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I expected that Ronnie would be sullen when the priest had gone, but instead he grabbed my hand and, laughing, ran me over the field towards the river, and when we reached the bank and sat down with our feet dangling above the gurgling water, he said to me without looking into my face, "Do you think I can talk good, Christine?"

"Oh, yes, Ronnie, I love to hear you talk."

He turned his face quickly to me.

"You do?"

"Yes, I think you're clever, oh, so clever."

He turned his eyes away and looked across the river and said, "Some day I will be clever and I'll talk and talk and talk, and I'll make people listen to me. Do you know what I want to do?"

"No."

He laughed and, turning and kneeling at my side, he grabbed my hand, saying, "I can always talk to you. I can tell you things. Well, I'll tell you what I want to do. I want to tie people in chairs so that they'll have to listen to me. In the middle of the night I wake up thinking things and nobody wants to listen, so I tie lots of people in chairs, Mam and Dad, Uncle Jim, Mr. Graham' ~ he was the schoolmaster"

Aunt Phyllis. Oh, yes. Aunt Phyllis. "

"And me, Ronnie?"

"No, never you, Christine, because you listen. Will you always listen to me, Christine?"

"Yes, always, always."

That summer the heat was intense and water became scarce, and for only part of the day it ran from the tap in the backyard. By each evening I would feel so hot and sticky that I would beg my mother once again to let me go in the river with the boys. Ronnie had said he would teach me to swim. But Mam would have none of it.

"You can pledge and that's all," she said.

So I would pledge in the shallows, shouting across the distance to where the boys sported in- the deeper water. They would dive like turtles, the water spraying up like a fountain

when they disappeared, then their heads, black and shiny, and their faces running with the cool water would break through a fresh surface.

On and on they would go, and I would think, "Oh, if only...."

At night we didn't go to bed early but sat around with all the doors and windows open. Dad used to sit on the front step reading aloud from the paper while my mother sat at the front window doing her mending or knitting; never did she sit down with idle hands. Gists of his reading stuck in my mind. The Dionne Quins were born, a man who had started to make bicycles with a capital of only five pounds was now a millionaire and they had changed his name from Morris to Nuffield. There was a woman found in a trunk in some station cloakroom, and there had been a lot of jollification over the King's jubilee.

I knew about the jubilee because they had had one or two tea parties in the town, but we hadn't had anything at Fenwick Houses. There had come a tentative suggestion from Mrs. Brown that something should be done for the hairns.

"What," said my dad, 'and have a means test on the cakes? " Also from his reading I remember there was a man called HoreBelisha, and he had something to do with lamp-posts, and this made my dad laugh. Then there was another man called Musso who had attacked the poor Abyssinians. Dad said it would be our turn next, and this worried me during a lot of hot, restless nights.

A number of times that summer I walked over Top Fell down to Bertram's Farm with Father Ellis, and Mrs. Bertram always gave me a cup of milk, then asked me, "Was that nice?" And I always said, "Yes, thank you."

She had the idea that I was hungry, but I was never hungry. I had only to dash into the house gasping, "Oh, Mam, I'm starvin'," and my mother would say, "Well you know where the knife is and you know where the bread is, if you can't help yourself I'm sorry for you." But I was well aware that this practice wasn't prevalent in Fellburn at that time, and not even in Fenwick Houses, certainly not next door in my Aunt Phyllis's, for both Sam and Don always came in with me when I said I was hungry and always went out with something in their fists.

It wasn't the drink of milk that I looked forward to on these walks with Father Ellis to the farm, but the fun we had.

To my mind he was as good fun as our Ronnie or Sam. I never, even in the vaguest way, coupled Don with Sam, Ronnie and fun, although he was as much my constant companion as the other two.

Once we were on the fells proper, Father Ellis would give me a start, then race me to a tree, or taking my hand he would run and leap me into great leaps, higher than I could jump when I flung my arms round myself. On some of the leaps I could see over the far fells and catch glimpses of the entire town. Sometimes he would tell me a Pat and Mick story, and sometimes I would tell him one, and we both laughed long and loud.

