For a second John Fellow’s stared at him stupidly. Then he burst out with: ‘And here’s that bloody dog again! Your mother’s told you she can’t a-bear it, but she’s no sooner upstairs . . .’ He slipped the belt from his waist and lashed at the wretched Tiger’s quarters. The dog squealed piteously. For a moment Abner saw red. He didn’t see his father any longer, only a stubby man, shorter than himself, staring at him with bloodshot eyes, and sweat trickling down two grimy wrinkles. He would have knocked his father down if Mrs Moseley hadn’t suddenly appeared at the foot of the stairs asking what the noise was about. The sound of her voice steadied both of them as they stood staring hatred at one another, and Abner’s anger passed as quickly as it had come. Mrs Moseley, standing between them, brought with her a pungent odour of some antiseptic. The smell impressed Abner with the moment’s seriousness. He was suddenly sorry for Alice. He even wished that he had been more patient with her. Then the whole sky was shaken with the vibrations of the great bull at Mawne Colliery. Five-thirty. He slipped into his pit clothes, left his father staring, and hurried from the house. When he came back from his turn at night the sense of stress that he had quite forgotten in the work of the day returned. On the doorstep of Number Eleven he felt intensely nervous. Something was going to happen, perhaps something had happened already. The house was quiet. In the kitchen a fire was burning that made for cheerfulness in spite of the heat. All this was attributable to Mrs Moseley, who now appeared with an encouraging smile. She told him that Alice’s baby had been born at ten o’clock. ‘And when I got her clean and comfortable and washed the baby, I thought, “Well, now, while I’m on my legs I may as well have a bit of a tidy round.” A lovely boy!’ she said. ‘Oh, what a beautiful babby—just like his father!’ Abner didn’t want to hear about the baby. He stuck to his obstinate determination not to countenance the affair at all, and Mrs Moseley laughed at him for behaving like a baby himself. He asked her what had happened to his father. ‘I haven’t seen him, not since you went to work. But men’s best out of the way at these times.’ Abner guessed that, once having started to drink, his father had probably been drinking all day and might well by this time be lying drunk in some hedge at the back of the Royal Oak. Mrs Moseley rebuked him. ‘You’re hard on your father, Abner,’ she said. ‘It’s a bad time for a man when he feels he can’t do nothing. You don’t love and honour your father the way you ought.’