“He just wants you to stand up to things, darling,” Ann explained. “You don’t want your stomach running your life, do you?”

All this in a flash through Ann’s mind before Ben turned his eyes from his father and bent to pat Taffy.

* * * * *

“Where’s the steer going?” repeated Wilfreda. “Doesn’t he want to walk up that gangplank?”

“Probably not,” said Peter. “It’s a good photograph, isn’t it? It’s the old steer’s last walk, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” shrieked Wilfreda, who had been reading the caption. “He’s going to have his throat cut.” She drew a finger under her chin and made a loud noise.

Mrs. Reed screamed faintly, and Ben stalked across the room to stare at the picture, his shoulders hunched, his elbows tight against his sides, skinny even in the bulky gray sweat shirt he wore.

“How can you be so cruel?” Mrs. Reed jumped to her feet, the embroidered panels of the Mandarin coat she wore as a tunic crackling. “Allowing your children to dwell on such barbarous things!” She, too, joined the group, peered at the opened magazine. “Oh, why do they allow such pictures?”

“It’s on the sentimental side, of course,” said Peter drily. “As a photograph, it’s good. Swell light and shadow, good composition.”

“Darling little Ben, don’t torture yourself staring at it.” Mrs. Reed threw an arm around Ben and pulled him away.

“Don’t be such a baby, Ben,” said Wilfreda.

Ann laid aside her workbasket. “Pipe down, Wilfreda. You’ve said enough. You scoot upstairs to bed.”

Mrs. Reed took her stand in front of Peter, her black eyes furious, her foot tapping, her arm tight around Ben’s squirms. “I demand an answer! How can you be so brutal? Look at your poor son!”

“Mother, please!” Ann saw Peter’s set jaw, his deepened flush. “After all, Ben knows meat doesn’t grow on trees.”

“Ann, you know as well as I do—” Mrs. Reed’s musical voice sounded its full diapason, vox-angelica effect—“that a sensitive person can’t stand the horrible things in the world. Have you been so changed that you refuse to protect your child? Oh, I can’t breathe in this room!” She swept away, the dignity of her exit marred by Boots’ scramble for a ball of wool she dropped as she went.

“Wilfreda, you heard what I said,” Ann admonished.

“But Daddy promised to sing me his new song,” protested Wilfreda.

“You’ve spoiled that. Go on!”

Wilfreda glanced at her father, but he ignored her, watching Ann. Reluctantly the child started, clomping slowly on each step to prolong her departure.

“I’m not going to be sick,” said Ben. “Only—” his voice shrilled—“how would you like it if you were that steer?”

“If I were, perhaps I shouldn’t mind.” Peter slapped the magazine shut and tossed it aside. He held out a hand to Ben, saw the boy flinch toward Ann, and pushed himself erect. He looked tired, not threatening at all, as he eyed them. “The photograph is sentimental, as I said, and so are you. You don’t have to visit a slaughterhouse, but why the devil can’t you face the fact of one? What an evening this has been! Never a dull moment. Good-night.” Taffy padded silently behind him to the foot of the stairs, his head cocked, his tail jerking his placating wags. Then he padded back and lay down in front of the fire, nose between his paws.

“Poor Taffy,” said Ann. “He gets more upset than folks, doesn’t he?”

Ben was about to answer, when Ann heard her name in a wail as vibrant as a violin string.

“I guess maybe Grandma’s sick,” said Ben, worried.

“She just wants something,” said Ann. “Look, Benjie, you put on the night latch and turn off the lights for me. Then come to bed.”

Ann ran upstairs, panic circling like bat wings. She could remember her father’s words, strong, reassuring: “Don’t get so frightened, Ann. Your mother’s just nervous. Her heart is a perfectly good ticker.”

* * * * *

An hour later Ann rose, slow-motion, inch by inch, from the chair beside her mother’s bed. This time the eyelids stayed sealed over the dark eyes, the breath came in regular, faint puffs from the relaxed, pale mouth, there was no movement in the face under the glisten of skin oil. Mrs. Reed had been so exhausted she couldn’t lift a hand to undress. Ann had helped her, had bound a net around the white curls, and had sat with her hand in her mother’s until sleep had ended the murmured lament, “He’s taken you away from me. He doesn’t want me here. What shall I do?”

