The only cable with an outdoor socket looked alarming. The outer sleeve had torn so you could see the individual wires inside it. I found a roll of insulating tape in one of bror’s drawers. With clumsy fingers I wound tape round the cable until it had an unnecessarily thick covering. Connected it to the wood cleaver and put on ear protectors.

The halfmetrelong billets were heavy. Maybe the wood wasn’t even dry. The cold made my fingers quickly lose any dexterity they still had. My arms were aching. My field of vision was narrowing. Just a few more. A contrary knot was so tough that the log snapped off and hit my left hand. It quickly swelled and bled from the knuckles.

Now all I had to do was get the pile of logs into the house. It was a slow job. In the end I did it log by log. I had filled a couple of baskets at first but realised they were too heavy. I couldn’t shift them. I carried wood in my arms instead wandering in and out again enveloped in a weird fog until most of it was on the floor in the boiler room.

I leaned against the wall to recover. My body seemed out of order. Everything was hard. Breathing. Thinking. Walking. In the end I crawled over the threshold on all fours.

Mother was sitting at the kitchen table. She was embroidering. I could even see which verse. God said let there be light. Our lord created the whole world mother said.

I wondered at that. Why did he fill his world with evil.

She said it was mankind that made the world evil. Not god. 261

Who made father evil I asked. She replied that children who are treated like animals will bite like animals.

What will I be like then I asked. Like your father she said.

I might have slept. I was lying on the hall floor. There was a draught from the front door. My throat was so clogged the oxygen could hardly slip through. My lungs were aching.

Eventually I set out to crawl upstairs to the attic. It felt like climbing to southern slope of afta hill. The last few steps to the bedroom were impossible. I fainted or maybe I fell asleep.

Mother was back. She sat on the edge of my bed stroking my hair. Not so lightly one might wonder if it was really happening but slowly heavily monotonously. Her hands smelled of luxsoap and byre.

We stood on the edge of the grave watching as the fathercoffin was lowered into the hole. But when I leaned forward to cast down my handful of earth bror was in the coffin not father.