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 themselves 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 at the end of 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.”
