Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [91]
He hesitated.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. She could read his face. “You were about to lie to me.”
“You’re right,” he said. “But do you understand why I have to lie about it?”
She thought for a moment. “Are you afraid that your enemies will attack you through the child?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good reason.”
“Thank you. And thanks for these.” He waved the maps at her, then went out.
Chantal had gone to sleep with Jane’s nipple in her mouth. Jane disengaged her gently and lifted her to shoulder level. She burped without waking. The child could sleep through anything.
Jane wished Jean-Pierre had come back. She was sure he could do no harm, but all the same she would have felt easier if he had been under her eye. He could not contact the Russians because she had smashed his radio. There was no other means of communication between Banda and Russian territory. Masud could send messengers by runner, of course; but Jean-Pierre had no runners, and anyway if he sent someone the whole village would know about it. The only thing he could possibly do was to walk all the way to Rokha, and he had not had time for that.
As well as being anxious, she hated to sleep alone. In Europe she had not minded, but here she was frightened of the brutal, unpredictable tribesmen who thought it as normal for a man to beat his wife as for a mother to smack her child. And Jane was no ordinary woman in their eyes: with her liberated views and her direct gaze and her says-who attitude she was a symbol of forbidden sexual delights. She had not followed the conventions of sexual behavior, and the only other women they knew like that were whores.
When Jean-Pierre was there she always reached out to touch him just before falling asleep. He always slept curled up, facing away from her, and although he moved a lot in his sleep he never reached out for her. The only other man she had shared a bed with for a long period was Ellis, and he had been just the opposite: all night long he was touching her, hugging her and kissing her, sometimes while half-awake and sometimes when fast asleep. Twice or three times he had tried to make love to her, roughly, in his sleep: she would giggle and try to accommodate him, but after a few seconds he would roll off and start snoring, and in the morning he had no recollection of what he had done. How different he was from Jean-Pierre. Ellis touched her with clumsy affection, like a child playing with a beloved pet; Jean-Pierre touched her the way a violinist might handle a Stradivarius. They had loved her differently, but they had betrayed her the same way.
Chantal gurgled. She was awake. Jane laid her in her lap, supporting her head so that they could look directly at one another, and began to talk to her, partly in nonsense syllables and partly in real words. Chantal liked this. After a while Jane ran out of small talk and began to sing. She was in the middle of “Daddy’s Gone to London in a Puffer Train” when she was interrupted by a voice from outside. “Come in,” she called. She said to Chantal: “We have visitors all the time, don’t we? It’s like living in the National Gallery, isn’t it?” She pulled the front of her shirt together to hide her cleavage.
Mohammed walked in and said in Dari: “Where is Jean-Pierre?”
“Gone to Skabun. Anything I can do?”
“When will he be back?”
“In the morning, I expect. Do you want to tell me what the problem is, or do you plan to continue talking like a Kabul policeman?”
He grinned at her. When she spoke disrespectfully to him he found her sexy, which was not the effect she intended. He said: “Alishan has arrived with Masud. He wants more pills.”
“Ah, yes.” Alishan Karim was the brother of the mullah, and he suffered from angina. Of course, he would not give up his guerrilla activities, so Jean-Pierre gave him trinitrin to take immediately before battle or other exertion. “I’ll give you some pills,” she said. She stood up and handed Chantal to Mohammed.
Mohammed took the baby automatically and then looked embarrassed.