Home, Sweet Home

Episode 16: Home, Sweet Home

    Aunty Kate’s finally pushed off. She left for home in late January, or put it like this, she went down to the South of France to do a tour over to Italy and then she went on another tour down to, um, Naples, I think. Well, the right direction: away from us, yeah. We got lots of postcards complaining bitterly about the weather and the dreadful Italian food. Then we got another fleet of postcards from Egypt, the whole thing seems to have been a mistake, not that she’d ever admit it, because the food was ghastly, the hotel was uncomfortable, dirty and noisy, and the trip to the pyramids unspeakably uncomfortable, with a frightful tour guide. Words to that effect. She’ll boast about it to the neighbours and the bowling club members for the rest of her natural—right. Plus and rub Uncle Jim’s nose in it that he never wanted to go—right again. Personally I’m with him: no—way. Crikey Dick, the place is notorious for filth and flies and has been since the era of Gallipoli or even earlier, and they already got terrorists that specialise in mugging tourists, and the place is full of Arabs, after last September who knows whether they’re gonna blow up a pyramid on the day you go to see it? Or your plane—right. Well, Aunty Kate escaped those but she had two doses of a nasty tummy bug, her phrase, not mine, but got it under control by taking some stuff she’d brought all the way from Oz and avoiding drinking anything but bottled water, a good brand—never realised the Egyptian hotels are more than capable of filling up empty Evian bottles with the local water, right. And finally got herself to an airport where she could take off for the Antipodes on a nice airline that she knows. Singapore Airlines, according to their ads they specialise in deliriously pretty little air hostesses that’ll sleep with the male passengers at the drop of a hat, but at least she didn’t send us fourteen postcards complaining about it. The food was very nice on board (read, totally bland and tasteless) and of course she had a stopover in Singapore, it’s so clean and well regulated you’d never know it was Asia. Quote, unquote.

    Of course she was very doubtful about leaving me down at the cottage with only Greg (and Rupy when he isn’t rehearsing or filming or making personal appearances, and frequently Imelda in the weekends and sometimes Tiffany, and Barbara quite often, only of course none of them count). So she wrote a full report to John and he wrote back plus and rung me up, well, he is the captain, I guess he deserves some perks, in fact being him, I’d bet all of my Henny Penny dough he’s entitled to a lot more, that he doesn’t take. And talked me into agreeing to suggest to Yvonne that instead of being my Personal Dresser she might like to be Baby Bunting’s nanny plus household help, only of course we’ll keep Lynne Carter on, darling, and Jessica in town, yes. There was no point in arguing with him and saying we don’t need her, and Baby Bunting isn’t a handful and me and Greg are getting on really well with the work, because although the work is going very well—we’ve been working steadily since Aunty Kate went—in the background as we spoke Someone was going “Waa-waa-waaa! Waa-waa-waa!” And someone else was going desperately: “Ssh! Hush, Baby Bunting! That’s Daddy on the phone!” Very squeaky: “Dada! Dada! Ssh!” And some sort of a hum in, presumably, Punjabi.

    So I gave in and rung Yvonne, and she’s gonna come down this weekend and take a look at the new cottages and see what she thinks. And if she does do it, Henny Penny are quite agreeable to her still doing Personal Dresser for me. I just hope John isn’t imagining she can cook. I’m not sure what the situation is with Li, especially in the wake of the Henny Penny Christmas party he wouldn’t come to. Well, he hasn’t proposed, that’s for sure.

    “So is John still abroad?” she asks approx. two min after she gets here. She drove down: she hardly ever drives her car in London because of course the traffic’s awful and you can never find a park. It’s more like a pet, y’know? She takes it for little outings in the weekends. I think this is about as far as it’s ever been. It’s one of those shortish, stunted-looking things. Bright purple. We had the ads for them in Oz shortly before I left: skinny girls zipping around town, kind of thing, was the image. Well, don’t look at me, I’m not into cars. Yvonne isn’t skinny, she’s very well developed, as I think I mentioned, and of course she isn’t a girl, she’s about thirty-five, and she never uses the car in town. Possibly that does prove something about the power of the media message, yeah. If it was mine I think I’d call it Gina but it’s never occurred to Yvonne to give her car a name: wrong educational background. She’s a Jerseywoman, her family’s lived there for yonks. And came to the mainland in order to be Sean Connery’s personal dresser. No, she never made it, whaddareya? Would she even be contemplating coming down to the middle of nowhere to look after Baby Bunting if she— Forget it. It either dawned immediately or you’ll never get it. Anyway, Sean Connery apart, she’s been very successful and is in great demand at Henny Penny. Being a qualified hairdresser and make-up artist plus and utterly reliable. John likes her partly because she is very likeable, partly because, in spite of being very much in awe of a Royal Navy senior captain (one of her brothers is in the Navy), she had the guts to give him a bell and tell him I was sick as a dog and miserable as Hell back when he was stuck in the States and I was slightly preggy and hadn’t told him, and partly because she’s round-faced, blue-eyed, blonde and busty.

    So I admit John is still abroad, yeah. “Thinks he might get back in early March, so that’s only another two weeks to wait. Depending on your definition of ‘early.’ And come to that, where’s Li?”

    Her wide mouth is seen to tighten. Oops. “He wouldn’t come. I told him what you said about the village not having a real taxi service, and Portsmouth not having enough taxis, but he wouldn‘t even consider it! He’s been stuck in that rut of his for the last thirty years; I suppose it was stupid of me to imagine I’d be able to pull him out of it. Anyway, never mind him,” she says grimly. “How’s Baby Bunting?”

    In spite of my report that he’s blooming, she has to verify it for herself, so we go upstairs and peep into the bedroom. Sleeping like an angel, thank Christ.

    “So he’s still sleeping in your room?” she says as we come downstairs again.

    “Yeah, the ensuite’s between our room and the nursery and I get the heebie-jeebies at the thought of him being that far from me.”

    And we put on our parkas, beg pardon, anoraks, and with only a passing reference to whatever happened to that really lovely white American one of mine, go out to look at the cottages. The one right next to us is almost finished as to the outside. Like, all the brickwork’s completed and the roof’s on and the doors and windows are in, but not painted: only that pink primer stuff. I thought window-boxes would be nice, seeing as how they aren’t antique cottages that would be ruined by non-antique window boxes. But when I wrote and suggested it John thought that whoever lives in it might like to make their own decision about window-boxes. So I explain: “It can have window-boxes, if you like.”

    “That’d be nice! I noticed that lots of the cottages in the village have got them!” she says happily.

    “Yeah, only at this time of year there’s not much in them. Lots of them have annuals: like, they plant them up every year.”

    Yvonne noticed one cottage that had window-boxes full of spring bulbs already sprouting! –Very keen. Crikey, in that case she must of made a detour down Church Lane, because the Pattersons’ at Number 26 is the only cottage within coo-ee, make that faint coo-ee, that’s got over-optimistic spring bulbs in its window-boxes. Well, it is possible to drive down that way and then get back to the High Street, the track that cuts through to Moulder’s Way and Harriet Burleigh Street isn’t the only way: but it’s much longer: you have to go right down Church Lane, then past the old village green (claypan, right), turning off just after the row of ruined cottages facing onto it, and that gets you into Wills Lane, which is very short, and that meets George Street, which runs right up to the far end of Harriet Burleigh Street.

    George Street is on the side of the rise that forms the cliff-top, and back in the old days was very well populated, but after the stream was diverted was almost deserted. It’s one of the most interesting streets because its population consists of only two groups: either elderly villagers, the remnants of the poorest families, that used to have to fetch water in buckets within living memory, or the most swept-up weekenders, the sort that appear at dead of night on the Friday in their glossy new BMWs and Volvos, laden with hampers of goodies, and disappear again after dinner on the Sunday. In the interval never so much as poking their noses in Murray Stout’s Superette or Jim Potter’s hardware shop—you goddit. The former live in small, cramped cottages in very bad repair. And the latter have got either totally restored cottages or hideously unlikely brand-new efforts

    My favourite, in terms of horror value, is Number 83 (it’s quite a long street). Number 83, though you can’t see the sea from it, appears to think it’s got a harbour view. It’s two and a half storeys, largely glass, held up by blue-painted steel posts, with two judiciously-placed portholes, and five, count them, five, small balconies, not steel posts to match the other bits, but rough weather-boarding (impregnated with weather-proofing, yep), except for the top rails (that no-one has ever been observed leaning on), which are blue. In summer these balconies all sprout unlikely sail-shaped awnings in the most pristine cream canvas. Perhaps needless to state, nothing, but nothing, about Number 83 is symmetrical. The owners quite often come over in winter: it must cost a fortune to heat. I’ve never been inside it, but Lynne Carter works for them, too, and she says that it’s totally nautical: huge squashy sofas and chairs covered in cream canvas, the floors all highly polished pine boards, touches of navy here and there, and in the biggest room, the one with the slightly larger balcony and the magnificent view across the road to old Mr Watkins’s tumbledown shack with the roof of patches held together by other patches, an actual lifebelt. They call it the family room but they haven’t got a family. In case you were wondering, they’re the sort of people that if there’s anything left over from the hamper they either biff it in the bin or take it home with them, instead of leaving it for Lynne. Aw, gee, s’pose it was self-evident, yeah.

    So maybe Yvonne is seriously considering John’s potty idea, then? And we go inside. The wall linings are in but it’s at the stage where there’s wires sticking out of little holes next to the doors and in the ceiling, and nothing’s been painted. I point out that you could have wallpaper.

    “Pink roses,” she agrees, grinning.

    “Hah, hah. Mind you, that can look good: Gray’s Aunty Maybelle’s cottage is modern, and she’s got—”

    Funnily enough she goes into a helpless giggling fit. Reminding me, as she mops her eyes, that I’ve only told the whole of Henny Penny about Maybelle’s cottage a hundred times. Who, me? I may have made a passing reference— “Yeah. Well, ya wanna see the kitchen?”

    She’s inspecting the view, first. Why? The cottage is right next-door to ours, it faces the bay, it’s got the same— Never mind. Even though it’s a grey, overcast, windy day she says it’s lovely. Well, that’s a good sign. We go and inspect the kitchen.

    “A modern stove, not one of those Aga things like John’s,” she spots, sagging.

    “Yeah, well, for cripes’ sakes, they’ve had electricity down here for—” She’s gone into another fit.

    “Anyway, it’s nice,” she says, mopping her eyes. “I like the sink bench.”

    Do ya? That’s good, personally I think it’s vile. Jack Powell’s doing the interiors, he chose it and John approved it by letter. Industrial steel, kind of thing. Jack knows this bloke that— Inevitable, yep. The other cottage of course has got the exact— Oh, ya got that.

    “I could point out there’s plenty of room for a fridge,” I say she as she squints at the view of an acre of muddy grass and damp hill above the sink-bench, “but just in case Battersea Power Stations were gonna be mentioned, I won’t.”

    She smiles kindly and says it’s a really practical layout. Is it? Well, if she says so.

    “Um, yeah. Um, Jack and his boys put these yellow tiles up before I could stop them, Yvonne.”

    She likes them. That’s good, now I won’t have to explain that they were a special offer from Jack’s mate. I don’t mention the total annoyance and bother of cleaning the grouting in between the fucking tiles above a kitchen bench because I already know she’s a spotless housekeeper that won’t ever let it get to that state. Added to which, the tiles start a fair way above the industrial-size all-in-one steel splash-back.

    I point out that the kitchen could be painted any colour, omitting to mention the fact that the cupboards can’t be: they’re ready-made plasticised white Melamine from Jack’s— Yeah.

    The cottages are both bungalows, what that means in Pongo is one-storeyed, geddit? John’s admitted that it’s cheaper to build that way and that Yeoman Thwaites and Mrs Thwaites aren’t getting any younger, so it would be silly to put in stairs. Yvonne admires the master bedroom, with its lovely view of the sea (lovely when the weather isn’t grey like today, right), and is really pleased with the small bedroom, it’d be so nice to have a guest room! So then I show her the new cottage’s pride and joy: twin ensuites. Gee, fully lined in pale blue plasticised sheeting with vanity tops and cupboards of white Melamine, wonder why? With industrial steel taps. The larger ensuite’s got a bath. She doesn’t notice that it’s one of those modern white plastic slightly short baths so I don’t mention it. Anyway, there’d be no point, because the one in the second cottage is exactly— Yeah.

    We go there next. They’ve got more to do in this one, but its bathrooms are done. It’s got three bedrooms, not two, and she thinks it’d be too big for her. That’s good, because I know John thinks Mr and Mrs Thwaites would prefer the larger one. Even though there’s only the two of them. Well, if the daughter and the grandkids wanted to visit, dare say they would need two extra rooms.

    “Um, I don’t think I… Well, I haven’t got much capital, you see. Is he building them to sell, Lily Rose?” she asks fearfully.

    “Nah, he’s got this totally nutty idea that you don’t let real estate go out of the family. He wants to rent one to his old, um, I always think of him as a waiter. Dunno if you met him that time we went on Dauntless to do those publicity shots? Mr Thwaites. Um, he’s a yeoman. He used to look after John on the ship, you see. Only he’s due to retire.”

    With her brother being in the Navy she’s grasped it before the words aren’t hardly out of my mouth. And is obviously very pleased to hear it.

    “He prolly won’t build any more. Well, unless any more old shipmates want to retire.”

    She eyes me sideways. “Commander Corky Corcoran?”

    And we both explode in giggles.

    “Hey,” I then say, “did I tell you about the last do involving him?”

    “No-o…. Not that time in Spain?”

    “No, worse. Near-disaster. You know that snippet in the papers about me and Euan and those publicity pics of me and John’s family at that kiddies’ Christmas party that Henny Penny put out to counteract it? Well—”

    Boy, is it a relief to get that off my chest! Especially to someone who fully shares my sentiments about it all, up to and including the conclusion that, never mind if Gloria Stewart is the biggest gossip in creation, it still hasn’t been proved that Corky Corcoran’s innocent, has it? Nope, Yvonne, it sure hasn’t. Has he got his ship, she asks. That means his own command. “Mm,” I say neutrally. “Susan was very relieved. H.M.S. Philomel.”

    “But she’s a only a frigate!” she gasps. “At his age? And after commanding Dauntless for a whole year?”

    You got it, Yvonne. Flavour of the month with the Navy high-ups Corky Corcoran is not. And gossiping happily, we go back to the smaller cottage to reinspect the kitchen and the dear little laundry, into which John is quite prepared to put all fittings, that is, besides the already installed industrial steel tub that, fancy that, it already features.

    “It’s lovely,” she concludes on a longing note. “Um,”—going rather pink—“so how much would the rent be, Lily Rose?”

    “Nothing, I don’t think. I sort of got the impression that the cottage goes with the job.”

    “I couldn’t do that!” she gasps, pinker than ever.

    “No, right. I’d prefer to get the cold, hard cash, too. Don’t worry, I’ll put the hard word on— Um, what?”

    “I didn’t mean that!” she gulps.

    Don’t care what she meant, actually. If she really wants to come and bury herself in the country for five years and work for us, I’ll make him pay her a really decent salary. Plus and have the cottage for a purely nominal sum.

    “Um, it’s a bit isolated, Yvonne,” I warn as we eventually go back in time to prepare a late lunch. “I’ll have to be down here for most of the next five years: at least until me and Greg have finished the study.”

    “That’s okay! Um, where is Greg?” –In the main room the computers are sitting in solitary state on their handsome wooden desks, so it’s a reasonable question.

    “Helping Jack finish the flat over the garage. You remember Jack!” I urge. “He was at our wedding!”

    She points out there were a lot of people there. True, and she did actually get Li to come, so her mind probably wasn’t on the guest list. And come to think of it, at the reception they had to sit with John’s old school mate from Harley Street complete with old school tie and toffee-nosed wife. Enough to make anyone’s eyes blur. I won’t give her a rapturous description of Jack, she’ll either like him or not, and I don’t want her to think I'm throwing her at him. Which I’m not, but the thought has dawned that it’d be ideal.

    “Jack Powell,” I say mildly, getting a frozen pizza out of the freezer compartment of Battersea Power Station. “He’s the guy that chopped up all the wood for us, that time me and Barbara—” I stop, because she’s gone into a terrific giggling fit.

    “I'm not even gonna start to ask what Barbara said!” I announce loudly once it’s started to die down.

    “And Rupy!” she gasps, collapsing again.

    I’m ignoring that; I just get on with the arduous task of putting the pizza in the oven. No, two, come to think of it.

    “Um, Lily Rose,” she says cautiously, wiping her eyes, “it’s not on.”

    “No, because none of the male experts that claim they can work it with both hands tied behind them are on deck, are they? But,” I note, “they soon will be, because a certain male wanker’s mate had all these fallen-off-the-back-of-a-truck short-wave radios, ex-service issue, going beg— Not HIM!” I bellow, catching sight of her expression. “Jack! And if ya really want to know, they wasted three hours this morning getting the bloody things to work. –Hey!” I bellow into one of the things. “Calling all useless male wankers! If ya want ya pizzas done with the crusts crisp, get on over here and put the fucking Aga on! –Words,” I explain evilly, switching off, make that putatively switching off, “have been passed in this kitchen on the subject of floppy pizza crusts.”

    Crackle, crackle, heard that! the thing produces with a crackly laugh.

    “Then get over here and turn the fucking thing off!” I scream, bending right down and putting my face very near to where it’s lying hideously on the bench top, the useless wanking piece of male hardware that it is.

    “Um, who was that?” the poor woman croaks faintly.

    “Dunno. Who cares? One or other of them.”

    She bites her lip. “Oh, dear. Are they, um, ganging up on you, Lily Rose?”

    “Something very like that, yeah. The more so because Jack’s had a couple of mates helping him with the cottages. They didn’t put up the outsides, John got a proper firm from Portsmouth to do that, they’re just doing the interiors. And with two it’s almost certain to happen, but once more than two are gathered together, it’s totally inevitable. Only don’t you worry, Yvonne, I’m not taking no crap from—”

    “It was me,” says Jack meekly, coming into the kitchen.

    “Take those fucking boots off!”

    “Damn. Sorry. Forgot. –Hullo,” he says, grin, grin, removing the muddy boots. “You’d be Yvonne, right? We haven’t got the back path in yet.”

    “This is Jack Powell, in case ya couldn’t of guessed,” I announce grimly. “And I wouldn’t shake hands until he’s washed them, if I was you.”

    Grinning, Jack pads over to the bench, washes his hands, dries them perfunctorily on one of John’s huckerback towels, and shakes hands. Still on the broad grin.

    Now, folks, Li’s a tall, burly chap, a bit run to seed, the pale and pudgy type, while Jack’s short, slim, and wiry, with one of those very dark, red-cheeked faces that can be very attractive on the male of the species while looking frightful on the female. And terrifically energetic. Chalk and cheese, right. Though a person doesn’t necessarily have to fall for the same physical type every time, does she? And though he’s not tall, Jack’s certainly more the Sean Connery type than Li is. No, well, I can see he thinks she’s a bit of all right but I’m damned if I can tell what she’s thinking. She lets him show her how to light the fucking Aga but then, she’s the type of woman that would.

    “It’s easy, Lily Rose!” she reports, beaming.

    “Not if you’re as cack-handed as her, it isn’t!” he says, laughing. I'm just gonna blast him when the fucking thing goes Crackle, crackle, crackle, over?

    “What the FUCK do ya want?” I shout, bending right down to it.

    Crackle, are you receiving? Gareth over, it replies.

    Shit. “Um, is that you, Gareth?” I croak lamely. –Jack’s grandson. Aged about ten. The skinny, big-eyed type, y’know? Adorable, right.

    “Say ‘over’,” prompts his grandfather, grinning.

    “Over,” I say, sticking my tongue out at him.

    “You can pick it up, ya know: it won’t bite,” he drawls.

    “Not flaming half! Um, sorry, what, Gareth?”

    Crackle, ya gotta say “Rosie over”! Gareth over.

    “Oh. Sorry. Rosie over.”

    Crackle did you try to send us a message? Gareth over.

    Giving in almost completely, I reply: “Yeah. Tell Greg lunch’ll be ready in half an hour and if he’s not here we’ll start without him. Rosie over.”

    Roger, wilco! Gareth over and crackle!

    Jack picks it up. “Cottage over and out,” he says firmly, putatively switching it off.

    “Over and bullshit! It’s Lombard Street to a China orange—”

    “We know. So, you been looking at the cottages?” he says chummily to Yvonne.

    The words: “Has she told everyone about it?” are now engraved on her forehead, poor thing. Together with the other words: “And what else has she told everyone?”

    “Um, yes,” she croaks. “They’re nice, aren’t they?”

    “Not bad. Made up your mind, yet?”

    “NO!” I shout. “And shut up, and get out!”

    Ignoring this, he says chummily: “Came by yourself, didja?”

    “Shut up, Jack!” I scream. “It’s bloody self-evident, and GET OUT!”

    Poor Yvonne is now positively purple but she tries to say gamely it’s all right. Even a gazetted made wanker can see it isn’t, so grinning feebly, he says he’ll tell Greg to stop painting that ceiling and wash his hands, grabs the boots, and ambles out.

    After a moment Yvonne asks feebly: “Is he painting the ceiling?”

    “’Course not. They’re all ready-made whatsits that Jack’s mate sold him wholesale plus the usual off-the-back-off-a-truck discount, like the ones in the cottages. I know they’re rather putrid but no-one asked my opinion, they just went ahead and did it.” I take a deep breath. “Like those blue Formica ensuites.”

    “What?” she bleats pathetically.

    “Um, ya might call it something else over here. Those blue walls they got in every bathroom. Greg’s bathroom in the flat’s the same. Um, but if you wanted to, I dare say you could paint the ceilings,” I end feebly. “And I apologise for the lot, Yvonne.”

    Yvonne’s a pretty sturdy creature, actually, and she’s over it. So she just grins and says: “That’s okay; I suppose they can’t help it. They’re all like that. And of course they all take one look at you and go silly.”

    At me in my beat-up jeans that date back to—I won’t mention which year at uni, come to think of it. And my almost equally ancient daggy black sweater that’s got so bad it’s been demoted to a weekends-only, try-to-remember-to-change-it-before-going-over-to-the-Superette sweater. It’s warm, though, and plenty big enough to wear lots underneath it, which actually, I am. Yvonne by contrast is in smart black and white check slacks with a fine-knit black high-necked sweater under a black cardy edged with a tiny frill in black, white, and red stripes. None of which garments I’ve ever seen her in before and the awful suspicion has already struck that maybe she bought the whole outfit as suitable-for-the-Captain’s-country-cottage gear.

    “Bullshit,” I reply briskly. “It’s the male peer group, pure and simple. You reckon we oughta give them pudding?”

    “They always like pudding, Lily Rose!” she says with a laugh.

    Everybody at Henny Penny’s always called me Lily Rose from the word “Go”, of course, so there’s probably not much hope she’ll remember not to within this millennium. So I don't bother to correct her. “Yeah. Um, well, there’s cheesecake,” I admit.

    “There would be!” she agrees with a laugh, even though she can’t cook, either.

    “Um, tinned peaches?” I offer.

    “They’ll eat those, too!”

    “Yeah. Well, cheesecake and tinned peaches? You wanna choose one?”

    She picks a strawberry one and offers to make custard for the peaches, if I like. We could chill it in the freezer.

    I’m impressed. “Custard? Can you make that?”

    “Only out of a packet,” she says quickly.

    “Oh. Well, I've got a tin, it comes already custified in tins here, it’s great! I haven’t tried it on John, yet, I dunno if it’s U or non-U.”

    She’s gone a maroon shade, oh, dear. You’d think she’d know me well enough by now to know I don't mean— No, she doesn’t. “It’s what you’d call very non-U, I’m afraid, Lily Rose!” she’s gasping.

    What I’d call— Oh, dear. Oh, lawks. I keep forgetting, the expression to the contrary, the bloody English class thing, and so ever since I’ve known her I've just blahed on to Yvonne in my usual run-off-at-the-mouth style. Not pausing to think whether the vernacular might strike her as weird. “Is it? Well, John won’t care, but I thought I’d like to be prepared in case he’s never had it before.” And, breaking down almost entirely, I decide the male peer group might be able to get through two frozen pizzas without even noticing they were there, so I bung some oven fries in as well. Since the thing’s on.

    Sure enough, even though it’s just Greg and Jack plus Gareth today, lunch vanishes like dew in the morning. And guess what we all talk about? Yep: finishing the flat, and the fittings and fixtures of the cottages. With a slight excursion, for Yvonne’s benefit, into how Grandpa got the walkie-talkies (his expression, don’t look at me) to work, in spite of Mum saying she betted no-one could! Did she, just? Good for Sylvia Biddle.

    Gareth’s just deciding he could manage a third helping of peaches when there’s a wail from upstairs.

    “Omigod! I forgot about his midday feed!” I'm out of there. Why didn’t somebody remind me? Poor Baby Bunting! “Yes, poor Baby Bunting! Are dey all fatchous male wankers, den?” I coo tenderly, picking him up.

    “Waa! Waa-aaa! Waaa-aaa-aaa!”

    “I should tink so! I should just tink so! –Clear out,” I snarl, not bothering to turn my head. “Couldn’t one of you have reminded me, in between playing with ya bloody walkie-talkies, ya useless male wankers?”

    “Um, it’s me,” says a rather small voice.

    Gulp. “Sorry, Yvonne! Come in. I’ll just change him illegally on the bed and then he can have lunch. –’Es oo can! Oo can have oo’s lunch, poor Baby Bunting!”

    “Waa! Waa-aaa! Woo-hoo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”

    “Oh, God, he’s making his woo-hoo noise.”

    “Mm. Sobbing,” she agrees, biting her lip. “Poor little man! Poor little man, den! Did they all forget about him with their silly old radios and stuff? –Why is it illegal to change him on the bed?”

    “Because in the nursery there’s a real changing table, made by Jack Powell’s own fair hands and all entirely his idea, down to the non-toxic paint.”

    “Oh,” she says weakly, watching with interest as I produce a new disposable nappy from a Laura Ashley floral frilled bag in the bottom of the wardrobe labelled, in flowing machine embroidery, “Laundry.” Big loop on the L, style of thing. That’s that, and we go downstairs and I feed the poor little sod. Sitting by the fire with him, as usual; boy, these English winters go on forever.

    Yvonne’s sat down at the table again but every so often she looks at us with a smile. Talking of biological clocks. After a bit Gareth explains in a low voice: “See, Rosie, she’s got milk. My friend Nobby, well his grandma, her cat had milk when she had kittens.”

    “Mammals,” I say clearly from my nursing position and they all jump. Nursing mothers don’t speak, ya see, let alone ratiocinate. “I have explained it all to him, Yvonne.”

    “Yes! I’m telling her!” he says crossly.

    “Oh, beg ya pardon, I’m sure.”

    Yvonne’s rather flushed but she says valiantly: “Yes, we’re all mammals. Guess what? I saw a baby horse on my way down this morning, and it was feeding from its mother!”

    “A foal?” I croak. “In this weather?”

    “Um, well, yes, Lily Rose, foals are born at Christmas, didn’t you know?”

    “Uh—oh, yeah! Come to think of it, think I did read about it in a Dick Francis. Only I suppose,” I add with a sigh, about to get up, “they go straight from mother’s milk to grass, no mucking about with supplementary bottles.”

    “I’ll get it, Rosie,” says Jack quickly, getting up.

   “Thanks, Jack,” I concede. “Never mind, Baby Bunting, it won’t be too long before you’re on real food and sitting up in your highchair biffing it onto Dada’s bloody Persian rugs like billyo!” Awarding him a kiss on his satiny forehead on the strength of it.

    At this Yvonne gives right in and comes and sits on the sofa next to us. “Isn’t he lovely?”

    No argument there.

    “Have you got a highchair?” asks Gareth clinically.

    “Well, you know our cottage as well as we do, Gareth. Have you seen one around the place?”

    Greg has to smother a snigger at this point, but Gareth replies sturdily: “No, but you might have one in the flat.”

    “That’s logical. Only we haven’t. But we can buy one in Ports—”

    Jack's come back with the bottle. (The microwave, right? This is the twenty-first century, for cripes’ sake!) “You don’t need to do that, I can knock you one up, easy—”

    “Bullshit, Jack. I may be almost as green as I’m cabbage-looking, but even I know that highchairs are full of fiddly little bits and pieces and rungs and lift-up trays and crap and in short, you are not gonna slave over one for weeks on end!”

    “I might drop John a line,” he goes, grin, grin. Right, and drag him into ya male peer group, Jack. I give up. No, well, as of this moment I give up, but I’ll drop John a line myself, pronto, in fact if he manages to ring again I’ll tell him. Anyway, Fiona and Norman are dying to give us a highchair: Fiona’s almost as keen on Baby Bunting as her oldest brother and dare I say it, by this time has seen more of him— Yeah.

    Eventually we’re all sated, even Baby Bunting, and Yvonne’s sitting on the sofa holding him with a dreamy expression on her face and Jack and Greg, hindered rather than helped by Gareth, have put the dishes in the dishwasher and with only a modicum of shouting floating through from the kitchen the thing’s started chugging. And Greg pops his head back into the sitting-room to announce: “Jack thinks we might as well get on with the back path while the paint’s drying, Rosie.”

    “Thought ya hadn’t bought the concrete, yet?” No, he means the levelling and the blah, blah, blah. “I'm all for that, if it means you can get back to actual work on Monday, Greg.”

    “Y— Um, I’ve got my gardening in Church Lane on Monday.”

    Very slowly I close one eye at him. “That is work, Greg.”

    “Yeah!” he concedes, choking slightly. “Hey, did I tell you Mrs Kirkbride actually went up to London and bought a whole load of books on the English cottage garden?”

    “If she’s got a cottage, why not?” ventures Yvonne.

    “Yeah, well, offering a challenge to Mrs Hartley-Fynch at Number 11,” he concedes. “No, but the thing is, Yvonne, she didn’t go into Portsmouth and use the public library.”

    “Like normal people,” I explain. “Or buy a couple of those magazine-type how-to books from a newsagent in Portsmouth.”

    “Right,” he agrees. “And get this, Rosie: Sue-Ellen Morgan from Number 53 asked me if I could put in a cottage garden for her!”

    “Did she actually use the phrase ‘cottage garden’?” I ask keenly.

    He nods hard. “Yeah!”

    “My God, Greg!”

    He nods hard. “It could make a whole chapter on its own, whaddaya think?”

    I think my little curly-headed research assistant is possibly getting slightly carried away, here, because one swallow does not a summer make, let alone a statistically significant summer. Even though Sue-Ellen Morgan was born Sue-Ellen Carter, from one of the giant local tribe of Carters, and comes from George Street, to be precise from the tumbledown shack next but one to old Mr Watkins’s tumbledown shack.

    “And listen, if she wants one, it’s a hundred to one Juliette Bellinger will, too!” he adds excitedly.

    This is true, they’ve been best friends all their lives and Juliette is a Watkins, the old man’s granddaughter, in fact, from what used to be another tumbledown shack in George Street next-door to the asymmetrically nautical Number 83 until some rich retirees turned it into a nightmare of Ye Olde. “This is true,” I concede, grinning at him. “Well, ya better do it, then, Greg. Mates’ rates, of course.”

