‘Oh yes, it’s the very busiest time for everyone, of course,’ Kayo continued with a look of nostalgic concern for the households at Tsunamachi and Gotenyama. The flesh of her slight shoulders that had always been so plump and of her fair-skinned cheeks with the peach-like bloom seemed somehow less full today, which, with the weariness about her eyes, gave her girlish body a new womanly appeal and pathos.

‘I have to thank you for letting me have the baby here in peace.’

‘Yes, she was really lucky,’ put in Shin. ‘Kayo’s mother isn’t her real mother either, it seems, so I suppose it would be difficult to tell her about this kind of thing. And the lady at Tsunamachi is no blood-relation of Kazuya’s either, is she…? Kayo says she owes everything to Mrs. Shirakawa at the big house …’

‘The baby – is he asleep?’ Without getting up Tomo edged across the tatami to where the baby had been set down on the edge of the checkered silk bedding.

‘He’s just had a good feed, you see …’ said Kayo half apologetically and gently shifted the gauze in which the baby’s chin was buried so as to let Tomo see the whole of his tiny face.

‘Gently, gently, he musn’t be woken up, now,’ Tomo said reprovingly to Kayo as she leaned cautiously across to peer at the baby. The baby, who was not yet twenty days old, and still had no eyebrows, was a flabby mass of innocence that looked as though it would sink without resistance if one pressed it with a finger. The indistinct, soon-to-disappear creases in its forehead and cheeks gave an almost animal texture to the flesh. Yet even from this tiny, amorphous lump of flesh there emerged unmistakably, in the area around the forehead and the bridge of the nose, the face of Kazuya. In the deep furrow of the eyelids there even lurked a definite hint of Takao’s face as a small child. No doubt about it, the child carried on the Shirakawa line. At the thought, a shiver of revulsion ran down Tomo’s back. If this had been Kayo’s child by Takao rather than by Kazuya she would surely never have dreamed of taking it from the cradle and giving it away to strangers. Only too well she knew without having to weigh things up in her heart the discrepancy in her love for those two grandchildren – Takao whom she had reared with her own hand and Kazuya, fruit of Miya’s womb.

‘There’s a likeness, isn’t there?’ said Shin, looking at Tomo and deliberately avoiding any mention of Kazuya’s name. Tomo nodded without speaking then said:

‘He’s a dear baby and he has a beautiful complexion.’