Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 19

Leo cut the cord rather clumsily and a little too far along, then nervously picked the baby up. He was astounded by her complex perfection. He placed her beside the mother, who opened her eyes and looked for the first time upon her daughter. An expression of wonder came into her face and Leo felt that at last her fever had broken and that she understood what was going on. She struggled to sit up. Leo supported her, then helped her to unbutton her shirt. As she took the baby to her breast and it began to suckle, the boy tactfully withdrew to the main room. A feeling of elation and lightness of heart took hold of him and shook him; he started to tidy the room in a noisy and boisterous fashion. When next he peeked into the bedroom, both mother and daughter were asleep.

Chapter Seventeen

Three days later Leo was still in the valley, but much had changed. The young mother, whose name, he had learned, was Adious, was recovering from her fever but was still weak and slept for many hours each day. The baby was thriving: she was a serene child who cried seldom and woke only at times that were convenient for everyone.

Of the three people who were sharing the hut, it was Leo who had to be the most active. He cooked, he cleaned, he cut wood. He learned how to change and wash the baby’s garments. He prepared soups and nourishing meals for Adious. He tended the mob of sheep that seemed to be the focus of the farm’s existence. He carried water, fed the cat, and cleared the gutters and drains after each of the frequent storms that swept through the little valley. The third room in the cottage, which gave evidence of having been prepared with loving care for the baby’s coming, was Leo’ temporary bedroom; he made a bed by stuffing a mattress cover with bracken, and fell exhausted on to it every night.

His conversations with Adious began to acquire more form. At first she had accepted his presence unquestioningly, but as her health improved she began to show more curiosity. He judged her to be about seventeen; she was a stunningly attractive black-haired girl with dark haunting eyes. She watched him as he scrubbed her floor and asked: ‘Who are you? Someone sent, to be my guardian? Where do you come from?’ Her voice had a slightly foreign flavour; Leo found it exotic and attractive. He leaned back on his heels and laughed.

‘My name’s Leo. I just happened to take this path, and I just happened to keep following it,’ he said, but at the same time he wondered if indeed it had been chance. ‘Then I found this valley and this hut, and there you were, looking like you needed some help. Do you remember much about it? I mean, about giving birth and so on?’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘But I remember that every time I felt terrible, you were there, and you were kind and gentle. How long have you been here?’

‘Nearly three days,’ Leo said, but at this she became distressed, and started up on her pillow.

‘Three days!’ she cried, ‘Where’s Jared?’

‘Who’s Jared?’ Leo asked, alarmed at her sudden fear. ‘You called out his name when you were having the baby, but there’s been nobody here but me.’

‘Jared’s my husband,’ she said, sinking back onto the bed. ‘Something must have happened to him. He left when I went into labour, to fetch the midwife. She’s only a day’s journey from here. Something has happened to him.’

Leo stood up. ‘Which way would he have gone?’ he asked.

‘There’s only one way out of this valley,’ she said. Leo assumed it was the same way he came.

He arranged some food for Adious, changed the baby again and set out along the track. He walked quickly. But he did not have far to travel. After less than an hour he heard voices approaching, so he stopped and waited. Around a bend in the track came a group of men, sombrely dressed, carrying a stretcher. After a moment Leo saw that the face of the body on the stretcher was covered, signifying death. The men stopped when they saw him.

‘Who are you?’ asked one of them, an unshaven man of perhaps forty, with the weatherbeaten face and rough hands of a farmer.

‘I’ve been helping, in the valley,’ Leo explained falteringly, suddenly feeling very young again. ‘The girl had a baby, and she was sick.’ The men looked at each other in despair.

‘Ah, she’s had it already,’ one said, ‘and my wife was not there.’ They put down the stretcher and crowded around, asking questions.

‘How is she?’ ‘How is the baby?’ ‘Wasn’t she worried about her husband?’ ‘How long have you been there?’ Leo answered as many questions as he could, then thought it was time to ask one of his own.

‘Is that her husband. Is that Jared?’ he asked. ‘What happened to him?’

The men suddenly fell silent, and stood back again. Finally the first man spoke: ‘We found him under a fallen tree,’ he said. ‘There was a storm . . . many trees came down.’

Leo sat down as the implications of this death began to dawn on him. The men adopted various positions, leaning against trees, sitting on the ground. Leo thought, ‘On her own . . . a new baby . . . she’s still not even able to stand.’ The tragedy of it all welled u

p in his stomach and came into his throat. He covered his eyes with his hands. ‘A death and a birth,’ he thought.

The men stirred, picked up the stretcher and began the last phase of their procession. Leo followed disconsolately.

