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his father, ‘that’s it. You’ve got to do it.’
    The supper ended. Bert went out to the side of the housewhere there was a bench. Alfred followed him, at Mr. Redway’s look. He was afraid he would have sneaked off to the pub, but Bert sat on the bench in the late sunlight. Alfred sat by him and Bert said in a low voice, ‘It’s made me think, Alf. I really didn’t believe it was as bad as that.’
    â€˜You’ve been pretty bad,’ said Alfred.
    Bert slumped there, shifted his feet about, sighed, coughed, and sent glances at Alfred.
    â€˜No,’ said Alfred. He was finding this gaoler role hard: an easy-going chap, he was, and now he faced months – years – of saying, ‘No, Bert. No.’
    After a while Bert said, ‘I’ll turn in.’ Alfred did not watch him to see if he did go in: it would be easy for Bert to escape. But he was thinking that if he were Betsy, he would watch, and intervene, if he had to.
    It was very warm and a breath left dust on the tongue. The scent of the may was like a clammy touch.
    Shadows from a long line of elms that stood along a stream stretched to his feet. A cart that had sacks of barley on it went past in the lane. The smell of the barley, sweet and insidious, made Alfred think of a tankard of ale, with a big head on it.
    â€˜Oh, Lord,’ said Alfred. ‘I’m catching Bert’s condition.’
    He had had a bad afternoon. First, he hated seeing his Betsy swollen and reddened, her hair matted on her cheeks. He was thinking all afternoon, trying to come to terms with it, that two years ago he had seen little Betsy, a delicately plump pretty girl, at the hospital dance, and he had swept her away from her partner in the Excuse Me, then danced with her allevening. And that had led to this, with him sitting here, perplexed and disbelieving, with one ear open for Bert – in the room at the corner of the house – his wife lying down because she felt bad, and him…
    As he was coming away from the station, having left Betsy there with Bert in the train, two girls had called out to him, ‘Alf, Alf, will we see you tonight at the Dawley dance?’
    Mr. Redway had looked sharply at Alfred, who was about to call back, ‘Yes, of course you will,’ but then he remembered and said, ‘I’m a married man, you’ve forgotten.’ The girls were Ruby and Ethel and he had danced with both at many dances. His mother would have said they were common, but he didn’t mind that. After all, he wasn’t marrying them! They were good fun and, above all, they danced well.
    â€˜So,’ called Ruby, ‘your dancing days are over, Alf.’
    And Ethel, ‘What a shame, Alfred.’
    A knife in his heart could not have hurt more. Yes, his dancing days were over, and he did so love to dance. He had won prizes for it. Often when he was dancing the floor cleared so that he and his partner – Ruby perhaps? Ethel? – could show off what they did. But his dancing days were over. If he had not had a wife lying there behind drawn curtains he would be off walking to Dawley. To walk on this summer evening, the shadows deepening, the birds sending to him their goodnight messages. Oh, no, he could not bear it. Never again. And so Alfred sat on the bench as the elm shadows engulfed his feet, and then his legs. He had understood that, with a wife, he could no longer enjoy the freedoms of a bachelor buthe had not taken it in as he had that afternoon with ‘Your dancing days are over.’
    He had made himself go up to see how the workmen were getting on with the house, so soon to be needed; he had walked from one end of the farm to the other and then back and around. His walking days were with him still but his dancing days…
    Not long before it was time to set out for the station with his father-in-law, it occurred to him: And how is she feeling? I hadn’t thought of that.
    At the