But he waited. She had said she would come back. She had promised she would come back. He strained desperatelyat every sound, hoping, hoping. Every time footsteps approached the room his heart beat quicker and he got ready to laugh and cry at the same time when he would hear her and feel her climb back into bed, but the steps passed without stopping and he was still alone, getting lonelier with every second, feeling smaller and smaller in the bed in the darkness. Doors slammed intermittently, voices called, voices mumbled, footsteps passed in the night and then, without any warning, there was nothing more.

He waited, he ached in his waiting for the black silence to break, but nothing happened, just the dogs barked and the bitch rattled her chain and his mother didn’t come.

‘Mother,’ he called in a resentful, hurt voice. ‘Mother.’ Nothing. ‘Mother!’—a harsh pain of a sound. His eyes were wet and his throat ached. ‘M-o-t-he-r.’

‘Tula! What is the matter?’

His surprize at getting an answer was so great that for a moment he actually thought it was his mother who had answered him. Then he heard the shuffle of footsteps crossing the yard and a scratching at the door that was like the bitch when she was a puppy and had tried to get in on cold nights.

‘Will the grave be my only undisturbed rest? Is there no respect for old bones?’ The match flared and by its light the old woman shuffled to the table and lit the candle. Then she turned and looked around at the empty bed, at the dress behind the door, the shoes under the bed, and lastly, searchingly, into his white, frightened eyes.

‘Where is she?’

He swallowed.

‘Police?’ she asked.

His lips trembled, he closed his eyes.

‘Mother!’ It was an endless sound.

‘Tula, snotnose,’ the old one cried.

David crawled out of the blankets and onto his feet.

‘Where do you think you are going?’

He stumbled to the door but she was quicker. An arm shot out and caught him and held him back with surprizing strength. He kicked and screamed, but she held on and closing her eyes passed implacably through the frenzy of his outburst.

Reduced finally to a sobbing, weak-kneed heap of his small self, she dragged him to the bed and got him on it and under a blanket. He made no effort to get back onto his feet. While she pulled a chair to the door and sat down, he buried his face in the cold, comfortless smell of his mother in the pillow and sobbed himself to sleep.

There were no dreams. When he awoke his first impressions, the sound of a new day stirring beyond the walls of the room, the smell of woodsmoke again and the clatter of enamel mugs, the rattle of a bucket, were so much like any other day in his life that for a moment there was no memory of the night. They came with the old woman’s voice.