Summer at Gaglow by Esther Freud

me, and she ushered Pam out of the room.
    ‘You see, no one in our family has boys,’ I tried to explain, ‘hardly ever,’ but the shock of it all had made me dizzy and I closed my eyes.
    Pam was waiting with my camera. As soon as I’d been lifted into bed she packed the baby into my arms. ‘Smile,’ and there I was, delirious with joy, gazing down into his perfect gummy face.
    When I woke up my mother was beside my bed. The baby lay with his head against my arm, and she leant over to give us both a kiss. ‘I can’t believe I slept,’ and I remembered thinking I was too excited ever to fall asleep again.
    ‘I came straight here,’ she said, and I saw a stick of Seven-Eleven flowers standing in a vase, ‘there wasn’t anywhere open,’ and we both grinned down at the baby. “‘And a child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, good and gay.”’
    ‘He is,’ I said, ‘he’s all those things.’ And we laughed to think that he was just a few hours old.
    ‘So what are you going to call him?’ Pam had reappeared, smelling of smoke, and she laid one finger against his hand, which even in sleep was held up quite flat like an important statesman.
    ‘Daisy Pamela Linder.’ I laughed, and we all turned to stare again into his face.
    A nurse put her head round the door. ‘There’s a visitor for you,’ she said. And Pamela looked down at her feet. ‘I’m sorry . . . I got carried away.’
    ‘Tell him to come in.’ I sighed. And I pinched her on the arm. My mother stood up to arrange the flowers.
    Mike shifted from one foot to the other, hovering, and then as if he should, he skirted round the bed to look down at his son. His face, amazed, filled up on the inside with a smile and he slipped one finger against the baby’s palm to see if it would grip. The fingers curled shut like a flower and Mike’s smile spilled out into a grin. ‘He’s great,’ he said, and nudging each other Pam and my mother slipped out of the room.
    With his free hand Mike produced a bunch of flowers. White roses with soft thornless stems, ‘These are for you,’ and he laid them beside me on the bed.
    ‘Thanks.’
    Still attached, he sat down on the narrow mattress, his elbow resting on my legs. I felt a small old thud of pain. ‘I haven’t named him yet.’ I would have liked to call him after my father, but unfortunately Michael had been all used up. My only other relatives were female. ‘How about Emanuel?’ I remembered.
    ‘Emmanuelle, like that seventies porno film?’
    I pulled away from him as best I could. ‘Trust you to think of that.’
    And then the baby raised his chin and yawned. It was a luxurious Walt Disney yawn and, without opening his eyes, he snuggled down again, making small sucking movements like a cat against a dish of milk.
    ‘Did Pamela tell you he was nearly born at the National Theatre?’ And together, silently, we considered Laurence and then thought better of it.
    ‘I hope that doesn’t mean he’s going to be an actor.’ Mike’s voice was gloomy, and I nearly told him about the theatre in Berlin.
    ‘How about Bert?’ I mused, but Mike was staring into the baby’s sleepy, rumpled face, his hair still wet, his eyes glued shut.
    ‘All right son?’ And for the time being we decided he might as well be Sonny.
    My father arrived, dressed up in a suit with brightly polished shoes. He sat formally beside my bed. My legs had thawed but I was still dressed in my pale blue operation gown with drips and tubes attached. Sonny was what the midwives called ‘a good little feeder’. His mouth latched on and as he sucked my milk came in, swelling rock hard with what felt like a gallon of ice cream.
    My father took a letter from his inside pocket. ‘They’ve discovered Gaglow.’ He looked as smily as a fox. ‘And there is no doubt at all that it belongs to us.’
    I shook my head, amazed.
    ‘Well, usually it would be much harder to prove, but it turns out that the house was taken