“No, no!” she cried. “It’s all over me!” “Been after his beer, he has,” Alf unnecessarily explained. “That’s what it is. Got up on the chair, and fell off it, trying to get at it. Bad boy!”
As she did not answer, from the irritation caused by nervous apprehensiveness, he soaked his own handkerchief and began to slap it across Pa’s face, until the jug was empty. Alf thoughtfully sprinkled the last drops from it so that they fell cascading about Pa. He was turning away to refill the jug, when a notion occurred to him.
“Any brandy in the house?” he asked. “Ought to have thought of it before. Pubs are all closed now.”
“See if there’s any ... up there.” Emmy pointed vaguely upwards. She was bent over Pa, gently wiping the trickles of water from his ghastly face, caressing with her wet handkerchief the closed eyes and the furrowed brow.
Alf climbed upon the chair from which Pa had fallen, and reached his hand round to the back of the high shelf, feeling for whatever was there. With her face upturned, Emmy watched and listened. She heard a very faint clink, as if two small bottles had been knocked together, and then a little dump, as if one of them had fallen over.
“Glory!” said Alf, still in the low voice that he had used earlier. “Believe I’ve got it!”
“Got it? Is there any in it?” Emmy at the same instant was asking.
Alf was sniffing at the little bottle which he had withdrawn from the cupboard. He then descended carefully from the chair, and held the uncorked bottle under her nose, for a corroborative sniff. It was about half full of brandy. Satisfied, he knelt as before, now trying, however, to force Pa’s teeth apart, and rubbing some of the brandy upon the parted lips.
“This’ll do it!” Alf cheerfully and reassuringly cried. “Half a tick. I’ll get some water to wet his head again.” He stumbled once more out into the scullery, and the careful Emmy unconsciously flinched as she heard the jug struck hard in the darkness against the tap. Her eye was fixed upon the jug as it was borne brimming and splashing back to her side. She could not help feeling such housewifely anxiety even amid the tremors of her other acute concern. As Alf knelt he lavishly sprinkled some more water upon Pa’s face, and set the jug ready to Emmy’s hand, working with a quiet deftness that aroused her watchful admiration. He was here neither clumsy nor rough: if his methods were as primitive as the means at hand his gentle treatment of the senseless body showed him to be adaptable to an emergency. How she loved him! Pride gleamed in Emmy’s eyes. She could see in him the eternal handy-man of her delight, made for husbandhood and as clearly without nonsense as any working wife could have wished.
Pa’s nightshirt was blackened with great splashes of water, and the soaked parts clung tightly to his breast. At the neck it was already open, and they both thought they could see at this moment a quick contraction of the throat. An additional augury was found in the fact that Alf simultaneously had succeeded in dribbling some of the brandy between Pa’s teeth, and although some of it ran out at the corners of his mouth and out on to his cheeks, some also was retained and would help to revive him. Alf gave another quick nod, this time one of satisfaction.