Shadow of the Moon (86 page)

He had slept in the jungle that night, in the grass before the entrance of the Hirren Minar; but he had lain awake for a long time listening to the night noises and straining his ears for any sound that might be made by men. He could hear, intermittently, a murmur of voices from the upper chamber of the ruined building behind him, but it came at longer and longer intervals and at last there was silence.

There were clouds in the sky that night, but they held no promise of rain; only of hot winds and dust, and it seemed as though they intensified the heat, pressing it down onto the gasping earth so that it could not escape, as though they were a lid on a gigantic cauldron. They were gone when Alex awoke with the first light of dawn, and the sky was clear again. Clear with the hazy clearness that promised a day of grinding heat.

Alex went down to the river and lay in the water on the narrow ledge below the bank, watching the sky turn from pale green to saffron while the birds awoke in the thickets above him and a troop of monkeys came down to drink. He lay there for a long time, until the sun leapt from below the horizon and the burning day was in full flood across the pitiless sky and the parched jungle. It was only then, when the sun flared in the tree-tops, that he realized that none of the three women had come down to the river that morning. They were usually there well before sunrise, and he would leave the small beach to them and return to the Hirren Minar. But today they had not come.

He left the water reluctantly and felt it dry on his back almost before he had reached the top of the bank. Between the tree shadows the sun was like a raw flame on his shoulders as he walked back to the Hirren Minar, and he had reached the entrance when he heard that agonized moaning, and stopped.

He stood quite still for perhaps five minutes, knowing with despair and anger and pity what it meant. Then he turned away and sat down in a patch of shadow on a fallen block of stone that fronted the low stone ledge before the Hirren Minar. This at least was not his affair. There were two women with her.

Listening to the moans he wondered why the Almighty had thought fit to inflict on womankind such a lengthy and agonizing method of populating the earth. And why, in the name of Allah the Merciful and Compassionate, had this got to happen now?

He leaned back on the warm, time-worn stone and wondered just how much difference this was going to make to all of them. The problem of this unborn child had been hanging over them all ever since the day of their escape from the Residency: marching remorselessly towards them; unavoidable and inescapable. Wars and riots and mutinies, famine, disaster and the crash of dynasties - the processes of birth stopped for none of these things. Lottie would have to bear this child even though her husband, mother, father and half her friends were dead, and India awash with blood and anarchy. Except by dying, she could not escape it.

Probably just as well to get it over, thought Alex. After all it was a perfectly natural process. Nothing to make a fuss about. Happened half a million times a day and was a simpler matter than one would suppose. He had assisted at the arrival of Chytuc and helped a bitch who was in difficulties to produce her litter, and once he had sat up all night reading by the light of an oil-lamp a manual on midwifery, and receiving terse instructions from a doctor who had crippled himself in a fall from his horse while riding fifty miles to attend the wife of a typhoid-stricken surveyor in a lonely forest camp, who was about to give birth to her first child. It had proved a slow but comparatively simple affair. But the woman had been wide-hipped and healthy and not in any way comparable to the childish smallness and fragility of Lottie.

‘What
are
those women doing to her?' thought Alex impatiently. He could hear Winter's voice and Lou's, and Lottie's agonizing moans going on and on. The moans rose to a scream that was more fear than pain, and suddenly he could bear it no longer. He leapt the stone ledge and was up the ladder and in the comparative coolness of the upper room.

Lottie was lying on the camp bed, fully dressed and clutching at the sides of it; her eyes wide with terror. Winter knelt beside her and Lou Cottar leant over her with a tin mug in her hand. They turned their heads towards him and on both their white faces was the same terror of the unknown that was on Lottie's, and Alex, seeing it, realized in that moment that not one of them had the least idea of the mechanics of birth.

The suffocating prudery of the age saw to it that the majority of young women were kept in complete ignorance of such matters, and neither Winter nor Lottie had even seen a cat having kittens, while Lou Cottar, who could certainly not be classed as either young or an innocent, had never had any children of her own and was entirely uninterested in the conversation and gossip of those who had. All three of them had only the haziest idea of what happened when a child was born, for the whole affair was shrouded in the deepest mystery and only referred to in whispers. It was, moreover, considered
by many that the less a young mother knew about childbirth the less likely she would be to panic about it in advance, while once the birth had begun - well, there was nothing for it then but to endure it.

