Miss Appleby's Academy by Elizabeth Gill

makes me feel better.’
    She shook her head and laughed a bit.
    He said, and softly, ‘Have you ever had a man that you really liked?’
    Nell stared at him. ‘You mean close like?’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘Nay, savin’ your presence, you’re all bastards really.’
    When he laughed and didn’t reply she smiled.
    Mick laughed more and shook his head. Nell watched him. ‘Your wife, she’s beautiful.’
    ‘Aye.’ He stared down into his whisky and he had thefeeling that Nell understood completely without him saying more. ‘We didn’t know, either of us, that there is no such thing as love. Only for our bairns. She’s a grand little lass is yours, different though.’ She got up.
    ‘You want more whisky? Something to eat?’
    ‘No, thanks.’
    Her husband had died down the pit and was blamed, and she got no money for it. Instead she left her children with her drunken brother at night and gave herself to the men as they came out of the pubs. What else could she do? Take in washing? Scrub floors? What was the difference but for pride? Whoring paid better, he knew, and she had two children and a leaking roof in the windswept little house at Road Ends where there was nothing to stop the howling winds from the fell. Her husband had been no good, had beaten her when she wouldn’t let him touch the children; her brother was a drunk. She had been so pretty, so fresh and young.
    ‘Nell—’ He stopped there, he didn’t want to insult her because he liked her, she was doing her best.
    She hesitated by the door. ‘I know.’ She looked hard at him. ‘We go on but we want to scream. You do a lot for me. If you get fed up you know where I am.’
    She was right, he had lost hope that night and a lot of other things as well. He went home eventually, as he must because of Connie and Ulysses, who had stayed at the house that day, and Hector, glad at last that he had given up his watch at the pub, sighed as they walked, knowing that he would be back to the house and all would be welland he would see Ulysses and there would be comfort, a fire, warmth and a rug. Only there wasn’t any more, and Mick didn’t care somehow.
    The dog sighed again when they got there. The house was cold and it looked unfriendly. No fire burned, no supper was ready. The kitchen was undisturbed and Connie was in bed. Isabel of course was drunk. He left her on the floor in the living room and went to bed.
    After that the world narrowed and was strange, as if it were all happening to somebody else. He could not keep the house and the pub and the child and everything working and going round and round as life should. He kept falling over himself and his grief until all he could do was go to work and make sure Connie had something to eat.
    It was as if Isabel died that winter and with her all his hopes and dreams. The future had gone away, there was nothing on offer except to get up every morning and try to keep his life turning, his child by him.
    Connie, in unspoken agreement always went back to the house after school now, as though she knew he could not stand any more. He didn’t want it that way, but it was all there was.
    He couldn’t bear to see the house as it had been. He neglected it. He ignored the garden, he watched in some satisfaction as the lawns became meadows, as the fields around it grew and were empty, as the house decayed and was thick with dust and his wife slipped further and further into the land of lost hope and he into despair.
    He kept up a lilting voice for his child, but he knew that he didn’t deceive her.
    It was as though his child was alone when she came home from school, so he left a dog there. At night, while Mick worked in the office and drank whisky slowly, Hector would nudge a warm moist nose into his hand. It was all the pleasure that Mick had. When he heard the thumping of the dog’s tail it lifted his heart just a little. Hector was always there, as Ed was always there, except that Ed went off to his little house a