but about your Don."

A shadow passed over his face, leaving it with the blank dead look that even Don's name had the power to create, and he asked, "Well, what about him ?"

"Don't you know?"

"Apparently not the latest."

"He's going to be married. Hasn't he told your mother?"

"He's going to be married?" Sam repeated each word slowly.

"Yes, didn't you know?"

"Who did he say he was going to marry?"

"Well... well when I asked him he just said a lass. But he's got somebody, hasn't he, in Bog's End?"

Sam gave me a long, concentrated look before letting his gaze slip away, and he walked from me and sat down by the table, and from there he looked at me again and said, "The lass he's got in Bog's End is no lass, she's a woman near on forty and she's married and apart from her man."

"But, Sam, he said a lass. It needn't be her, it could be somebody else."

"Oh, God in heaven...." Sam's voice drifted away wearily as he finished this phrase and, taking up his favourite position, his hands dangling, his eyes cast floor wards he said, "You better know this.

You're the lass, Christine. You always have been and you always will be with him. " He turned his head slightly to the side and glanced at me.

There was a dryness in my mouth, and I wet my lips several times before I managed to bring out, "You're wrong, Sam. He might have wanted me that way once but not since I've had Constance. He hates me for what I did."

"He might have done, but he still wants you and he means to get you.

He's never been baulked of anything he's wanted in his life, and the very fact that you're hard to get makes him all the more sure that he'll win. If you weren't that way, he would've dropped the idea of you years ago. It's the twist in him. "

"Sam, you're mistaken."

"No, Christine." Sam got to his feet and stood opposite to me, and he did not look like an eighteen-year-old lad but like a man much older than myself. And he talked like one as he said, "I live next door, I know what goes on. Only the night afore last me mother was up when I came in off late shift.

She was crying because he hadn't come in and it near two in the morning. She said they'd had a row before he went out. It started about the woman in Bog's End, and he had said to her, "You needn't worry your head about her much longer for I'm going over the fence where I threw me cap years ago." And he had nodded towards the wall.

It's funny, Christine, but I think me ma's as twisted as he is for she's more worried over him having you than she is the one in Bog's End. "

My voice was very small when I said, "Well, he'll have his jump to no purpose. You know that, Sam, dont you?"

Now Sam stepped close to me and there was an actual tremor in his voice when he spoke.

"Listen to me, Christine. You've got to get away.

That's the only place you'll be safe from him. Take the baim and go some place. You'll get work. And listen he held up his hand to stop me from speaking and added 'let me finish. I've thought about this a lot. I've saved a little bit and I never spend half my pocket money. I can help you until you get on your feet. But you've got to get out.

Your dad'U manage, and I'll talk to him and explain. "

"Sam ... Sam, you listen to me. Come and sit down." I took his hand and pressed him into a chair, and, sitting opposite him, I said, "I've got something to tell you, Sam. Remember what I said yesterday?"

He gave a brief nod and I went on, "Do you remember the lad you saw me with that night by the river? You remember me grabbing you into the kitchen to tell me mam that you had seen me with that lad?" Again he nodded.

"Well he's come back. He loves me and I love him and we're going to be married."

I dont know what reaction I expected from Sam to my news, I hadn't thought about it, but when, with his eyes fixed intently on me, he got slowly to his feet and, turning without a word, made for the door. I cried to him, "Sam!"

On this he paused, and without looking at me, he said, "I would still go away if I was you."

Standing alone in the kitchen I had, for a moment, a feeling of utter deflation. I had thought I could talk to Sam about Martin, but he had no intention of listening to anything I had to say about him; that was plain. Then there was what he had told me about Don. Cap over the fence indeed! Yet who could have judged from Don's manner that he still wanted me. That he would want to hurt me for hurting him, yes, but not want to marry me. Fear was with me again. But I pressed it away, Martin would deal with him. In my mind's eyes I saw them together and I saw Don dwarfed by Martin's presence. Martin had something that could shrivel people like Don. A crisp word from him and Don would soon know where he stood with regards to me. Don could no longer frighten me with his subtle tactics. Martin had said that tonight we must talk. He would talk, I wouldn't be able to stop him tonight, I knew, and I would talk, too, and tell him about Don, and that would be that.

Martin did not come, and I spent the evening in a fever of waiting and the night hours in telling myself between doses that there would be a letter in the post for me. If there was not I wondered just how I would get through each hour until the night again.

