Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [153]
Would he like to be a father to Chantal? she asked herself. She looked at the tiny face, and wide blue eyes looked back at her. Who could fail to cherish this helpless little girl?
Suddenly she was completely uncertain about everything. She was not sure how much she loved Ellis; she did not know what she felt about Jean-Pierre, the husband who was hunting her; she could not figure out what her duty to her child was. She was frightened of the snow and the mountains and the Russians, and she had been tired and tense and cold for too long.
Automatically she changed Chantal, using the dry diaper from the fire-side. She could not remember changing her last night. It seemed to her that she had fallen asleep after feeding her. She frowned, doubting her memory; then it came back to her that Ellis had roused her momentarily to zip her into the sleeping bag. He must have taken the soiled diaper down to the stream and washed it and wrung it out and hung it on a stick beside the fire to dry. Jane started to cry.
She felt very foolish, but she could not stop, so she carried on dressing Chantal with tears streaming down her face. Ellis came back in as she was making the baby comfortable in the carrying sling.
“Goddam horse didn’t want to wake up either,” he said; then he saw her face and said: “What is it?”
“I don’t know why I ever left you,” she said. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known, and I never stopped loving you. Please forgive me.”
He put his arms around her and Chantal. “Just don’t do it again, that’s all,” he said.
They stood like that for a while.
Eventually Jane said: “I’m ready.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
They went outside and set off uphill through the thinning woodland. Halam had taken the lantern, but the moon was out and they could see clearly. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe. Jane worried about Chantal. The baby was once again inside Jane’s fur-lined coat, and she hoped that her body warmed the air Chantal was breathing. Could a baby come to harm by breathing cold air? Jane had no idea.
Ahead of them was the Kantiwar Pass, at fifteen thousand feet a good deal higher than the last pass, the Aryu. Jane knew she was going to be colder and more tired than she had ever been in her life, and perhaps more frightened, too, but her spirits were high. She felt she had resolved something deep inside herself. If I live, she thought, I want to live with Ellis. One of these days I’ll tell him it was because he washed out a dirty diaper.
They soon left the trees behind and started across a plateau like a moonscape, with boulders and craters and odd patches of snow. They followed a line of huge flat stones like a giant’s footpath. They were still climbing, although less steeply for the moment, and the temperature dropped steadily, the white patches increasing until the ground was a crazy chessboard.
Nervous energy kept Jane going for the first hour or so, but then, as she settled into the endless march, weariness overcame her again. She wanted to say How far is it now? and Will we be there soon? as she had when a child in the back of her father’s car.
At some point on that sloping upland they crossed the ice line. Jane became aware of the new danger when the horse skidded, snorted with fear, almost fell and regained its balance. Then she noticed that the moonlight was reflecting off the boulders as if they were glazed: the rocks were like diamonds, cold and hard and glittering. Her boots gripped better than Maggie’s hooves, but nevertheless, a little while later, Jane slipped and almost fell. From then on she was terrified she would fall and crush Chantal, and she trod ultracarefully, her nerves so taut she felt she might snap.
After a little more than two hours they reached the far side of the plateau and found themselves facing a steep path up a snow-covered