Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [62]
She still had not made up her mind when he arrived a few minutes later. She wiped the dust from his face with a damp towel and gave him green tea in a china cup. He was pleasantly tired, rather than exhausted, she knew: he was capable of walking much longer distances. She sat with him while he drank his tea, trying not to stare at him, thinking: You lied to me. When he had rested for a little while, she said: “Let’s go out, like we used to.”
He was a little surprised. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere. Don’t you remember, last summer, how we used to go out just to enjoy the evening?”
He smiled. “Yes, I do.” She loved him when he smiled like that. He said: “Will we take Chantal?”
“No.” Jane did not want to be distracted. “She’ll be fine with Fara.”
“All right,” he said, faintly bemused.
Jane told Fara to prepare their evening meal—tea, bread and yogurt—then she and Jean-Pierre left the house. The daylight was fading and the evening air was mild and fragrant. This was the best time of day in summer. As they strolled through the fields to the river, she recalled how she had felt on this same pathway last summer: anxious, confused, excited, and determined to succeed. She was proud that she had coped so well, but glad the adventure was about to end.
She began to feel tense as the moment of confrontation drew nearer, even though she kept telling herself that she had nothing to hide, nothing to feel guilty about and nothing to fear. They waded across the river at a place where it spread wide and shallow over a rock shelf; then they climbed a steep, winding path up the face of the cliff on the other side. At the top they sat on the ground and dangled their legs over the precipice. A hundred feet below them, the Five Lions River hurried along, jostling boulders and foaming angrily through the rapids. Jane looked over the Valley. The cultivated ground was crisscrossed with irrigation channels and stone terrace walls. The bright green-and-gold colors of ripening crops made the fields look like shards of colored glass from a smashed toy. Here and there the picture was blemished by bomb damage—fallen walls, blocked ditches, and craters of mud amid the waving grain. The occasional round cap or dark turban showed that some of the men were already at work, bringing in their crops as the Russians parked their jets and put away their bombs for the night. Scarved heads or smaller figures were women and older children, who would help while the light lasted. On the far side of the Valley the farmland struggled to climb the lower slopes of the mountain, but soon surrendered to the dusty rock. From the cluster of houses off to the left the smoke of a few cooking fires rose in pencil-straight lines until the light breeze untidied it. The same breeze brought unintelligible snatches of conversation from the women bathing beyond a bend in the river upstream. Their voices were subdued, and Zahara’s hearty laugh was no longer heard, for she was in mourning. And all because of Jean-Pierre. . . .
The thought gave Jane courage. “I want you to take me home,” she said abruptly.
At first he misunderstood her. “We’ve only just got here,” he said irritably; then he looked at her and his frown cleared. “Oh,” he said.
There was a note of imperturbability in his voice which Jane found ominous, and she realized that she might not get her way without a struggle. “Yes,” she said firmly. “Home.”
He put his arm around her. “This country gets one down at times,” he said. He was not looking at her but at the rushing river far below their feet. “You’re especially vulnerable to depression at the moment, just after the birth. In a few weeks’ time, you’ll find—”
“Don’t patronize me!” she snapped. She was not going to let him get away with that kind of nonsense.