The clerk looked at it and said, ‘Oh, that Mr Smith And the bridal suite. Why didn't you say so?'

‘I did say so, ten minutes ago.'

‘I am very sorry, sir. Front!'

Twenty minutes later I was in a wonderful tub of hot, soapy water, just like Chicago six years earlier. I almost fell asleep in the tub, then realised that I was keeping my bridegroom out of the bath, and pulled myself together. ‘Briney! Shall I fill a tub for you?'

No answer. I dried off a bit, wrapped the towel around me, aware that I was a scandalous sight (and a provocative one, I hoped).

My gallant knight was fast asleep, still in his clothes, lying across the bedspread.

There was a silver bucket just inside the door - ice and a bottle of champagne.

I got out my nightgown (virginal white and perfumed; it had been Mother's bridal nightgown) and a pair of bunny slippers. ‘Brian. Briney. Please wake up, dear. I want to help you undress, and open the bed, and get you into it.'

‘Murrf.'

‘Please, dear.'

‘I wasn't asleep.'

‘No, of course not. Let me help you off with your boots.'

‘I c'n get ‘em.' He sat up and reached for them.

‘Ali right, dear. I must let the water out of the tub, then I'll run a bath for you.'

‘Your water is still in the tub?'

‘Yes.'

‘Let it be; I'll use it. Mrs Smith, you couldn't get a tub of water dirty; you would just impart a delicious flavour?

Sure enough, my gallant knight did bathe in my bath water (still lukewarm). I climbed into bed... and was sound asleep when he came to bed. He did not wake me.

I woke up in darkness about two or three, frightened to find myself in a strange bed - then remembered. ‘Briney?'

‘You awake now?'

‘Awake some.' I snuggled closer.

Then I sat up and got rid of that nightgown; I was getting bound up in it. And Briney took off his nightshirt, and for the first time both of us were bare all over and it was wonderful and I knew that all my life had just been preparation for this moment.

After an unmeasured time that had started out slowly, we both took fire together - after that, I was lying quietly under him, loving him.

‘Thank you, Briney. You are wonderful.'

‘Thank you. Love you.'

‘Love you, my husband. Briney. Where's your cat? In Cincinnati? In Rolla?'

‘Eh? No, no. In Kansas City.'

‘Here? Boarded with someone?'

‘I don't know:

‘I don't understand.'

‘You haven't picked it out yet, Mo. It's the kitten you're going to give me. Bride's present to the bridegroom.'

- ‘Oh! Briney, you're a scamp!' I tickled him. He tickled me. It resulted, by stages, in Maureen being disgracefully noisy again. Then I got my back scratched. Having your back scratched is not the only reason to be married, but it is a good one, especially for those spots that are so hard to reach by yourself. Then I secratched his back. We finally went to sleep all tangled up in each other like a basket of kittens.

Maureen had at last found out what she was good for, her true destiny.

We had champagne for breakfast.

Chapter 7 - Ringing the Cash Register

From having read candid autobiographies written by liberated women in the twentieth century, especially those published after the second phase of the Final Wars, c. 195= et seq., I know that I am expected to tell in detail all aspects of my first pregnancy and of me birth of my first child - all about morning sickness and my cyclic moods and the tears and the loneliness... then the false labour, the unexpected breaking of the bag of waters, followed by eclampsia and emergency surgery and the secrets I spilled under anaesthesia.

I'm sorry but it wasn't that way at all. I've seen women with morning sickness and it's obviously horrible, but I never experienced it. My problem has always been to ‘stay on the curve', not gain more weight than my doctor thought was healthy for me. (There have been times when I would have killed for a chocolate éclair.)

With my first baby labour lasted forty minutes. If having babies in hospitals had been the expected thing in 1899, I would have had Nancy on the way to the hospital. As it was, Brian delivered Nancy, under my direction, and it was much harder on him than it was on me.

Dr Rumsey arrived and retied the cord and cut it, and told Brian he had done an excellent job (he had). Then Dr Rumsey took care of the delivery of the afterbirth, and Briney fainted, poor lamb. Women are more rugged than men; they have to be.

I've had longer labours than that one but never a terribly long one. I did not have an episiotomy with that first one (obviously!) and I did not need a repair afterwards. On later births I never allowed a knife to be used on me down there and so I have no soar tissue there, just undamaged muscle.

I'm a brood mare, built for it, wide in my thighs and with a birth canal made of living rubber elastic. Dr Rumsey told me that it was my attitude that made the difference but I know better; my ancestors gave me the genetic heritage that makes me a highly efficient female animal, for which I am grateful... as I have seen women who were not; they suffered terribly and some of them died. Yes, yes, ‘natural selection' and ‘survival of the fittest' and Darwin was right -stipulated. But it is no joke to attend the funeral of a dear friend, dead in her golden youth because her baby killed her. I was at such a funeral in the twenties and heard a sleek old priest talk about ‘God's will'. At the graveside I managed to back away from the coffin such that I got him proper in his instep with a sharp heel. When he yelped, I told him it was God's will.

Once I had a baby in the middle of a bridge game. Pat it was, Patrick Henry Smith, so that makes it 1932 and that makes it contract we were playing, not auction, and that all fits together, as Justin and Eleanor Weatheral taught us contract after they learned it and we were playing at their house. Eleanor and Justin were parents of Jonathan Weatheral, husband of my first-born, so the Weatherals were a Howard marriage themselves, but they were our friends long before we knew that about them. We did not learn it until the spring Jonathan showed up on Nancy's Howard Foundation list of young male eligibles.

In this bridge game I was Justin's parmer; Eleanor was Briney's partner. Justin had dealt; contract had been reached and we were about to play, when I said, ‘Put your hands face down and put paperweights on them; I'm having a baby!'

‘Forget the hand!' said my husband.

‘Of course,' agreed my partner.

‘Hell, no!' I answered in my ladylike way, ‘I bid the bloody thing; I'm damn well going to play it! Help me up from here!'

Two hours later we played the hand. Dr Rumsey, Jr., had come and gone; I was on Eleanor's bed with the table, legs collapsed and supported by pillows, across my lap, and my new son was in my partner's arms. El and Briney were on each side of me, half seated on the bed. I had bid a small slam in spades, doubled and redoubled, vulnerable.

I went down one trick.

Eleanor tilted her nose at me and pushed it up with the tip of her finger. ‘Smarty, smarty, missed the party!' Then she looked very startled. ‘Mo! Move over, dear! I'm about to have mine!'

So Briney delivered two babies that night and Junior doc had to come back just as soon as he reached home and grumbled at us that he did wish we would make up our minds; he was going to charge us mileage and overtime. Then he kissed us and left - by that time we had long known that the Rumseys were Howards, too, which made Junior Doc a member of the family.

I called Ethel, told her we were staying overnight, and why. Is everything all right, dear? Can you and Teddy manage? (Four younger ones at home. Five? No, four.)