The Children of Men (34 page)

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.

The sound of his shoe striking the metal had warned Miriam. She was
still busy with the child and, without turning her head, said: “What happened? Was that the kettle?”

Theo said miserably: “I’m sorry. It’s appalling. I’ve spilt the water.”

And now Miriam stood up and came over to him. She said calmly: “We were going to need more water anyway, water and food. I have to stay with Julian until I’m sure it’s safe to leave her but then I’ll go to the house we passed. With luck the water will be still laid on, or there may be a well.”

“But you’ll have to cross an open field. They’ll see you.”

She said: “I have to go, Theo. There are things we need. I have to take that risk.”

But she was being kind. It was water they needed most and their need was his fault.

He said: “Let me go. You stay with her.”

Miriam said: “She wants you with her. Now that the baby’s born, she needs you more than she needs me. I have to make sure the fundus is well contracted and check that the afterbirth is complete. When that’s done it will be safe to leave her. Try to get the baby to the breast. The sooner he begins sucking the better.”

It seemed to Theo that she liked explaining the mysteries of her craft, liked using the words which for so many years had been unspoken but unforgotten.

Twenty minutes later she was ready to go. She had buried the afterbirth and had tried to clean the blood from her hands by rubbing them in the grass. Then she laid them, those gentle experienced hands, for the last time on Julian’s stomach.

She said: “I can wash in the lake on my way. I could face your cousin’s arrival with equanimity if I could be sure he’d provide me with a hot bath and a four-course meal before shooting me. I’d better take the kettle. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

On impulse he put his arms round her and held her close for a moment. He said, “Thank you, thank you,” then released her and watched as she ran with her long, graceful strides over the glade and passed out of sight under the overhanging boughs of the lane.

The baby had needed no encouragement to suck. He was a lively child, opening on Theo his bright unfocused eyes, waving his starfish hands, butting his head against his mother’s breast, the small open mouth voraciously seeking the nipple. It was extraordinary that anything so new could be so vigorous. He sucked and slept. Theo lay down beside Julian and placed an arm over them both. He felt the damp softness of her hair against his cheek. They lay on the soiled and crumpled sheet in the stench of blood, sweat and faeces but he had never known such peace, never realized that joy could be so sweetly compounded with pain. They lay half-dozing in a wordless calm and it seemed to Theo that there rose from the child’s warm flesh, transitory but stronger even than the smell of blood, the strange agreeable aroma of the new-born, dry and pungent like hay.

Then Julian stirred and said: “How long is it since Miriam left?”

He lifted his left wrist close to his face. “Just over an hour.”

“She shouldn’t take so long. Please find her, Theo.”

“It isn’t just water we need. If the house is furnished there are other things she’ll want to collect.”

“Only a few to begin with. She could always go back. She knows we’ll be anxious. Please go to her. I know something’s happened to her.” As he hesitated, she said: “We’ll be all right.”

The use of the plural, what he saw in her eyes as she turned them on her son, almost unmanned him. He said: “They could be very close now. I don’t want to leave you. I want us to be together when Xan comes.”

“My darling, we will be. But she could be in trouble, trapped, hurt, waiting desperately for help. Theo, I have to know.”

He made no further protest, but got up and said: “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

For a few seconds he stood silent outside the hut and listened. He shut his eyes to the autumn hues of the forest, to the shaft of sunlight on bark and grass, so that he could concentrate all his senses into listening. But he heard nothing, not even the sound of a bird. Then, almost leaping forward like a sprinter, he began pounding, past the lake, up the narrow tunnel of green towards the crossroads, leaping over the ruts and potholes, feeling the jar of the hard ridges under his feet, ducking and weaving beneath the low clutching branches. His mind was a tangle of fear and hope. It was madness to leave Julian. If the SSP were close and had captured Miriam there was nothing he could do to help her now. And if they were that close it was only a matter of time before they found Julian and her child. Better to have stayed together and waited, waited until the bright morning lengthened into afternoon and they knew that there was no hope of seeing Miriam again, waited until they heard on the grass the thud of marching feet.

But, desperate for reassurance, he told himself that there were other possibilities. Julian was right. Miriam could have had an accident, fallen, be lying there, wondering how long it was before he came. His mind busied itself with the images of disaster, the door of a pantry slamming fast behind her, a defective well-head which she hadn’t seen, a rotting floorboard. He tried to will himself into belief, to convince himself that an hour was a very little time, that Miriam was busy collecting everything they might need—calculating how much of the precious store she could carry, what could be left until later, forgetting in her foraging how long those sixty minutes would seem to those who waited.

Now he was at the crossroads and could see, through the narrow gap and the thinner bushes of the wide hedge, the sloping field and the roof of the house. He stood for a minute catching his breath, bending to ease the sharp pain in his side, then plunged through the tangle of high nettles, thorns and snapping twigs into the clearer light of the open countryside. There was no sign of Miriam. More slowly now, aware of his vulnerability and of a deepening unease, he made his way across the field and came to the house. It was an old building with an uneven roof
of mossy tiles and tall Elizabethan chimneys, probably once a farmhouse. It was separated from the field by a low dry-stone wall. The wilderness which was once the rear garden was bisected by a narrow stream spurting from a culvert higher up the bank over which a simple wooden bridge led to the back door. The windows were small and uncurtained. Everywhere was silent. The house was like a mirage, the longed-for symbol of security, normality and peace which he had only to touch to see vanish. In the silence the ripple of the stream sounded as loud as a torrent.

