This was how Nancy had remembered the garden at home. Not with its summer smell of mown grass and trellised roses, but with richly coloured leaves scattered over the brighter green autumn grass and the last of the Michaelmas daisies glowingly purple over by the back of the boathouse. She and Peggy had, after all, spent all their childhood summers determined to escape house and garden and roam as widely as possible, and preferably by sail. They had spent more time in the garden when Amazon was out of the water for the winter. Jane and Susie were running about happily discovering the tiny patches of colour where the plants that their grandmother had planted in random optimism "to give them a chance" had thrived in benign neglect since Nancy and Peggy had been the same age. Julia and Jamie trailed their older sisters more slowly, still eyeing each rather cautiously. Nancy suspected that Julia's nose had been somewhat put out of joint by the way Jane and Susie had squealed with delight and fallen into each other's arms on the station platform. Nancy and Peggy had exchanged grins of delight that their daughters got on so well together.

"Give them another year or so and they'll be conspiring to drive us mad together." Peggy had said, in the evening, when they had finally got all four wildly excited children to sleep.

"A year or so?" Nancy had replied. "They're our daughters, Peg. I give it a few weeks."

Peggy had mentioned Jamie's hair in a letter, but Nancy, who had only seen him in photographs, had somehow been picturing him with the light brown hair Peggy herself had had when they had been very little, and Jamie's bright ginger curls had remained a small surprise to Nancy every time she glanced at her nephew, even this morning as she waddled (There was no other word for it really.) around the garden at Beckfoot with her sister.

"Here are some sticks. We can use them to make a house." Julia announce with the natural authority of three- and- a-bit speaking to not-quite-two. "You can bring the sticks over here and I can make them into a house."

Jamie seemingly had no fault to find with this plan and dutifully brought sticks over to his cousin one at a time, left thumb firmly planted in his mouth.

Nancy and Peggy watched the activity for a bit, while Jane and Susie solemnly paced out the vegetable patch Bridget had dug out from the lawn in the first year of the war, now newly reseeded with grass and fenced off with bamboo and twine. The little girls were counting aloud to themselves.

"I'm afraid John told Jane that a yard was one big step, and she isn't really prepared to admit that her steps are that much smaller than her Daddy's." Nancy said.

"They'll get stuck in a second." Peggy said, "Susie can't count to more than twenty."

"Jane can get to fifty." Nancy said, adding hastily as Jane's count reached twenty-nine, forty, forty-one, "On a good day, that is. She can't add and subtract to more than twenty though."

"Aunt Maria wrote another letter to Mother about it." Peggy said.

"About Jane's arithmetic? That's a bit of a cheek. She's only four. The GA should be jolly glad she's got any arithmetic at all."

"About Jane starting school."

"Well, she is going to, in January, I hope." Nancy said. "They don't have to take her until Easter really, I suppose, but she's desperate to start and quite convinced she'll have learned hundreds of things by the end of the first month, at least. Jane would quite happily start next week if they would have her, but they probably won't in the middle of term and it would be a bit hard lines on Julia to be left out of something the moment we get here. Malta's the only place Julia can remember and she was missing it before we were half way home. She got quite cross with me for calling Beckfoot home."

"Did you mind?" Peggy asked.

Nancy laughed. "If I minded every time Julia was cross, I'd be minding all the time. Besides, I'd just decided at that point that I'd made a terrible mistake and should have stayed put on Malta with John until after the baby's here – only then the baby would have been late and he'd be on the other side of the Atlantic by the time it arrived and I'd have to pack up everything and move back with three children."

"I didn't mean that. I meant did you mind about not going to school until they thought I was old enough too and that sort of thing." Peggy said. "Susie minds dreadfully if we can't do something Jamie is too young for, although he walks pretty well for his age."

"Not about school." Nancy said. "I wouldn't have wanted to go away without you. Except sometimes I wished we'd been to a day school first. It would have been a lot easier to put up with it all the lessons if we'd known we could have got into comfortables and messed in Amazon about at the end of the day."

Peggy laughed. "Not much of the day left in winter. But yes. And seeing Mother every day too. Although the GA has been busy pointing out in letters that the school in Rio won't "mould" Jane's character much if the "benefits of a regular regime are undone by indulgence."

"I don't spoil her and I like her character just the way it is!" Nancy exclaimed indignantly.

"I bet you do sometimes."

"Only when I think she needs it."

