Free The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin Page A

she latched the window which could scarcely have admitted a skilful cat; and then she hastened, trembling, down the stairs to the bedroom.
    The dreamlike feeling was gone now, and she was awake; but Oh! so wearily awake! She was so tired that her whole body seemed to be swaying, rocking, and when she lay down it was as if she was being sucked into heaving, bottomless water. ‘All conquering sleep.’ The phrase drifted into her mind – was it some quotation from the classics? And had the author of it been inspired by a weariness as deep as hers? Across the span of the centuries Louise reached out for the solace of a fellow-sufferer. But uselessly; for that long-ago poet had managed to put his torturing sleepiness into immortal verse; not, like Louise, into muddling the laundry list and snapping at the children.

CHAPTER SIX
    W hat’s more, that poet was wrong. This was Louise’s first dazed thought as the relentless, intermittent crying from Michael’s room forced her to battle her way back to consciousness a couple of hours later. For weeks now she had fought this nightly battle, and each night it grew a little harder. Each night, too, she would pause for a little in the midst of the struggle, allowing herself to think: Perhaps he’ll stop: perhaps if I lie here and do nothing about it, he’ll get tired and drop off again. He wouldn’t: she knew with absolute certainty that he wouldn’t, and yet the thought still gave her a sort of respite; gave her time to collect the strength needed to open her eyes and to move her limbs again.
    Two o’clock. It was always two o’clock. There was no need, really, to peer into the little phosphorescent dial; no use, either, to cherish that flickering hope that possibly, this time, it would be three, giving a hope that his habits might be slowly changing.
    The cries, which had been irregular, were continuous now, and growing louder. She must go to him, at once. If she delayed any longer Mark would wake up too, exhausted past endurance, and she would have a row on her hands as well as the crying baby.
    The linoleum was icy on her bare feet as she felt about in the darkness for her slippers; her heavy dressing-gown gave, as always, its odd assurance of support, as if its enveloping warmth was a sort of relic of the blessed sleep which was gone. Clutching round her its delusive comfort, Louise padded through into the next room, and set herself to the nightly routine as one might set a machine in motion.
    The routine had changed since Miss Brandon’s arrival. As Mark had pointed out, one couldn’t expect a stranger to put up with this nightly disturbance; and after that first night of hearing doors reproachfully opening and closing, Louise had evolved a new method. Instead of feeding Michael in his own room, and then rocking him, patting him, senselessly pleading with him, and at intervals trying to settle him back in his cot, she now took him straight down to the kitchen and sat with him there. Sounds seemed to carry upstairs less from here than from the sitting-room, and if his screams became really impossible , she could always carry him through into the scullery, thus putting two doors between him and the rest of the household. There she could sit, her feet propped on the mangle, her head drooping against the draining-board, and jig her baby up and down – up and down; while behind her the taps dripped in the darkness. There she would stay; and presently she would be neither sleeping nor waking; neither thinking nor at peace; scarcely aware of the cold striking up from the stone floor. And her head would sink further and further over the throbbing little body … the screams would become part of an uneasy dream…. People, crowds of people, shouting, calling, demanding … rushing for a train in a station full of screams and whistles and roars…. And then, quite suddenly, she would start awake, cold and deadly stiff, to find the baby relaxed and quiet in her lap, and the dawn