Then he heard the booming shouts of his father, come home nearly drunk, then the sharp replies of his mother, then the bang, bang of his father's fist on the table, and the nasty snarling shout as the man's voice got higher.
And then the whole was drowned in a piercing medley of shrieks and cries from the great, wind-swept ash-tree.

The children lay silent in suspense, waiting for a lull in the wind to hear what their father was doing.

He might hit their mother again.

There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood.

They lay with their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish.