fell as he breathed. Rhoda liked to see it. He stirred and woke and stretched out his hand towards her in an enquiring and generous fashion. Ken, beside Wendy, did not stir.
‘I must go now, darling,’ said Rhoda.
‘But what about this pain?’
‘What does Ken say?’
‘He didn’t seem to think it was anything,’ said Wendy. ‘He just went to sleep.’
‘Then that’s all right,’ said Rhoda. ‘Ken’s always right,’ and put down the phone. One of Wendy’s fears was that if her father died her mother would want to marry Ken. She liked a decisive man, she said. Bruno was not decisive. He was a jobbing gardener by trade. He liked to stand about to see what the weather was going to do next. Wendy took after him, said Rhoda.
Wendy rang her friend Louise but there was no reply. Ken slept on. The pain grew worse. She got out of bed. The waters broke. She mopped the liquid up from the floor with a clean towel, though she knew it meant presently lugging it all the way down to the launderette. Ken didn’t like washing machines, or indeed any domestic machinery, in the house. Should it go wrong he would be expected to mend it: he was a musician, not a mechanic. Presently Wendy wrote a note for Ken suggesting he came on down when he’d had breakfast, walked fifteen minutes to the hospital and admitted herself.
The baby was born at 7.20 in the morning, in the labour ward not the delivery room because Wendy failed to persuade any of the nurses that the baby was on the way.
‘Nurse,’ said Wendy politely, at least once or twice, ‘the baby is coming out. I can feel it.’
‘Nonsense,’ replied the nurses, ‘you’re not even three fingers dilated,’ until one of them, a girl with a lot of red hair, opened Wendy’s legs and looked and screeched, ‘But I can see the head! Why didn’t you tell me?’ and ran off for help. The baby was wholly out by the time she got back with Sister, though in a caul, as if giftwrapped in Clingfilm. ‘Holy Mary Mother of God!’ cried the nurse, crossing herself. Then she fainted, hitting her head on the metal bedstead. Sister attended to the nurse while Wendy attended to the baby, clearing its mouth, nose and eyes. A passing student doctor clipped and tied the umbilical cord for her, and told her the baby was a girl and just fine. These things sometimes happened in even the best run hospitals, he said, and this one was not even particularly well run. By the time Sister returned Wendy had removed the rest of the baby’s wrapping, and was reproached for so doing. Heaven knew what harm she had done. But the baby, so far as Wendy could see, was in good order, firm of limb, bright of eye, smooth of skin and, once released from its wrapping, extremely lively.
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ asked Ken. ‘Sounds as if you needed me. You’re too independent for your own good.’ It was four o’clock in the afternoon. He had wakened at eleven thirty, only just in time for his lunchtime gig. He’d come over as soon as he could. He inspected the baby. ‘Are you sure it’s mine?’ he asked.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Wendy. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘We’re not married,’ he said. ‘How do I know what you get up to?’
‘Perhaps we ought to get married now there’s a baby,’ said Wendy. The girls at work admired her for living with a man and not being married to him, but she could forgo that pleasure, she thought, for the baby’s sake.
‘Musicians make rotten husbands,’ said Ken. ‘When I took up music, it meant giving up all thought of a family. It isn’t fair to the kids.’
‘I suppose it isn’t,’ said Wendy.
‘I hope this baby doesn’t grow up to have your brains and my beauty,’ said Ken. ‘I hope it’s the other way round.’
He’d brought her not flowers, not fruit, but a little orange kitten, which he’d found wandering in the street outside. It dribbled something nasty from its back end on to the white sheet. Ken put it on top of the locker, where it staggered around the perimeter mewing and testing space with its paw.
‘You’ll just have to take it home,’ said Wendy.
‘I can’t,’ said Ken. ‘I’m going straight on to a gig.’
He kissed her fondly.
‘Rhoda isn’t going to like being a grandmother,’ he said. ‘I know,’ said Wendy, happily. Ken