'It hurts, Mum!' Sylvia moaned, leaning heavily on her chest of drawers.

'I know, love, I know,' Ada rubbed her daughter's back. 'That's just you getting ready for baby, that's all…lay yourself down now…and I've got the Doctor's number right here…'

Although I don't hold with men being at births, she added to herself. Even if they are doctors – there's only one man should see that part of a woman, and that's her husband – not in this state, either. She thought of her Son in Law. It'd scare him half to death.

Just then, the doorbell rang.

'Oh, who's that?' Sylvia asked irritably.

'Your Mother in Law, I expect,' Ada replied, and went down to let Mavis in. It wasn't as if she couldn't cope on her own, but there'd be hell to pay after for Sylvia if she was left out – Ada had plenty enough experience with mothers and mothers in law to know that.

Sylvia groaned. It wasn't as if she didn't like Frank's Mum…they were actually quite similar…but the fewer people that saw her like this, the better. She just hoped they wouldn't end up arguing over the best way to do things – she really didn't need that now.

'I've brought towels!' Mavis announced, bustling in. 'Ada, did you put the brown paper down?'

'Yes, I put the brown paper down…' Ada sighed a little in resignation. This was going to be one of those times, and there had been many, in her career, when the family of the mother to be thought they knew best…

'And there's some woollies here for the baby, because it's starting to get a bit chilly at night, and if that baby's anything like my Frank, he'll need to be kept warm…is the kettle on?'

Back at the Church Hall, Pike stared blankly at Jones for a moment. 'What?'

'It's your baby, your baby's coming!' Jones repeated excitedly.

The men crowded round, not too sure quite how to react but hoping to offer some sort of comfort.

'The baby? Really?' Distractedly, Pike went over to sit on the steps by the stage. 'Will they be all right? Sylvia? And the baby?'

'I'm sure they will, Frank,' Wilson assured him, reaching down to place a hand on his shoulder. 'Your mother said she'd be there too, you know?'

'Oh yes, my old Mum, she had ten of us, an' she was all right!' Jones was starting to calm down slightly now.

'Sylvia's not having ten!' One was quite enough to try to understand at the moment.

'Well, that depends,' Jones continued. 'Of course, them days weren't like these days, what with…'

'Jones!' Mainwaring interrupted him sharply before he went into any more detail. 'That'll do.'

'And don't forget, Dolly brought some of her herbal tea round to Mrs Hodges the other day,' Godfrey mentioned. 'That should help; she says it's very good for her rheumatism.'

'Ach no, ye don't want to worry son!' Frazer declared, leaning over the rails next to the stairs. 'I mind the story my own Mother told me – when I was born, it was a wild, black, storm wracked night, and the doctor had to row oot through the crashing waves from the Mainland to attend to her…the man fair nearly drowned…'

'Frazer, Frazer,' Mainwaring shook his head. 'That's not helping.'

'Oh, he was fine, fine…the boat crashed up on the rocks…but he was there by then!'

Not feeling particularly reassured, Pike turned to Wilson.

'Uncle Arthur? I don't want to go home on my own tonight – can we stay here? And,' he continued, looking around at the men gathered round, 'can you stay too? Please? I mean, not if you got to get home, an' that, but…'

'Of course we will, Frank,' Wilson agreed. Out of all them, at least those closest to Frank, Wilson reflected, he was the only one who knew what waiting for a baby was like.

Having dropped off the stuff he brought down to the American camp near Brighton, Walker pushed open the door to the Church Hall. He had a room at the Red Lion that night, and it would be nice to drop in on the lads before he went back.

'Evening gents!' he called out chirpily, before stopping halfway into the room. 'What? What's happened?'

'Joe! Sylvia's having her baby!' Pike explained, scrambling up the steps.

'Blimey! Good job I come by when I did!'

'Yes…' Dr McKay nodded, looking at his watch. 'Those contractions are definitely coming more quickly now…nothing to worry about, Mrs Pike.' His job was made somewhat more awkward by the hard stares from the women crowded next to him.

'It hurts, though!' Sylvia complained, although she was starting to notice that they weren't actually getting any worse.

'I know, I know…' Ada replied, trying to comfort her. 'You're doing really well now…'

The brown paper spread out over the bed rustled and made the towels slide when Sylvia moved. As another contraction came she pushed her head back into the pillow and gritted her teeth. There were people around her, she knew there were, but by now they'd become almost irrelevant as her body and mind concentrated on the task in hand.