No light showed under Ben’s door. Good. Ann closed the door of the big bedroom softly. Peter was asleep, too. The night light on the head of her own bed showed her covers folded back, her gown and robe laid on the triangle of puff. He had done that as a small sign for her. Ann watched him a moment, distant and stern in his sleep, the planes of his face severe, the animation of his spirit withdrawn. She longed to wake him, to beg him to help her, and she did not dare. “She’s your mother,” he might say. “Ben is your son. You’re not a foolish child, you are a grown woman.”

Ann went quietly to bed, and lying in the dark, hearing the light sound of Peter’s slow, steady breathing—everything about him is in that same secure rhythm, she thought—tried to comfort herself with Peter’s little sign that he was not angry with her. He thinks I’m not wise enough about Ben, though. He wants a son like himself, dauntless, doughty, intrepid. Ben’s such a little fellow; he suffers so easily. I’ve tried to help him; I know how he feels. Oh, how do you help a child suffer without perishing? Perspective. That was one of Peter’s words. Get things in perspective, learn their relative value, take them in your stride. Perhaps it was those distant Dutch forebears of Peter’s who put that iron, that simplicity in his veins. Well, in dilute form, some of them might be in Ben, mightn’t they? Hadn’t she had her hands full enough with Ben and his father, before her mother had turned up? She fell asleep in the slow revolving of her predicament.

* * * * *

She woke the next morning heavy from a troubled dream. Peter was already in the bathroom. Ann heard the cascade of the shower and Peter’s deep, true voice trying a phrase, a minor fall of notes, over and over. That must be his new song, the one he did not sing last night. A wry taste of the ruined evening lingered under her tongue, but she swallowed it. Peter’s singing meant that he stepped into the new day with no resentment. The least she could do was to meet him with serenity. She stepped into her gayest house coat, yellow with splashes of blue flowers, brushed back her soft dark hair, had a hasty scrub in the children’s bathroom, heard Ben’s radio and knew he was awake, ran in to shake Wilfreda out of sleep, and hurried down to the sunny kitchen to start breakfast.

The intent routine of breakfast for schoolchildren and a husband with a train to make buoyed Ann into well-being. She let Taffy and Boots out at the kitchen door, set the thermostat at seventy, made coffee, sliced bread for toast, started bacon, laid bright cork mats on the kitchen table. The woman-by-the-day came at nine. Mother (just a whiff of thought, this) never got up until noon. Breakfast, for all its necessary brevity, was the best time of the day. Peter, fresh and ruddy from his shave, kissed her and went to pack his briefcase for the day. Ben sidled into the kitchen, his nose puckered, sniffing the temper of the morning. Ann tugged down his sweater in the rear, patted his sleeked-back hair, and sent him out to call Taffy. She drew the part straight on Wilfreda’s head, tied on blue ribbons.

“Mmmm, bacon! I’m glad the war is over.” Wilfreda plumped into her chair to watch the toaster.

Taffy at Ben’s knee, his eyes eloquent as he smelled bacon and toast, Peter saying, “Coffee tastes like another cup,” Wilfreda eating around and around the yolk of her egg until Ann took Wilfreda’s fork and broke the yellow bubble. “’Most time for the bus to start.” Then, a polo coat over her house coat, Ann backed the family car out of the garage, Peter sat beside her on the front seat, the children piled in behind, and they were off, right on the dot.

As Ann drove homeward alone, her buoyancy sagged a little. She would have to do something about Mother. “You mustn’t interfere between Ben and his father.” She practised the sentence in her mind. “Ben is sensitive, but his father—” She changed that firmly. “But I wish him to learn control. He mustn’t grow up unable to face hard things. After all, he’s got to be a man.” Or was that an apology? “You, being a woman, can shrink away.” Why, I minded things, too, thought Ann, surprised. I borrowed my father’s way of taking them. Now I try to borrow Peter’s way.

Stout, competent, noisy Mrs. Kiely from the village was already setting the kitchen to rights. Ann discussed the day’s work with her, lowering her voice by way of suggesting that they mustn’t wake her mother.

“Land, I forgot about the old lady,” said Mrs. Kiely. “She’s a nervy one, ain’t she?”

In more ways than one, thought Ann, as she went about the round of household tasks, her mind still working on talk for her mother. “If you’re to stay with us, you must remember this is Peter’s home. These are his children.”