Peggy grinned sideways at Nancy. That was as close to an admission as you could expect from Nancy, who had always disguised her kindnesses with jollity, or when that failed, a careless manner. Now Peggy thought about it, Susan hid some of her kindness behind her characteristic brisk efficiency in a similar way.

"Although there's a fair chance of Mother and Cook doing a little spoiling, I should have said. They spoil my two enough."

"Not when they'll see my two everyday. Not as much anyhow. And it may come to a boarding school eventually – it probably will in fact – given that John has no intention of packing in the Navy until he retires, but I'm not going to send them away before I have to – and not until they can go together." Nancy grinned at Peggy. Peggy grinned back.

"Anyway," Peggy continued, "The great-aunt is rather more concerned about Jane going to the village school in Rio and learning unsuitable language."

Nancy gave a shout of laughter. "Just as well she doesn't know what Jane's first word actually was. John wasn't all that pleased with it. Surely I must have told you at the time?"

Peggy nodded grinning. "Well, he should have been more careful what he said in front of her then. Serves him right."

"Oh, that was Roger. He owned up pretty handsomely."

All four children were happily occupied and well away from the river. Nancy and Peggy began to wander slowly down to the boathouse.

"There's something very familiar about the house Julia and Jamie are building." Peggy said.

"It's like the House at Pooh corner – you know, the one they build for Eeyore. Julia loves the stories, but she won't let me read it to her. I don't do the voices right."

"Susie and Jamie love it too. What's wrong about the way you do the voices?"

"I don't do them exactly as John does. So, no Daddy, no Winnie-the-Pooh. For the present anyway."

"I don't know if it's safe to let you in the boat-house in your condition." Peggy said. "You're quite sure you're not about to give birth are you? It'll be pretty chilly for the baby."

Nancy laughed and gave her sister the mildest of thumps on the shoulder. "Not the slightest twinge of anything. And the baby isn't due for another fortnight."

"I seem to remember a similar story about Julia."

"She was a week early. Anyone can be a week early. That isn't much. And Jane was late."

With a final glance to see that the children were alright, they went into the boathouse.

"Jamie will squawk if he looks up and I'm not there, though." Peggy said. "We mustn't be long."

"You'velooked after Amazon well, First Mate." Nancy remarked as she examined the dinghy closely. "And Swallow too."

"Quite a bit of that was Dick and Titty. Mostly Titty really."

Nancy glanced over at Scarab. Her rigging, like Swallow's had been replaced fairly recently.

"I shouldn't leave all the work to you." she said, "I'll see about replacing Amazon's rigging this afternoon and maybe tidy up the boat house a little."

"Mummy! Muummyyyy!"

"Come on." said Peggy. "As long as he can see me, it's OK."

Jamie was almost instantly soothed, and the supply of readily available sticks having run out, Jamie and Julia joined the other two on top of the upturned wheelbarrow. Whatever they were doing required the wheel to be spun round rapidly – a job the older two seemed determined to reserve for themselves. They did hear Jane's voice ring out clearly at one point with "You can have a turn when Susie and me have made sure it's working and it's safe."

"Have you chosen names?" Peggy asked, as they settled themselves on the wooden bench against the wall, "Are you sure you're warm enough with your coat flapping about like that?"

"Baking." Nancy said cheerfully, "And I can't fasten it anyway."

"So have you?" Peggy persisted.

"Might have done." Nancy grinned again. "Look, you complete galoot, of course John and I have discussed names for a boy or a girl. The girls insisted on giving their opinions too. Although with Julia's first choice, it wouldn't make much difference which the baby is."

"Lesley?" Peggy hazarded, "Evelyn? Beverley?"

"Flopsy." said Nancy. "Julia has been wanting a rabbit for ages now. Then she wanted Peter for a boy and Cinderella for a girl. Only, after the Flopsy bit, John made it quite clear that I would be getting the final say on names, and not the girls. And I made it quite clear to them that the baby would not be called anything out of Beatrix Potter."

"So John for a boy and.." Peggy trailed off.

"Stop fishing. And not John for a boy. It's not as if you can shorten it to anything shorter and there'd be no end of confusion eventually. It isn't like Jim and Jamie. And Jane is already Jane, so I've had my way on that once already."

"So why was Julia called that? Does John have a Julia in the family?"

Jane's voice rang out again. "We can let them have a go while we carry the hosepipe. It might be heavy. And we said they could. You come and show me where the hosepipe is and Julia can have a go and then Jamie can have a go."

