The winter wore on, and John Fellows, whose alcoholic history made him a bad subject for a fractured thigh-bone, still lay in hospital. Abner stuck to his thankless labours at the pit. He worked longer underground than he need have done, simply for the reason that he did not want to spend his evenings in the dangerous company of Alice. After that night he knew that he could not wholly trust himself. His earnings were now sufficient to keep the household in comfort, and the money that he drew from his overtime he put aside for an emergency, concealing them in an old stocking underneath the mattress of his bed. He wanted to be sure of his liberty as soon as his father returned.
At Christmas, Alice made a heroic attempt to recover her lost happiness. A week before the festival she went down into the market at Halesby and bought a branch of berried holly which she hung above the middle of the table from a nail that had once supported a hanging lamp. She decorated the branch with cheap trifles, flags, lustred balls and candles of coloured wax in metal clips shaped like butterflies. Over the mantelpiece she pinned a scroll of varnished paper with ‘God Bless Our Home’ in gothic characters upon it, and in various inaccessible places she put sprigs of mistletoe. Although she said nothing to Abner it was evident that she was counting on him to celebrate the feast at home. A few days before the event she showed him a present that she had bought for the child, a wooden horse with red nostrils, a lambskin mane, and a ridiculous dab of a tail. Even this failed to move him, and up to the last moment she was in doubt as to whether he would forsake her. She schemed her very hardest to keep him, using as a bait the child whose curious ways and stumbling attempts at speech amused him. This creature loved, above all things, to be caught up and perched on the dizzy height of Abner’s shoulder, so high that he was able to examine the unexplored country of the ceiling. He also loved to play with Tiger, who now came and went in Hackett’s Cottages of his own accord. Tiger liked children, and he and little John would roll over together on the kitchen floor. Alice always made the dog welcome, tempting him with such bones as never entered Mrs Moseley’s house. He was a link with Abner, and therefore to be encouraged.
In the end Abner spent Christmas Day at Hackett’s Cottages, or, to be exact, the morning and evening of it, for the afternoon he devoted to watching the league match between Mawne United and Dulston on the Royal Oak ground. He could not bring himself to forget football altogether even though he persisted in his determination not to play. In spite of all Alice’s pathetic efforts, the day was not a success. In the evening, when they sat over the fire and Mr Higgins, who had brought in a basket of oranges, had left them alone together, she made a direct attempt to have the matter out with him.
‘Why are you so funny with me, Abner?’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done that you should treat me distant like this. You didn’t use to do it.’ But he would not answer. ‘You’ve took a turn against me,’ she said. ‘I know you have. What is it I’ve done?’
‘You ain’t done nothing,’ he said. ‘And I ain’t took a turn again’ you neither. I’m all right if so be you’ll leave me alone.’
‘Yo’m different even with our John,’ she said.
‘Don’t yo’ bother,’ he said at last. ‘It’ll be different time ourn comes back. He must be getting on a bit now.’
She had to leave it at that. It had been a difficult evening for Abner, for in spite of her troubles the firelight and the excitement that the baby’s pleasure in his presents had given her made her look very attractive in her own fragile way. ‘When ourn comes back . . .’ She sighed, for she felt that John Fellows’s return would put an end even to the small measure of happiness that she managed to extract from the present. When John Fellows came back she would be faced with all the old desperate problems, the old terrible nights. As they sat over the fire she turned her face aside to hide the tears that came into her eyes. Abner puffed stolidly at his pipe. ‘When he comes back,’ he said, ‘I reckon I’ll have a look round for another job.’
‘Where?’ she asked, in alarm.
‘Oh, anywhere out of this place,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of Halesby. I reckon I’ll go to Coventry or Wales. There’s good money in Wales.’