like it best. There’s a tin that your nan brought.’
‘Yes,’ Dickon said in his slurred voice. Mari knew that he wanted to agree, to please her. She turned away abruptly so that he wouldn’t see the tears. Fear of losing him had begun to possess every hour that Mari was conscious, the fear even stronger than her impotent anger and bitterness.
‘Here’s your dad,’ she called from the top of the stairs, hearing Nick’s boots in the entry.
‘Daa-ad.’ There was pleasure in the child’s voice. When Nick went up to him, he would hold out his arms for his father’s hug. Mari was Dickon’s limbs and tongue, but Nick was the sun in his sky. Mari would once have smiled at the thought, but now her face was stiff and cold.
‘How is he?’
Nick was standing aside from the foot of the stairs to let Mari come down, because there was no room for them to pass in the steep space.
‘The same. He’s eaten nothing.’
They passed without looking at each other, and Nick went up the stairs. Mari made tea, spooning condensed milk recklessly into Dickon’s special cup. When she took the cups upstairs she found Nick sitting with his arm around Dickon while with his free hand he drew charcoal pictures on the backs of old handbills. Dickon’s face was faintly flushed with pink and he was laughing his funny, braying laugh. Mari silently gave them their tea and drank her own downstairs while she was waiting for the washing water to boil on the reluctant fire.
When Nick reappeared she was in the tiny scullery, feeding wet sheets from a tin bucket through the wooden mangle.
‘He’s asleep. He seems better today,’ Nick said carefully. When Mari didn’t answer he went on, ‘I think he’s on the mend. Perhaps that doctor didn’t know what he was on about.’
‘He knew what he knew,’ Mari said. ‘And that was that he couldn’t do anything for him. And that he won’t get better without the specialist.’
It was old, painful ground. They had covered and recovered it a hundred times. Mari had wrapped Dickon in an old shawl, Nick had lifted him, too easily, and they had carried him to the Ferndale bus. At the end of the journey, after gritting their teeth at every jolt, they had seen an old doctor, a friend of Myfanwy Jones, the midwife. Nick and Mari had watched anxiously as the doctor examined Dickon, running his square hands over his tiny body and peering into his mouth and eyes with a small light.
After the examination, the old man had frowned and eased himself upright, pulling the points of his waistcoat down over his stomach.
‘I’m a country quack, that’s all,’ he told them. ‘I’d say it’s a kind of progressive blood deficiency, some form of pernicious anaemia perhaps.’ He had explained again quickly, using simple words in case they hadn’t understood him, and Nick had frowned at the assumption. Mari had touched his arm warningly.
‘But you shouldn’t take my word for it,’ the doctor rumbled on. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t treat him properly. With children like this, any diagnosis and treatment is complicated. There’s a big man in Cardiff now, a blood specialist. I could write him a letter for you. I don’t know how you’re placed …’
And the kindly doctor had broken off and looked at the shawl Dickon had been wrapped in, at Mari’s tight dress that was faded under the arms and at the seams, and at Nick’s decaying boots.
‘Thank you,’ Nick had said stiffly. ‘We’ll manage. If you would write the letter for us. And your own bill, if you would …’
The doctor had turned away to wash his hands. ‘There’s no charge. I’m glad to do it, for Myfanwy Jones.’
So Nick and Mari had wrapped Dickon up again and carried the uncomplaining bundle back on the bus to Nantlas.
The doctor’s letter in its stiff, white envelope still stood on the mantelpiece, tucked safely behind the Barry Island china mug. They had as much hope of finding the money to see the big man in Cardiff as they had of retiring in comfort to the Gower peninsula.
‘He seems better today,’ Nick repeated. He was struggling to convince himself, Mari knew that. She had tried the same thing herself, and she had failed. The truth was that Dickon wouldn’t get better, not without the help that they couldn’t afford. She didn’t answer, and went on turning the handle of the mangle so that the wooden rollers clamped on the sheets and sent the water dripping and splashing into the enamel bowl set underneath.
Nick stood awkwardly for a moment with his arms dangling at his sides, and then took a single step so that he was beside her. He put his arms around her waist and rested his cheek against her hair, pulling her towards him.
‘Mari,’ he murmured. ‘It will be all right. Dickon will be all right.’
His wilful blindness pierced Mari’s shell of control. She let go of the handle of the mangle and it swung backwards, clanking. The sheets fell and dragged on the gritty floor, and she just let them lie. Her resentment of him, her bitterness and her despondency boiled up inside her and it seemed for an instant that she hated Nick Penry and all their life together. She snatched at his sleeve, her white face frightening him.
‘Come here,’ she hissed at him. ‘With me.’ Still gripping his sleeve, Mari dragged Nick through the back kitchen to the foot of the stairs. Half-pulling and half-dragging, she made him follow her up to Dickon’s room. Only when she had knelt down beside the low bed did she let him go, because she was turning back the sheet and worn blankets that covered the sleeping child.
‘Look,’ she whispered to Nick. ‘Just look at him. You think he’s getting better?’
Her hands were shaking as she undid the buttons of the child’s pyjamas. They were Nick’s last pair, cut down, and they flapped pathetically as the boy stirred in his sleep. Mari pulled the folds of them away from Dickon’s chest. The ribs stood out under the white skin as sharp as knife handles.
Mari did up the buttons one by one, and covered him up again. Then she stooped and picked up the bowl of cold potatoes.
‘See this? See? He hasn’t eaten anything for two days. Two days, Nick. And are you surprised, when this muck is all I have to give him? He should be having eggs, and fruit, and little bits of chicken and rich gravy to tempt him, and proper soups full of goodness, not this old dishwater …’
Watching her, Nick thought with shocked detachment that the old, sensual vitality he had loved in his wife had drained down into this one lascivious recital of all the good things that they couldn’t give to their sick son.
‘We’re lucky to have what we’ve got,’ he said quietly. ‘Some don’t have even that much.’
‘I don’t care about some. I care about us. No, not us. Not you, Nick. I care about Dickon. I don’t want him to die just because of you.’ Mari was almost screaming, the high, hysterical note in her voice cutting through Nick like a wire. Behind her, he saw Dickon’s wide-open terrified eyes.
‘Don’t frighten the boy,’ he said.
Mari broke off at once and knelt down to soothe Dickon. ‘There, lamb,’ she murmured. ‘Your dad’s set me off again. You go back to sleep and take no notice.’
Dickon’s eyelids fluttered as he drifted into sleep again. Silently they crept down to the kitchen and Mari closed the door on the stairs.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Nick asked.
Mari smiled, a thin, down-turning smile that aged her already lined face. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.
Nick sighed, knowing what was coming. ‘Mari …’ he began, but she cut him short.
‘Where?’
‘I’ve been to a meeting. The Associated Collieries rate per ton is being cut again. For God’s sake, they’ll be asking the lads to pay for the privilege, next, of dragging the bloody coal out of the ground for them. Half of the lads want to sit