The back door was of black oak banded with iron. It stood ajar. He pushed it wider and the mellow autumnal sunlight splashed gold over the stone slabs of a passage leading to the front of the house. Again he stood for a second and listened. He heard nothing, not even the ticking of a clock. To his left was an oak door leading, he presumed, into the kitchen. It was unlatched and gently he pushed it open. After the brightness of the day the room was dim and for a moment he could see little until his eyes accustomed themselves to a gloom made more oppressive by the dark oak beams, the small dirt-covered windows. He was aware of a damp coldness, of the hardness of the stone floor and of a tincture on the air, at once horrible and human, like the lingering smell of fear. He felt along the wall for a light switch, hardly expecting, as his hand found it, that there would still be electricity. But the light came on, and then he saw her.

She had been garrotted and the body dumped into a large wicker chair to the right of the fireplace. She lay there sprawled, legs askew, arms flung over the ends of the chair, the head thrown back with the cord bitten so deep into the skin that it was hardly visible. Such was his horror that after the first glance he staggered over to the stone sink under the window and vomited violently but ineffectively. He wanted to go to her, to close her eyes, to touch her hand, to make some gesture. He owed her more than to turn away from the appalling horror of her death and vomit his disgust. But he knew he couldn’t touch her and couldn’t even look again. With his forehead hard against the cold stone, he reached up to the tap and a gush of cold water flowed over his head. He let it flow as if it could wipe away the terror, the pity and the shame. He wanted to throw back his head and howl out his anger. For a few seconds he was helpless, in the thrall of emotions which left him powerless to move. Then he turned off the tap, shook the water from his eyes
and took hold of reality. He had to get back to Julian as quickly as possible. He saw on the table the meagre gleanings of Miriam’s search. She had found a large wicker basket and had filled it with three tins, a tin-opener and a bottle of water.

But he couldn’t leave Miriam as she was. This mustn’t be the last vision he had of her. However great the need to get back to Julian and the child, there was a small ceremony he owed to her. Fighting terror and revulsion, he got up and made himself look at her. Then, bending, he loosened the cord from her neck, smoothed the lines of her face and closed her eyes. He felt the need to take her out of this awful place. He lifted her in his arms, carried her out of the house and into the sunlight, then laid her carefully down under a rowan tree. Its leaves, like tongues of flame, cast a glow on the pale brown of her skin as if her veins still pulsed with life. Her face now looked almost peaceful. He crossed her arms on her breast and it seemed to him that the unresponsive flesh could still communicate, was telling him that death was not the worst thing that could happen to a human being, that she had kept faith with her brother, that she had done what she set out to do. She had died but new life had been born. Thinking of the horror and cruelty of her death, he told himself that Julian would no doubt say that there must be forgiveness even for this barbarity. But that was not his creed. Standing for a moment very still and looking down at the body, he swore to himself that Miriam would be avenged. Then he retrieved the wicker basket and, without a backward look, ran from the garden across the bridge and plunged into the forest.

They were close, of course. They were watching him. He knew that. But now, as if the horror had galvanized his brain, he was thinking clearly. What were they waiting for? Why had they let him go? They hardly needed to follow him. It must be obvious that they were very close now to the end of their search. And he had no doubt of two things. The party would be small and Xan would be among them. Miriam’s murderers hadn’t been part of an isolated forward search party with instructions to find the fugitives, leave them unharmed and send back word to the main party. Xan would never risk having a pregnant woman discovered except by himself or by someone he trusted absolutely. There would be no general search for this valuable quarry. And Xan would have learned nothing from Miriam, he was sure of that. What he was expecting to find was not a mother and child but a heavily
pregnant woman still with some weeks to go. He wouldn’t want to frighten her, wouldn’t want to precipitate a premature labour. Was that why Miriam had been garrotted, not shot? Even at that distance he didn’t want to risk the sound of gunfire.

But that reasoning was absurd. If Xan wanted to protect Julian, to ensure that she kept calm for the birth which he believed was close, why kill the midwife she trusted and kill her so horribly? He must have known that one of them, perhaps both, would go to seek her. It was only by chance that he, Theo, not Julian, had been faced by that swollen, protruding tongue, those bulging, dead eyes, the full horror of that awful kitchen. Had Xan convinced himself that with the child ready to be born nothing, however shocking, could really hurt it now? Or had he needed to get rid of Miriam urgently, whatever the risk? Why take her prisoner with all the consequent complications when one quick twist of cord could settle the problem for ever? And perhaps even the horror was deliberate. Was he proclaiming: “This is what I can do, what I have done. There are now only two of you left who are part of the conspiracy of the Five Fishes, only two who know the truth about the child’s parentage. You are in my power absolutely and for ever”?

Or was his plan even more audacious? Once the child was born he had only to kill Theo and Julian and it would be possible to claim the baby as his own. Had he really in his overweening egotism convinced himself that even this was possible? And then Theo remembered Xan’s words: “Whatever it is necessary to do, I shall do.”