Suddenly it was young again; in a last rush of fluid a pink and hairless puppy bundled itself into Midwife Bell’s arms. As the tears wept from my eyes I felt Miriam’s fingers grip my hands. The dawn light was filling the spaces between my neighbours’ roofs. After a few hours away from me, Miriam had returned and was a wife again.

*   *   *

Miriam slept during the morning, the baby girl in the wickerwork cot beside her. At noon Midwife Bell called, bathed the baby, and pronounced herself satisfied, as if willing to accept the formal entry of our child into the mundane world of time and space. Before leaving, she handed Miriam her makeup case, hairbrush, and mirror. Midwives sat close to the fire, busy with their washings and breaking of the waters, drawing life into the light. By contrast, Miriam’s local physician, Dr. Rogers, with his jovial humour and misplaced advice, resembled a light-headed tour guide searching none too confidently for the sacred spring.

Alice and Henry crept into the bedroom and inspected the baby, curious but faintly disapproving.

“Will she stay with us?” Alice asked.

Miriam laughed at this. “Don’t you want her to stay?”

“I might…”

Henry was more interested in the remnants of the midwife’s equipment, the foil caps, spare swabs, and mouthpiece. Miriam sat up and hugged them tightly. Later I drove them to spend the afternoon with local friends of Miriam, and they were already planning games and initiation ceremonies for their new sister. Seen through my sleepless eyes, Shepperton had changed. The air was more vivid, as if the town were being lit for some large-budget production at the film studios. The women sitting under the driers at the hairdressers, the cashiers behind the counter at the bank, resembled extras recruited to play the roles of ordinary suburbanites. At any moment the action would begin, and I would find that I had a walk-on part and lines of dialogue I had forgotten to learn.

When I returned home Miriam called to me from the bedroom. She had put on a fresh nightdress, combed her hair, and rouged and powdered her face. The slash of lipstick on her mouth was a pennant flying proudly above the debris of this quiet room.

I looked down at the baby. She had changed yet again, more puckered and more alive, her lips moving while she slept, as if she were trying to remember a message entrusted to her by the unseen powers of creation. Within a few hours she had recapitulated her roles, from archaic messenger to slippery water sprite baptised in her mother’s caul, and then a dreamy swaddling whose skin flinched at the light and air.

“Lucy?” I suggested.

“Yes … Lucy.” Miriam beckoned me to the bed. “You must be exhausted. Come and lie down for an hour.”