The following days marked Leo forever. There was the grief of a girl whom he no longer thought of as beautiful but rather as a fascinating and unpredictable person. A solemn burial under a grey sky, the figures of the mourners etched against the dun background. A baby named Jessie, who gripped Leo’ finger in her little hand, and who fell asleep comfortably in his arms as he rocked her. A desperate ride through the night for help when it appeared that the baby had become seriously ill. The inexpressible relief and joy when he found, upon his return, that the illness had been nothing more than a stomach upset . . .

A week passed, and another, and another. Neither Adious nor Leo mentioned the possibility of his leaving. Each day he busied himself with work both indoors and outdoors, improving the hut and the farm. He carried out short-term jobs and long-term jobs. He rehung a dragging door and sowed wheat and oats. ‘This valley’s too wet for sheep,’ he said to Adious that night. She smiled, for the first time since the burial. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘Jared was no farmer.’

Her story slowly emerged. She had been born at sea, the daughter of a ship’s captain who travelled with his wife. She had seen many wild and tranquil sights. As the years went on her mother tended to stay at home, caring for a family that had grown to five children — Adious and two sets of twins. When Adious was older she began to travel once more with her father on his trading voyages. On one such trip she fell in love with a new member of the crew, Jared. They had married less than a year ago, and had come to the valley to learn farming. She was just seventeen years old.

During the day she and Leo would work separately or together, but they found time to play too. On hot days they swam; on cooler days they took long walks and explored the tangled forests that surrounded the valley. The baby would ride in a pouch on her mother’s back. In the evenings they ate together at the rough timber table, while Jessie slept in a basket on the floor beside them. Adious loved to hear Leo read, so after dinner most nights he would read aloud from one of the few books in the meagre hut’s poor collection. She particularly loved to hear stories of the sea, but would get passionately angry at any inaccuracies in them.

After a few months they began to sleep together. It happened in an almost casual way, without planning and without drama, although both of them had considered the possibility many times. One night as they began to ease towards their respective rooms Leo lingered a little, and Adious took him by the hand and led him to her room. He expected her to be wild in bed, and on the second night she was, but that first time she was slow and gentle, almost dreamy. Leo worried that she might be remembering Jared, but he tried to put the thought out of his mind.

Other changes came about. Jessie began to show much joy when Leo returned to the hut after a day’s work. Leo looked forward to these moments in a way that made him realise how deeply bonded they had become since their first tentative contact on that wet and threatening afternoon so many months before.

Leo was changing. He was growing taller at a disconcertingly rapid rate. He was becoming stronger across the chest and developing muscles in his arms and legs. His body hair was spreading; he tried to ignore with dignity Adious’ teasing, and was secretly proud that he had to borrow Jared’s razor more and more often.

They did not have many visitors in the valley. None came by chance and few by design. The nearest farmers and their wives took it in turn to make formal visits after Jared’s death, to pay their respects to the young widow. They showed no concern at the unconventional presence of Leo, but watched him closely, as if to assess his capabilities. Apparently satisfied by what they saw the men each took him solemnly aside and outlined the jobs that needed doing around the farm. They assumed that he was adept at physical labour, but in fact Adious was probably stronger than he was. As the baby grew a few months older, Adious was able to do more outdoors work.

The days shortened and winter began to close its grim hand around the valley — forcing them to concentrate on two major tasks: clearing another section of the valley for crops and building up huge stocks of firewood. They extended the vegetable garden behind the hut and covered it with straw as protection against frost. It would be a hard winter and they trained their stomachs by restricting themselves to two meals a day.

Leo left the valley only once, to take wheat and vegetables to a small trading centre called Fesquina, which was nearly a full day’s journey from their sheltered home. He used a handcart, which Jared had brought into the valley when he and his bride had first arrived there. It was not easy to tow the laden cart over the rough walking tracks, and Leo was exhausted by the time he arrived. Most of the bartering was over for the day so the boy had to be patient and endure a cold sleep under a tree before trading his stock. He used the money he made to buy essentials he and Adious had agreed they needed. These included salt and sugar, smoked fish, tools, needles and thread, oil, and some more books.

From the moment he had left the valley Leo missed the company of Adious and Jessie. He felt responsible for them. He set a quick pace on the trip home and the cart bounced crabbily behind him. His only indulgence was to stop at a tree that was beautifully encrusted with a vine bearing late autumn flowers, fragrant yellow and green. Leo picked armfuls of creeper and filled the cart with them: these, and an old silver ring that he had bought in Fesquina, were the presents he brought home to Adious.

Chapter Eighteen

The two young people never tired of each other’s company. Through the long winter Leo and Adious delighted in exploring each other, physically and spiritually. Yet Leo knew that there were dark depths of Adious that would never be plumbed, not by him, not by anyone, not even by Adious herself. She was a poem, a painting, the coals of a fire. She was a night of stars and a moody river. For her part Adious was seduced by the brown-eyed boy who had come from nowhere. She remembered little of the fever-filled days that had seen Jessie brought out of her body. She had made assumptions about him in those early days but they all proved fallacious.