The car had sunk out of sight. He had feared that the water at the edge might be too shallow, that the roof would be visible even under the cover of reeds, but peering down into the murky darkness he could see nothing but swirling mud.
Miriam said: “Have you got the cutlery?”
“No. Haven’t you?”
“Damn, they’re in the front of the car. Still, it hardly matters now. We’ve no food left to eat.”
He said: “We’d better get what we have got to the wood-shed. It’s about a hundred yards up that path to the right.”
Oh God, he prayed, please let it still be there, let it still be there. It was the first time he had prayed in forty years, but the words were less a petition than a half-superstitious hope that somehow, by the strength of his need, he could will the shed into existence. He shouldered one of the pillows and the raincoats, then picked up the kettle of water in one hand, and the suitcase in the other. Julian slung a second blanket round her shoulders and bent for the saucepan of water only to have it taken from her hand by Miriam, who said: “You carry the pillow. I’ll manage the rest.”
Thus encumbered, they made their slow way up the path. It was then that they heard the metallic rattle of the helicopter. Half-imprisoned by the interlocking boughs they had little need for extra concealment but instinctively they moved from the path into the green tangle of the elder bushes and stood motionless, hardly breathing, as if every intake of breath could reach up to that glittering object of menace, to those watching eyes and listening ears. The noise grew to an ear-shattering clatter. Surely it must be directly overhead. Theo almost expected the sheltering bushes to shudder into violent life. Then it began to circle, the rattle receding then returning, bringing with it renewed fear. It was almost five minutes before the noise of the engine finally faded into a distant hum.
Julian said softly: “Perhaps they aren’t looking for us.” Her voice was faint and, suddenly, she doubled up with pain and grasped at Miriam.
Miriam’s voice was grim. “I don’t suppose they’re on a joy-ride. Anyway they haven’t found us.” She turned to Theo. “How far is this wood-shed?”
“About fifty yards, if I’ve remembered rightly.”
“Let’s hope you have.”
The path was wider now, making their passage easier, but Theo, walking a little behind the women, felt burdened by more than the physical weight of his load. His previous assessment of Rolf’s likely progress now seemed ridiculously optimistic. Why should he make his way slowly and by stealth to London? Why should he need to present himself personally to the Warden? All he required was a public telephone. The number of the Council was known to every citizen. This apparent accessibility was part of Xan’s policy of openness. You couldn’t always speak to the Warden but you could always try. Some callers even got through. This caller, once identified, once vetted, would get priority. They would tell him to conceal himself, to speak to no one until they’d picked him up, almost certainly by helicopter. He had probably been in their hands for over twelve hours.
And the fugitives wouldn’t be difficult to find. By early morning Xan had known about the stolen car, the amount of petrol in its tank, had known to a mile how far they could hope to travel. He had only to stab a compass point in a map and describe a circle. Theo had no doubt of the significance of that helicopter. They were already searching by air, marking out the isolated houses, looking for the gleam of a car roof. Xan would already have organized the search on the ground. But one hope remained. There might still be time for the child to be born, as her mother wanted, in peace, in privacy, with no one to watch but the two people she loved. The search couldn’t be quick; he had surely been right about that. Xan wouldn’t want to come in force or to attract public attention, not yet, not until he could personally check the truth of Rolf’s story. He would use only carefully selected men for this enterprise. He couldn’t even be certain that they would hide in woodland. Rolf would have told him that that had been the original plan; but Rolf was no longer in charge.
He was clinging to this hope, willing himself to feel the confidence that he knew Julian would need from him, when he heard her voice.
“Theo, look. Isn’t this beautiful?”
