Alice heaved and sighed, twisting her head to and fro against Marion’s breast, and drew Marion’s thoughts from her dead daughter to her living one. There was no doubt that Alice was a very different child, lively and sturdy. It would be very cruel if fate killed such a promising baby, but Marion knew only too well how quickly even a strong child could sicken and die. Nolly, her second child, never quite absent from her thoughts, sprang to life in her memory, her dear round Nolly, plump and quick-eyed like a robin, strong and lively as a puppy, and then dead in a week, before he was three. He died, as so many babies did, with a sudden diarrhoea, screaming with pain, unable to take any food which did not at once pass through him. His chubby body dwindled, his strong rounded arms became limp like scythed weeds in the sun, his head rolled on her arm and his whole body hung limp across her knees. She held him for three days and nights while he gradually cried less and less until she felt he had no more strength to cry. It was early April and very cold. She recalled how Peter had urged her to put Nolly in the cradle and come to bed herself. ‘He’s quiet now, he’ll sleep – you are worn out, come to bed,’ he had urged. She, racked with grief and exhaustion, had finally agreed, had laid Nolly in the cradle and lay down on the bed beside him. She had slept and in the morning Nolly was dead and the sodden cloths wrapping his body were frozen to the straw in the cradle.

For Marion, grief was interwoven with anger against Peter for telling her to leave Nolly in the cradle, and guilt that she had succumbed to his command. She had never expressed to Peter her anger at his suggestion, but she could never quite forget it. If she had sat up with Nolly, if she had kept him warm, he might not have died. Might – it was all might. She might have saved him that night, he might have died later. She could not say to Peter, ‘If you had not told me to put him in the cradle he might be alive now,’ though these ‘mights’ were threaded forever in and out of her grieving thoughts. ‘My poor Nolly,’ she sighed as she held Alice closely, ‘My poor Nolly.’ How was it that three years of Nolly – ten years ago – should still be more precious than twelve years of poor Margery, poor hare-faced, suffering Margery?

Marion’s bottom was numb. Waking Alice or not, she must move. She hitched herself down so she could rest her head against the log, and she scooped up a bit more straw under her buttocks as padding. The deadly stillness returned, the silence pervaded. Her thoughts returned to Margery but became less coherent. Alice’s heavy body on her stomach was warming. Marion dozed.