heard her father splashing across the yard.
“And to think he’s only come to look at those old books!” said her mother with her little explosive hiccough of a laugh. “They’re all the same.”
Mr. Morris was stamping his feet on the thickly-encrusted step. Nora waited, pervaded by a sort of jeering resignation. She knew how the latch would crash as her father put his hand on it, how the coats on the back of the door would mutter as the door opened, and already in her ears, like an echo that has come too soon, even before the sound has been made, she could hear the grinding noise as the woodwork met the uneven tiles. This is serious, she thought. When little things like that get on your nerves.…
The door opened and jarred to a halt as it met the raised tiles. If only things weren’t so much the same, day after day; if only something unusual, unexpected would happen.
“Might as well give up,” said her father with a bland smile.
He did not say what he was proposing to give up. He clumped his routine three paces across the room, pulled his chair forward so that the legs snarled along the floor, and sank down with a gusty sigh.
“That’ll be all for now,” he said. “And if it gets any worse”—he favoured his daughter with a prodigious wink—“I won’t be able to get down to chapel tomorrow. A great pity it will be, but they will not be able to say it’s my fault, is it?”
Mrs. Morris came to help him pull off his boots. It took a lot of energy for him to do it, nowadays, and made him very red in the face. There were times when the phenomenon of getting old puzzled him, and he would hold his hand up before his face as though to read in his palm the answer to the questions that were, perhaps, beginning to worry him. Sometimes that hand trembled when he held anything—his razor, for instance: Nora noticed that he did not shave so often as he had done in the past. No one said a word about it, but often her eyes were drawn to the fine silver stubble that gleamed around his chin and up to his ears. He had been several years older than his wife when he had married her, and it irked him now that she should be able to get about so briskly while he felt his vitality ebbing away. Living on the land for the space of a lifetime, giving it all the strength he had, and now feeling that strength gradually seeping away.…
Nora went out of the room, snatching up a duster as she went. Her father and mother began to talk together. She was sure they had nothing new to say, but the buzz of their voices followed her along the passage.
She could hear Jonathan’s dry cough from the parlour. It was a fidgety, throaty cough. She knew that when she reached the door she was going to turn into the parlour. You didn’t do any dusting on a Saturday afternoon, but carrying a duster made things look better. There would always be an excuse to hand when she went in.
It was already becoming dark. As she entered she said: “Goodness, it’s black in here. Don’t you need a lamp?”
For a moment her voice did not reach him. His head was bowed over a book that he held open, resting on his two hands. She stopped by the door until he looked up slowly, like a preacher about to deliver a text. His eyes were burning with a far, remote passion, but he spoke flatly, without interest.
“Thank you, no.”
He closed the book and slipped it back on the shelf, allowing his fingers to rest on it for a second when it had been replaced.
“Are these books very valuable, do you think, Mr. Jonathan?” she asked suddenly.
“Valuable?” he said, his voice regaining its normal fussiness. “My dear young lady—oh, indeed, yes. Very valuable.”
“How much?” she said bluntly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“How much do you think they’re worth?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say how much. Really, I have no idea.”
“But if you think they’re valuable—”
“I have no idea of their value in terms of money.”
He came forward, passing her, and going back towards the kitchen. She could hear the clatter of plates and knew that her mother was getting tea ready. The cold began to tingle at her finger-ends. It was everywhere, waiting for you, sharp, painful, ready to pounce as soon as you left the warmth of the fireside, this bitter cold. She could not stay away from the fire for long. She would have to go back. Soon her brother would come back from the afternoon he had been spending with a friend, and the kitchen would be crowded and noisy. It was a large room, and had once held a larger family than it did now, but noise seemed to ring back from the stone floor and everyone invariably wanted to move about at once. Nora would have liked to stay on in the parlour, just for the sake of being alone, but the discomfort would be too extreme. And the darkness made her uneasy. She had never been affected this way before. Darkness held no terrors as a rule; yet at the moment she became conscious of a sensation of brooding menace. If she had another nightmare tonight, she would have something to say to Simon.
The lamp had been lit when she returned to the kitchen. It glowed richly on the white cloth, the crockery, and the knives and spoons, but the corners of the room were huddled in sullen shadow. Mr. Morris still sat by the fire, his wife’s distorted shadow flickering across him as she moved to and fro. Where lamplight and firelight blended, the walls seemed hazy and unsettled, beating in and out with a wavering, unsteady pulse.
Mr. Jonathan hovered indecisively at the far end of the table, seeing nowhere to sit down that was not in the path of the active, bustling Mrs. Morris.
“Sit down, Mr. Jonathan,” said Mr. Morris gruffly, still looking into the fire. “Draw you a chair up to the fire.”
“Thank you. I will, thank you.” Mr. Jonathan looked around, as though the selection of a suitable chair would be an important matter. Before he could come to any decision, Mrs. Morris, without halting on her way from cupboard to table, picked up a hardbacked chair with one hand and swept it towards the fire.
Mr. Jonathan stared at it, then went and sat on it. He glanced at his host. Nora, cutting bread, watched him covertly. His mannerisms had slipped away for a moment, and he was just a nervous little clerk paying a weekend visit. She thought he was going to speak to her father, perhaps making some remark about “the crops,” hoping to win favour—as so many visitors did—but as she watched, a cunning gleam came into his eye, and that unaccountably self-satisfied expression returned to his features.
“Here’s Denis,” said her father suddenly.
“Pardon?” said Mr. Jonathan, starting violently.
“Denis—my son.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I met Denis last time. Yes.”
Nora heard her brother coming across the yard, and heard also that there was someone with him. She stood with her eyes on the door, holding the butter knife in mid-air as though to make a lunge with it. If Denis had met Simon and brought him home to tea.…
The door opened.
Denis had not brought Simon. He had brought his friend from Pen-y-bryn. They were both caked with snow down one side, and it looked as though they both had grey hair, though actually Denis had aggressively ginger hair, and his friend, shaking his head cheerfully, revealed a thick tangle of curly brown.
And
