Across the Bridge (33 page)
Authors: Morag Joss
S
he lies there. She
lies there breathing with her mouth open while the stove burns low
and the knitting comes apart in her hands, because her hands feel
nothing, not the metal knitting needles that are hot from the fire
or the stitches slipping off past her fat finger ends or the
unravelling wool settling over the creases at her wrist. The hands
don’t move. The fingers look boneless, like stuffed tubes, her
nails are sunk into the tips like flat baby buttons pushed into
dough. She’s on her back like a sleeping sow, her breath whistling
in her throat, eyelashes twitching on her pink face. Her chest
moves up and down, her breasts lift and collapse over her bulging
stomach. Her giant bare feet look too lumpy to walk on. They still
bear semicircular ridges across the fronts where the swollen flesh
has bulged from her over-tight shoes, which lie splayed and
distorted on the floor beside her.
I watch her for more than an hour.
“I told you you were too tired,” I say in a loud voice, and I go
to the table and make a noise clearing our plates and taking them
to the kitchen. Her phone is also on the table and I clear that
away to the kitchen, too. I have to do everything. Every evening I
check that it’s charged and working. She can’t be trusted to.
When I come back she is awake and sitting up with the knitting
in her lap, trying to push her feet into her shoes.
“You’ll split them,” I tell her. “You can’t get them on any
more. They don’t fit.”
“I know they don’t,” she says calmly. “But it’s not worth
getting new ones now. They’ll fit me again as soon as the baby’s
born.” She smoothes a hand over her belly and picks up the
knitting, frowning at it.
“Oh dear, you shouldn’t have let me fall asleep,” she says,
yawning, picking at the yarn with the needles. “Look at this
mess.”
“Don’t blame me,” I say. “I told you you were too tired.”
She pauses with the knitting and looks at me, and then gets up,
sighing. “I’m not blaming you, Silva. I’m going to bed.”
“I suppose
I’ll
clear up, then,” I say.
Another sigh. “I’m happy to do it in the morning, but I’m very
tired now. Please leave everything. I’ll do it in the morning.”
“Leave everything dirty all night? No. That’s not how I am. You
can go to bed if you like.”
“Just leave it, Silva, it won’t matter. I’ll do it in the
morning. Good night.”
She shambles off without another word, bent over with her hands
on the small of her back, her fat feet half out of her shoes. She
doesn’t walk like that when Ron is here. I want to tell her I know
about them. Does she think I’m stupid? I see their faces, I know
they whisper away together. I heard them at it this evening, and
when I appeared she pretended she was talking about the logs. I
want to tell her Ron is as much mine for the taking as hers, I
could have him if I chose to. Then it would be me he gives whatever
I ask for on a plate, it would be me he’s ready to drop everything
for, take anywhere I want. She has everything, and she deserves
nothing.
She must be making all her plans. She must be feeling very
clever. I am so angry I am going to have to cry. But I can’t bear
to go to my room, where I have nothing of you but your photographs,
while she lies on the other side of the wall stroking that belly of
hers, thinking of that baby, smiling to herself. I go back to the
kitchen and pick up her phone. I check it, and it’s just as I
suppose: she’s got it on silent. That will be so she can carry on
text conversations with him all day, even while I’m around. Making
all their plans for after the baby. How and when they are going to
leave me.
I look at the Inbox and yes, of course there’s a message from
Ron, and in the Sent box is her reply.
HELD UP IN QUEUE. SEE YOU CAR PARK 4.30. DID YOU GET
BANDAGE FOR S?
THX OK. YES. ALSO GETTING SAVLON + AFTERSUN.
Both messages are from a Sunday in late August, not long after
she tried to see the doctor in Inverness and I’d made her start
carrying her phone again. On the Sunday morning I’d cut my hand
with a chisel, chipping stones for your memorial. It was a
baking-hot afternoon, and I came back to the cabin with my
shoulders and nose red and sore and my hand wrapped in the bloodied
folds of my skirt. Annabel patched me up using small bandages and
tissues and asked Ron to take her to the chemist in Netherloch. Ron
said he needed some white spirit anyway, so they went, and she
bought bandages and also lotion for my shoulders.
When they got back she cleaned the cut and dressed it, then she
dabbed the sunburn lotion on me. She put the bottle in the fridge
so it would be extra cold and soothing for the next time I needed
it. She thought I was crying because my skin was sore, but I was
crying for her kindness and how cared-for I felt. How long ago that
is.
There are no other text messages from Ron since then, and only
three or four from me. That means the ones they’ve been sending
each other since she’s been deleting as she goes, in case I find
them. If she’s doing that, I must be right to worry. Maybe it
started longer ago than I think. Suddenly I recall the day in July
when Ron brought the paper with the photographs of your chain and
Anna’s giraffe. They sat up that night together, waiting for me to
sleep. Was that when they began to say to each other they would be
better off without me? How long have those looks between them being
going on, those conversations that stop the moment I come into the
room?
There is nothing on voicemail. Now I scroll through the call
records and between late August and now, there are no numbers
either received or dialled except mine. Scrolling back, I find
there is nothing at all between late August and February.
But on the eighteenth of February she called another number. On
the nineteenth, she missed and received calls from the same number.