He turned and came up beside her. She was standing beside a tall overgrown hawthorn heavy with red berries. From its top bough there cascaded a white froth of travellers’ joy, delicate as a veil, through which the berries shone like jewels. Looking at her rapt face, he thought: I only know it’s beautiful; she can feel its loveliness. He looked beyond her to a bush of elderberries and seemed to see clearly for the first time their back glistening beads and the delicacy of the red stems. It was as if in one moment the forest was transformed from a place of darkness and menace, in which he was at heart convinced that one of them would die, into a sanctuary, mysterious and beautiful, uncaring of these three curious interlopers, but a place in which nothing that lived could be wholly alien from him.
Then he heard Miriam’s voice, happy, exultant. “The wood-shed is still here!”
32
The shed was larger than he had expected. Memory, contrary to its custom, had diminished, not enlarged. For a moment he wondered whether this dilapidated, three-sided building of blackened wood, fully thirty feet across, could be the wood-shed he remembered. Then he noticed the silver birch to the right of the entrance. When he had last seen it the tree had been only a sapling, but now its branches overhung the roof. He saw with relief that most of the roof looked sound, although some of the planks had slipped. Many at the side were missing or jagged and the whole shed, in its lopsided, solitary decrepitude, looked unlikely to weather more than a few more winters. A huge wood-transporter, grained with rust, had sunk down askew in the middle of the glade, its tyres split and rotting and one immense wheel lying free beside it. Not all the logs had been carted away when the forestry finally ended, and one stack still remained neatly piled beside two huge felled trees. Their denuded trunks gleamed like polished bone and chunks and slivers of bark littered the earth.
Slowly, almost ceremoniously, they entered the shed, heads turning, anxious-eyed, like tenants taking possession of a desired but unknown residence.
Miriam said: “Well, at least it’s a shelter and it looks as if there’s enough dry wood and kindling here to make a fire.”
Despite the thick surrounding hedge of tangled bushes and saplings and the rim of trees, it was less private than Theo had remembered. Their safety would have to depend less on the shed being unnoticed than on the improbability of any casual walker finding his way through the tangle of the forest. But it was not a casual walker he feared. If Xan decided to undertake a ground search in Wychwood it would only be a matter of hours before they were discovered, however secret their lair.
He said: “I’m not sure we ought to risk lighting a fire. How important is it?”
Miriam replied: “The fire? Not very at the moment but it will be once the baby’s born and the daylight goes. The nights are getting cold. The baby and her mother need to be kept warm.”
“Then we’ll risk it, but not before it’s necessary. They’ll be watching for smoke.”
The shed looked as if it had been abandoned in some hurry, unless, perhaps, the workers had expected to return and had been prevented or told that the enterprise was now shut down. There were two stacks of shorter planks to the back of the shed, a pile of small logs and part of a tree trunk standing level which had obviously been used as a table since it bore a battered tin kettle and two chipped enamel mugs. The roof here was sound and the trodden earth soft with shavings and sawdust.
Miriam said: “About here will do.”
She kicked and scraped the shavings into a rough bed, spread out the two raincoats and helped Julian to lie down, then slipped a pillow under her head. Julian gave a grunt of pleasure, then turned on her side and drew up her legs. Miriam shook out one of the sheets and placed it over her, covering it with a blanket and Luke’s coat. Then she and Theo busied th
emselves setting out their store: the kettle and one remaining saucepan of water, the folded towels, the scissors and bottle of disinfectant. The small stock seemed to Theo pathetic in its inadequacy.
Miriam knelt beside Julian and gently motioned her on to her back. She said to Theo: “You may as well take a short walk if you feel like it. I’ll be needing your help later, but not this minute.”
