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  "Well, not exactly the religion; because if all the priests were like Father White and Father Bailey and all the teachers were like Miss Cail and Miss Holden you couldn't imagine being frightened. But it's the priests like Father O'Malley and teachers like the headmistress of the Borough Road school who inst il fear into you; and | I don't want Annie to be afraid as I was."

  "Go on, Kate; tell me how it affected you. I'm very interested, as I've had a few cases of children being afraid of Hell this past month."

  Kate seemed relieved, and begun to talk as if recently the beating of her heart had not threatened to suffocate her: "That was my main fear, too. After my first confession, at the age of seven, I had the idea that hosts of people in Heaven were watching my every move and would report to God on all my misdeeds, and so I would be sent to Hell. I used to placate them, one after the other--the Virgin Mary, Joseph, St.

  Anthony, St. Catherine, St. Agnes--and instead of getting relief by going to confession Father O'Malley made it worse, a thousand times worse. After being told I'd end up " in Hell's flames, burning", I had a might mare I dreamed that I was thrown into Hell, falling through layer after layer of terrible blackness, with things in it, not seen but felt, until I reached a red, gaping void. For years that dream recurred, and sometimes, even now, it comes back."

  "Are you still afraid?" asked Rodney.

  "No, not really; al thought at times I am haunted by vague fears for which I have no explanation. Do you know, I have never prayed to God in my life until recently. The Tolmaches, who practise no religion, have, really brought me nearer to a knowledge of God than I have ever been before."

  "Not prayed to God!" exclaimed Rodney.

  "To whom did you pray, then?"

  "The Holy Family, the saints, the martyrs."

  "But what about Jesus, Kate?"

  "Jesus? ... Well, Jesus was more frightening than the rest, for he was dead, dead and aweful, so dead that no resurrection could ever bring him to life again. Every Sunday, in church, I sat opposite to him, a life-size Jesus, just taken down from the cross, his limp body trailing to the ground from his mother's arms, his blood realistically red and dripping from his wounds. He was naked but for a loincloth, and all his body had that sickly pallor of death. He was quite dead, and Easter Sunday could do

  nothing to bring him to life again. "

  "Good heavens, Kate," exclaimed Rodney, 'do you think the statues make the same impression on most children? "

  "No," said Kate.

  "Some don't seem to mind. But I know I did, and I don't want Annie to suffer in the same way. So that's why I want to take her away from the school and the Borough Road church. But I'll still send her to a Catholic church, for they don't all have such gruesome statues as in the Borough Road church. But whatever I do it's going to be difficult, because as long as she's at home there's my da father to contend with."

  "Kate, stick to the decision you have already come to in your mind,"

  Rodney entreated her.

  "Don't let your father or anyone else turn you from it. I should hate to think of Annie's little mind being tortured like that. And if there's anything I can do to help you with Annie, Kate, you know I will; I'm very fond of her."

  "I know that, doctor. You have always been so good to her, and I am very grateful. But it's my father and Father O'Malley I'll have to fight. If only I could take her away;

  but I can't. I can't hurt my mother, she's suffered so much.

  Everything is so difficult. "

  Rodney sought an answer to a question he was asking himself: "Why were you going to Midnight Mass, Kate, feeling about things as you do?"

  Kate considered a minute: "Habit, I suppose, and ... yes, because a part of me is attracted by the mass and, I feel, always will be. There is a lot of beauty in the religion if one were allowed to look at it without its coating of Hell and sin. I have thought a lot about it, lately, and I think more care should be taken over the choice of priests. Quite a number of them lose more Catholics than they convert.

  But my real reason for going tonight was to keep the peace at home; it makes things easier for my mother. "

  "Does she go?"

  "No, her legs are so bad. What is really wrong with her legs, doctor?"

  "It's dropsy, Kate."

  "Is it very serious?"

  "Well, she needs a lot of rest; she should keep her legs up as much as possible."

  Kate sighed, and they were silent tor a moment.

  Rodney looked at his watch: "Time's getting on, Kate. Let's get out for a moment and take a breather on the hill, eh?"

