Chapter Eight
By four o'clock that afternoon, 221B The Esplanade was a haven of calm. The nursery party had departed for Collins Towers, Mr Butler and Lin Soo having offered to cater for the enlarged numbers and left a cold collation for Mr and Mrs Robinson. Phryne sighed happily, and decided that, comfortable though her couch might be, her bed would knock seven bells out of it in a fair fight, and hauled herself upright. The journey up the stairs was once again punctuated by a spasm in her back, but she reminded herself that stairs always did that and everyone had been telling her to rest, and where better to do that but in bed?
On arriving in the boudoir, she slipped off the dress and assumed a Chinese robe in light silk, before reclining thankfully on the mattress.
A few minutes later, she felt a sensation that had only occurred once before in her life. With great presence of mind, she rolled off the bed to kneel on the rug, and watched a rush of fluid soak it.
"Oh, that's a nuisance" said Miss Fisher (in broad translation).
Another spasm of an all-too-familiar kind caught her, and she stripped off the now-soaked robe and undergarments, to roll back on to the bed and debate Next Steps.
She had hardly got beyond dismissing the idea of returning to the telephone when another contraction came. How could they be coming so close, so soon? She reassured herself that she had done this before, she was healthy, she'd no reason to believe the child wasn't healthy too, she could do this. Women in the tea plantations would have a child without even breaking step, surely she could do it in the lap of relatively sanitised luxury? There was something about breathing. She did that. Then recalled that she'd been doing it all her life and cursed antenatal professionals in the bluest of language while the next contraction came.
At this point, relief arrived, in the form of a key in the front door.
Marvellous. Someone new to curse.
"Hello?"
"Jack?"
"Home early - where are you?"
"Boudoir, and currently alone, but possibly not for much longer - can you telephone Mac again? And then come upstairs? Please?"
Miss Fisher absolutely did not do plaintive, so the last word was a polite entreaty of a purely social nature. Still, it appeared to work, and within the space of thirty seconds, she was rewarded by the sight of a pale-faced policeman, coatless, sleeves in the process of being rolled up, panic thinly veiled by a veneer of calm.
"Mac wasn't there, but they're going to try and find her and send her over. What do I do?"
"Hello, darling. I haven't a clue. I seem to recall that there was a time I had to stop breathing and start pushing, but neither suggestion seemed like much fun at the time, so could you just - sort of - hang around and hold my hand?"
It turned out that he could, and did, and they muddled through. Within a couple of hours, Mac was letting herself into the house by the door left most reprehensibly on the latch (local housebreakers having apparently declared a full day's holiday for the momentous event), while the latest addition to the Robinson family was arriving simultaneously by slightly less spacious means, but no less effectively.
Phryne believed in dressing appropriately for every occasion. On this occasion, Appropriate Dress turned out to be stark naked, attached to the earth's newest acquisition by an umbilical cord and with sweat on her brow which was a mixture of hers and that of Detective Chief Inspector Robinson.
She therefore considered herself dressed entirely appropriately for the conversation upon which she was embarking.
"Hello, my little accident. What brand of adventure are you going to be?"
The young man didn't immediately reply, but once Mac had finished tidying her up, she settled back on clean sheets to examine her offspring more closely; and concluded that he was certainly going to be extremely handsome; and the way his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down a little at the edges, bore a remarkable resemblance to his father.
Father, in the meantime, had gone to telephone the Collins' and Aunt Prudence with the news, and returned with a pot of tea and a bottle of whisky.
"What are you going to call him?" asked Mac, settling back with a sigh of relief and gulping a scotch.
Phryne grinned. "Well, the only other person I know who looks like this is called Jack."
"And I'd like to remain the only one in the house, please," requested the Inspector mildly. "Think what would happen when the post arrives."
"John?"
"That's my actual name, Phryne. Have you no imagination?"
"But look at him, Jack! Can you blame me?"
He looked, and decided that of all the things he might want to award Miss Fisher in recognition of her sheer genius in producing the child, blame definitely wasn't one of them.
"How about Ian?" piped up Mac.
"The Scottish version of John? I like it," Phryne nodded. "Well, Ian Robinson, are you hungry?"
He confirmed that he was.