Alex could see all these things written clearly in the desperate, terrified faces of the three women, and a sudden fury of exasperation took him by the throat. He thrust Winter and Lou aside and said savagely: ‘What in hell's name do you think you're doing? Come on - get her out of those clothes!' And saw again the same expression reflected on three faces. Even in this extremity they could feel it to be unspeakably shocking to remove Lottie's dress in his presence, and his exasperation mounted. He bent over Lottie and took her hands, feeling them turn and clutch frantically at his, and said: ‘Listen to me, Lottie. You've got to think of your baby now and not of anything else. Forget that I'm a man - or anyone you know. Just try and do what I say. Will you do that?'

Lottie nodded, clinging to his hands, and he released them with difficulty and said shortly to Lou: ‘Pull that fan and keep the flies off her. Have we got enough water in the place?'

‘I - I think so,' said Lou. Her face was quite white and her assurance had suddenly forsaken her. Lou would have faced a howling mob with calm and courage, and she had not flinched in the face of danger. But Lottie's pain and fear were something that she could do nothing to relieve, and it left her feeling sickened and helpless.

‘Well, make sure. And if we haven't, get it.' He turned to Winter, who had removed Lottie's clothing, and said: ‘Get down there and heat some water. And here—' He reached for a clasp knife from the stone ledge and handed it to her. ‘Boil that in some water - let it boil for five or ten minutes and then take it off and leave it in there.'

She turned without a word and descended the ladder and Lou said: ‘The smoke—'

‘We shall have to chance it.' He heard Lottie's moans rise once more to a scream and went to her swiftly, taking her hands again, and Winter heard him talking as she fetched wood and dry grass and lit the fire that they had never yet lit by day. He was telling Lottie about the child. What it was doing, and what her own body was doing to help it in its struggle for release, and what she must do to help them both. It sounded, suddenly, entirely natural and reasonable, and no longer some dark and mysterious and inexplicable process fraught with terror and uncertainty. His words evidently carried the same reassurance to Lottie, for her agonized moaning ceased.

‘You can't avoid a certain amount of pain, dear,' said Alex, ‘but there isn't anything to be frightened of, and it will be here soon.'

‘
He
,' said Lottie. ‘Not “it”.'

Winter heard Alex laugh, and thought again: ‘He has a special voice for Lottie. Dear Alex - darling Alex—!'

The long morning wore away, and the appalling heat filled every corner
and crevice of the Hirren Minar as though it had been a tangible thing; a weight which could be lifted from the shoulders if only the body had possessed sufficient strength.

That day, when they needed it so badly, the hot wind failed and the air was as still as brass. Lou and Winter took it in turns to pull the bamboo punkah and to sponge and fan Lottie, while Alex sat by her, talking to her; pulling against her as she clung to his hands, dragging at them and screaming. The sweat ran down their faces and blinded their eyes, and Winter and Lou flinched and gasped at every scream, but Alex's voice remained steady and reassuring and Lottie's eyes clung desperately to his - as desperately as her hands.

Once Lou had dropped the wet cloth she had been holding and jumped to her feet, her eyes wide and staring in her white sweat-streaked face and her hands pressed frantically over her ears to keep out the sound of that terrible screaming. ‘I can't bear it!' she gasped. ‘I can't bear it—' She had started to run from the room and Alex had released one hand and caught her arm in a crushing grip, forcing her back. He had not spoken, but Lou had looked down into his face and experienced as violent a shock as though he had struck her. She stood staring at him, trembling and gasping, and then her tense muscles had slackened and the blood had rushed up into her face, and she said: ‘I'm sorry.' Alex's fingers relaxed, and she had looked down dazedly at the marks they had left, and stumbling back to her place had picked up the cloth and continued to bathe Lottie's writhing body.