  She nodded. He got down and came round the car and helped her to alight. As he touched her, back floated the warm, disturbing feeling.

  He stood near her, on the road, and looked at her face as she gazed up into the sky and inhaled deeply. His throat felt tight, his muscles gathered into knots in his arms, he moistened his lips; her face, pale and lovely, began to draw him, as if over a great distance. He was saying to himself, "It's no good; I want her, and I'm glad I want her,"

  when her voice recalled him to himself: "There's a car coming over the hill," she said, with the crispness of tone she had used before.

  He turned and looked at the oncoming car and sighed heavily. Then, taking her lightly by the elbow, he led her on to the hill.

  Two of the occupants of the passing car watched Rodney and Kate, shoulder to shoulder, walk over the sparkling grass. They craned round until the figures disappeared into the shadows and blurr of the hillside.

  Mrs. Richards was the first to speak: "Upon my word! I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. At one o'clock in the morning I What do you make of it, Joe?"

  Doctor Richards, the look of surprise still on his face, settled himself further into his seat.

  "Well, what can you make of it?"

  "That was the Hannigan girl, wasn't it?" said Jennie Richards, leaning forwards from the back seat towards her mother.

  "The one Miss Tolmache dresses like a duchess."

  It's a question as to who dresses her, Mrs. Richards thought; but she said aloud, primly, "Whether it was or not, you keep your mouth shut, Jennie."

  "Oh, don't treat me as a child, mother," said Jennie petulantly.

  "Why, it's common knowledge that Doctor Prince is the father of her child 1 And he certainly makes

  no secret of it; he takes the kiddie all over the place in his car.

  "

  To the peril of them all. Doctor Richards swung round in his seat, his head nearly colliding with his wife's.

  "Look where you're going, Joe!" she cried.

  "Do you want to kill us?"

  Turning back to the wheel, he asked over his shoulder, "Where did you hear that?" , "I heard Bella talking to cook ... oh, ages ago....

  Mary, the Prince's maid told her."

  "Good God!" said Doctor Richards. Mrs. Richards said nothing; she was thinking of two years ago tonight when they had all gone to the pantomime.

  8f,

  ANNIE

  Annie opened her eyes slowly. She was surprised to find she had to open them, for the last thing she could remember was sitting up in bed, feeling very frightened after having shouted at her gran da Her mind cleared of sleep at once, and the frightened feeling returned; but not so badly, for it was morning now and she could hear her grandma moving about downstairs. Things didn't frighten you so much in the daytime as they did at night, and although she was always afraid of her gran da the feeling became a choking terror in the night when she heard his voice muttering and grumbling at her grandma. She had never before heard her grandma's voice from the other room until last night, and it was this that bad made her shout out. Her gran da voice, low and terrible with menace, had come to her through the thin wall, causing the little body to stiffen on the bed; then her grandma's voice, thick and full of something that struck greater terror into Annie's heart, had cried, "Don't! Oh, don't 1 I won't! I won't!" It was then she could bear it
no longer, and she yelled, "Leave her alone, gran da Leave her alone!" A terrible silence had followed, and she had sat, paralysed with fear, waiting for the door to open. And now it was morning, and it was Christmas Eve. A little shiver of ecstasy passed through her, sweeping fear and all thought of last night away.

  Bringing her knees up, she curled into a ball and put her head under the clothes, a favourite position when she wanted to think something nice. Tonight she would hang up her stocking, and their Kate would be home today, and at half-past eleven she would see the doctor, and perhaps he'd have time to give her a ride. She gave a succession of shivers and hugged her knees tighter.

  When her grandmother gently turned back the clothes, Annie's green eyes laughed up at her, her lashes curled like a dark smudge under the line gf her arched eyebrows, her delicate-tinted skin flushed with her own breath. Her grandmother straightened out the strands of tumbled, silver hair that had escaped from one plait, and arranged, with little stroking movements, the fringe on her forehead: "Come on, hinny; it's time you were up."

  "It's Christmas Eve, grandma!"

  "Yes, hinny, it's Christmas Eve."

  "And Santa Claus will come tonight!"

  "He will that, my hairn. But come on, get up now; and hurry."

