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pile of sacks in favour of a great truss of freshly-cut bracken bundled against the wall. She saw the kettle beside the almost extinct fire and would have crawled across to revive it by blowing on the embers had not Hazel, at that moment, clutched her with both hands as her mouth opened in another fearful yell. Then she understood that everything else would have to wait, that her immediate presence as someone to cling to for as long as the ordeal lasted, was more important than water or bedding or linen, so she wriggled in a half-circle that brought her in a position where Hazel’s head could rest on her lap and Hazel’s hands could retain their grip on her wrists and in this way she rode out the girl’s successive heaves, pouring out such words of comfort as she could invent while the climax mounted and mounted until there was no interval between the spasms that touched off the girl’s cries.
    She was never able to recall how long they were alone before Joannie Potter arrived. It might have been twenty minutes, or an hour, or even longer before Rachel saw the child lying there and Hazel’s grip on her wrists relaxed, so that she was able to shift her position and spill the truss of lean bracken across the floor, dragging some of it under the girl’s shoulders, then scrambling round to revive the fire. The water in the iron kettle was still warm and in one of the cave’s recesses she found the deep earthenware bowl that Hazel used for baking. She cleaned it as best she could, using strips torn from her petticoat and half-resting the squirming little creature on her knee sponged it from head to foot with her best cotton blouse. She had no means of separating mother and child, for although there was a large wooden-handled knife among the utensils its blade was rusted and she remembered that Jamieson, the Valley vet, had impressed upon them the importance of using clean instruments. It did occur to her to hold the blade in the fire but she shrank from this and anyway it did not seem to matter for the terrible urgency had ceased with the girl’s cries. She was still making sounds of distress, long, whistling gasps, like a cider-sodden harvester asleep in the hay but her big brown eyes followed Rachel’s every movement and noting this Rachel said, softly, ‘It’s a boy, Hazel! I think he’s all right!’ The girl twisted herself to look at the child but even this small effort exhausted her and she slumped back on the bracken while Rachel, now using the hem of her petticoat, tied the cord tightly in two places about twelve inches apart as she had seen Jamieson do in the byre at Four Winds. When the water had been changed and the baby sponged again it looked, Rachel thought, more like a baby and less like a slimy pink monkey. It let out a single yell and its tiny feet pressed feebly against Rachel’s knee, so that she forgot her terrible anxiety in a surge of achievement, wondering again whether or not to use the knife to cut the cord but again rejecting the idea from motives of hygiene. Instead she cradled the baby against her soiled skirt and with her left hand tore off another strip of material from her petticoat, using it to wash Hazel’s face and the lower parts of her body. The girl spoke, suddenly, her voice seeming hardly to belong to her after all those cries:
    ‘Where’s ’er tu?’ she demanded. ‘Where’s The Boy?’ and Rachel, surprised that she should have remembered Keith’s fleeting appearance in the cave, said that he had gone for Joannie Potter, who would be here any moment and also the lady doctor, who would come as soon as Keith Horsey guided her here. Hazel received this information thoughtfully, lying back with her eyes fixed on the roof of the cave and Rachel noticed that her breathing was slowly returning to normal and that she seemed, miraculously, little the worse for the ordeal. Then, as the light in the cave waned, they heard someone call from the path and Rachel shouted, ‘In