to be all right - hold thumbs for me.' She made Ramsey give his solemn promise not to leave her alone from now onwards. Thus, she was lying in his arms, both of them naked under the sheet in the moonlight, the doors to the terrace wide open to catch the faintest breeze off the sea, when the first pain woke her.
She lay quietly, not waking him, while she timed the intervals between contractions, feeling smug and accomplished as she entered the final stages of the long fascinating process. When at last, she shook Ramsey awake, he was most gratifyingly solicitous. He hurried away in his pyjamas to fetch Adra from the servant's room on the lower floor.
Isabella's suitcase was ready, and the three of them climbed into the Mini.
With Isabella seated in splendid isolation on the tiny rear seat, Ramsey drove them out to the clinic.
As her doctor had predicted, it all went forward naturally and rapidly.
Although the baby was large and Isabella's hips were relatively narrow, there were no complications. When the doctor called upon her from between her raised knees for a final effort, she thrust down with all her strength and then as she felt the enormous slippery rushing release within her she uttered a joyous and triumphant cry.
Anxiously she struggled up on one elbow and brushed the sweaty tangle of hair out of her eyes. 'What is it?' she demanded. 'Is it a boy?' And the doctor held the skinny glistening red body high, and they all laughed at the petulant birth-wail.
'There you are.' Still holding him dangling by the ankles, the doctor turned the infant so that Isabella could see him better.
The child's face was scarlet and creased, the eyelids swollen tightly closed. His hair was dense and jet black, plastered wetly over the skull.
His penis stuck out half as long as her forefinger in what seemed to be, to Isabella's partisan appraisal, a full and impressive erection.
'It's a boy!' she gasped, and then with a chuckle of wonderment: 'He's a boy and a Courtney!' Isabella was unprepared for the overwhelming strength of her maternal instincts as they laid her firstborn son at her breast and he took her engorged nipple between his rubbeo little gums and tugged at it with an animal strength that aroused sympathetic contractions in her distended womb and a deeper, more primeval pain in her heart.
He was the most beautiful creature she had ever touched, as beautiful as his father. In those first days, she could not take her eyes off him, often rising in the night to bend over 'his cot and examine his tiny face in the moonlight, or while he suckled, opening his pink fists and studying each perfect little finger with an almost religious awe.
'He's mine. He belongs to me,' she kept telling herself, not yet able to overcome the wonder of it.
Ramsey spent most of those first three days with them in the big sunny private room of the clinic. He seemed to share her fascination with the child. They discussed, as they had during the previous months, what names they would christen him. In the end, by a slow and painful 141 process of elimination, they struck out Shasa and Sean from her side of the family, and Huesca and Mahon from Ramsey's side. They settled for Nicholas Miguel Ramsey de Santiago y Machado. Miguel was a compromise for the Michael which Isabella had suggested.
On the fourth day, when Ramsey came to her room in the clinic, he was accompanied by three sober gentlemen in dark suits, all of them bearing important-looking briefcases. One was an attorney, another was an official from the State Registrar's office and the third was the local magistrate.
The magistrate bore witness as Isabella signed the order of adoption, relinquishing her guardianship of Nicholas to the Marques de Santiago y Machado, and he placed his official seal on the document. The birth certificate provided by the registrar showed Ramsey as the father.
After the officials had toasted the mother and child with a large glass of sherry and left, Ramsey took Isabella tenderly in his arms.
'Your son's claim to the title is secure,' he whispered.
'Our son,' she whispered in reply, and kissed him. 'My men, Nicky and Ramsey.' When Ramsey fetched them from the clinic and brought them back to the flat, Isabella insisted on carrying Nicky up the stairs herself. Adra had filled bowls of flowers to welcome them.
She took the child out of Isabella's arms. 'He is wet. I will change him.' And Isabella felt like a lioness deprived of her cub.
Over the days that followed an unspoken but nevertheless intense competition developed between the two women. Although Isabella acknowledged Adra's obvious expertise in dealing with the infant, she found herself resenting the intrusion. She wanted Nicky all to herself, and she tried to anticipate his needs and to get to him ahead of Adra.