  No word of last night, but the sight of her grandma with her sleeves down brought it all back to Annie's mind. She didn't expect her grandma to make any reference to it, for it was an unspoken understanding that gran da was not mentioned in any way. Yet with her shouting out like that, she thought perhaps her grandma might have said something; and she couldn't remember seeing her grandma with her sleeves down before. But other strange things had happened like that after her gran da had shouted at her grandma; such as the time when she wore a scarf for weeks in the summer; and there was the time, too, when her finger was bad, and she had kept it wrapped up; and when it had mended it was crooked. She looked searchingly into her grandmother's face, but the pale eyes, with little wrinkled bags beneath them, crinkled at the corners reassuringly.

  Annie put her arms around her neck and kissed her:

  "Have I to put my clean vest and bloomers on?"

  "No, not until tomorrow, hinny. And come on, now, and hurry downstairs and get washed."

  When Annie was told to hurry downstairs and get washed it meant her gran da was coming into breakfast at half-past eight from the long shift, and that she must be ready and have had her breakfast and be sitting quietly while he ate, or go out to play, or down the yard.

  She washed in the bowl that stood on the backless chair in the two-foot recess between the kitchen door and the

  cupboard. Her grandma had given her hot water with which to wash, and she would have liked to play about, but she knew that she mustn't.

  Standing before the fire that held the big black frying-pan with her bacon and fried bread sizzling in it, she put on her vest and bloomers, her one calico-topped petticoat, her flannel one, her blue woollen dress and her white, frilled pinafore. Then she sat down at the table and said her grace.

  When she had finished her bacon and had wiped up her dip with a piece of oven-bottom cake, keeping one eye on her grandmother while she did it, knowing that this was one of the things that Kate said she was not to do, and which her grandmother reluctantly enforced, she again said her grace and left the table. The fire looked inviting, and she would have liked to have sat before it on the fender and read one of her story books until it was time to go and meet Kate. But, again remembering last night, she hurriedly got into her thick reefer coat, pulled on to her head a red woollen hat with a pompom on the top, picked up her gloves, and kissed her grandmother.

  "Keep on the dry parts, hinny," said Sarah; 'and don't play with the snow, it's too dirty now. You must keep yourself dean for Kate coming, you know. "

  Annie nodded and hurried out, down the yard and into the lavatory, just as the back-yard door opened and her gran da clumped up the yard.

  She gave a little sigh, shot the bolt and got on to the seat. And then the safe feeling crept over her, the feeling she always had when she was in here. No one could get at you here; it was quiet, like a little square house, all red and white, and you were tight locked in.

  The red bricks of the floor, the whitewashed walls, the white wooden seat extending right across the breadth of the lavatory and filling half its depth, was a place of sanctuary for Annie. There were rarely any bad smells here, for her grandmother kept it fresh with ashes down the hole, and daily scrubbing. The only time Annie got a violent distaste for it was when the men unexpectedly lifted the back hatch to clean it out with their long shovels. Then a revulsion for it would overcome her. She

  didn't like thri scavengers, nor would she follow the cart, with her companions, shouting:

  "Cloggy Betty, on the netty On a Sunday morning ..."

  She never looked at the men, they were so filthy; but she felt pity for the bushy-footed horse, and had wild visions of herself unharnessing it and letting it away.

  She heard a scramble of feet in the Mullen's yard, next door. Their back-door banged and her own opened, and a plaintive voice chanted up the yard, "An-niel ... are-yacomin' out? ... Annie ... Are-ya-comin'

  out?"

  Quickly scrambling out of the lavatory, she joined her friend, and marshalled her with un seeming haste out of the yard into the back lane.

  "I didn't know yer gran da was in, Annie," said Rosie Mullen, apologetically; she hadn't asked for an explanation of the hustle; she knew all about Annie's gran da in some ways much more than Annie did, as her parents were outspoken in their comments on their neighbour.

