and I can't bear to see him like that."
Tom sympathized with her, and he was tempted to comfort her, but he was afraid to give in. He had a feeling that this conversation might be a turning point. Living with his mother and no one else, Jack had always been overprotected. Tom did not want to concede that Jack ought to be cushioned against the normal knocks of everyday life. That would set a precedent that could cause endless trouble in years to come. Tom knew, in truth, that Alfred had gone too far this time, and he was secretly resolved to make the boy leave Jack alone; but it would be a bad thing to say so. "Beatings are a part of life," he said to Ellen. "Jack must learn to take them or avoid them. I can't spend my life protecting him."
"You could protect him from that bullying son of yours!"
Tom winced. He hated to hear her call Alfred a bully. "I might, but I shan't," he said angrily. "Jack must learn to protect himself."
"Oh, go to hell!" Ellen said, and she turned and walked away.
Tom entered the refectory. The wooden hut where the lay workers normally ate had been damaged by the fall of the southwest tower, so they took their meals in the refectory after the monks had finished and gone. Tom sat apart from everyone else, feeling unsociable. A kitchen hand brought him a jug of ale and some slices of bread in a basket. He dipped a piece of bread in the ale to soften it and began to eat.
Alfred was a big lad with too much energy, Tom thought fondly. He sighed into his beer. The boy was something of a bully, Tom knew in his heart; but he would calm down in time. Meanwhile, Tom was not going to make his own children give special treatment to a newcomer. They had had too much to put up with already. They had lost their mother, they had been forced to tramp the roads, they had come near to starving to death. He was not going to impose any more burdens on them if he could help it. They were due for a little indulgence. Jack would just have to keep out of Alfred's way. It would not kill him.
A disagreement with Ellen always left Tom heavyhearted. They had quarreled several times, usually about the children, although this was their worst dispute so far. When she was hard-faced and hostile he could not remember what it had been like, just a little while earlier, to feel passionately in love with her: she seemed like an angry stranger who had intruded into his peaceful life.
He had never had such furious, bitter quarrels with his first wife. Looking back, it seemed to him that he and Agnes had agreed about everything important, and that when they disagreed it had not made them angry. That was how it should be between man and wife, and Ellen would have to realize that she could not be part of a family and yet have all her own way.
Even when Ellen was at her most infuriating he never quite wished that she would go away, but all the same he often thought of Agnes with regret. Agnes had been with him for most of his adult life, and now he had a constant sense of there being something missing. While she was alive he had never thought that he was particularly fortunate to have her, nor had he felt thankful for her; but now that she was dead he missed her, and he felt ashamed that he had taken her for granted.
At quiet moments in the day, when all his laborers had their instructions and were busy about the site, and Tom was able to get down to a skilled task, rebuilding a bit of wall in the cloisters or repairing a pillar in the crypt, he sometimes held imaginary conversations with Agnes. Mostly he told her about Jonathan, their baby son. Tom saw the child most days, being fed in the kitchen or walked in the cloisters or put to bed in the monks' dormitory. He seemed perfectly healthy and happy, and no one but Ellen knew or even suspected that Tom had a special interest in him. Tom also talked to Agnes about Alfred and Prior Philip and even Ellen, explaining his feelings about them, just as he would have done (except in the case of Ellen) if