Marion said that if she did keep becoming pregnant it must be Jack’s fault.

‘Suppose so,’ Peter said grudgingly. ‘Suppose he can’t help himself.’

FEBRUARY

And oft dame stops her burring wheel

To hear the robins note once more

That tutles while he pecks his meal

From sweet briar hips beside the door …

Thus nature of the spring will dream

While south winds thaw but soon again

Frost breaths upon the stiffening stream

And numbs it into ice

Since the slow thaw had petered out at the end of January, it had rained. It had rained and rained, frequently, heavily, for days. Then there would be half a day of still clouds and mist over the tops of the trees, then at dusk the wind would stir again and more rain come swirling up the valley.

As in the January snow there was nothing much Marion could do but to maintain existence as much as possible, to stay indoors, to keep a little fire going, to eke out the food, to spin when she could, to keep the animals alive, to endure, to endure, to endure. Endurance wearied them all, and tempers became short among the strong, but most people, specially the women, felt too apathetic for resentment.

In the damp air that pervaded, nothing in Marion’s cottage was dry. Their heavy woollen clothes absorbed moisture and retained it. The blankets with the feathery layer lay heavy and chilly on them at night, their boots never dried out. Marion had constant difficulty with the fire because the roof-hatch above it leaked. Since Peter had banged it in the snowy weather and had broken one of the hinges, it had not fitted properly and in the rain storms drips fell on to the logs below, either extinguishing their glow or making them too wet to ignite. She had had to go out and half demolish the wood pile in order to get dry logs from the bottom and from against the cottage wall, bring some in, then pile them up somewhere in the hope of keeping them dry. In doing so she had come across a bit of old woven wattle from a garden fence, brittle, dry and a good but brief kindling. Then she must go out and rebuild the wood pile.

One mercy was that she did not have to go down daily to the water-place. A bucket left out in front of the door was often three-quarters full with soft zestless water by morning. The great earthenware corn pot, which always stood on the shelf, and which Marion had always believed to be damp-proof (perhaps because it was proof against her other enemy, mice), she discovered to be damp inside at the bottom. The glaze, which was only on the inside, had cracked and through the porous earthenware the damp had seeped up. Some of the corn at the bottom of the jar was mouldy. The hens ate it after her family had complained of the taste of the bread she had made from it. Marion secretly agreed that this bread was nasty, but she knew it was partly so nasty because it was undercooked before the meagre fire.