When each new Iremonger was born it was a family custom for them to be given something, a special object picked out by Grandmother. The Iremongers always judged an Iremonger by how he looked after his certain object, his birth object as they were called. We were to keep them with us at all times. Each was different. When I was born I was given James Henry Hayward. It was the first thing that ever I knew, my first toy and companion. It had a chain with it, two feet long, at the end of the chain there was a small hook. When I could walk and dress myself, I wore my bath plug and chain as many another person might wear his fob watch. I kept my bath plug, my James Henry Hayward, out of sight so that it was safe, in my waistcoat pocket while the chain looped out U-shaped from the pocket and the hook was attached to my middle waistcoat button. I was very fortunate in the object I had, not all birth objects were so easy as mine.

While it was true my bath plug was a thing of no monetary value, such as Aunt Onjla’s diamond tiepin (that said Henrietta Nysmith), it was in no way as cumbersome as Cousin Gustrid’s skillet (Mr Gurney), or even my grandmother’s own marble mantelpiece (Augusta Ingrid Ernesta Hoffmann) that had kept her on the second floor all her long life. I did wonder over our birth objects. Should Aunt Loussa ever have taken up smoking had she not been given an ashtray (Little Lil) at birth? She began her habit at seven years of age. Should Uncle Aliver ever have been a doctor if he was not presented with that pair of curved forceps designed for child delivery (Percy Hotchkiss)? And then of course there was my poor melancholy Uncle Pottrick who was given a rope (Lieutenant Simpson) tied into a noose at birth; how miserable it was to see him mournfully limp through the unsteady corridors of his days. But it was deeper than even that, I think: should Aunt Urgula have been taller if she had not been given a footstool (Polly)? It was very complicated, people’s relationships with their birth objects. I used to look at my own and know it fitted me perfectly, my bath plug. I couldn’t say exactly why but I knew it was true. I could never have been given anything else other than my James Henry. There was only one Iremonger’s birth object in the whole family that did not speak a name when I listened to it.

Poor Aunt Rosamud