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hands, nightdresses belonging to Cecilia. She thought she was too large herself but perhaps Leila might…Edwin hoped the night would be a comfortable one for them.
    â€œThank you,” Leila’s mother said, taking up all the space in the hall. “It’s a funny thing about lingerie,” she said. “Lingerie”: she let the word roll on her tongue before she finished saying it. “Lingerie,” she said, “seems to be based on the idea that we are attracted to clothing which reveals a great deal but not our all. Not everything about the human body. We enjoy,” she said, “the suspense of peeking at each other even though we know, often very well, what we are peeking at.” She moved slightly, Edwin hoped in the direction of the bathroom. She shook a plump finger at him. “No peeking,” she said. She seemed to savor the idea.
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    The water was running in the bathroom for a long time. He sat at his desk and stared at Jason’s despair: If only children could be got some other way… Leila’s mother certainly had some ideas on underclothes. Surely she could not have read Donne quoting Pliny. It would be amusing, perhaps, to read the passage aloud to her, perhaps at breakfast:
    â€¦that when their thin silk stuffs were first invented at Rome…it was but an invention that women might go naked in clothes, for their skins might be seen through those clothes, those thin stuffs…
    It was one thing for Leila’s mother to talk about what she called lingerie; he was sure she would be outraged and her respectability wounded if he quoted Pliny. It was quite in order for women to say certain things. If a man said them, then a woman would set about accusing him.
    In an attempt to soothe himself and to make the night as ordinary as possible, he gazed upon the pensive and gentle faces of the Madonna. Because of his lecture preparations he had several on his desk. Uppermost were the Hans Memling, the Dürer and the Van Eycks. The children lay there in complacent repose, each with innocent limbs and a babyish head which contrasted with the facial expressions of wisdom moresuited to those of an old man. This contemplation of the representation of the human individual as a naked, plump, contented child, the subject of countless acts of adoration and contrition, never ceased to fill him with indescribable longings.
    Perhaps, as others had for centuries before him, he would meditate, keep to his quiet existence and dwell in the peacefulness reflected in the patient expression in the face of the blessed Mother as she holds her child.
    He heard the regular beat of the water meter. Perhaps they, Leila and her mother, were both in the bathroom. The throb of the water in the pipe as it passed below his window seemed to echo in his head. Women, he knew, were often sociable in bathrooms, flipping up their skirts to perch, chatting, on the lavatory and removing clothes shamelessly to step one after the other under the same shower. Often he’d heard peals of silvery laughter (Cecilia’s) from the bathroom when she had a friend, not Daphne, to stay. Sometimes he’d heard snatches of songs and conversations over the noise of running water and filling toilet tanks. Women, he knew, continued to talk even while they cleaned their teeth. He preferred having the bathroom to himself.
    He thought he would examine the dry patch on his shin. He found it with difficulty. It looked the same as it had looked earlier. There was not much point, he thought, in recording a measurement, as he had not written down, though he meant to, the earlier size. At a guess it did not seem to have grown bigger. He wished he had asked Cecilia what he should rub on it. He folded back the cover on his bed, neatly, and put his pajamas out. Cecilia always thought this action of his cute and said so every time she came into his study and saw his pajamas spread out ready.
    When they were first married