  Rosie was two years older than Annie, but much shorter. She was a replica of her mother, being dumpy and fat, with small, bright eyes and a round face. Her dark hair stuck out in two-inch plaited points from behind her ears. She looked ugly and quaint and likeable, and Annie had a deep affection for her, for which Rosie was grateful, although she didn't know it; she only knew that Annie Hannigan was her best friend, and if the girls said things about her gran da that made Annie cry she punched them in the chest or slapped their faces.

  "I've got to take our Nancy out in the pram," said Rosie, in disgust.

  "That'll mean I can't go with you to meet your Kate." Which would also mean she would miss either some sweets or a ha' penny

  "Oh, well, I haven't got to go till half-past ten, so we can take Nancy round to the shop and have a look in," said Annie; and, with great intuition, added, 'and I'll keep you half of whatever our Kate gives me. "

  Rosie grinned broadly, and, taking hold of Annie's hand, dashed with her into their backyard, seized the big,

  dilapidated pram, in which a two-year-old child lay sucking a dummy, and pushed it out into the cobbled back lane, down which they hurried, the pram tossing about like a cork on the ocean, past seven back doors with their accompanying coal and oozing lavatory hatches, round the bottom corner, across a piece of waste land where children were already playing among mounds of dirty snow and wet, brown grass, and into the front street of the houses opposite their own. About half way up, one of the houses suddenly changed its pattern;

  above its window a large, yellow tin placard said, drink brook bond tea, and a gay old gentleman, on another piece of tin, asked you to look at him to see how fit he kept on ally sloper's sauce. The house window itself held tier on tier of bottle of sweets receding away from the gaze of the beholder to dim regions beyond, while, balancing on the front of every shelf, were boxes of hearts- and-crosses, sherbet dips, everlasting stripes, scented cachous and jujubes. In front of the window were large jars of pickled cabbage and pickled onions, and seven- pound jars of loose jam and lemon curd. Among these, at crazy angles, were placed Christmas wares of "Shops with real scales', dolls in the minutest of gauze chemises, work boxes miniature boxing-gloves and tram-conductor sets of hat and ticket puncher. Paper-chains hung in loops from the ceiling, together with huge red and green paper bells, of a honeycomb pattern. From the chains and bells, hel
d by fine threads, dangled swans, balls, dolls, ships and fairies, all in fine glass and painted a variety of colours.

  Annie and Rosie pushed the pram against the wall and joined two other children, who were endeavouring to get a first-hand view by hanging on to the high windowsill by their elbows and sticking their toes into the wall. "Ooh! ain't they luverly?" said Rosie, gazing in rapture at the display.

  "I'm getting a great big doll," said the taller of the two girls in front, jerking her head round.

  "Oh, you! You are always saying that. Cissy Luck!" snapped Rosie, without taking her eyes from the chains and their dangling splendour.

  "I am, ain't I, Peggy?"

  "Yes, she is," said her Companion; 'and she's going to take me into their house to play, ain't you? "

  "Yes," said Cissy, pursing her lips, 'and she's going to play with my doll the morrer. "

  There was a questioning silence while the two girls turned from the window and confronted Annie and Rosie. When no further remarks regarding the integrity of her statements were forthcoming. Cissy said to Annie, "Whatcher getting in yer stockin' ?"

  Annie, whose eyes, like Rosie's, were fixed upon the magic array behind the glass, answered abstractedly, "Oh, I don't know yet, not until Santa Claus comes; I've sent him a letter."

  Cissy and Peggy exchanged sidelong, incredulous glances. Then, suddenly throwing their arms around each other, they shrieked with laughter.

  "You gone barmy?" asked Rosie, looking at them stolidly.

  Annie smiled, feeling that she was the source of their enjoyment, but not knowing why.

  "She says ... she sent 'im a letter," spluttered Cissy into her friend's neck.

  "Well, what about it?" demanded Rosie, her square jaw thrust out.

  "Ain't nowt funny about that."

  The other two suddenly turned on her, their faces aggressive with knowledge; "She's a silly bitch! There ain't no Santa Claus; it's yer ma and da," said Cissy.

  Rosie blinked rapidly; she knew this to be the truth, but, glancing at Annie, something in her friend's face caused her to deny this statement hotly: "You shut yer mouth up! There's a picture of Santa up there,"