There was no letter in the post. About eleven o'clock Sam came in, and for the first time in my life I snapped at him, for he began again to tell me that I must get away.

"Oh, dont be silly, Sam," I said sharply, 'where am I to go ? "

He turned his eyes away as he muttered, "Well you said you've got this fellow ... if he's on the level hey fix something."

His tone made me angry and I exclaimed, "Of course he's on the level."

And then he asked with a sort of pleading, "Christine, do this for me, will you? Go away for a little while." And I replied, "I can't Sam, there's nothing settled yet." On this he barked at me in a very un Sam-like manner, "Well, dont tell me later on you wished you had."

When in the afternoon I slapped Constance's bottom hard for getting on the chair and taking from the top shelf the box of chocolates, Dad said, "That trick, lass, didn't merit that spankin'." And he looked at me with a little twisted smile and, perhaps remembering my gaiety of yesterday, added "Spring's soon over and summer comes."

Yes, summer comes, but Martin did not come that night either and by nine o'clock I was pacing the floor like someone demented. At half-past ten I was retching into the sink. Knowing I would go mad if I did not sleep I took six aspirins, but even in the drowsy daze that these induced I was still waiting and calling, "Martin... Martin."

The following day I made preparations for that evening. If he did not come by eight I would go down to that bar and try to get news of him I just could not stand another evening of pacing from the front room to the kitchen. But there had to be someone in the house with Constance.

There was no one I could ask who would not want to know my business except, strangely enough, the Pattersons next door. As I have said before, they were the only Protestants in the place and be cause of this had always been divided from us. The fault lay not on the one side or the other. It would seem that the roads on which we were travelling to God were going in exactly opposite directions and therefore we never met. Mrs. Patterson had always been pleasant, she would always speak about the weather, or the news when we met, but we had never visited each other, even the war had not brought us close.

The house next door could have been at the end of the street, so far apart were we. In fact I knew more of Miss Spiers at the top end and the Campbells at the bottom end than I did of the Patter- sons. But it was of Mrs. Patterson I thought when I wanted someone to stay with Constance.

When I knocked at her door and made my request she did not seem in any way surprised and said, "Yes, of course, Christine, I'll see to the baim. Just let me know when you want to get away."

By asking this favour of her I had broken down the barriers of years, and I think that she was pleased. She took it, anyway, as if it had been a daily occurrence that I should ask her to come into our house.

I told her there might not be any necessity for it. I was expecting a friend and if she didn't turn up then I'd have to go and see her as she might be ill. How easily the stories come when the necessity arises, and you dont think of them as lies. The arrangement was that I was to knock on the wall if I wanted her.

At eight o'clock, my hat and coat already on, I knocked on the wall and Mrs. Patterson came in immediately, and so nice was she that her eyes did not roam around the place to see how it was fixed, but she sat down by the fire with her knitting and said, "Don't hurry, Christine." Even with anxiety rending my body I could spare a thought to think, "She's nice."

I liked her. For over twenty years she had been next door and I dont think I had given her more than a passing thought. And now I knew that of all the women in the street I liked Airs. Patterson. I took my torch and said, "I won't be long, not more than an hour."

I was not used to being out in the black-out and, apart from the blackness which made the roads unfamiliar, I had the men to contend with. When I reached the High Street, time after time a light was flashed into my face and an invitation given to me. The first time it happened I ran, the second time I side-stepped the man. He was in uniform. The third time wasn't so easy. There were three of them abreast and they were laughing, and as I dodged off the pavement they dodged, too, this way and that. And then in desperation I yelled, and as they dispersed I heard one exclaim as if in amazement, "Struth!"

Three times I lost my way, but finally I came to the passage leading to the bar. When at last I pushed open the door and went round the black-out curtains and into the saloon, I stood blinking and dazed for a moment. I could not recognize the room that I had visited a few days ago. All the seats were occupied, people were even standing round the walls, and all the men were in uniform, R.

A.

F.

uniform, and I saw at a glance they were all officers. It did not take more than a second to assure me that Martin was not there, and I told my self I had known he wouldn't be. If he could have got off he would have come to me at the house, perhaps at this very minute he was there.

This thought brought a flurry to my mind. Why had I not told Mrs.

Patterson the truth? Then the bar man squeezed past me. He was the man who had served us the other day, and I touched his arm and asked,