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his wife kneeling in front of it, her head bowed, stiffened.
    Only as he neared her did he see the knife, the blade gleaming in the light, and only as he caught her hand did he stop the movement. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Whatever,’ taking her against him, feeling the resignation. ‘Nay, for God’s sake,’ he said, his hand still on her. ‘What is it? Whatever are you doing, then?’
    She cried against him and he felt his own grief breaking, pouring out, a sudden devastation, calling out, unable to see or hear. ‘Whatever shall we do?’ he asked her. ‘That’s no way out. We’ve got another one to think of now,’ he said.
    ‘Why did he go? Why did he go?’ she asked him.
    ‘Nay, let’s think of the other one,’ he said.
    ‘Why did he die?’
    ‘Nay, we mu’n never think of that,’ he said.
    Some nights now, before he left for work, he prayed with her. The first time he’d seen her had been in a church, with a friend of hers, standing in the porch after an evening service. It had been raining and he’d had an umbrella, borrowed from his father, and he went up and offered it to her, taking her home that evening, and taking her out again a week later. To begin with all their meetings had started at the church. But for the wedding, and the funeral, they had never been again. Now, however, before he left for work he knelt with her by the fire, prayed ‘Our Father’, and then, on her behalf, prayed for the new baby. ‘May it be a good child, may it live and not die,’ he said, while at the back of his mind he prayed, unknown to her, ‘Give us something back. For Christ’s sake, give me something back,’ taking it with him as he cycled through the dark, looking back at the village, at the coke ovens glowing, wondering how she was, if she were sleeping, whether it might be a boy or, better still, a girl. And though all his new hope was on the baby, he felt the dead weight of the other pulling at his back.
    Shortly before the child was born his wife went to a hospital in a near-by town. On two afternoons a week he caught a bus there, taking her fruit, or a change of clothing, sitting on the upper deck, smoking, anxious, yet somehow relieved she was away and he helpless now to intervene. It was two weeks before the child was born, a boy, and when she came back he’d been almost six weeks on his own, his meals occasionally cooked by Mrs Shaw.
    The boy was dark-haired, with dark eyes, like his wife, but with something of his own features, the broad face and the wide mouth, a little larger at birth than Andrew.
    It was a strange child. His wife gave it all her attention. It never cried. Its silence astonished him, its gravity, an almost melancholic thing. After the noise and spirit of the other child, its quietness frightened him.
    ‘Do you think it’ll be all right?’ he said.
    ‘Why not?’ she asked him. She’d seemed confident about it from the start, from the moment he first saw them both together. It was as if her grief had come out of her and was now lyingthere, to hold. He would watch the baby with a smile, not sure what it represented, half-afraid, reluctant to hold it unless his wife were willing, she suddenly amused by his uncertainty, restored, almost contemptuous of the way he drew back, letting her the whole time go before him. ‘No, no, you see to it,’ he’d say whenever she suggested he should feed or change it, which he’d done often with the other boy.
    They called it Colin. It was the name of her mother’s father, the only member of her family she’d ever admired, a sailor, who was seldom home and who, whenever he returned, was always giving her sweets. Her memories of him were very faint, but for his uniform, the sweets, and the beard which covered her face whenever he embraced her. She had a yellowed photograph of him which she kept with one of her parents and one of their marriage in a folder in the wardrobe by the bed.
    He felt a little helpless with the boy, and only relieved