    “Yeah, of course. Maybe I could work it up into an article?” he says on a hopeful note.

    “Maybe ya could. You could call it ‘The Cottage Garden Syndrome as an Indicator of Upward Mobility in the English Rural Backwater,’ maybe.”

    “Very funny,” he says uneasily.

    Kindly I concede: “Find more than two best friends whose families have lived here for three hundred years, min.’, that are cottage-gardenifying their front yards, Greg, and then you might actually get it published.”

    Yvonne’s been grinning over the somnolent Baby Bunting’s head but at this her jaw sags and she croaks: “Not really?”

    “Yeah!” I say impatiently. “I told you all about it, for Chrissakes, Yvonne!”

    “Mm,” she admits, swallowing.

    “You can laugh, if ya like: it’s water off a duck’s back to us.”

    She swallows again, and smiles uneasily.

    “Yeah,” confirms Greg indifferently. “Hey, now what about this, Rosie: Mr Horton asked me if I’d give him a hand to clear up his garden!”

    “Perry Horton? But Greg, you only did it for him before Christmas!”

     “Yeah, only he wants more done, he wants the veggie garden done and actual grass where that field that I hadda scythe used to be.”

    “My God, Greg, is he gonna sell?”

    “Um, dunno. Well, it’d be good if he did, eh? ‘The Disappearance of True Gentry from the English Rural Backwater as an Indicator of New Millennium Upward Mobility,’” he notes with relish.

    “Exactly!” I agree fervently.

    We look at each other excitedly.

    After a minute Greg pulls a face and admits: “Pity in a way, though. I mean, he’s so interesting to talk to, y’know?”

    “I know. About the only person around these parts capable of original thought,” I agree glumly. “I’d miss him awfully.”

    Funnily enough it’s only at this point that Yvonne breaks down and goes into the helpless spluttering fit that’s been threatening for some time.

    “Yeah, hah, hah, very funny. Just don’t smother Baby Bunting in ya hilarity.”

    “He doesn’t seem to mind,” Greg notes with interest as Baby Bunting stirs, and nuzzles hopefully at her black twin-setted bosom.

    “Shut up,” she says mildly, two seconds before I shout: “You can drop that entirely!”

    “Well,” he says, not looking apologetic but on the contrary, on the broad grin, “it’s all so bloody, um, think the word I want is fecund. Yeah—so bloody fecund round here at the moment. You can hardly blame a bloke. –Hey, old Jack was pretty lit up over lunch, wasn’t he?”

    “Get out!” I gasp, more in amazement that he noticed than indignation at the wanker’s saying it to Yvonne’s face, if the truth be told.

    He goes, smirking.

    “Ignore him. Cheeky little toad,” I order her grimly.

    “He was right, actually!” she says with a laugh. “I told you you always have that effect on them, Lily Rose! And of course real men just love it when there’s a mother and baby in the house! –Don’t they, Baby Bunting?” she coos.

    Well, I’m glad she thinks Jack’s a real man, and just by the by that probably was a hit at Li, but crikey! “Yvonne, you great raving nana, the little sod meant you as well!”

    It can’t of dawned, because she’s gone very, very red. “Rubbish,” she croaks.

    “It was your tits Baby Bunting was nuzzling at the precise moment, not mine!”

    “All right, slay me with your varsity logic,” she says, smiling limply. Still red, though. “Anyway, I don’t mind: he’s nice, isn’t he?”

    “Greg? Yeah, he’s all right. Just far too apt to let himself be dragged into any male peer group that might be in the offing.”

    “Well, he’s very young, isn’t he?” she says placidly. “Shall we put Baby Bunting to bed?”

    “Yeah, righto. Only I gotta warn you that he goes down for two hours and then wakes up frisky as anything and if ya don't get him up, he gets as cross as buggery and starts screaming.”

    “So would I if I had to spend all afternoon by myself in my cradle! ’Es, I would! ’Es, I would!” she coos at his snoring head.

    And we go upstairs and put him down.

    “Where’s Tim got to?” she asks as we come downstairs.

    Sighing, I admit that Jack’s decided he can’t come in when Gareth’s having a meal with us, because the kid’s incapable of not giving him tit-bits And I went and told him that Tim’s started expecting them, and last time Father Sir Admiral and Lady Mother graciously descended on us for afternoon tea, beg pardon, tea, he came inside and—

    “Begged from her?” she gasps in horror.

    “He’s not that barmy! No, from Father Sir Admiral. Tim’ll either be supervising the back path or in his tent, I’d think. Oh, get this, Yvonne: I had it up the day they came, because he loves it, ya see, and Lady Mother saw he was lurking in it and said: ‘Good Heavens, my dear, surely you realise that that thing isn’t nearly warm enough? Buy him a decent kennel.’ It was sort of, um… I can’t describe it.”

    “I get it,” she assures me grimly. “Light but meaningful?”

    “You said it!”

    She squeezes my arm kindly and we pop out to see if Tim’s in his tent. No, so he's probably round the back with the male peer group and nothing on God’s earth is gonna get me— Oh, all right, I’ll just get my parka. Anorak.

    We put our anoraks on and venture down the drive, and there they all are, there’s spades and a big garden roller, dunno where that came from, it's not John’s, and miles and miles of string and stupid little pegs and two separate and quite distinct giant levels, and six thousand rakes and you-name-it crap. Wheelbarrows—right. And gee, they explain it all to us! Even though, frail little feminine things that we are, we can actually see that what they’re doing is laying a fucking back path! Jesus!

    When we’re finally allowed to retreat Tim comes with us, and no wonder.

    “Well?” I say as we shut the front door and hang our anoraks on the coat-stand.

    She opens her mouth and then her eye meets mine and we both break down in helpless splutters.

    “Never mind, it’s keeping them happy,” I concede, wiping my eyes.

    “Yes! Um, what about a cup of tea?”

    “Yvonne, the kitchen windows give a person that might be laying a path from the garage to the kitchen a bloody good view of the distaff side making cuppas.”

    “Oh, yes, they would,” she admits. “Why didn’t they build it with— Never mind,” she says quickly.

    “With a view of the back garden instead of the end of the drive and the back of the dinette? No idea, but to hazard a guess, because it woulda been sensible and attractive and it was a male Haworth ancestor that ordered it done? What about a gin instead? John’s sherry’s awfully dry.”

    We settle for pink gins by the fire.

    And after a lot of gossip about personalities at Henny Penny Yvonne admits that she’s coming round more and more to the idea of the cottage and being Baby Bunting’s nanny. I can feel a great beam spreading across my face so I admit that’s great, and does she spew her heart out on long drives in the back seats of cars? Very puzzled, she reveals she doesn’t. But why? I'm so relieved I can hardly utter. Because I know she had no qualms about coming on Dauntless that time we had to do the publicity shots for Henny Penny, but then, it was just parked neatly at the wharf. Feebly I reveal John’s plans about drives down the Loire Valley and similar European crap. She’s thrilled. Absolutely thrilled.

    “Oh, good,” I utter limply.

    “Lily Rose, surely you didn’t think I’d object?” she says with an amazed laugh.

    “No, but the thing is, I’m such a rotten traveller I’ll have to go in the front, I get sick as a dog in the back seat, I won’t be able to swap with you. Um, unless it’s on a long straight road with no bumps.”

    Evidently that’s perfectly all right. Phew.

    Then she thinks she could spell John at the driving! Deluded woman. I don’t point out that in spite of all his good sense he’s far too macho to let a blonde, busty female drive him. She can spring that one on him in the middle of Frog-land and we’ll take it from there. “I’m such a rotten sailor that he’s agreed we can take the Channel tunnel,” I add.

    “That’d be fun,” she agrees placidly.

    Something like that. At least it’s not floating on the sea going up and down. “Yeah. Three cheers for the European Union.”

    So I’ll check with John about the rent and the salary. She won’t decide this weekend, but she promises she will definitely think it over very seriously. Good, think John’ll like that: he doesn’t like people that rush into things. Uh—make that he thinks he doesn’t. Or maybe I’m the exception that proves the rule?

    Later in the week. The post’s come. No, well, to put it more precisely, Sean Bates has come, in his little red van. We’re at the end of his run, so of course we offer him elevenses (it was a short run today), and, as usual, he takes a look at what me and Greg’ve got up on our computer screens before he goes. Greg’s almost got the hang of the working version of the CIA’s geog. positioning program: give him another ten years and he may actually manage to enter something to it.

    “Try clicking on that, there,” suggests Sean.

    “No! It only changes the colour!” he snarls.

    “Isn’t that what you want to do?” says Sean mildly.

    Cough. I’d of said so. But I’m keeping well out of it. After all, books were published for many, many years with perfectly good coloured and/or shaded maps in them before the CIA automated the process. However, Greg’s determined to beat the thing or die in the— Yeah.

    “Who’s it from?” he asks as Sean finally takes himself off and I open the bulging airmail envelope with the giant row of highly coloured Australian stamps.

    “Aunty Allyson,” I groan. “Still under labouring under the impressions that (a) we know someone that collects stamps, and (b) it’s more efficient to buy a book of local-rate stamps and then trudge into the Post Office and try to buy a two-cent stamp to make up the differ—”

    “Give the stamps to Julie Bates. She collects them.”

    “Eh?” I croak.

    “What? Oh! No relation,” he admits somewhat feebly. “She lives in Bottom Street. Anyway, why shouldn’t your aunty use up the stamps she’s got?”

    “Greg, they phased out two-cent coins yonks back. Yonks. And one-cent, before you start.”

    “I wish I hadn’t asked, now!” he says with feeling. “If your aunty’s having a go at you again, just come right out and say so!”

    “She isn’t— Um, well, she’s on about Wendalyn’s Sickening Little Taylor and all the words she could say by the time she was one.”

    “He isn’t nearly one, yet,” notes Greg pedantically. “He’s only… Nearly six months.”

    “Right, and his dad’s missed most of them.”

    He sighs. “Go on, what else?”

    “There’s approx. forty pages on Wendalyn’s Little Kieran’s progress and the pics to—Oops! Blast!” I gasp as they suddenly scatter themselves all over the sitting-room. “—prove it. Sorry,” I say lamely as we scrabble for them.

    “How old is he, now?” he gasps, surfacing with a handful of Polaroids.

    “No idea. Read it for yaself, if ya that interested!” I snarl.

    He isn’t, funnily enough.

    “No, well, it’s one percent gossip and ninety percent speculation.”

    “What’s the other nine percent?” asks Greg with interest.

    “Hot flaming air!” I snarl.