'Mavis, love, can you get that herbal tea that's down in the kitchen? Just on the side there by the kettle?' Ada asked.

Not normally one to do as she was told, Mavis took a quick look at the young woman bringing her son's baby into the world and nodded. The girl looked like she needed it.

'Now,' Ada continued, hands on the sheet covering Sylvia. 'If you don't mind, Doctor, I'd like to check on how my daughter's getting along…'

'Right then…' Back at the Church Hall, Walker was writing in a small notebook. 'Baby Pikey…boy or girl?'

He looked round at the men. 'All right, place your bets, two 'orse race!'

'Walker!' Mainwaring turned, just catching what he said. 'Do you really think you should be doing that on Church Property?'

'Oh, it's all right, Mr Mainwaring,' Walker answered, an innocent looking smile on his face. 'Just a bit o' fun, no money…'

The look he received said quite clearly that Mainwaring didn't believe that for a minute, but he let it go.

'What about names, Pikey?' Jones asked. 'You got to have names for a baby…'

'Oh, we don't know yet…' Trying to remember what they were took rather too much effort with everything else he had to think about just now.

'How about Mabel? My Mum's called Mabel!' Jones continued, referring to his long lived mother, still alive and well living in Angmering.

'Nah, no-one's called Mabel these days!' chimed in Walker. 'You want somethin' modern, like Maureen – I got a cousin with a little girl called Maureen!'

'Rhona!' was Frazer's suggestion. 'That was my mother – a fine strong woman she was!'

'Or Victoria, for the old Queen?' said Godfrey.

'Well…' Pike did remember something. 'Sylvia likes that film, 'Casablanca', with Humphrey Bogart and Vivien Leigh…I think she might like Vivien for a girl.'

'What if it's a boy?' Wilson asked, keeping a close eye on him.

'Oh, well, I thought maybe Clark, or Rhett…'

'Oh no.' This was Mainwaring. 'I don't think you should have any American rubbish like that. He needs a good English name…'

'Or Scottish!' interrupted Frazer.

'Well, British, you know…'

'Yeah…not Tyrone then?' Pike asked. 'Sylvia said I looked like Tyrone Power once!' he added proudly. 'And Robert Taylor!'

Mainwaring shook his head in exasperation. Even now, with his child soon to be born, Pike was still in some ways the fifteen year old schoolboy that had come for his interview at the Bank a couple of years before the War, still in his uniform, with the job conditional on his School Certificate results. Mainwaring had never told him, but Pike had actually done much better on the calculations he'd set as part of the interview than the other boys, and he was wearing the uniform of the local Grammar…Mainwaring had looked at him, and decided that even though it was likely to count against him in future, that uniform wouldn't today - a small act of rebellion, against the system that had kept him down all these years.

'Of course not Tyrone, you stupid boy!'

As it grew later, those men that had wanted to stay bedded themselves down as best they could in the Hall. Pike couldn't sleep though, and had wandered out to sit on the same bench outside that Sylvia had sat on when she'd stormed out after that row about the Canadian. Turning, he heard footsteps coming towards him.

'Frank?' Wilson asked, offering a cigarette.

'Oh, all right, thank you,' Pike replied, taking it. He wasn't particularly good at smoking – whenever he'd tried, he'd just coughed and felt a bit sick, and certainly didn't look as sophisticated as his Uncle, or Joe, but thought it might help this time.

'Everything all right?' Wilson asked, taking a long draught of his own.

'Uh, yeah, I think so…they'd have called, wouldn't they, Mum and Sylvia's Mum, if there was any problems?

'I'm sure they would.' Wilson appeared to have something else on his mind. 'You know, there was something I perhaps should have told you sooner…' He paused. This was going to be as hard as it had been telling Mavis.

'A long time ago now, I was engaged to a young lady…'

'Were you?' He sounded surprised enough at that.

'Yes.' Another pause. 'And, for various reasons, well, we weren't really…suited, you know?'

Pike nodded, not sure what was coming next.

'But we had a child…a girl…' He'd never expected to make that confession to him – it had taken long enough to tell Mavis.

'What? Does Mum know?' Pike turned to him, shocked.

'Yes, she does now…you remember when Walker had all those pigeons…well, she came by, to visit, and you remember, your Mother threw me out of the house…?'

'Yeah…'

'Well, that was why…'

Pike sat there for few moments. 'What does she look like?'

