THE VIOLENT OUTRAGE overhead went away and was replaced by human noise: Win, howling Ruth’s name, punctuated by the various aliases of God. Ruth tried to call back, tried to say that she was all right, but found that she had no voice. The next thing was the banging of the gate and young Tommy Slender running to the back door, going, “Gor, bogger! Missus? Ruthie? You seen that? That Jerry? Come over just now? That near on took our chimbley off!”

Ruth got her elbows under her and looked down the garden path. The boy was running circles on the rough concrete between the kitchen door and the outside lavatory. He had his arms stretched out and was making shooting noises; they mixed strangely with Win’s howling.

“Fadda fadda fadda!”

“Ruth! Dear God, Jesus Christ!”

“Brahahaaa! You seen our boys come arter him? Bogger!”

“Sweet Lord! Ruth!”

Then Chrissie Slender was looking down at her.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You dunt look it. Can you get yerself up?”

“I dunno,” Ruth said.

“Wait you there, then,” Chrissie said, and went away.

She came back with Win, who was white-faced and fluttery, and Tommy, who had one ear pinker than the other because it had just been slapped. They pulled and pushed Ruth to her feet. The moment she was upright, a pain the shape of lightning went through her and she cried out. She thought it might be the pain of the child dying; for all she knew, violent noise might kill babies in the womb.

After a moment or two she could walk.

In the kitchen, she perched her backside on a high stool; for some time now she’d been unable to sit comfortably on a chair. Win was useless. She walked in and out of the room, clapping her hands together, looking up at the ceiling, and mumbling stuff from the Bible. Chrissie put the kettle on the stove and made a pot of tea. She found a damp residue of sugar in a crumpled blue paper bag and spooned it all into Ruth’s cup.

“Drink it,” she told Ruth. “Yer’ve had a shock. That’ll settle you.”

Ruth took a couple of sips.

“Thas it,” Chrissie said. “Thas brought the color back to yer cheeks already.”

Ruth had, in fact, gone quite red in the face. But it wasn’t recovery. It was shame. For some reason she’d let go of herself. Her lower parts were a hot flood.

Tommy said, “Mum, she’re wet herself!”

“No, she hent,” Chrissie said. “And mind yer bleddy manners. Ruthie, I reckon yer waters hev broke. D’you know what that mean?”

Ruth shook her head. She had a hot wet cup and hot wet legs and didn’t know what to do with any of them.

“That mean baby’s ready to come,” Chrissie said. “You got to get upstairs. Tommy, get you home and get the bike and fetch Nurse Salmon up here. Thomas! You hear what I say?”

“Yeah.”

“Then dunt stand there lookun like a bleddy fish. Do what I told yer.”

Tommy ran the thirty yards home pretending that the sky was full of Nazis and that he was dodging their bombs. His mother’s bike was leaning against the wall of the outside lav. It was a woman’s bike, without a crossbar. Tommy was too short to sit on the seat and reach the pedals, so he rode it standing up with his face almost level with the handlebars, machine-gunning everything that crossed his path.

District Nurse Salmon had retired in the summer of 1939. Bad timing. Ten months later, the Cottage Hospital outside Borstead started to fill up with damaged soldiers and airmen, and she found herself called upon to tender to the needs of the civilian population. The local doctor, a depressed and alcoholic Scot, steadfastly refused to visit civilian patients who could not pay his fees (in guineas). So instead of gardening and reading and walking her fat little terrier, Miss Salmon spent the first six years of her retirement cycling hither and yon, dealing with fevers and earaches, tweezering gravel out of boys’ knees, dressing ulcers, lancing boils, strapping up broken wrists and fingers, dabbing antiseptic on dog bites, stitching cuts, blitzing head lice, and, very occasionally, delivering babies. When she was paid for her services, it was usually in kind: a dozen eggs, half a week’s ration of tea, a rabbit (unskinned), a bundle of carrots, a bottle of parsnip wine. She lived in a tidy little Victorian house a mile and a half from Bratton Morley, set back from the Cromer road. The house suited her; it was plain but slightly posh, as she was. She was in the kitchen frying a slice of belly pork for her lunch when Tommy Slender pounded on her door. She didn’t get to eat it until ten hours later.

Ruth had imagined any number of fearful things about what they called labor. Chrissie had told her it would hurt. (“Thas like havun yer top lip pulled up over yer head.”) But she’d had no idea that it would go on for hours and hours, the pain rolling through her time after time. Even so, it was not the physical agony that almost unhinged her brain; it was the embarrassment. Lying there, spraddled and heaving, with Chrissie holding her down, and old Nurse Salmon peering and poking at the parts of her that not even George had ever had a close look at. Her own language shocked her. When the pain roiled in, she swore and blasphemed in a voice that didn’t seem hers. It was like she was possessed by some raging, goaty old Satan.

Her mother used this as a pretext to excuse herself from the proceedings.

“I ent gorna stay here an lissun to any more of yer language, Ruth,” Win said. “If you can’t get ahold of yerself, I’m off downstairs.”

In truth, Win was more frightened than offended. She noisily cleared up the soot and shards of chimney pot that had spilled from the fireplace, then busied herself in the garden. When it got dark, she sat in the living room with her fingers in her ears, humming hymns. At eleven o’clock, she was shaken awake by Chrissie Slender, who said, “Win? Come you upstairs an say hello to yer grandson. He’re had a helluva struggle gettun here.”

Win followed Chrissie up the stairs. Ruth’s bedroom smelled of sweat and disinfectant. Nurse Salmon was putting things into her leather bag. A stained sheet was bundled at the foot of the bed. It would need a salt-and-soda soak, Win thought, and even that probably wouldn’t do the job. Ruth’s face was yellow and slick in the lamplight. The child lay on her chest, wrapped in a towel. From where she stood, Win could not see its face.

“So. How’re yer doing, Ruth?”

“Dear God,” Ruth said, “I ent gorn through that again.”

“I should hope not,” Win said.

In accordance with George’s wishes, Ruth named the baby boy Clement, after Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party. Win thought it was absurd.