    Shrugging, he looks at the pics. Little Kieran at the zoo. Little Kieran pointing at a penguin (penguin not shown). Little Kieran pointing at a lion (lion not shown). Little Kieran pointing at an elephant (only Wendalyn and Bryce could manage this one: elephant not shown). Little Kieran pointing at a— Yeah.

    “He can say Dada and— Never mind. He is a lot older than Baby Bunting. Oh, well, I knew Aunty Allyson’d rub my nose in it, whatever I told her. But he is sitting up good, now.”

    “Yeah.” He takes another look at me. “Um, well, what else?”

    “She’s calling him Baby John,” I point out, scowling.

    “Let’s see. Oh, yes, so she is,” he verifies. “It is his name.”

    “Its a family thing!” I shout. “They’re forcing me to stop calling him Baby Bunting before I want to!”

    “Ye… Well, ye-es… I suppose. Well, they must think it’s time— Well, mustn’t they?”

    “They don’t think,” I state grimly. “They don’t know they’re doing it, it’s not even conscious, see? How can ya fight that?”

    “By ignoring the whole bit?’” suggests Greg mildly. “Richpal did, when Grandfather tried to call their Billy by some Indian name—forget what it was, now, the ignoring worked so well,” he admits cheerfully.

    “Possibly this proves that the popular Western myths about extended Indian families are so much crap, then,” I note evilly.

    Greg only agrees mildly: “Probably does. Approx. fifty percent of popular myths of any society are crap. It’s the other fifty percent that reflect psychological or sociological truths. On the other hand, you’re halfway round the world from your extended family, Rosie, and you’re pretty strong-minded: I don’t see why you can’t ignore them.”

    “Why? Because see this other letter covered in Aussie stamps?” I retort evilly.

    “From your mum?” he hazards.

    “Don’t be a clot, would I of opened Aunty Allyson’s first?”

    “No,” he concedes, smiling. “So who is it from? Ugh, your Aunty Kate?”

    “No, her letters always have one stamp representing the exact postage,” I remind him sourly. “No, it’s from Aunty Allyson again, only to John. Presumably I’m supposed to forward it, if he doesn’t get home this month. She’ll of put ‘Baby John’ the whole way through!”

    “Uh—God,” he gulps.

    “Yeah.” I march over to the door. “I’m going out.”

    “Where to?” he says mildly, sitting down at the geog. positioning program again..

    “To the Superette. To buy some more film for John’s camera. I’m gonna make bloody sure he takes a million pics the minute the gets home, and I’m gonna send a copy of each one to bloody Aunty Allyson. And what’s more, I’m gonna write on the back of each one ‘Baby Bunting in his playpen’ or ‘Baby Bunting sitting up,” and like that! –Keep an eye on him, will ya, Greg?” Placidly he agrees. I march out. “Tim! Where are you? TIM! Oh, there you are. Good boy. Come on, walkies! …Lovely walkies, and sod all rellies.”

    Right, he’s six months old and his bloody father’s not home—they’re supposed to be at sea, steaming towards their home port, what good’s that doing us?—and so I’m bloody well gonna have a six-months party for him! Added to which, March down on the South Coast of England is pretty dreary at the best of times, anything to brighten it up. Added to added to which I’ve had this official offer from bloody Derry Dawlish— Never mind. Today’s the day.

    The breakfast dishes are in the machine and Belinda Stout’s just rung to say Murray’s gonna drop off the sliced white loaves I wanted and if I don’t mind she’ll pop over for a few minutes later on when there’s a knock at the front door.

    “What’s he knocking for? The back door’s unlocked! Yeah, come on, Baby Bunting, we’ll let silly Uncle Greg in— Cripes!”

The visitors all speak at once.

GRAY

(speaking simultaneously)

Surprise, Rosie, darling!

ARTHUR

(speaking simultaneously)

Hullo, Rosie!

(squeakily)

Huwwo, Baby Bunting

MRS MORRISSEY

(speaking simultaneously)

Hullo, Rosie, dear. Hope it’s not inconvenient.

VANESSA

(speaking simultaneously)

Surprise, Rosie, sweetheart!

MAYBELLE

(eagerly)

Hullo, Rosie dear! Look at him, the little pet!

    Turns out Gray drove Vanessa and the Morrisseys down to his Aunty Maybelle’s last night, her cottage is near Bournemouth, because they couldn’t miss his party!

    “What about your housekeeping clients, though, Mrs Morrissey?” I gasp in horror.

    Sniff; tosses head scornfully. “They can do without me for one day, dear!”

    Crikey. She never misses a day, unless at death’s door. And what time must they have had to get up, to get over here by this time? I mean, the distance isn’t that much, John’s shown me where Maybelle’s village is on the map, but with the wanking English roads and all the commuters in transit… And Maybelle’s well into her seventies. I don’t dare to ask, frankly.

    Of course they’ve all brought presents for him, even though I told everybody I mentioned it to that we’re not having presents. Mrs Morrissey’s crocheted him a bright green dinosaur with pink and green um, flanges? Not fins. It’s a modern pattern, all the kids like dinosaurs these days. Arthur tells me in a whisper it’s awfully complicated, but I can see that. And the eyes are crocheted in—I can see that, too. And it’s got crocheted-in yellow claws, it’s the most fabulous dinosaur I ever laid eyes on!

    Maybelle’s more into sewing: she’s brought him a padded anorak and matching pants that she made herself. Navy blue, and the jacket’s lined with bright scarlet teddy-bear fur.

    “It’s real anorak material,” I say dazedly as Arthur capably gets him into it. Gee, he looks a trick!

    “Of course, dear,” says old Maybelle complacently, nodding.

    Crikey. My bet woulda been she’d never heard of it.

    Mrs Morrissey’s ordering Arthur sharply not to get him into the pants, never mind if they’re waterproof, we don’t want any accidents, as I shakily open Vanessa’s present. It’s big… Not all that heavy…

    “There now!” says Mrs Morrissey in vindicated tones as I bawl all over it.

    Poor Vanessa’s horribly taken back. “Don’t you like it, dear? We knew you were planning a trip, so—”

    “I—love—it!” I sob all over it. It’s a smart navy-blue suitcase, one of those woven artificial materials, proper lightweight, y’know? Just a small one, the next size up from a carry-on bag. But she’s had lettered on it in bright scarlet: “B.B.H.”

    “See?” says Mrs Morrissey to no-one in particular as Vanessa smiles in relief and Arthur pats my back. “That’ll larn them, eh?”

    “Yes,” I admit, accepting Gray’s hanky, and blowing my nose hard. “–Thanks, Gray. –It sure will. Thank you very, very much, Vanessa!”

    “Don’t mention it, dear!” she says with a relieved laugh.

    Capably Arthur takes it off me and puts it in the playpen next to the dinosaur. “Just for a bit,” he says before his mother can say anything. “Go on, Gray, let Baby Bunting open yours!”

    “It isn’t anything much,” says Gray apologetically, producing his parcel. “But, um, we thought he might like the paper.”

    “He did, he means,” allows Mrs Morrissey. “Rupy told him some story about the baby liking to muck round with paper, you see. Well, our Maureen was like that, too. Used to bawl whenever she saw the evening paper, drove ’er dad mad.”

    “Mum, that went on until she was seven or so, that’s what drove Dad mad,” Arthur objects uneasily.

    “Help!” I say with a laugh. “I hope his doesn’t last that long! –Yes, lovely paper, Baby Bunting: look what Gray’s brought for you!”

    Crumple, crumple, crumple… We all watch, mesmerised, for ages and ages while Baby Bunting crumples the very loosely wrapped present from Gray. Finally Gray gives in, leans into the playpen, and gives it a big RIP! And there it is!

    “It’s a cushion,” says Arthur limply, terribly let-down.

    “No, you clot!” I cry. “I mean, it is a cushion, but it’s his very own cushion for Jamaica, isn’t it, Gray?”

    Of course it is, he spotted it at that nice shop in the High Street near Della’s, and it was so nice and squidgy, and what with the palm trees and the boats and pineapples as well—! And Aunty Maybelle says it’s washable.

    “It’s lovely and squidgy,” I agree, getting right down there with them. “Mmm! Look, Baby Bunting, lovely squidgy cushy for you! ’Es, for you!” Etcetera and so forth.

    After quite some time Arthur comes to and remembers he hasn’t given him his present, yet!

    “Look, Baby Bunting! More paper!” I urge.

    It’s book-shaped paper. “Only some little books,” says Arthur uneasily.

    Faint sniff from Mrs Morrissey: fair warning.

    Cripes. Gorgeous picture-books, where did he get— Right. Went back to Smith’s, the nice man helped him, goddit, goddit. Hastily I remove them from the playpen before he can start mauling them. “They’re lovely, Arthur. We’ll start reading them tonight! Won’t we, Baby Bunting? ’Es, we will! Look, big bear. Can you say bear? –Not a sausage.” I explain to the company.

    “Maybe he will later,” says Arthur kindly. “There’s one about a rocket, too, it’s nice. It’s got a picture of the space shuttle in it.”

    Ooh, so it has! Mrs Morrissey notes uneasily that’s it’s too old for him. I don’t say anything about babies needing books or like that, I just say comfortably that he’ll grow into it. And thank them all very much. And shall we have a nice cuppa?

    We have a nice cuppa and Maybelle produces “just a sultana cake”—home-made—to go with it, and just as we’re sitting down to it and Arthur’s wondering whether Yvonne’s coming, in she comes.

    “I can’t wait to move into my cottage, Lily Rose!”—She has decided, but according to the horrible contract Brian made her sign, she has to give a month’s notice. Or what, I didn’t ask: be shot, possibly. Anyway, it’s giving Jack time to finish off the cottage beautifully. Window-boxes and all.—“That blasted oven of mine burnt the sausage rolls!”

    “You did, you mean,” notes Mrs Morrissey stolidly. “Anyway, he’s too little for sausage rolls.”

    Arthur’s got him on his knee. “Yes, he’s only got a tiny tummy!” he says happily. “Tiny tummy, eh, Baby Bunting?” he squeaks.

    “Yes, and it doesn’t need any sultana cake in it, either,” Mrs Morrissey quickly flattens him. “Frozen, were they?” she says to Yvonne.

    “Yes,” she admits limply. “Um, hullo,” she says even more limply to the company.

