Ken Follett Unabridged CD Collection: Lie Down With Lions, Eye of the Needle, Triple by Follett Ken

Author:Follett, Ken [Follett, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781423386520
Amazon: 1423386523
Goodreads: 6022945
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2009-01-10T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When Fara learned that Jane and Jean-Pierre would be leaving with the next convoy, she cried for a whole day. She had developed a strong attachment to Jane and a great fondness for Chantal. Jane was pleased, but embarrassed: sometimes it seemed as if Fara preferred Jane to her own mother. However, Fara seemed to get used to the idea that Jane was leaving, and the next day she was her usual self, devoted as ever but no longer heartbroken.

Jane herself became anxious about the journey home. From the Valley to the Khyber Pass was a 150-mile trek. Coming in, it had taken fourteen days. She had suffered from blisters and diarrhea as well as the inevitable aches and pains. Now she had to do the return journey carrying a two-month-old baby. There would be horses, but for much of the way it would not be safe to ride them, for the convoys traveled by the smallest and steepest of mountain paths, often at night.

She made a sort of hammock of cotton, to be slung around her neck, for carrying Chantal. Jean-Pierre would have to carry whatever supplies they needed during the day, for—as Jane had learned on the journey in—horses and men walked at different speeds, the horses going faster than the men uphill and slower downhill, so that people got separated from the baggage for long periods.

Deciding what supplies to take was the problem that occupied her this afternoon, while Jean-Pierre was at Skabun. There would be a basic medical kit—antibiotics, wound dressings, morphine—which Jean-Pierre would put together. They would have to take some food. Coming in, they had had a lot of high-energy Western rations: chocolate and packet soups and the explorers’ perennial favorite, Kendal Mint Cake. Going out, they would have only what they could find in the Valley: rice, dried fruit, dried cheese, hard bread and anything they could buy on the road. It was a good thing they did not have to worry about food for Chantal.

However, there were other difficulties with the baby. Mothers here did not use diapers, but left the baby’s lower half uncovered, and washed the towel on which it lay. Jane thought it was a much healthier arrangement than the Western system, but it was no good for traveling. Jane had made three diapers out of towels, and had improvised a pair of waterproof underpants for Chantal out of the polythene wrappings from Jean-Pierre’s medical supplies. She would have to wash a diaper every evening—in cold water, of course—and try to dry it overnight. If it did not dry, there was a spare one; and if both were damp, Chantal would get sore. No baby ever died of diaper rash, she told herself. The convoy certainly would not stop for a baby to sleep or be fed and changed, so Chantal would have to feed and doze in motion and be changed whenever the opportunity arose.

In some ways Jane was tougher than she had been a year ago. The skin of her feet was hard and her stomach was resistant to the commoner local bacteria.

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