“Good for me! Good for me!” I exclaimed with fury, and at my violence the baby unclasped himself and started to cry. I sat him up and patted his back, and tried for his sake to be calm again. “Look,” I said to David, “why don’t we leave this little chat until I’ve finished feeding Joe? It’s not worth upsetting him, I’ll be here all evening if we go on like this. Why don’t you leave me alone for half an hour, and then we can begin again?”

“I’ll leave you for the night if you want,” he said, getting up and finishing his beer. “But there won’t be any point in beginning again. I signed the contract this morning.” And thereupon he walked out.

Poor Joseph imbibed a good deal of bile along with his milk that evening. I subsequently found out that what Dave had said about the contract was not in fact true. He had not signed it, as I should have suspected at the time, and did not do so until he had dragged a formal approval out of me. On the other hand, the determination that I had recognized in him had been quite real, and what was my determination against his? There was nothing I could say or do to deflect him. I thought that he might have had the fairness to wait until Joseph’s feed was over before raising the subject: our tempers are evenly matched, and we usually conduct our discussions with equal virulence, but one is at a hopeless disadvantage with a baby on one’s knee, with milk dripping all over and the prospect of a sleepless night if one loses one’s temper. It is too much to expect of other people that they will remember such conditions. I do not expect it, but on the other hand, I cannot behave as though they have remembered. So my behaviour is ruined, even while I try to preserve my judgment. I often think that motherhood, in its physical aspects, is like one of those trying disorders such as hay fever or asthma, which receive verbal sympathy but no real consideration, in view of their lack of fatality, and which, after years of attrition, can sour and pervert the character beyond all recovery. Motherhood has of course infinite compensations, though I can well believe that some people are driven to a point where they cannot feel them.