At eleven o’clock, Jacob comes into the kitchen with the doctor, who takes his leave. I am there with John and Jonathan; Roger has gone to bed.
‘Well,’ Jacob says stoically, ‘I’ve known worse.’ He puts the kettle on to make Jane and the midwife some tea. ‘She’s got it all out. The babe is female and a very decent size.’
‘How is she?’ John says.
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Somewhat grey and washed out, of course. The human frame is not particularly well designed for the purpose. It’s easier for cats and horses. The infant is nibbling happily. Come in and see her.’
Jane is sitting up in a very pretty old brass bed, propped on candy-striped pillows. Her face is lined and slightly puffy. The midwife is sitting on the bed with her, talking coaxingly, rather idiotically, to the baby.
‘Come on, don’t be a lazy girl,’ she says, ‘take the whole nipple, darling, or your mother will get sore. We can’t have that, can we?’ She pushes the dark surround of Jane’s nipple expertly into the baby’s mouth. The room smells faintly of menstrual blood. On a tea trolley at the end of the bed is an enamel basin containing an organ, in appearance not unlike an ox heart, as one might see in the butcher’s shop, but trailing bluish umbilical cord. She sees Jonathan look at it.
‘It’s my placenta, Jont,’ she says, reaching out to him. ‘Nature is very messy sometimes. Would you like to hold her?’
‘Okay,’ Jonathan says. He takes the baby with its head in the palm of his hand, swaddled, as it is, in cellular blanket like an infant Christ. Quattrocento. ‘Hello, little rat,’ he says.
‘She’s beautiful,’ says the midwife reproachfully.
‘Just a good size to go in your saddle-bag, isn’t she, Jont?’ Jane says. ‘Would you like to take her to school tomorrow? Bumpety over the cobbles?’
‘It is tomorrow,’ John says. ‘Katherine and I are off now, Jane.’ He gives her a kiss. ‘Don’t exhaust yourself, will you? We’ll meet again soon. Come up to London.’
‘Come again, Katherine,’ Jane says to me. ‘Write me your ‘phone number on the wall in the kitchen.’ She kisses me. ‘Jacob, make her do it,’ she says. ‘Where’s Roggs?’
‘He fell asleep,’ Jonathan says, ‘playing himself at chess.’
John drives us with grim and silent purpose to the nearest hotel and signs us in. I have no power to object. I feel, as I enter the foyer, that I have an electronic beeper on the third finger of my left hand announcing the absence of the wedding ring. I am morbidly fascinated by his preening beauty, which borders upon the physically repulsive in its narcissism. Although he takes the precaution of undressing in the dark I am aware of grotesquely enlarged male parts in silhouette, as you get in Aristophanes, tied on for ribald effect. As my mind connects, suddenly, with what the biology teacher told us about erectile tissue in the reproduction of the rabbit, I realise, with relief, that this is routine. There is no difficulty of access and no pain. Just a comforting and unremarkable filling of a gap. Easier than one’s first tampon. John, presumably, experiences the additional pleasure of confounding Jacob’s prohibition. In the morning, he drives into London and drops me off at the Hampstead underground station before going on to his office.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he says.