Rainbow Bridge (58 page)

‘I have found a baby… Is it?’

‘No, Coz, that’s a little stone.’

‘Put eyes?’

He found a marker, and put eyes on the little stone. She’d talk to anything. Her fingers were a family, Ax’s feet (known as Footso and Toeso), were characters in an enduring soap opera. ‘Oooh, Coz. Where did you find your stone? Is it Min’s?’

The little girl was shaken by terrible guilt.

‘
No
!’ she whispered, tears brimming. ‘I have found it.’

What are we going to do with this child? She’s so devastated by everything, so passionately in love with everything around her. ‘Sssh, ssh, it’s okay. Your stone.’

Cosoleth left the bed, and crouched with her little head clutched in her hands, wrestling in silence. Finally, biting her lip, tragic-eyed, she took the stone with eyes and laid it at Min’s paws. She came back to the mattress, cast herself down and wept.

Ax picked her up and rocked her, what shall it be, one of her favourites

Don’t be scared, he told himself, don’t be scared. The beauty of the night struck him as something unearthly: the child in his arms, Min sphinxing on the end of the mattress now; his Les Paul in its hard case up against the red-plastered wall. An arch of blue handprints above the window… He wanted to paint this and put it to music in immix, with the intensity of a Van Gogh interior. Better than wanting, he thought; I’ll do it. But not until I know what kind of beauty this is. Oh God, is this the end of my life? The door of the inner room opened. The midwife looked out from the bright light in there; Ax and Cosoleth started up, trembling.

‘Fiorinda?’ breathed Ax.

‘Your wife is very well, it was easy. Your friend is a good nurse.’

‘Yeah, I know, yeah, I know. Is the baby okay?’

‘She’s very well. You have another daughter.’

The baby was washed and dressed, and offered her mother’s breasts. She latched on without hesitation (a good sign). Ax went with the midwife into the front room, where she showed him a little drawstring bag of papercloth. ‘This is for the umbilical cord, you should bury it under the doorsill. If you know the child’s name, write it here.’

Ax wrote. The woman looked at him suspiciously.

‘Faraj? This is a boy’s name.’

‘A girl is a boy,’ said Ax. ‘A woman is a man.’

Her suspicions were not assuaged. She addressed Ax sternly. ‘The Prophet, peace and blessings, hath said,
one daughter is worth ten sons to a man of peace.’

Ax thought that might be one of the Elder Sister
hadith,
he wouldn’t put it past her. And why not? Who knows how much of what the Prophet really said got suppressed, when it didn’t suit the canon of opinion? She would conquer Islam, the same as she’d conquered everything else: by might and guile and patience.

‘I believe it.’ That’s why my daughter isn’t going to have a second class (don’t tell me any different, I know how Arabic works) version of her name. She gets the full measure. ‘What does it mean if you bury the umbilical cord?’

‘Nothing, really. It’s a nice thing to do.’

Ax took the baby into the yard with him, wrapped in her blankets, to see the midwife out. He knew her eyesight wasn’t clear yet, but he wanted her to see the stars. The midwife had been paid. She would be back tomorrow, later in the day.

‘Goodnight, and peace be with you.’

‘And with you, peace,’ said Ax.

Under the doorsill, hm. He felt that his life had suddenly expanded, become limitless as the abyss up there, with all its worlds. The tiny baby was awake again, looking up at him. When they are newborn, before babyhood closes over them, they seem so wise, they seem like grown up alien beings. Nothing like Coz: he felt a quieter soul in there, a gallant little stoic, with sheeny dark hair and Fiorinda’s smile. He felt as if he’d known her all his life.

‘Your name is
Faraj,
’ he said. ‘My daughter. It means Joy.’