The florid birth-tones of Nicky's face soon faded into a peachy perfection, and his thick dark hair curled. When he opened his eyes for the first time, they were that exact same shade of pale green as Ramsey's. Isabella considered this one of the great miracles of the universe.
'You are as beautiful as your father,' she told him as she suckled him. At least that was one service that Adra could not render him.
In the months that they had lived in the village, Isabella had become a local favourite. Her loveliness and her easy engaging manner, her pregnancy and her sincere efforts to master the language had delighted the tradespeople and the stall-holders in the market-place..
In response to their entreaties, when Nicky was barely ten days old, she laid him in the pram and paraded him through the village. It was a triumphant progress, and they returned to the flat laden with small gifts and with their ears ringing with praises.
When she phoned home on Easter Day her grandmother asked severely: 'What is so important in Spain that you cannot come home to Weltevreden?' 'Oh, Nana, I love you all, but it is just impossible. Please forgive me.' 'If I know you, young lady, which I do, you are up to no good and it wears trousers.' 'Nana, you are an absolute shocker. How can you believe that of me?' 'Twenty years of experience,' Centaine Courtneymalcomess told her drily.
'Just don't get into any more trouble, child.' 'I won't, I promise,' Isabella told her sweetly, and hugged the infant at her bosom. Oh, if you only knew, she thought. He doesn't wear trousers; not yet anyway.
'How is the thesis going?' her father asked, when he came on the line. She could not tell him that she had already submitted it, for that was her excuse for remaining in Spain.
'Almost done,' she compromised. She hadn't thought about it since Nicky had come along.
'Good luck with it.' And then Shasa was silent for a moment. 'Do you remember our talk, the promise you gave me?' 'VAiich one?' she procrastinated guiltily. She knew very well what he was referring to.
'You promised that if you were ever in any trouble, any trouble at all, you wouldn't try to go it alone, you would come to me.' 'Yes, I remember.' 'Are you all right, Bella baby?' 'I'm fine, wonderful, just marvelous, Daddy.' He heard the ring of it in her voice and sighed with relief.
'Happy Easter, my bright and beautiful daughter.' With Michael it was a relief to let it all out of her. They were on the telephone for forty-five minutes, Milaga to Johannesburg, and she tickled Nicky to make him gurgle for his distant uncle.
'When are you coming home, Bella?' Michael asked at last.
'Ramsey's divorce will be through by June, that's definite. We will have a civil marriage here in Spain and the church wedding at Weltevreden. I expect you to be at both functions.' 'Try to stop me,' he challenged her.
They celebrated Easter dinner at their favourite seaside restaurant with Nicky's pram parked at the table. The patron's wife had knitted a jacket for the baby.
Adra was with them. She was part of their small family by now, and she wheeled the pram when they walked home to the flat. Isabella clung to Ramsey's arm. She felt very married and maternal, and as happy as she had ever been in her entire life.
When they arrived at the flat, Adra took Nicky away to change him. For once Isabella did not resent it.
In the front bedroom she lowered the shutters, and then came to Ramsey.
'It's three weeks since Nicky was born. I'm not made of glass, you know. I won't break.' He was too gentle, too considerate for her mood. She had been without him for too long.
'I think you've forgotten how to do'this,' she said, and pushed him over on his back. 'Let me refresh your memory, sir.' 'Don't hurt yourself,' he cautioned anxiously.
'If anybody gets hurt around here, it is more likely to be you, my friend.
Now, fasten your seatbelt. We are ready for take-off.' Afterwards, in the shuttered room, she lay against him in languorous exhaustion, their bodies sticking lightly together with the sweat of their loving and he said: 'I have to go away for four days next week.' She sat up quickly. 'Oh, Ramsey, so soon!' she protested, and then realized that she was being possessive and unreasonable.
'You'll phone me every day, won't you?' she demanded.
'I'll do better than that. I'll be in Paris and I'll try to arrange for you to join me there. We will have dinner at Laserre.' 'That would be lovely, but what about Nicky?' 'Nicky has got Adra to look after him,' Ramsey chuckled. 'Nicky will be all right, and Adra will love the opportunity to have him all to herself.' 'I don't know...' she said dubiously. The thought of being parted from her wondrous achievement for
