Out of the stunned silence softly but gathering force Tidge’s wailing comes; it goes on and on, it does not stop; a cry of the most agonising distress. Souls, angry souls, feel close.
‘Get out,’ the doctor orders the soldiers.
Tidge drops to his brother’s crazy enormous impetuous heart and hovers his hand over it, can hardly bear to touch, then lies down next to him as close as he can, breathing him in, and slings his arm over him and cries, ‘Mousie,’ but a cloud bank shifts across your boy’s face; it is going to another place, there is a stately progression from sun into shadow and Soli drops down and lifts his head and cradles its terrible flop. Her other hand finds Mouse’s and entwines it in hers, a hanky to her wet face, and Tidge looks up at Pin’s father: ‘Please return my heart,’ says his face, ‘which you have just wrenched out with a filthy fist.’
I shall so softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.