But before the morning was out Alex knew with a sick despair that he would not allow to show in his face that he was fighting a losing battle.

Lottie's meagre strength ebbed with the day, and Alex gave her brandy and cursed both man and nature for allowing any woman born with that narrowness of hip to conceive. He could not see how it was possible for the child to be born at all - let alone be born alive. And yet it was so nearly born. But the afternoon had gone, and Lottie's strength with it. She could do no more. He would have to do the rest himself. He looked at Lou and saw that her hands were shaking, and he turned his head and spoke over his shoulder to Winter: ‘Hold her for me.'

Lottie's daughter was born just as the sun touched the level of the tree-tops; and long before the gold had left the sky Lottie was dead. She had survived the birth, and she might have lived if she had fought to do so; but she had neither the strength nor the desire to hold on to life.

She had spoken only once. Lou had washed the tiny, whimpering creature and laid it against Lottie's thin shoulder, and Lottie's sunken eyes had opened slowly and painfully and she had looked at it. A last ray from the sinking sun had pierced through the bamboo screen and touched its small head, and Lottie's bloodless lips had curled in the shadow of a smile.

‘Red hair,' she whispered. ‘Like Edward's. Take care of him, Lou.' And then she had died.

Lou had wept, but Winter had not cried for Lottie. Lottie was with Edward, and she had loved Edward so much. That tiny red-headed morsel of humanity, if it lived, might have comforted her, but it would never have made up to her for the loss of her Edward, or wiped out that picture of him dying cruelly before her eyes. She washed Lottie's light little body and dressed her again, and went out to the river before it became too dark to see, leaving Lou with the child.

Alex was sitting on a fallen block of stone among the jungle grass near the entrance to the Hirren Minar. He had his head in his hands, and in the dusk he had been almost invisible against the background of the bamboos that towered up behind him.

Winter stood watching him for a moment or two, and then she went to him and put her arms about him, and laid her cheek against his hair. He turned his head against her shoulder with a tired sigh and his arms came round her quite gently. He leant against her for a long time without moving or speaking, as though he were too tired to wish to do either, while the dusk deepened about them and the evening star shone bright in a soft green sky.

Alex stirred at last, moving his head so that his lips lay against the curve of her throat, and his arms tightened about her, drawing her close. And then a peacock screamed from beyond the bamboo-brake - a harsh, grating cry that seemed to echo the gasping screams that had rung in their ears all that hot agonizing afternoon - and she felt his body jerk almost as though he had been abruptly awakened from sleep. He pushed her away from him suddenly and violently, his hands coming up to grip her arms and wrench them away, and he stood up swiftly and said in a voice that was as hard and as rough as a steel file: ‘No, I'm damned if I will! Not after today. I won't let that happen to you. I won't, do you hear. Go on - get back in there before I—' He bit the sentence off, swung round and disappeared into the dusk.

He had returned an hour later and fetched the heavy-bladed knife that was used for cutting through thick jungle, and gone out again. It had taken him the best part of the night to dig a grave that would be deep enough to protect Lottie's little body from marauding animals, but he had managed it at last.

They had buried her in the clear pearly light of the early morning, an hour before the sun rose, and Alex had said as much as he could remember of the service for the burial of the dead over her grave. He remembered a good deal of it, for India was a country where that service was used with depressing frequency. Afterwards he had gone off to bathe in the river at a spot higher up the bank, leaving the narrow beach by the tree to Winter and Lou, and had not returned until an hour after the sun had risen.

The upper room of the Hirren Minar was clean and swept and tidy, and yesterday and all the nerve-racking torture of those long, hot, agonizing hours seemed a year away. Winter had handed him food which she had kept hot for him in a covered cooking-pot among the embers of a fire, and he had eaten it and watched Lou who was feeding the baby with water in which she
had boiled a little rice. She dipped a clean rag in the liquid and gave it to the tiny creature to suck, and there was a look on her face that Alex had not thought it possible for Lou Cottar to wear. A soft, absorbed wonder. He observed it with interest and a certain astonished amusement - Mrs Josh Cottar, of all people!