He went outside, feeling for a second unreasonably rejected, and sat on the felled tree trunk. The peace of the glade enfolded him. He shut his eyes and listened. It seemed to him after a moment that he could hear a myriad small sounds, normally inaudible to human ears, the scrape of a leaf against its bough, the crack of a drying twig: the living world of the forest, secret, industrious, oblivious of or unconcerned with the three intruders. But he heard nothing human, no footfall, no distant sound of approaching cars, no returning rattle of the helicopter. He dared to hope that Xan had rejected Wychwood as their hiding place, that they might be safe, at least for a few more hours, long enough for the child to be born. And for the first time Theo understood and accepted Julian’s desire to give birth in secret. This forest refuge, inadequate as it was, was surely better than the alternative. He pictured again that alternative, the high sterile bed, the banks of machines to meet every possible medical emergency, the distinguished obstetricians summoned from retirement, masked and gowned, standing together, because after twenty-five years there was a better hope of safety in their united memory and expertise, each one desperate for the honour of delivering this miraculous child, yet half-afraid of the terrifying responsibility. He could picture the acolytes, the gowned nurses and midwives, the anaesthetists, and beyond them, but dominant, the television cameras with their crews, the Warden behind his screen waiting to give the momentous news to an expectant world.
But it had been more than the destruction of privacy, the stripping-away of personal dignity, that Julian had feared. For her Xan was evil. The word had a meaning for her. She saw with clear and undazzled eyes through the strength, the charm, the intelligence, the humour into the heart, not of emptiness but of darkness. Whatever the future might hold for her child, she wanted no one evil to be present at the birth. He could understand now her obstinate choice and it seemed to him, sitting in this peace and quietness, to be both right and reasonable. But her obstinacy had already cost the lives of two people, one the father of her child. She could argue that good could come out of evil; it was surely more difficult to argue that evil could come out of good. She trusted in the terrible mercy and justice of her God, but what other option had she but to trust? She could no more control her life than she could control or stop the physical forces which even now were stretching and racking her body. If her God existed, how could He be the God of Love? The question had become banal, ubiquitous, but for him it had never been satisfactorily answered.
He listened again to the forest, to its secret life. Now the sounds, seeming to increase as he listened, were full of menace and terror: the scavenger scurrying and leaping on its prey, the cruelty and satisfaction of the hunt, the instinctive struggle for food, for survival. The whole physical world was held together by pain, the scream in the throat and the scream in the heart. If her God was part of this torment, its creator and sustainer, then He was a God of the strong, not of the weak. He contemplated the gulf fixed between Julian and himself by her belief, but without dismay. He could not diminish it but he could stretch his hands across it. And perhaps in the end the bridge would be love. How little he knew her or she him. The emotion he felt towards her was as mysterious as it was irrational. He needed to understand it, to define its nature, to analyse what he knew was beyond analysis. But some things now he did know, and perhaps they were all he needed to know. He wished only her good. He would put her good before his own. He could no longer separate himself from her. He would die for her life.
The silence was broken by the sound of a groan followed by a sharp cry. Once it would have aroused his embarrassment, the humiliating fear that he would be found inadequate. Now, conscious only of his need to be with her, he ran into the shed. She was again lying on her side quite peacefully, and smiled at him, holding out her hand. Miriam was kneeling at her side.
He said: “What can I do? Let me stay. Do you want me to stay?”
Julian said, her voice as even as if there had never been the sharp cry: “Of course you must stay. We want you to stay. But perhaps you’d better build the fire now. Then it will be ready to light when we need it.”
He saw that her face was swollen, the brow damp with sweat. But he was amazed at her quietness, her calm. And he had something to do, a job at which he could feel confident. If he could find wood shavings which were perfectly dry there was hope that he could light a fire without too much smoke. The day was practically windless, but even so he must be careful to build it so that no smoke blew into Julian’s face or the face of the baby. A little towards the front of the shed would be best, where the roof was broken but close enough to warm mother and child. And he would need to contain it or there would be a danger of conflagration. Some of the stones from the broken wall would make a good fireplace. He went out to collect them, carefully selecting them for size and shape. It occurred to him that he could even use some of the flatter stones to produce a kind of funnel. Returning, he arranged the stones into a ring, filled it with the driest wood shavings he could find, then added a few twigs. Finally he laid flat stones across the top, directing the smoke out of the shed. When he had finished he felt some of the satisfaction of a small boy. And when Julian raised herself up and laughed with pleasure his voice joined hers.
