Page 96 - sons-and-lovers

was it? Was it a silence of blood? What had he done?
The children lay and breathed the darkness. And then,
at last, they heard their father throw down his boots and
tramp upstairs in his stockinged feet. Still they listened.
Then at last, if the wind allowed, they heard the water of the
tap drumming into the kettle, which their mother was fill-
ing for morning, and they could go to sleep in peace.
So they were happy in the morning—happy, very hap-
py playing, dancing at night round the lonely lamp-post in
the midst of the darkness. But they had one tight place of
anxiety in their hearts, one darkness in their eyes, which
showed all their lives.
Paul hated his father. As a boy he had a fervent private
religion.
‘Make him stop drinking,’ he prayed every night. ‘Lord,
let my father die,’ he prayed very often. ‘Let him not be
killed at pit,’ he prayed when, after tea, the father did not
come home from work.
That was another time when the family suffered intense-
ly. The children came from school and had their teas. On
the hob the big black saucepan was simmering, the stew-jar
was in the oven, ready for Morel’s dinner. He was expected
at five o’clock. But for months he would stop and drink ev-
ery night on his way from work.
In the winter nights, when it was cold, and grew dark
early, Mrs. Morel would put a brass candlestick on the
table, light a tallow candle to save the gas. The children fin-
ished their bread-and-butter, or dripping, and were ready
to go out to play. But if Morel had not come they faltered.