'She has blonde hair, like her mother…a Wren now…engaged herself…'

'I met her,' Pike replied, mind still reeling, both from this realisation and everything else about this strangest of nights. 'Spoke to her, at the Red Lion…'

'Did you?'

'Yeah.'

They both paused for a moment.

'What's her name?'

'Clara.'

Pike let this sink in. 'So…Mum's sort of got a stepdaughter, now you're married?'

'Yes, yes she has.' Wilson hadn't really thought about it that way himself.

'And I've sort of got a stepsister?'

'Yes.'

'Well…if she's getting married, she'd best invite Mum then, 'cause with her being family she wouldn't like it if she wasn't invited!'

Wilson smiled, a little sadly. He still didn't really understand.

'Yes, I suppose she should,' he finished, and left it at that. There may well be further explanations needed later, to others, but those were for another time.

Night turned back into day, and Sylvia held tightly to her mother's hand as she followed her advice to 'bear down', feeling weirdly stretched as her body told her to push. A strange feeling – even more so when some part of her mind that was still present led her to tentatively reach down beneath the sheet to where the pressure was. Her fingertips touched hair, that wasn't hers.

'Mum! I felt it! I felt the baby's head!' she breathed, exhilaration shining through exhaustion.

The two older women gasped at that, and leaned closer.

'Ada! Is she all right?' Mavis asked anxiously.

Taking a deep breath, Ada did as she was asked, trying to keep her training in mind, trying to forget, for the moment, that this was her daughter and her grandchild, because that made the whole experience so much more…real. She'd never have told Sylvia, but she'd learned, early on, how close birth could be to death. She'd seen it, of mothers, of their babies…so too, she suspected, had Mavis. There was a look about a woman at times like this; if she'd lost a child…it would go a long way to explaining how protective she was of her boy, too.

'Yes, yes, she's fine…baby's fine…' Ada nodded back towards Dr McKay. 'I think you best check her blood pressure again though, Doctor, just to make sure…'

Later on, the only way Sylvia could describe the feeling to herself was as something…strange. It didn't hurt, exactly, at that stage, it was just very strange – the feeling of her baby slowly being born.

'All's well then, Mrs Hodges?' Dr McKay asked, as Ada made her latest examination.

'Yes…' Ada brushed straggling hair out of her eyes. 'Push now, Sylvia – push, and you're nearly done, come on, now, nearly there!'

'Mum, that was the baby's head, wasn't it?' Sylvia asked, panicked, after one particularly hard push made her scream and scrunch the sheet up so hard, that had she still been holding her mother's hand, she'd probably have drawn blood.

'Yeah…' Breathless herself, Ada nodded. 'That's it, not long now!'

'Just keep pushing!' Mavis added frantically. 'Baby comes out so much easier now, just a bit more!'

'Mrs Hodges? Would ye check the shoulders for me?' Doctor McKay said then, reaching into his bag. 'D'ye need any help getting them oot, d'ye think?'

'No,' Ada replied, after a few moments, a note of wonder in her voice. 'They're out…baby's nearly out, love!'

The last push was sudden, and almost took Sylvia by surprise, as something slippery burst from her, hurriedly scooped up by her mother and held up to Dr McKay.

'It's a girl!' Ada called excitedly, as the doctor smartly cut the cord bonding mother and child.

'Congratulations, Mrs Pike!' he smiled. 'You've a fine wee girl!'

'Oh, isn't she beautiful!' Mavis thought she might cry.

Dazed, Sylvia herself wasn't too sure what was going on. There was a baby…her baby…

'Now you just lie back there for a moment…' Dr McKay continued, '…and your mother'll get her all cleaned up for ye!'

Exhausted, Sylvia fell back against the pillow. It was morning, she realised. She'd taken all night…

With just enough strength to turn to Mavis, she asked. 'Where's Frank? Tell him…'

Mainwaring hadn't trusted anyone else to answer the telephone when the call came. If anything happened…well, as his Commanding Officer it was his responsibility to inform the youngest member of his Platoon…not that he thought it likely, but…a dangerous time, nonetheless.

'Good morning, Walmington on Sea Home Guard,' he said, sounding slightly groggy from an uncomfortable night in his chair.

'Mrs Pike – Wilson?' He still got that wrong, occasionally, and was suddenly hit with the whirlwind that was an overexcited Mavis.

'Oh, Mr Mainwaring, I'm so glad I caught you! It's a girl! Tell Frank, and tell Arthur, it's a girl, a lovely little girl!'