One day, for some reason or another, I had missed him, but I knew he had gone to the farm and I went to meet him. The sun was going down and I stood on the top of High Fell straining my eyes into the dazzling rose and mauve light trying to make him out against the shades on the hills. But I could see nothing, for the sun was making my eyes water.

Yet I remember I didn't turn my face away from the light. I was so high up that I felt on top of the sun, and as it slipped over the brow of the hill yon side of the river it seemed so near that I had but to bend forward, put out my hand, and I could press it into the valley beyond.

Blinking, I turned, blinded with colour, to see just a few feet away from me Father Ellis. He was standing looking at me, and I cried joyfully, "Oh, hallo. Father." But he didn't speak, he just took my hand and turned away and we walked homewards. I thought he was vexed, somebody had vexed him, yet he didn't look vexed, and then he said in a voice which he only used in confession and never on the fells,

"Christine, how old are you now?"

"Eleven, Father. I was eleven on April the twenty-sixth. You know I was born the day the Duke and Duchess of York were married. It was a nice day to be born, wasn't it?"

I looked up at him and he smiled and said, "There wasn't a better."

And then he went on, "But now, Christine, you're a big girl and you must give over dreaming." He gave a little gentle wag to my hand.

"You must do practical things. You understand what I mean?"

"Yes, Father," I said, but I wasn't quite sure in my mind.

"You must help your mother with the housework and things in the home, for she works very hard."

"Oh, I do. Father. I do the brasses every Saturday morning, and the fender oh, the fender, Father." I smiled up at him.

"It's awful to do and takes so long to get bright."

"Yes, I know you do things like that, but you must do even^ more. You must learn to cook and do all the housework, and" sew, and always keep busy. "

"I'm a good sewer. Father, but I dont like patching."

He laughed now and said, "No, you wouldn't like patching." Then he stopped, and looking down at me again with a straight face, he said quietly, "But you'll remember what I said and try to put your mind on everyday things?"

Yes, Father. "

I knew what he meant I was always being told to pay attention and stop dreaming. But I liked dreaming, I liked to lie in bed and float away out of the bed. Not that I didn't like my bed and my little room, and not that I didn't think our kitchen the finest kitchen in the world, but I just wanted to go off somewhere. Where, I couldn't have explained, it was just somewhere. I came near to a vague understanding of this feeling the following spring.

Following the hot summer it was a hard winter, there was a lot of snow, with high winds and great drifts and thaws and freezing, and this pattern seemed to go on for ever. I wasn't very fond of the snow, for my hands, even with gloves on, would become very cold while playing snowballs, and I hated to be rolled in the snow. Our Ronnie knew this and never pushed me into it, nor did Sam, and Sam could have be cause, although he wasn't tall, he was strong. But Don, at every opportunity, pushed me down and tried to roll me in the snow. This often ended in a fight between Ronnie and him.

One day the fight became grim and Sam joined in, not to help his brother but to help Ronnie, and later that evening I heard Sam getting a walloping and knew Don had told on him. It was during this bitter cold time that I first noticed my mother walking slower. When she came up the hill she would stop once or twice, and as soon as she got in she would sit down. This was unusual, for she never sat down unless it was in the evening. She would never let me carry the bags of groceries, saying they were too heavy for me, nor had she ever let anyone else carry them. But one day she came in and Sam was with her, and he was carrying the big bass bag. It was nearly as big as himself and when he dumped it on the table she looked at him with a smile and said,

"Thanks, Sam." And Sam's reply was an unusually lengthy one for him, for he said, "That's all right. Aunt Annie, I'll always carry your bags for you if you like."

My mother's smile broadened, and she patted his back and said, "Go in the pantry and cut yourself a shive."

He turned eagerly away, but then quickly looking back at her said, "I didn't do it for that, Aunt Annie."

"No, no, lad, I know that. Go on and dont be so thin- skinned."

