Birdsong (66 page)

Elizabeth gasped and he looked to where the top of the skull pushed and bore down again, demanding entrance. The body split and parted for it; the head emerged, whole, streaked with blood and slime, trapped around the neck by Elizabeth’s divided flesh.

“Come on,” he said, “come on, one last push and it’s there.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I have to wait for a contr …” Her voice failed. He put his face close to hers and kissed her. Strands of hair clung to her cheek, stuck down by sweat, as she buried her face in the chintz cushion of the sofa.

He took the baby’s head between his hands.

“Don’t pull,” she gasped. “See if you can feel the cord round its neck.”

Robert gently probed with his finger, but feared to stretch the bursting flesh further. “It’s all right,” he said.

Then Elizabeth opened her eyes, and he saw them fill with a determination he had never seen in any human face before. She threw back her head and he could see the sinews of her neck rise up like bones. Her wild eyes reminded him of a horse that has finally scented home and clamps his teeth on to the metal bit: no power on earth could stop the combined force of muscle, instinct, and willpower as it drove on to its appointed end.

Elizabeth screamed. He looked down and saw the baby’s shoulders driven out behind its head. He reached down and took them in his hands. Now he was going to pull.

The baby’s shoulders were slippery between his palms, but as he increased the pressure, it suddenly burst free with a sound like a giant cork being released. In a rush of blood it slithered down into his hands and let out a single bleat. Its skin was grey and covered
with a whiteish substance, thick and greasy about the chest and back. He looked down to the angry purple cord that looped back beneath Elizabeth’s blood-smeared legs, then to the baby’s genitals, swollen with its mother’s hormones. He blew into its face. It cried, a jagged, stuttering cry. It was a boy.

He could not speak, but he found a towel less bloodied than the others, in which he wrapped the baby. He passed it back beneath Elizabeth’s knees into her hands. She sat back on her heels amid the newspapers and the blood, holding the child to her.

“It’s a boy,” said Robert hoarsely.

“I know. It’s …” She struggled on the word. “… John.”

“John? Yes, yes … that’s all right.”

“It’s a promise,” she said. She was in a storm of weeping. “A promise … made by my grandfather.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine.” Robert knelt with Elizabeth and the boy; he put his arm round both of them. They stayed in this position on the floor until they were disturbed by a knock at the door. They looked up. A woman with a briefcase had let herself in, then knocked because they had not heard her.

“It looks as though I’m too late,” she smiled. “Is everyone all right?”

“Yes,” gasped Elizabeth. She showed her the baby.

“He’s lovely,” said the doctor. “I’ll cut the cord.”

She knelt down on the floor. She looked up at Robert. “It’s probably best if you go and get a bit of fresh air now.”

“Yes. All right.” He stroked Elizabeth’s hair and laid his fingers against John’s cheek.

———

The sun was up outside. It was a fresh, clear morning, overpoweringly bright after the darkness and panic of the cottage.

Released from the need to be calm, Robert heaved his shoulders up and down and forced out several long, sobbing breaths.

He walked a few paces up into the garden, and then the joy overwhelmed him.

He felt it coursing through his arms and his legs; the top of his skull began to crawl and throb as though it would lift off his head. The feeling that rose up inside him was like taking flight; his spirit
lifted, then, as the confines of his body would not contain it, seemed to soar into the air.

He found that in his rapture he had walked to the top of the garden. He stopped and looked down. His feet were ankle-deep in chestnuts, which had fallen overnight from the tree, the glossy fruit bursting from the spiky green shells. He knelt down and picked up two or three of the beautiful, shining things in his hand. When he had been a boy he had waited every year for this day. Now here was John, his boy, another chance.

He threw the chestnuts up into the air in his great happiness. In the tree above him they disturbed a roosting crow, which erupted from the branches with an explosive bang of its wings, then rose toward the sky, its harsh, ambiguous call coming back in long, grating waves toward the earth, to be heard by those still living.

CHARLOTTE GRAY

In blacked-out, wartime London, Charlotte Gray develops a dangerous passion for a battle-weary RAF pilot, and when he fails to return from a daring flight into France she is determined to find him. In the service of the Resistance, she travels to the village of Lavaurette, changing her name to conceal her identity. Here she will come face-to-face with the harrowing truth of what took place during Europe’s darkest years and will confront a terrifying secret that threatens to cast its shadow over the remainder of her days.

Fiction/Literature

A WEEK IN DECEMBER

In the blustery final days of 2007, seven characters will reach an unexpected turning point: a hedge fund manager pulling off a trade, a professional football player recently arrived from Poland, a young lawyer with too much time on his hands, a student led astray by Islamist theory, a hack book reviewer, a schoolboy hooked on pot and reality TV, and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these lives in a daily loop. And as the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the new world they inhabit. Panoramic and masterful,
A Week in December
melds moral heft and piercing wit, holding a mirror up to the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life.

Fiction/Literature

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