    At which point it dawns that not everybody’s met before, so it’s introductions all round and Yvonne’s sat down, and firmly provided with a cuppa by Gray and a slice of the sultana cake by Vanessa. After which Mrs Morrissey and Maybelle decide that they’ll put it all right. This’ll entail Gray driving over to the village to buy some more frozen sausage rolls, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Just as we’re wondering whether to make a fresh pot Murray Stout arrives with the groceries, so that settles it and a fresh pot is brewed and Murray admires all the presents, ending up with Baby Bunting on his knee, telling us all what his Terry was like at that age…

    Arthur follows me out to the kitchen for more milk and asks cautiously: “Did Terry decide to go up to the varsity?”

    “Yeah. The college was quite keen to have him. He can’t start until September, though.”

    “That’s good. I thought they might decide they didn't want him after all.—So did I, Arthur, but evidently Oxford colleges that offer working-class boys giant scholarships that they turn down because their parents have suddenly got all keen after taking no interest in their schoolwork for years aren’t like that.—“Does he know yet what he’s gonna do, Rosie?”

    “Who, Terry? Like, his career? ’Course not. So ya better not mention it!” Carefully I close one eye.

    After the spluttering fit’s over he asks: “Um, what are these, Rosie?”

    “Don’t touch them! We call them fairy bread in Oz, we always have them at kids’ parties, and don’t tell me ya never seen them, Arthur, ’cos he’s my son and we’re having them!”

    “I was only going to say,” he says meekly, “that they look really cute.”

    “Oh. Sorry.” Somewhat limply I join in admiring the plate of tiny squares—okay, almost-squares—of white sliced bread, buttered—all right, spread with marg—and dotted with hundreds and thousands. The secret of real fairy bread being that ya gotta cut the crusts off.

    “I’ve never had them,” he says wistfully.

    “Oh, go on.” Sneakily me and Arthur each have a slice of fairy bread in the kitchen.

    “Mm, lovely!” he approves, and I admit: “It’s the only party food I can do. That and jelly.”

    “That’s all they need, at that age,” he says kindly.

    And after a quick check in the fridge by Arthur to assure himself those jellies have set, how bad does he think I am—don't answer that—we go back companionably to the party, which might not have originally been intended to start now, but pretty obviously has.

    There aren’t that many little kids in the village, not under school age. So there’s Baby Bunting, he won’t be up to much of the party food, Velda Cross’s very new Samantha Rose, born in January, so she won’t eat anything, Velda’s neighbour Wendy Scott’s little Janelle, Keanu and Meg Driver from Bottom Street, Courtenay Carter from the top end of Dipper Street (Georgia’s niece, Mrs Carter’s granddaughter) and, ulp, Kiefer Deane Jennings from The Church, Church Lane. Juliette Bellinger wanted to come, and what Ms Deane Jennings’s eye doesn’t see, apparently. And she never gets home until gone six. He’s been lapping up those jellies like nobody’s business: oops. Ms Deane Jennings never lets him have anything with brightly coloured food dyes in it. Not because he's allergic to them, he isn’t allergic to anything. Or hyperactive. On principle.

    The kids aren’t playing together, but then, nobody really thought they would. Well, Janelle Scott tried to pull Courtenay’s rather sparse hair, but both their mothers saw that coming, and she’s now joined Meg in victimising little Keanu, but apparently he’s used to it. Baby Bunting’s pretty tired, his eyelids are starting to droop. He’s just lying pudgily on his tum with some crumpled paper in his fist. We tried to make him wear a paper hat but he hated it, so we didn’t insist. The others are playing with his toys but fortunately he’s too little to be possessive over toys. Nevertheless, several small persons have been told very firmly by their respective mothers or baby-minders that that’s Baby Bunting’s whatever-it-is, and you won’t be able to take it home with you!

    Being into that sort of thing in the wake of her art-school training, Velda’s got a shiny all-knobs camera almost as techo as John’s, so it doesn’t matter that three-quarters of Yvonne’s Polaroids haven’t come out and only half of Arthur’s have, the entire scene is gonna be recorded for posterity. And I sure hope Duncan Cross likes sitting up till all hours sticking blurred inside shots of unidentifiable kiddies into ruddy albums on his few precious evenings at home.

    In case you’re thinking it’s all mothers and babies, plus the contingent from town and Maybelle, ’tisn’t, see. Not Greg, no. Of course he’s fond of Baby Bunting, but he’s one of the world’s greatest conformists. But Jack’s turned up, apparently unaware that males don’t usually attend kiddies’ birthday parties in the middle of a working day. Five minutes after he arrived there was a knock on the front door and it was Penny Hendricks and John’s sister Fiona, they’d driven down together, I’d forgotten they’d got friendly after combining to torture me and John over the wedding reception. No husbands in sight, good on them, even though Fiona admitted that Norman could have come, he was keen to. We’d opened all the non-birthday presents and little Meg, who’s the oldest, was starting to whine for cake, when lo! Michael Manfred turned up. True to his threat, he’d driven all the way over from his cottage for it. With a lovely stuffed elephant for him, Maybelle reckons she can fix its eyes so as they’re absolutely safe. And I’m gonna make John take a pic of Baby Bunting pointing at it, the kid’ll point if I have to glue his arm in place, and label it “Baby Bunting pointing at elephant”, elephant in shot, you betcha, and send it to bloody— Yeah. Well, wouldn’t you?

    So anyway, Mrs Morrissey quickly made a cuppa for Michael while the rest of us set out the party food and the real party started. Most of the kids were only interested in the fairy bread (see?) and the jelly and ice-cream, those who are old enough to know what ice-cream is. Though I gotta admit the adults made short work of all them sausage rolls. Just as we were about to cut the cake Isabel Potter and Belinda Stout turned up, so that was well-timed.

    Isabel and Belinda have reluctantly gone back to their places of business, and/or hubbies, and now we’re at the just-sitting and looking-at-the-remains-of-it stage and, in the case of some, the still-taking-pics stage… Yes, Maybelle, it sure is lucky we got a dishwasher. She still looks fresh as a daisy: how does she do it?

    A bit later. The party boy was starting to whinge so he gets put down in his bassinet, Jack coming up with me and making noises about not long before he’ll be big enough for a full-size cot, why don't I just throttle the bugger now? Suddenly Yvonne surfaces behind him, informs him shortly of the error of his ways, and removes him bodily. So I just sit down on one of the spare beds and watch Baby Bunting snoring, forgetting I’m the hostess…

    Mrs Morrissey comes in silently and sits down beside me. We just sit, watching him and listening to him… Finally she sighs deeply and says: “Come on, dear. Better get back to them. They’re starting to go.”

    “Good,” I admit.

    She hands me a hanky. Beautifully ironed, Arthur will’ve done it, he does most of their ironing. Pale yellow with a couple of blue stripes round the edge. I blow my nose hard.

    “When Arthur was that age… Oh, well,” she says heavily. There’s a short pause and I look at her nervously. “He had a little fuzzy monkey. Liked it better than the big panda his father got for him. Always did like dainty things, Arthur. Oh, well—water under the bridge. Come on, dear, upsy-daisy.” And we go downstairs.

    Downstairs people are going, all the kids are either whingeing or half-asleep and even Juliette Bellinger admits she better take Kiefer back to The Church, Ms Deane Jennings expects to see him fed, bathed and in his sleeping-suit by the time she—

    “Jesus, Juliette! Doesn’t she ever want to give him his bath herself?”

    “No, well, maybe she does in the weekends,” she says dubiously.

    Balls, she’ll make Robert Jennings bath him in the weekends: Yvonne’s eyes meet mine but neither of us says it, and Juliette quickly wrenches Dino Saurus out of Kiefer’s small and now distinctly grubby hand and carts the screams of rage and deprivation quickly away—

    “Phew,” I say, as the last of the triple-parked cars disappears up the lane, leaving only Gray’s Mazda, Jack’s truck, and Fiona’s Golf (the fawn Volvo’s officially Norman’s, though actually she drives it almost as much as he does).

    Back in the sitting-room Gray, Vanessa, and Yvonne are tidying while Fiona and Penny are jointly operating on one of John’s Persian rugs. Ice cream, I think. Don’t think anybody actually pee-ed on it, they were all wearing their Treasures nappies, but anyway, if it’s as genuine as he claims, it’ll have been pee-ed on by camels and carted miles across the dusty desert on the back of said camels, and anyway, who cares?

    “Put your feet up, Rosie,” orders Fiona firmly as I sag onto the honourable sofa.

    “Yeah, um, but what about the dishes?”

    “Maybelle and Mrs Morrissey are in charge of those,” says Yvonne firmly.

    “Yes, but Yvonne, I used some of the crystal dishes for the jelly!”

    “Maybelle’s doing those by hand,” she says firmly. “And Jack thinks he can mend that big cabbagey plate you broke, he’ll take it home.”

    I give in. “Okay.” And put my feet up. Immediately Fiona covers me with the big rug that lives in the useful hole under the very, very new window-seat. Well, it isn’t a drawer, is it? It doesn’t pull out. And it isn’t a cupboard, it hasn’t got a door. So what would you…

    Crikey. How long was I out for? And where is everybody? Groggily I sit up. It is still light, that’s something.

    The kitchen’s empty. Empty and pristine: for Chrissakes, it looks as if someone’s washed the floor! Even that yellow splodge of Imelda’s has almost disappeared. (School, is the reason why she wasn’t here today boots and all. School and a very strong-minded father.) I stagger upstairs. In the nursery, on the spare bed to my right, Yvonne’s zonked out, snoring. Be the strain of that fire in the oven at crack of dawn this morning. Plus and the party bringing home the status of the biological clock, and no, we haven’t heard a whisper about bloody Li, so I reckon it’s definitely all off. To my left Vanessa’s zonked out on the other spare bed. That’ll be the combination of the early start, the strain of thinking she’s gonna meet John’s posh rellies, actually making conversation with Fiona and Penny, though she did meet them both at the wedding, and, even though the op is now happily in the past, the fact that she does tend to get tired at odd moments. Plus and, the fact that that bitch at her hair salon will’ve made her work untold hours of overtime to make up for the day off, you betcha boots. I tiptoe out.

    In our room Baby Bunting’s zonked out in his cradle, snoring, and Maybelle’s on the big bed with the duvet over her. Wide awake. She gives me a perky smile. “They made me lie down, dear, hope it’s all right.”

    “Yeah, ’course, Maybelle. Have a sleep, if you wannoo.”

    “Goodness, dear, I never sleep in the afternoons, you know that!”—I do, yeah, having stayed with her, without or without Gray, a couple of times. She’s got ten times the stamina of me and Gray combined.

    “Yeah. Where are they all, Maybelle?”

