Slight rustlings in the bedclothes remained entirely indiscernible to the snoring, impercipient hulk sagging at the centre of the mattress. Even the subsequent roll of a small body down the slope to the sleeper in the bed could penetrate no further into the weariness with which he was padded than might a wrinkle in the sheets. It took the child's heels kicking in reflexive response to a running dream ... ratatatat, tubuthud ...against his father's kidneys, to rattle slumber's chains. The man's stentorian stertor abruptly shifted cadence as a weighty arm slipped off his chest to crash willy-nilly upon the child who had come seeking warmth and reassuring bulk. Infantile outrage augmented the shrill wailing in the father's ear, enhanced the hysterical sobbing that set the man's teeth singing with vibration. He started awake.

Sympathetic miauling from siblings in the nursery made it a chorus. But for the aggrieved yowler, mother's side of the bed was empty. Where had she gone? The man squeezed the little one, hugged him to muffle the crying before carrying the child to its bed across the hall. The small boy stopped weeping when tucked snugly beneath the appropriate coverlet, but requested some grapes, and began snivelling all over again when ordered to silence and to sleep. Threatened with a roomful of teary, waking children, father instantly decided that acquiescence would buy provisional peace on the cheap. He now remembered that the children's mother was down the street tending to grandmother, who had been poorly earlier in the evening.

The man lumbered into the kitchen and fumbled for the grapes. His first inclination was to snatch up the bunch to bring it as it was to the children's bedroom, but a dim warning from the back of his brain concerning his wife's reaction to fruit squashed in the beds made him wince and give pause. He yanked at the central stem to separate the clump, sending some of the bouncy little orbs racing off across the table and down to the floor. He cursed, extracted a cleaver from a wooden scabbard on the counter, and as he hacked at the fruit, felt the blade slip towards his hand. He watched, stuck as in a sickening dream, as the neat edge sliced towards his meaty fingers. The cleaver missed the hand, halved a grape, bounced off the tabletop, and wavered just a moment before stabbing into the end of his thumb.

Ugh. He shivered, then leapt about for a bit with his fist wrapped around the injured digit, spouting a little trail of blood which began in dribbles by the table and ended in a splash at the sink. His wife walked in the door. She was distraught, extenuated, and in a filthy humour entirely impassable to pity. She smelled of the strong spirit she and her mother had prescribed for themselves during the small hours. At the least provocation, she would have assaulted anything less imposing than a lion.

The woman immediately flew at the stumbling mess in the kitchen, who not only managed to demolish the house the instant she left him in charge, but was incapable of providing a home large enough for grandmother to stay with her daughter and grandchildren on a permanent basis. The object of the vituperations made a few vain attempts at riposte, but soon accepted the futility of reason and so merely glowered, growled, and waved his split digit. Revulsion at last prompted his wife to bed. She banged the kitchen door on the dog as she went. It howled. The children set off again. The father, whose smarting thumb was now towelled in a rag, ushered the contents of the nursery into the kitchen to eat an early breakfast. They filed to their places without a sound, under threat of immediate extinction. The youngest asked for his mother. An executioner's glare smothered any such hope. Another child held his nose and pointed to the floor with a piqued, dramatic expression: the trampled dog had eased his bowels. The smallest child had trod in the stools. They stank.

The father booted the four-legged culprit out of the house, ordered the eldest to supervise the cleaning of floor and feet, and crossed the room to lean upon a windowsill. He had forgotten his injury, and nearly shouted when he pressed his thumb upon the jamb. His face ached between the eyes. A slim rim of primrose popped up along the dark line of roofs outside. Dawn nearly had arrived.