Widow Dyer says: We have no need of a man in here ' Such exhaustion! Elizabeth cannot think what it is Uke, cannot imagine words for it. Her belly is frozen. The child, a bung of ice IS kiUing her. A cold salt sweat burns her eyes, streams off her taut s^n, soaking the mattress. How will Joshua survive without her> Who will love the children as she does? Who wiU make the good butter? Who will rear the lambs of dead ewes or stitch shirts until eyes and fingers ache? She can remember no prayers, not one. Her head IS empty. A voice is nagging her, teUing her to push, push for aU life. How cruel they are to make her suffer so! She screams; a vast sound, josthng the women, rocking them, all save the Widow the most rooted. Liza is blown on to the floor, felled as though stmck
between the eyes with a poker. Mrs Collins pulls her up. No one suggests the girl might leave.
The midwife cries: It comes!'
Traise be,' says Gwyny Jones. She strokes her heart; a reflex of
joy-
The midwife rakes the infant out, grips its slithery ankles in her fist and holds it up. It is dressed, head to toe, in blood, and hangs limply from the woman's hand.
Says Widow Dyer: 'Is it quick?'
The midwife shakes it; the infant moves its arms and hands, a blind swimmer, an old blind man feeling for the door. It does not cry. It is silent. The women cock their heads. Silent. Liza reaches out. The midwife cuts the cord with enormous rusty scissors.
It is baptised three days later. Joshua, the Widow, Liza, and Farmer Moody, who is to be godfather, attend at the church. Elizabeth is too weak to leave her bed. Milk seeps from her nipples, undrunk. A wet-nurse feeds the child, a woman with skin like a shark.
Though it is the middle of the afternoon, the church is so dark they can barely see each other. The child is not expected to live. Widow Dyer has persuaded them so. No healthy child could be so unnatural, not to make a sound in three days. Sleeps, wakes, feeds; does not cry, not once. It has a dozen curls of silk-black hair on its head. Its eyes are baby blue. Widow Dyer says it is best if it dies.
The priest comes late from his lunch, expels, discreetly as he can, the gas from his stomach, takes the child, asks Moody if he abjures
the work of Satan, and gives the child its names: James Dyer. One given name quite enough for such a sickly thing, and less work for the mason.
There is no water in the font. The priest spits in his hand and makes the cross on the child's brow, feels it stirring, then passes it to the girl. Joshua Dyer fumbles in his purse, puts the money in the priest's hands, nods solemnly, awkwardly. They trudge home through the scraped fields, Liza hugging the baby tight against her ribs.
From inside the house they hear the sound of his horse in the lane. Liza runs to the window. Widow Dyer looks up from her darning, hoists her bulk upright and bustles to the fire. There is a poker dug into the heart of the fire. Elizabeth says: 'Nay, let me, Willa,' but the older woman ignores her, draws the poker out, protecting her hand with a piece of scorched cloth. There is a bowl of punch set ready by the fire. She presses the tip of the poker into the liquid so that it hisses fiercely. The noise wakes the baby. It has been sleeping on a quilt in the kneading-trough. It looks at the fat woman by the fire, looks at her dipping her finger into the punch, then breaking off a piece of sugar loaf and mixing it in. The Widow says: 'He alius liked things sweet. Is his food ready? He'll be leery after the market all day.'
The older children have run to the front of the house to glimpse their father coming down the lane. Now they run back into the kitchen, to the back door where they know he will enter when he has stabled the horse. After a minute they hear his boots and elbow each other to be nearest to the door. There is the sound of
the iron latch, then the kitchen door opens and a wave of winter air sweeps across the kitchen.
He lets the children crowd around him for a moment, then closes the door and pushes into the room. Widow Dyer ladles punch into a mug and hands it to him. She says: 'Bide by the fire, son,' and fusses him towards it. She does not ask him about the parcel beneath his arm. He sets it down with exaggerated care on the kitchen table, then drinks the punch as fast as he can bear to. The others watch him in a broken circle. He is a splinter of the outer world. From the deep half-frozen folds of his coat come odours of horse, leather, tobacco. Even the frosty, thrilling smell of the night itself.
Sarah, no longer the youngest now the baby has come, reachs up on tiptoe and places an investigative hand upon the parcel. Liza plucks her away, scolds her. Joshua grins at the older girl. In a teasing voice he asks: 'Now, wouldn't you like a peek inside, wench?'
Tou sold the geese then, father,' Liza says.
He laughs and holds out his mug. 'Alius business with you, Liza. Fill this for me, then. Greetings, wife.' Elizabeth nods to him. She has picked up the baby and swaddled it in her arms. Joshua looks away at his mother. 'I got a good price for the birds.'
Elizabeth wonders if Joshua has drunk much at market. She remembers the night, six months past, when he fell on his ride home, covering his side with plum-coloured