Miriam said: “It would be best if you knelt at her side and held her hand.”
During the next spasm of pain she gripped so hard that his knuckles cracked.
Seeing his face, his desperate need for reassurance, Miriam said: “She’s all right. She’s doing wonderfully. I can’t make an internal examination. It wouldn’t be safe now. I haven’t sterile gloves and the waters have broken. But I’d estimate that the cervix is almost fully dilated. The second stage will be easier.”
He said to Julian: “Darling, what can I do? Tell me what I can do.”
“Just keep holding my hand.”
Kneeling there beside them, he marvelled at Miriam, at the quiet confidence with which, even after twenty-five years, she exercised her ancient art, her brown and gentle hands resting on Julian’s stomach, her voice murmuring reassurance: “Rest now, then go along with the next wave. Don’t resist it. Remember your breathing. That’s fine, Julian, that’s fine.”
When the second stage of labour began she told Theo to kneel at Julian’s back and support her body, then took two of the smaller logs and placed them against Julian’s feet. Theo knelt and took the weight of Julian’s body, his arms clasping her to him under her breasts. She rested against his chest, her feet clamped hard against the two logs of wood. He looked down at her face, at one moment almost unrecognizable, scarlet and distorted, as she grunted and heaved in his arms, the next at peace, mysteriously wiped free of anguish and effort while she panted softly, her eyes fixed on Miriam, waiting for the next contraction. At these moments she looked so peaceful that he could almost believe that she slept. Their faces were so close that it was his sweat mingled with hers that from time to time he gently wiped away. The primitive act, at which he was both participant and spectator, isolated them in a limbo of time in which nothing mattered, nothing was real except the mother and her child’s dark painful journey from the secret life of the womb to the light of day. He was aware of the ceaseless murmur of Miriam’s voice, quiet but insistent, praising, encouraging, instructing, joyfully enticing the child into the world, and it seemed to him that midwife and patient were one woman and that he, too, was part of the pain and the labouring, not really needed but graciously accepted, and yet excluded from the heart of the mystery. And he wished, with a sudden surge of anguish and envy, that it was his child with which such an agony of effort they were
bringing into the world.
And then he saw with amazement that the head was emerging, a greasy ball plastered with strands of dark hair.
He heard Miriam’s voice, low but triumphant. “The head is crowned. Stop pushing, Julian. Just pant now.”
Julian’s voice was rasping like an athlete’s after a hard race. She gave a single cry, and with an indescribable sound the head was propelled into Miriam’s waiting hands. She took it, gently turned it; almost immediately, with a last push, the child slid into the world between his mother’s legs in a rush of blood, and was lifted by Miriam and lain on his mother’s stomach. Julian had been wrong about the sex. The child was male. Its sex, seeming so dominant, so disproportionate to the plump, small body, was like a proclamation.
Swiftly Miriam drew over him the sheet and blanket which covered Julian, binding them together. She said, “See, you have a son,” and laughed.
It seemed to Theo that the decrepit shed rang with her joyful and triumphant voice. He looked down at Julian’s outstretched arms and transfigured face, then turned away. The joy was almost too much for him to bear.
He heard Miriam’s voice: “I’ll have to cut the cord, and later there’ll be the afterbirth. You’d better light the fire now, Theo, and see if you can heat the kettle. Julian will need a hot drink.”
He went back to his makeshift fireplace. His hands were shaking so that the first match went out. But with the second the thin shavings burst into flame and the fire leapt like a celebration, filling the shed with the smell of wood smoke. He fed it carefully with the twigs and pieces of bark, then turned for the kettle. But that moment brought disaster. He had placed it close to the fire and, stepping back, kicked it over. The lid came off and he saw with sick horror the precious water seeping into the sawdust and staining the earth. They had already used the water in the two saucepans. Now they had none.