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running up with a snowball in his hand and she blew his nose for him and gave him a penny to buy sweets for himself. She turned the corner on to the main road, saw rags of snow clinging to the wheels of a cart, and the rich glow on a coalman’s face as he lit his swinging lamp. The snow slushed in her boot and she shivered.
    She went into ‘The Bee Hive’ and sat in a snug near the stove. There was dry sawdust on the floor, a smell of new varnish, and a great glow of heat. She’d have a nice drop of punch. She held out her hands to the heat and smiled sweetishly as she heard the tight scringe of a cork coming out of a bottle.
    That night the children were long in bed and Auntie Sue had not returned. Daniel was seated on the sofa in the firelight, a pair of his trousers drying on the back of a chair, the children’s wet boots in a row on the fender. A quilt of snow fell from the roof into the yard. A knock came to the front door. Daniel lit the gas, and when he opened the door there was Aunt Suzanne hanging between the arms of two men. They linked her into the kitchen and on to the sofa, her skirt and coat dripping wet, her hat feathered with snow. She sang to herself pieces of Lady Mouse and began to hum. ‘Three gay grease,’ she said. ‘No, that’s not it. Poor Auntie Sue can’t say, “Thee geese geen …”’
    Daniel stood in the middle of the floor staring with rising anger at the miserable woman on the sofa. She looked up at him with half-shut eyes and mumbled: ‘As dacent a man as ever walked in shoe-leather.’
    He went into her room and bundled all the things he could find into her band-box. He opened the door and looked up and down the street. A gramophone was playing and a child crying. The snow was falling and drifting quietly on to the window sills and the shut doors. Over the white, silent roofs the cold sky was sprayed with stars. A man with bowed head passed and said: ‘That’s a hardy night,’ and Daniel heard him knock the snow off his boots and close his door. He came inside. Auntie Sue had leaned back on the sofa, her hands listless, her eyes shut. He took his trousers from the back of the chair, threw an overcoat over the huddled figure, and put out the gas.
    In the morning Auntie Sue was leaving, and they all went down on the tram to see her off; Arthur knelt on the seat looking out, and no one chastised him when he pursed his lips against the window. They spoke little. They could find no words to say to each other.
    At the station, before getting into the carriage, Aunt Suzanne gave him a penny, and her eyes were wet as she held Annie’s and Mary’s hands and stroked them lovingly. They couldn’t look up at her, but stood awkwardly swaying to and fro. The train slid out and they lifted their arms and waved them wearily, tears filling their eyes. Arthur stood watching the back of the receding train. Then he plucked at Mary’s coat. ‘Come, on quick,’ he said, but they didn’t seem to hear him, and he ran on in front to the chocolate machine with the penny Auntie Sue had given him.

Stone

    A small flame trembled above the turf on the hearth, shrivelled and disappeared, leaving a cord of smoke ravelling itself in the wide chimney. Old Jamesy Heaney sitting with his hands on his knees, his shoulders drooped forward, waited for the fire to light. At his feet lay his black and white collie, her forepaws in the ashes, a wet nose on the flags. The closed door was slitted with light, and through the nests of cobwebs on the deep window came a blue wintry brightness. It was cold.
    The old man prodded the fire with a twig and presently it fluttered into life. He’d made a cup of tea before going to the village and while the tin boiled he’d get ready his eggs. He stood up and hobbled to the dresser. The dog got up too, leaving a damp mark on the stone where her nose had lain. She yawned and sat back on her