    Jack’s over in the flat with Greg. Gray and Fiona, blink, never thought I’d hear that actual combination, wanted to take Tim for a walk along the beach. “I see,” I say weakly. “I’ll make a cuppa for them, the beach always makes ya thirsty. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

    Later. Gray wants to stay on at Maybelle’s, but Arthur and Mrs Morrissey have to get back to London because she can’t desert her housework clients for another day—but that’s okay, Fiona will drive them. I think she’s secretly hoping to get the dirt on a couple of the more up-market clients, but never mind the motive, the result’s good. Penny’s ready to go, too, though as for imagining she’s going to get his dinner tonight, Brian, though she doesn’t quite put it like this, can get choked. Boy, is she tee-ed off with him for telling her that no-one has a party for their infant turning six months. Well, plus and because the feebleized wanker their daughter’s married to still shows no signs of being able to procreate. So off they all go, waving madly.

    Vanessa wants to see our Sloane Square Salon: she knows that Pauline’s clientele is growing and Georgia wants to work in Portsmouth as soon as she qualifies (Big Smoke syndrome, right). So Yvonne’s going to take her over there and then they’ll go back to London together.

    The cake wasn’t quite cleared away, it was put on the coffee table in front of the fire once the toddlers had gone (and the rug had been cleaned) and since it’s just sitting there looking at the three of us—

    “Hul-lo! Is this a party?” he says with a laugh, removing the to-die-for hat, Vanessa’s eyes are on stalks, did she think he didn’t really wear one or—

    “John!” I gasp, getting up, tripping over the fucking rug, and falling into his arms. “You’re home! Of course it’s a party, he’s six months today, where have you been?”

    He hugs me very, very, very tight and kisses me lingeringly, oh, John!

    “At sea,” he says mildly. “Don’t bawl, Rosie, darling.”

    “No,” I gulp. “There’s no jelly left, serve ya right.”

    “You ate it all, did you?” he says with a laugh, rapidly taking in the assembled company.

    “Nope, Kiefer Deane Jennings pulled a whole bowl of it off the kitchen table, so we were a bit short in the jelly department. You remember Vanessa, don’t you, John?”

    Of course he does, and he shakes hands, and if he may, Vanessa’s looking very smart (of course he may: bright jade narrow-cut suit, slightly Seventies-look blouse with long pointy collar, Yvonne and me have already admired it but she didn’t look nearly so chuffed as she does now.) And he was thrilled to hear of Yvonne’s decision—and in short he says all the right things.

    So Yvonne gathers her wits. “I think we’d better be off, hadn’t we, Vanessa?” –Meaning look. Vanessa gets the point and they hurriedly scarper, with thanks for the party, and thanks from me for coming, and some “Lovely to see you, Johns” which sound very genuine.

    And finally me and John are alone together in our cottage with our Baby Bunting and our big black dog.

    “Did Tim stuff himself on party goodies?” he says with a smile, fondling his ears.

    “Nah, the high-pitched chattering put him off, poor old fella. It was pretty bad.”

    “Mm. Bed?”

    And up we go. Baby Bunting’s still snoring… Shit. “He never had his tea,” I croak.

    “After being stuffed like a little sausage on jelly and so forth, I doubt he needed it, darling. I’ll check his nappy, shall I?”

    I just watch. He’s horrified to discover how much his son’s grown, in his absence. Yeah, well, they do that.

    … Much later. Boy, that was extra. He didn’t even stop to have a shower, he just hurled his winter uniform onto the floor and pushed me onto the bed… But having him at sea for nearly six months is not, on the whole, worth it.

    “You hungry?”

    “Starving!” he admits with a laugh.

    “We should have had tea first.”

    “No, we shouldn’t!” he says with a laugh, nuzzling a tit. Mmm…

    “Um, dunno what there is. They came down like a wolf on the fold on the sausage rolls.”

    “Chips?” he says, raising his eyebrows at me. “Pizza?”

    “Might be. I’ve been feeding Jack and his boys a fair bit lately. I nearly died the first time he turned up with them; have you seen them, John?”

    “Uh—not that I recall, darling. Why?”

    “Well, he always calls them ‘the boys,’ ya see, but only one of them’s under twenty, that’s Ivan Coates, don’t ask me why they called him Ivan, he’s as English as you are. But the other one, Fred Carter, he’s Jim Carter’s brother, he’s Jack’s age, for God’s sake!”

    “Then ‘the boys’ must refer to their rank,” he says primly.

    “Geddouda here!” I bash him with a pillow.

    “Uncle!” he gasps at last. “Well, check out the fridge?”

    “Yeah. It’s Battersea Power Station, John,” I remind him, as he gets out of bed. Are those shoulders or are they shoulders, and his thighs are just the answer to a maiden’s prayer. Well, them and other bits of the anatomy, yep. He doesn’t realise I’m lying here admiring him, he chucks me my dressing-gown and says: “Come on, darling.”

    So we go downstairs. Uh… There’s lots of frozen peas.

    “If I’d known you were coming I’d of baked a cake. Or bought a pizza.”

    “Mm… Fish fingers?”

    “Yeah. With frozen peas, or white bread? Or both.”

    He looks in the fridge side of Battersea Power Station. The remains of a trifle: Juliette Bellinger brought it. It isn’t nearly as good as Aunty Kate’s trifles. In fact I think that’s tinned custard in it. And a B,O,N,E for Tim.

    “Wuff, wuff, wuff!” Pant, pant, pant!

    So he gives it to him and lets him take it outside.

    “I vote for fish finger sandwiches with that nice white bread,” he says calmly.

    Do ya really? So do I! “Yeah, ace. Murray only brought it over today, it’s fresh.”

    “You haven’t been letting him deliver, have you?”

    “Only in dire emergencies, like a howling gale and snow on the tops of the hills. He came today because he wanted to see Baby Bunting on the day he turned six months.”

    “I see.” He turns away and puts marg on the bread without saying anything else, so I come up behind him and put my arms right round him and hug him tightly and say: “Never mind. You made it.”

    “Just,” he says tightly.

    “Mm,” I say, leaning my head against his back. We just stay like that for ages and ages…

    “That was delicious!” he concludes with a laugh, finishing off Juliette’s trifle in front of the fire after a huge meal of fish finger sandwiches. I’m not gonna ask when he last ate, I know I won’t like the answer.

    “Yeah. We could waste wood by bunging some more on the fire, or we could take glasses of something up to bed,” I note.

    Grinning, he votes for glasses of something in bed, fancy that.

    …. Quite some time later. I’m just standing over by Baby’s Bunting cradle, watching him. He hasn’t woken up, in spite of the noise we’ve been making.

    “Rosie, sweetheart, come back to bed.”

    I’m looking at my watch that somehow I forgot to take off. “No. Wait.”

    “For what?” he says in surprise, automatically picking his up from the bedside table and checking it. “Oh,” he says, biting his lip. He gets out of bed and comes over to put his arm round me.

    We wait. Midnight ticks over and Baby Bunting’s first six months have gone.

    “I’m hellishly sorry, Rosie,” he says, swallowing hard.

    “Shut up,” I say, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and sniffing. “It couldn’t be helped. You had to do your duty.”

    “Did I? Now that it’s done, I get the distinct feeling that someone else could have done it instead. What a fool,” he says, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffing.

    No argument there, John.

    Next morning. John’s fast asleep. Could just lie here beside him… He sleeps on. I’ll have to give Baby Bunting his brekky soon and anyway I’m starving. …Isn’t he ever gonna wake up? …Nope. What the heck. I get up and go downstairs. Just as I well I did, because the phone rings. I snatch it up, hoping it hasn’t woken him. It’s Juliette Bellinger, thanking me for the party.

    “Gee, that’s okay, Juliette. Thanks for the super trifle. John turned up not long after you left, so he finished it off for his tea.”

    She’s thrilled to know he’s back. Then she says it was a pity that Bridget and Katie couldn’t make it down yesterday. Sort of emphasis on the “yesterday”.

    “Um, they both had rehearsals.”

    “Yes, they said.”

    “Eh? When?”

    “This morning. They were in Stouts’ first thing, I popped in to get some full-cream milk before work, Ms Deane Jennings only has low-fat. They’re at Quince Tree Cottage.”

    “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Euan drove them?”

    “No, he didn’t. I thought they must’ve come down on last night’s train, but actually Mr Horton gave them a lift.”

    First I emanate numbed silence. Second I croak: “Perry Horton gave them a lift? From London?”

    “Um, yes. Katie mentioned it. He picked them up at, um, the theatre, was it?”

    “Did— What else did they say?”

    “Well, nothing, really, Rosie. I suppose he had to be in London and one of the girls mentioned they were coming down.”

    One of the girls. Right. Feebly I agree with her, ask after little Kiefer, he's fine, the jelly had no apparent effect on him, and She never noticed a thing, and we ring off.

    “What?” I mutter. To my knowledge Bridget hasn’t set eyes on him for about three months. Driving them down from London? “Oh, bullshit!”

    “What is?” says an interested baritone from the doorway and I scream and leap ten feet in the air.

    “Don’t do that!”

    “I'll do this instead.” He comes over and hugs me very hard, mmm…. “What’s bullshit?” he says into my hair.

    “Nothing. Perry Horton doesn’t even drive!” I state grimly.

    “Yes, he does, darling: drives himself up to Scotland every so often to see his friend David,” he says in mild surprise.

    “But— Well, what does he drive?”

    “An ancient and honourable Bentley: about the same vintage as my Jag—you do know this, Rosie.”

    “Uh—oh. Shit, yeah, ya did mention— But we did the survey and everything, he hasn’t got a garage!”

    “I suppose it was logical that you’d rule out a car on that account. Graham Howell garages it for him, sweetheart, you’d better correct your survey paper.”

    I nod numbly.

    “Why are you so disturbed?” he asks.

    “It’s nothing”

    He kisses me rather thoroughly but releases me and says: “Come on, I’ll make some coffee, shall I? Baby Bunting’s asleep but I have a strong feeling that if we go back to bed, he’ll wake up.” He propels me into the kitchen but instead of starting on the coffee he says: “I had the strong impression it wasn’t nothing, Rosie.”

    “All right, then. Juliette Bellinger saw Bridget and Katie in Stouts’ first thing, and Katie told her that Perry Horton gave them a lift down last night.”

    “Perhaps he was in town seeing his lawyer, darling.

    “That’s not the point!”

    “What is?” he says, measuring coffee.

    “Bridget’s given me the impression that she hasn't seen hair nor hide of him these past three months.”

    John finishes filling the coffee-pot and puts it methodically on its little electric burner. “I see. I’d have said that Bridget was totally incapable of prevarication.”

