That evening, in the garden, Jane forgives me for picking a half-grown cucumber which I mistake for a courgette. Potatoes come out of the ground white, I discover. The brown skin forms afterwards. Jacob joins us on his return, in the company of Annie and Sam whom he has met at the gate. He has the Listener in his hand and a parcel of cheese wrapped in vine leaves for his wife.
‘For you, my love,’ he says. ‘Not for anybody to share with you.’
‘Not even you?’ she says. She is touched. ‘Oh, Jake.’
Wrapped in the Listener he has a Dillon’s bag which he hands to me. In it is a copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
‘Take a holiday from The Great Tradition,’ he says. I thank him, profusely, being honoured by the gift.
‘A Young Person’s Guide to the New Jerusalem, eh, Jake?’ Jane says. ‘I’m rather glad I got the cheese. I’m too old to be converted.’
‘I’m coming out simultaneously in paperback,’ he says to her. She rejoices and kisses him.
‘Oh, wow,’ she says. ‘Oh, Jake, wow.’
‘Come out with me tonight,’ he says. ‘Leave the children, leave the guests and come out with me. Hold hands with me at the pictures.’
‘I have to tell you, Jake, that I’ve been having fairly regular labour contractions this afternoon,’ she says.
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘That’s it then for the next six months. Or can one hire a wet nurse? Who needs an au pair? Why is the world full of au pairs? A wet nurse is what we need.’
‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she says, ‘I’d better not go anywhere tonight.’
‘Sweetheart,’ he says, accepting the inevitable. He turns to Annie and Sam. ‘Jane will have a baby for you tomorrow. Rosie will be more than pleased to see you two lose your place as the family babies.’ Jane laughs a little.
‘She will, won’t she?’ she says. ‘Poor Rosie.’
Jane makes the children’s supper that evening, leaning against the table periodically, to breathe deeply as her uterine muscles contract. She has ‘phoned the midwife and the doctor from the kitchen telephone. I find it all more exciting than I can say and am astonished at how cool she is.
‘I thought people gripped a bed and screamed,’ I say.
‘That happens later,’ she says. ‘Later on is when I go to pieces. I’ve never been one of these insufferable people who does it all right.’ Jacob and John are watching the television news in the playroom. Jonathan is doing some homework at the kitchen table. He had spread a newspaper over the mess and has his Latin on top of it. I engage Rosie and the twins in a game of Snap on the kitchen floor, but Rosie’s perception is, of course, too quick for the others. Nor is she old enough yet to indulge their urge to win.
‘Snap!’ she shouts relentlessly. ‘Snap! Snap!’ The babies storm her to grab back their cards. Jane despatches the twins sharply to the playroom to join Jacob before she goes into another of her spasms.
‘Jont,’ she says, ‘I’m going to be sick.’ Deftly, Jonathan grabs a large antique jug from the shelf beside him and inverts, on to the table, a small pile of paper clips, trading stamps and string before handing it to her.
‘Heave into this, Ma,’ he says, which she does.
‘Get Jake,’ she says, when she can raise her head. ‘Tell him I’m going to bed. Tell him there’s puke on the table.’
‘Snap!’ Rosie shouts. ‘I’ve won.’
Roger comes home with his violin in its case.
‘Hello,’ he says. He turns a chair round and sits on it astride the back. He puts his violin on top of Jonathan’s Latin. Rosie is doing a handstand against the kitchen door.
‘Jane is having her baby,’ she says, glad to be first with the news. Jonathan comes in.
‘Mother is giving birth,’ he says. He picks up the jug of vomit and goes to the door with it. ‘Cheers,’ he says, disgustingly. We hear him flush it away in the downstairs loo. Roger says nothing but the event puts him on edge.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he says. We coincide with the midwife on the path to the front door. I eye her bag for signs of crochet hooks and lead pills.
‘Which one are you?’ she says heartily to Roger. ‘Did I deliver you?’ In spite of their differences, the Goldman children have the look of having come off the same conveyor belt.
‘I am Myself,’ Roger says witheringly. He has a powerful line in animosity. He pulls the Hamlet hat further over his eyes to hide from her. We walk across a field to the right of the house towards a stream. Beyond the stream, which we cross, is a rather morbid little chicken battery belonging to the neighbouring farm, and, alongside that, a blackberry wilderness where we pick and eat.
‘Jane says you can get blackberries without thorns,’ he says as he examines a scratch on his wrist. ‘She’s going to grow them.’
‘Have you always lived here?’ I say. He shakes his head.
‘Since I was five,’ he says. He hands me some blackberries which he has picked from beyond my reach. ‘We used to live in Belsize Park. Where do you live?’
‘Hendon,’ I say. ‘I take my cat to the vet in Belsize Park.’
‘We used to live on Haverstock Hill,’ he says. I grow silently desperate, thinking that Roger will be gone in four days and all we do is have these dead-end conversations. Suddenly Roger says, ‘Once Jont and I were picking blackberries in Oxford. In my grandmother’s garden. We tried an experiment to prove the existence of God, because the grandparents had been converting us. We were about four and seven, I think. We kept muttering abuse to the Holy Ghost to see if the wrath of God would come down. The neighbours heard and told on us. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. My grandfather tried to make us pray for forgiveness. I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t.’
‘Isn’t praying embarrassing?’ I say. ‘Isn’t it excruciating?’
‘At least C of Es do it with a book so that there’s an end,’ Roger says. ‘Quakers go on for ever when the spirit moves them. Our headmaster was a Quaker.’ He gives me another handful of berries.
‘Pentecostals do it to a Wurlitzer,’ I say. ‘Get moved, I mean. I heard them on the radio.’ I walk six feet in the air for noticing that I have made Roger laugh. As we walk back to the house, as I try not to break a leg in my silly shoes, I think admiringly that I have taken berries from the hand of one who does not balk at performing experiments on the Almighty.