Christmas came but it did not seem so happy this year. The eons of time passed until one morning I knew it was spring. The sun was hard and bright; I had run up to the edge of the wood and there through the trees I saw a wonderful sight. There had been no snow for weeks, but sprinkled around the roots of the trees was something that looked like snow. As far as my eye could see there was this sprinkling of purity white, each drop separate from its fellow and divided within itself, and each part shining. I took in a great gulp of air. I wanted to share this wonder with someone, someone who needed wonder, and who needed wonder at this moment more than my mother, for she was tired.

And so, dashing back down the street, I flew into the kitchen where she was on the point of lifting the big black frying pan from the fire, and clinging on to her apron I cried, "Mam, come up to the wood and see something, it's beautiful. It's been snowing in the wood."

She turned very quickly and looked down at me with a surprised, almost frightened expression. Then she said sharply, "Don't be silly, child, it hasn't snowed for weeks."

Now I laughed at her and said, "It has, Mam." I turned my head to where Dad had come out of the scullery, his shirt neck tucked in and soap on his face ready for a shave, and after looking at my face for a moment he said to my mother, "Go on, lass. Leave the pan, I'll see to it."

"What!" she exclaimed.

"Don't be silly."

Now my dad came forward looking as if he had grown old overnight, for the soap had formed a white beard, and taking the pan from her hand he whispered, "Keep it up." Then nudging her, he added,

"Go on."

She looked at me impatiently.

"Oh, come on," she said, straightening her apron and clicking her tongue.

Her attitude didn't dampen my spirits and I danced before her up the street and into the wood. Then from my vantage point I stopped, and when she came and stood by my side I pointed and she looked. Then her hand came slowly round my shoulder and she pressed me to her.

And as we stood like this, gazing spellbound at the first sprinkling of anemones, I said, "They seem glad to be out, Mam, dont they?" Her hand drew me closer and she said, "Yes, hinny, they're glad the winter's over." Then much to my surprise she didn't turn homeward but walked quietly on into the wood, her arm still around me.

At one point she turned and looked back, and I did, too, wondering what she was looking for. Then she did a strange thing. She went down on her hunkers like my dad did and, taking me by the shoulders, she gazed into my face, her eyes moving around it as if looking for something, like when I've had a flea on me, and pressing my face between her large, rough hands she exclaimed softly, "Oh, me hairn."

Then she said a thing that was stranger than her kneeling, yet not so strange, for I understood in part.

"Keep this all your life, hinny," she said. And she ended with something which contradicted a daily statement of hers, for she said,

"Never change. Try to remain as you are, always."

Now that was a funny thing for her to say for she was for ever at me to

"Stop dreaming' and forever saying " Come on, pay attention'. And hadn't Father Ellis too said that I would have to pay attention. But now she was telling me never to change.

The tears were rolling over the red part of her cheeks and dropping straight on to the grass, and I was crying, too. But it was a quiet crying. Then getting quickly to her feet, she wiped my face round with her apron, then wiped her own and, jerking her head up, she laughed and said, "Eeh! that frying-pan. Your dad makes a mess of everything.

Come on. " And she took my hand. But we didn't run out of the wood, just walked quietly.

The spring got warmer and warmer, and everything was beautiful, until I came up the hill one day with Cissie Campbell. She had left school now and had got a job in Braithwaite's the big grocery shop on the High Street that supplied most of Brampton Hill, and she had got very swanky all of a sudden and spoke down her nose. It was just after we had crossed over the bridge and one or two of the men had called, "Hallo there, Christine," and I had said, "Hallo' back and called them by their names that Cissie said, " I've got something to tell you. " Her voice had dropped to a whisper and she brought her face close to mine.

"You know last Saturday afternoon?" I couldn't remember anything particular about last Saturday afternoon, but I nodded and said, "Yes."

And she went on, her voice dropping even lower, "Well, you know what happened? You wouldn't believe it but I was coming across Top Fell, I hadn't reached the top, I was just at that part near the stile where the bushes are, you know that narrow cut?"

Again I nodded.

"Well, I met Father Ellis there and you know what?"

I shook my head now and there was a long pause before she said, "He tried to kiss me."