Ken Follett - Lie down with lions

When it started again there was a new pain, a sharp burning sensation in her crotch. Zahara suddenly said: "It comes."

"Don't push now," said Rabia. "Let the baby swim out."

The pressure eased. Rabia and Zahara changed places, and now Rabia squatted between Jane's legs, watching intently. The pressure began again. Jane gritted her teeth. Rabia said: "Don't push. Be calm." Jane tried to relax. Rabia looked at her and reached up to touch her face, saying: "Don't bite down. Make your mouth loose." Jane let her jaw sag, and found that it helped her to relax.

The burning sensation came again, worse than ever, and Jane knew the baby was almost born: she could feel its head pushing through, stretching her opening impossibly wide. She cried out with the pain—and suddenly it eased, and for a moment she could feel nothing. She looked down. Rabia reached between her thighs, calling out the names of the prophets. Through a haze of tears Jane saw something round and dark in the midwife's hands.

"Don't pull," Jane said. "Don't pull the head."

"No," said Rabia.

Jane felt the pressure again. At that moment Rabia said: "A small push for the shoulder." Jane closed her eyes and squeezed gently.

A few moments later Rabia said: "Now the other shoulder.''

Jane squeezed again, and then there was an enormous relief of tension, and she knew that the baby was born. She looked down and saw its tiny form cradled on Rabia's arm. Its skin was wrinkled and wet, and its head was covered with damp dark hair. The umbilical cord looked weird, a thick blue rope pulsing like a vein.

"Is it all right?" Jane asked.

Rabia did not reply. She pursed her lips and blew on the baby's squashed, immobile face.

Oh, God, it's dead, thought Jane.

"Is it all right?" she repeated.

Rabia blew again, and the baby opened its tiny mouth and cried.

Jane said: "Oh, thank God—it's alive."

Rabia picked up a clean cotton rag and wiped the baby's face.

"Is it normal?" asked Jane.

At last Rabia spoke. She looked into Jane's eyes, smiled and said: "Yes. She is normal."

She's normal, Jane thought. She. I made a little girl. A girl.

Suddenly she felt utterly drained. She could not remain upright a moment longer. "I want to lie down," she said.

Zahara helped her step back to the mattress and put cushions behind her so that she was sitting up, while Rabia held the baby, still attached to Jane by the cord. When Jane was settled, Rabia began to pat the baby dry with cotton rags.

Jane saw the cord stop pulsing, shrivel and turn white. "You can cut the cord," she said to Rabia.

"We always wait for the afterbirth," Rabia said.

"Do it now, please."

Rabia looked dubious, but complied. She took a piece of white string from her table and tied it around the cord a few inches from the baby's navel. It should have been closer, Jane thought; but it doesn't matter.

Rabia unwrapped the new razor blade. "In the name of Allah," she said, and cut the cord.

"Give her to me," said Jane.

Rabia handed the baby to her, saying: "Don't let her suckle."

Jane knew Rabia was wrong about this. "It helps the afterbirth," she said.

Rabia shrugged.

Jane put the baby's face to her breast. Her nipples were enlarged and felt deliciously sensitive, like when Jean-Pierre kissed them. As her nipple touched the baby's cheek, the child turned her head reflexively and opened her little mouth. As soon as the nipple went in, she began to suck. Jane was astonished to find that it felt sexy. For a moment she was shocked and embarrassed, then she thought: What the hell.

She sensed further movements in her abdomen. She obeyed an urge to push, and then felt the placenta come out, a slippery small birth. Rabia wrapped it carefully in a rag.

The baby stopped sucking and seemed to fall asleep.

Zahara handed Jane a cup of water. She drank it in one gulp. It tasted wonderful. She asked for more.

She was sore, exhausted and blissfully happy. She looked down at the little girl sleeping peacefully at her breast. She felt ready to sleep herself.

Rabia said: "We should wrap the little one."

Jane lifted the baby—she was as light as a doll—and handed her to the old woman. "Chantai," she said as Rabia took her. "Her name is Chantai." Then she closed her eyes.

ELLIS THALER took the Eastern Airlines shuttle from Washington to New York. At La Guardia Airport he got a cab to the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The cab dropped him at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the hotel. Ellis went inside. In the lobby he turned left and went to the 58th Street elevators. A man in a business suit and a woman carrying a Saks shopping bag got in with him. The man got out at the seventh floor. Ellis got out at the eighth. The woman went on up. Ellis walked along the cavernous hotel corridor, all alone, until he came to the 59th Street elevators. He went down to the ground floor and left the hotel by the 59th Street entrance.

Satisfied that no one was following him, he hailed a cab on Central Park South, went to Penn Station and took the train to Douglaston, Queens.

Some lines from Auden's "Lullaby" were repeating in his head as he rode the train:

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral.

It was more than a year since he had posed as an aspiring American poet in Paris, but he had not lost the taste for verse.

He continued to check for a tail, for this was one assignation his enemies must never learn about. He got off the train at Flushing and waited on the platform for the next train. No one waited with him.

Because of his elaborate precautions it was five o'clock when he reached Douglaston. From the station he walked briskly for half an hour, running over in his mind the approach he was about to make, the words he would use, the various possible reactions he might expect.

He reached a suburban street within sight of Long Island Sound and stopped outside a small, neat house with mock-Tudor gables and a stained-glass window in one wall. There was a small Japanese car in the driveway. As he walked up the path, the front door was opened by a blond girl of thirteen.

Ellis said: "Hello, Petal."

"Hi, Daddy," she replied.

He bent down to kiss her, feeling as always a glow of pride simultaneously with a stab of guilt.

He looked her up and down. Underneath her Michael Jackson T-shirt she was wearing a bra. He was pretty sure that was new. She's turning into a woman, he thought. I'll be damned.

"Would you like to come inside for a moment?" she said politely.

"Sure."

He followed her into the house. From behind she looked even more womanly. He was reminded of his first girlfriend. He had been fifteen and she had been not much older than Petal. . . . No, wait, he thought; she was younger, she was twelve. And I used to put my hand up her sweater. Lord protect my daughter from fifteen-year-old boys.

They went into a small, neat living room. "Won't you sit down?" said Petal.

Ellis sat down.

"Can I get you something?" she asked.

"Relax," Ellis told her. "You don't have to be so polite. I'm your Daddy."

She looked puzzled and uncertain, as if she had been rebuked for something she did not know to be wrong.

After a moment she said: "I have to brush my hair. Then we can go. Excuse me."

"Sure," said Ellis. She went out. He found her courtesy painful. It was a sign that he was still a stranger. He had not yet succeeded in becoming a normal member of her family.

He had been seeing her at least once a month for the past year, ever since he came back from Paris. Sometimes they would spend a day together, but more often he would just take her out to dinner, as he was going to today. To be with her for that hour, he had to make a five-hour trip with maximum security, but of course she did not know that. His aim was a modest one: without any fuss or drama he wanted to take a small but permanent place in his daughter's life.