Chapter 37 Summary

"About the East Wind"

In one of the longer chapters in "Waterland," Tom Crick uses the chill, forbidding east wind to introduce the narrative that describes the death of Helen Crick to influenza in 1937. Throughout the story describing both influenza outbreak, the affliction of Tom with the illness, and the ultimate death of his mother in his place, the East Wind blows.

In the chapter, as Helen becomes very ill, the role of nurse which she played previously to her husband Henry is now reversed. Near her death, Helen calls for Dick to come to her - she gives him the brass key to the mysterious Atkinson chest which has been stored in the attic since she married Henry. Helen dies the next day, in an event which Henry tells the boys, "Children, your mother's gone. She's gone. Gone." The East wind stops...