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not bother to sort out the good from the bad on finally deciding to aim a big one at his house. Or perhaps she sensed that if Any Being wanted to get back in the deadliest way at another, it would take the one nearest to him, and she was certainly that person to whom Burton was most attached. The price of marrying anyone is to pay for their sins, but he treated her as he would have treated himself if he had discovered the same weak traits in his own make-up, which is the highest form of injustice.
    He derided her soft heart, especially when she couldn’t bear to see him kicking the dogs or knocking his children about, so it is possible that she had more humility instilled into her than she had been born with, and therefore more fear of everything. She continually worried, though it was of a sort that would never break her down, and in fact most likely kept her going. It tormented her, yet made her strong, because it demanded such great effort.
    She was in many ways weak, but effort is often the only effective fuel of the weak, and a lasting impression is that she must have been as strong as iron to put up all her life with someone as hard as Burton. When he was about forty she saw him in a pub talking to two women. This was no surprise to her because something had been said already of his carryings on. She walked up to the bar and threatened that if he didn’t come home straight away she would go back and set fire to the house.
    He laughed, and told her to leave him alone. When she stood there, wondering why she had bothered to tackle him, he pushed her outside with everyone looking on. In her tears she repeated the threat, and though Burton went back to his two women he eventually lost his nerve, afraid that she might actually do as she said.
    She was still in the yard when he caught her, not far from the house door. His consciousness roamed around behind his eyes like a tiger unshackled by the chain of words or reason. He grasped her by the hair, dragging her back in a wild rage and spinning her round as his fists flew. The children came up at her screams, and began howling. Burton’s last furious punch caught her in the mouth and knocked two of her front teeth out. He then went in and locked the door behind him, staying till conscience nagged sufficiently for him to go and see to her.
    Nobody knew why she put up with him. Though so much injustice had been done to her she didn’t let anything unjust go by without comment—at least not in my presence. All harshness from without, and uncertainty within, registered on the lines of her brow. Headaches continually plagued her and the daughters. The sons were affected by weak stomachs, which showed how Burton had got on their nerves from birth, though they were all fit men and lived a long time, as it turned out.
    Headaches and bad stomachs became a thing of the past when Burton died. His children then took on the residue of toughness and longevity that, perhaps in spite of himself, he left them with.

24
    When I built a secret road on the rammel-tip I hoped in my reasonably young heart that a lorry would drive along, and that the man inside would use it to take him to a new place on which he could dump more rubble and add to my highway.
    To try and write the truth, and at the same time make it more attractive for those who might read it, would be to commit a lie, an unforgivable act when set on a self-conscious furrowing. To refuse the responsibility of a lie means pushing art out of the way, for it is only possible to create art when seeking to make raw truth believable.
    I wanted to make a road for other people to use. But the zone of ground between river and railway, long since covered in factory warehouses, figures once more in my landscape of truth. My mother knew one of the lorry-drivers, and even before I used to go there alone I went to it holding her hand, younger than seven years of age. She waited for him outside, and when he came he would open the