"You said they could." Susie grumbled, but followed her cousin round the corner of the house in search of the hosepipe. "I didn't."

"No, he just liked the name. People don't necessarily have to be named after other people. Look here, Peggy, what is Mother so uneasy about? Is the thought of several months of the girls and me about the place wearing her out in anticipation? Because if that's the case, she's being a bit of a galoot not to say. I could probably find somewhere to rent over the winter at least quite easily not too far away. Or does she genuinely think I'm going to make a habit of giving birth in boathouses?"

"She hasn't said anything to me – but I'm sure it isn't the first. It might just be Rattletrap, of course."

"What about Rattletrap? It's still on blocks isn't it?"

"That's just the thing – it is. And they're both getting older, Mother and Cook both, and rowing across to Rio or walking to the head of the lake when they want something is getting a bit much. Only I suspect Mother is worrying that she can't remember how to drive. I mean, not even how to drive how she used to drive."

"And other people have stopped expecting to meet her too, not that that ever made a difference with summer visitors. Look here, Peggy I'll tell her she needn't worry about that. I can get something organised about getting Rattletrap of blocks and drivable again – and I can do the driving while I'm here. Not just at the moment of course. That's assuming Rattletrap can be got back into drivable condition."

Susie and Jane reappeared from the yard, carrying loops of hosepipe in their arms.

"Now," said Jane, "There's got to be a telephone call. And you can answer that if you like Jamie."

Jamie shook his head vigourously.

"Well Julia can then, or Susie."

"I'm going to drive the fire-engine," said Susie very firmly. "but I can do both."

"No," said Jane, "You can drive the fire-engine if you like, but everyone must have a job to do. That's fair. Julia answers the telephone and tells us where the fire is and then we all get aboard the fire-engine and go driving off very fast making the right noise and then we get there and all get off and point the hose. Jamie can point the hose."

There was more vigorous head-shaking.

"Well then," said Jane, "We can all point the hose and Jamie can join in if he feels like it. Only someone has to make sure the hose is working properly. I'm going to do that because I haven't had a special job yet – not unless you count getting the hose and that was before we started playing properly."

"It's not attached to the tap is it?" Nancy whispered to Peggy.

"No, Jim took it off and coiled it up on Friday when we arrived. Mother says she hasn't needed to use it since August, but the wing nut you use to fasten the metal loop thing was a bit rusty. Jim put new one on."

Nancy nodded somewhat abstractedly, and glanced at her wristwatch.

Julia cheerfully announced a fire in St John's cathedral and the crew of fire engine set off at the tops of their voices. Susie was quite determined to drive for a very long time, but eventually decided that the charms of being hose-pointer-in-chief exceeded those of spinning the wheel on the wheelbarrow and announced their arrival at the cathedral. The arrangement of poles that had supported the runner beans earlier in the year was pronounced "just like a cathedral" and Susie busily arranged her crew in order, while Jane rushed off round the corner.

Letter from Nancy to John, the next day

…

The moment Peggy said "wingnut" I should have thought of it, but I was just beginning to think that maybe I wouldn't have time to get Amazon's rigging sorted out that afternoon after all. You should be rather proud of Jane. She had got the hose fixed back onto the tap beautifully. I asked her about it this morning – I was rather too occupied to think about it yesterday, but then I realised that she would hardly have time to refit the hosepipe when they arrived at "the fire". She had got it sorted out when she went to fetch the hosepipe with Susie. Apparently the idea of using "pretend water" simple hadn't occurred to her when there was the outside tap so handy. The water didn't come through right away since Julia and Susie were standing on the hose, but Jane had turned the tap full on, so it was pretty spectacular when the moved and it did. Jamie howled, Jane and Susie laughed like mad things and Julia didn't quite know whether to laugh or cry until she saw that Peggy and I were laughing too.

We hustled them inside fairly sharpish and I left Peggy stripping the wet clothes off them in the scullery and while I went and rounded up Mother and got to bed, since our son was making it jolly clear he intended to arrive pretty quickly. Even Peggy had to admit I had a good excuse for letting her sort out the hosepipe problem.

Robert is gorgeous (I think I've already mentioned that - anyway he is a jolly fine baby) and a good weight – 7lbs 10oz – I don't know if Peggy put it in her telegram. Julia has discover that Susie and Jamie have middle names and now still campaigning for Robert to be called "Robert Flopsy"

I'm so glad you forbade me to give our children middle names!

With lots and lots of love,

Nancy