    “Ye—Um, so would I, but then I’d have said she was incapable of rocking up to a bloke’s house with a book he’d forgotten he’d ever said he wanted to read—if he ever had.”

    “Mm… That doesn't mean she has been seeing him, sweetheart. Has Katie said anything?”

    No, but Katie’s been off me for a while, since that episode, make that those two episodes, come to think of it, at Eddyvane Hall. “Um, no, but I haven’t seen much of her.”

    John sits down slowly at the kitchen table. “This doesn't indicate anything much, Rosie. Certainly not that Perry’s serious about her. And it may be quite true that she hasn’t seen him for months. Has she been down here since Christmas?”

    “Um, she came and stayed the weekend with me once, and another time she stayed with Katie. Only maybe she has, and she hasn’t let on to me.”

    “Ye-es… Darling, don’t be cross, but possibly Bridget’s rather fed up with everybody, um, taking too close an interest in her poor little affairs of the heart these past few years.”

    “Me, ya mean.”

    “Mm. Well, you did make it pretty clear that you hoped she’d fall for Matt when we were all in America, sweetheart.”

    I did not!

    John’s pouring coffee. “Want some coffee?” I let him give me a cup of real coffee with loads of sugar and milk. He sips his and says: “Just try leaving the girl alone, and, um, pretending you’re not interested for a bit, would be my advice, Rosie.”

    “But I am interested!”

    “I know,” says my hubby with a little smile.

    “But—” I give up, and groan: “All right, I’ll pretend to ignore the whole thing!”

    “Mm. It may be nothing, sweetheart. And even if Bridget— Well, Perry’s good sense may prevail.”

    Right, and pigs might fly. It has dawned on me that, eccentric and determined though Perry Horton is, Bridget in her quiet way is miles more determined. I don’t say it: John will have worked it out long since.

    And given there’s now a wail from upstairs, I haul myself to my feet and go and get him. John comes too so I generously let him change the nappy. Then we go downstairs and he watches numbly as Baby Bunting sits up on my knee like Jacky and eats, er, mashes and mumbles his shlop. Eventually saying feebly: “He needs a highchair.”

    “Yeah, but don't let Jack make one: he’s done far too much already and they're terribly fiddly. I meant to drop a hint to Fiona yesterday, but I forgot.”

    “Fiona came down yesterday?” says her brother in a stunned voice.

    “Yes, her and Penny came together.”

    He’s still stunned and he wants to know who else, so I tell him.

    “Not Rupy?” he says weakly at last.

    “No. He was really peeved he couldn’t get away, especially since Michael came, but Paul had scheduled a rehearsal.”

    He just nods feebly and watches numbly as I heat up the bottle in the microwave. He hadn’t realised he was fully weaned, yikes!

    “Um, yeah. Like, when they go onto shlop and mushed-up bananas and, um, like that”—little bits of bread with hundreds and thousands on it, right—“that means they're gonna be ready for more solid stuff soon and they don’t need the milk. And I was drying up anyway.”

    “Mm. Let me feed him, Rosie.”

    Ouch. Last time Greg tried to give him his bottle he screamed blue murder. Then Jack had a go, after all he is a very experienced grandfather, but he screamed again. I began to wonder if he just doesn't like men so I let Lynne Carter try and he took it like a lamb. So either he doesn’t like the specific Greg and Jack, or… I hand him over. He screams blue murder. Oh, God.

    “He’s decided he only likes ladies,” I say with a sigh, taking him back. Suck, suck, suck like a greedy little pink piglet—right.

    “Or only Mummy?” he says, trying to smile.

    “No, he lets Lynne Carter feed him but he won’t take it from Greg or Jack. I thought that was a fair sample, statistically speaking, but I could continue the sampling, if ya like. Or we could try stuffing a cushion down ya front.”

    “That’s not funny,” he says, biting his lip.

    “Balls, John, ya trying not to laugh.

    He does grin, but he says: “Well, I’m glad it’s not just me.”

    Yeah, so am I, actually.

    “Tea?” he says mildly.

    I open my eyes with a gasp. “Is it morning?”

    “Yes. Tea, darling?”

    “Eh? Are you up already?”

    “You were snoring peacefully, so I did get up and make a pot of tea, yes.”

    In his old navy jumper under his overalls? Is this the beginning of the end, or what?

    “It’s a nice fine day,” he says mildly, possibly not in explanation of why he’s dressed on a Sunday morning, when he’s only been home for a couple of days! Most of which we’ve had blissfully to ourselves, the word of course went round the village that the Fleet was in, and everyone had the tact not to disturb us.

    “Why are you dressed?”

    “Mm? Oh. Well, Jack’s coming over early, sweetheart. We’re going to concrete the path, get it done for you.”

    For me? I don’t drive, so I don’t need to walk from the kitchen to the garage, and in fact he always backs the car down the drive and me and Baby Bunting just nip across to it from the front door. The weather’s got no drying in it so I won’t need to walk down the new path and up its extension to stand on the new row of stepping-stones to put the washing on the new line above them. So what makes them imagine they’re doing it for me?

    “I see. I’ll just have a pee and then I’ll have the tea, thanks, John,” I say feebly, getting out of bed. And not pointing out that yesterday they didn’t have no concrete to concrete with, because he’ll have an answer for that, you betcha.

    I nip back under the covers real quick. Boy, that ensuite’s chilly. “That’s not Earl Grey, is it?”

    “No, it’s English Breakfast, cuckoo,” he says mildly.

    Yes, so it is. Aah! “You could make breakfast, if you wannoo,” I note casually.

    “Of course, darling. What do you fancy?”

    What I fancy, ya nong, is a bit of the other. “Anything. One of the really rotten things about being the one that has to get the meals is that you have to make the ruddy decisions, hasn’t anyone ever told you that before?”

    “No,” he says, staring.

    Folks, he makes decisions all day and every day as part of his normal working life, why did I even bother to open my mouth? “Well, take it from me. You know my tastes, Watson.”

    “But I don't want to make anything that you don’t particularly fancy today,” he says, frowning over it.

    “Have I got my period? –No. Is my period even due? –No. Then apart from third-strength muesli, anything, John. I could probably even look a nice black pudding in the eye without blenching.”

    “Is there any— Silly question. Damn, I wish you hadn’t said that, I could just fancy a nice black pudding!” he says with a laugh.

    Blast, the last of that remaining packet of fish fingers that we had with peas and instant mash last night can’t have been filling enough for a bloke that spent the whole day, er, the bits we didn’t spend in bed, slaving over his boat. But of course he never said anything. “Nip over to the Superette. Or Tom Hopgood might have some real ones.”

    He looks at his watch. My God, he’s even got his watch on! So much for any faint hope that after the tea…

    “I tell you what, darling, I’ll walk over; take Tim. Hopgood should be open by then. Er, he does open on Sundays, does he?”

    “Yeah, just in the mornings: he discovered he was losing custom from the wanking weekenders. And if you’re too early, could you pop in at the Garden Centre while you’re waiting and see if they’ve got any lambs’ lettuce seeds?”

    “What?” he says faintly.

    “Don’t look at me, I don’t even know what it is! Greg reckons we can plant it now and get a nice crop. Personally I’d of thought that hard frost that killed off them early lettuces he put in would be sufficient warn—” He stops the yattering by bending down and giving me a smacking kiss.

    “Mmm! What was that for, if anything?”

    “I think it was for your being such a daft ’ap’orth! Lambs’ lettuce seeds—right. See you later, Rosie darling.”

    Honestly! Barely back three days, and not waking me up, and getting dressed— And Jack can’t be due that soon, or he wouldn’t of suggested walking over to the village!

    Much later. It’s all done, Greg and Jack have pushed off to Jack’s to watch whatever mind-bogglingly boring sporting fixture is on TV this arvo, and Fiona and Norman have arrived on schedule, and it’s dawned: one has to get one’s path done first thing in order to change into one’s decent slacks and good cream Aran-knit cardy to receive one’s very own sister that’s only known one all her life. God give me strength. Possibly to spite him I give them Vegemite sandwiches and supermarket sultana cake for afternoon tea but they're too polite to look surprised. And anyway, the only other available spreads are peanut butter or John's Royal marmalade. There aren’t any biscuits because I’m the sort of person that if she buys a nice packet of biscuits she eats them.

    Of course they had to admire the flat and the path and inspect the cottages, and after the afternoon tea, since Baby Bunting’s really perky and the weather’s what they call pleasant, this means there’s an occasional glimpse of blue sky and it isn’t raining, we bundle him up and walk along the beach. Fiona’s rather tall and thin, very elegant bones, same sort of physical type as Lady Mother, and a very up-market voice, but genuinely well intentioned and genuinely adores Baby Bunting. So I let her tell me how nice my black Harrods slacks and blue Harrods jumper are without telling her who chose them, when, or why. Norman’s a short, stout, balding character in his mid-fifties: he’s a merchant banker and starts off telling John about some deal in the City but then gets going on gardening. John’s carrying Baby Bunting so I just hug his arm rather tight and occasionally gurgle or chirp at our son but otherwise don’t say a thing. Even though I’m almost sure John doesn’t want any of those plants that Norman’s mentioned and in any case our front garden would be too windy and salty for any of them. Added to which they’d get in the way if we wanted to reinstate Jamaica some summer. It’s possibly the most unremarkable afternoon you could imagine but we all end up back home very pink-cheeked and happy.

    They can’t stay for dinner because Norman’s got an early meeting tomorrow. (He’s not the sort of person that would ever call it a breakfast meet. Or recognise the expression if he heard it.) And off they go, Fiona at the last moment winding her window down and crying: “Don’t worry, John, I won’t forget the highchair!”

    “When didja mention that?” I croak as he urges me quickly back inside.

    “Mm? Oh—when she rang,” he says, closing the door and steering the two of us over to the fire. “Fancy a drink? Sherry? Or what about a rum toddy?”

    We make it rum toddies. I don’t know what he does to them: I’ve watched him and I’ve tried making them with the exact same ingredients, but mine never turn out this good.

    “Happy?” he says as we settle down on the honourable sofa in front of the fire.

    “Yeah,” I agree with a sigh. “Happy and peaceful.”

    “I've missed this,” he says, knocking back the rum.

    “Uh—thought the Navy invented the stuff?”

    “No! Cuckoo! Home.”

    Yeah. Well, apply for a shore job, John. I’m not gonna say it. I won’t try to stop old Bernard talking to him, I haven’t got any impulse to be a martyr, but it’s not gonna be me that pushes for it, see? Much as I want, it, I am aware that if I push for it and he agrees to appease me, it’ll never work.