It’s a number so familiar to me, but so out of place and time, that
at first I don’t believe what I’m seeing. I get my own phone and
look. Of course I know I am right, I am merely putting off the
moment of acceptance. For a time I look from one number to the
other, a phone in the palm of each hand, checking every digit,
until I cannot deny it.
The person who called her on the nineteenth of February was you.
Were you replying to her calls to you on the eighteenth? There are
none before that and, of course, none since. My mouth is dry, and a
kind of creak comes from my throat. Something is robbing me of the
strength to call out. I drink a cup of water, and another.
Less than three hours before you and Anna were thrown off the
bridge in a car rented by a woman whose body has never been found,
you spoke to Annabel. This Annabel who lies in the next room, who
that night wandered the choked roads with nowhere to go and came
knocking on our trailer door. Annabel who collapsed sick and
helpless in front of me the next morning and after that never left,
and has never said who she is. She attached herself to me as if her
arrival did not need explaining, and by the time I thought to ask
her about it, she told me that she stayed with me to help me. If I
shook her awake now she would say the same thing, in her flat, lazy
way. She says she found the trailer by accident. But the trailer
was not in a place she could have found by accident. I calculate
quickly.
I’ll never know all the small twists in the story that brought
you to be in her car, but I can work out enough of it. I know her
dates. Did she pick you up when you were working in the White Hart,
over New Year? Was she there for the holidays, with the husband?
There was a row with the husband, is that it? Then she comes on to
you and you’re drunk and angry with me, angry enough to give her
what she asks for, a fuck against the wall? That’s what happened. I
know what you can be like. That’s why she came back in February,
it’s why she’s been hiding from the husband who can’t keep away
from the bridge. She came back to get you for herself, and when she
couldn’t, she made you give her money instead. The money she’s so
generous with is our money. Maybe you took her car, left her
stranded somewhere, I don’t care. You wouldn’t have been in it at
all but for her. What happened is her doing. She killed you, and
she killed our daughter. She left me with nothing. And she is
carrying your child.
Now there is a wet, smug snoring coming from her room. This fat
and greedy taker of all the space and air and all my careful
provisioning in this place also took you from me. My legs shake,
and vomit rises from my stomach. My baby girl in that car, you
twisting and trying to reach her, the pocket of air bubbling away
while you push at the door against the weight of the river, the
dense water swallowing you. You were too late to hold my baby in
your arms.
There’s a cough, the bed creaks. She’s heaving the great bulk of
her body around, shifting the living flesh of your child inside
her. My child is dead, and this one is alive. It kicks and squirms
and presses down on her; she whispers to it, she pats it, she tells
it she loves it.
I stand in the kitchen and think of the times you and I sat by
the river and spoke of the next child we would have and, God
willing, the children after that. We talked of Anna being a big
sister to them all, how they would go to school and squabble and
play and grow up. Now this woman who stole my child lies with
another in her belly. It, too, is a child stolen from me, and from
you.
I remember all the other nights when Ron was here, the soft
shufflings at Annabel’s door, their voices, a needle of candlelight
gleaming through a split in the partition wall. They must think I
am stupid. Then utter darkness and stillness within the cabin, and
outside, the river under the moon running silently seaward on the
ebb tide.
O
n Sunday, Ron was on
call for extra transport runs. Two weeks ahead of the bridge’s
completion date, more workers were being brought in to work more
shifts, seven days a week. He was pleased to have a real reason not
to see Annabel that day; he needed some time to think. He sent her
a text message to explain why he could not come. Then he sent
another one saying he would no longer be able to come to the cabin
every evening, but he would be there whenever he could. There was
no reply. He sent another message reassuring her that he would
still go off-duty the moment he was needed, to get her to hospital.
She or Silva had only to call, and he’d be at the cabin within
minutes. Even from the farthest point on the opposite bank, it
would take him less than half an hour to reach her. He ended the
message with “Hope you’re OK. Don’t worry about anything.”
She didn’t reply. He called her number. Silva answered and said
that Annabel was resting. An hour later he got a text message from
her: “Missed yr call sorry. If evenings busy no problem don’t come.
Will call you when it’s time for hospital. I’m fine. A.”
On Monday, Silva called him. “She’s fine, but she’s got to that
stage she doesn’t really want a man around her. She doesn’t want
anyone to see her, she doesn’t want to go out. It makes her feel
awkward. It’s how women are, just before. She needs to be with
other women. When the labour starts, that’s when she’ll need
you.”
It was the natural way of things, Ron believed, that no man was
capable of understanding this fully, and it would be pointless for
him to try; it was important only that he accept it. This was a
time for Annabel, for any woman, to be as fickle as she chose. The
only proper response was to hope for nothing more than to be of
service to her, on her terms, when the time came. He had never
before been so close to this most female and ancient mystery, and
was, in fact, a little afraid of it; the secrecy surrounding a
woman soon to give birth both entranced and repelled him. He
understood now, he felt, the sentimentality and awe of fertility
worship. Though Annabel with her slatternly ways was unlikely
goddess material, he was not really surprised to find that he was
ready to do absolutely anything for her.
“I can still come,” he said to Silva, “just not so often. I’ll
talk to her and see what she wants.”
“No. She said she doesn’t want to tell you herself, she doesn’t
want to hurt your feelings. But she definitely just wants me
around, for the last few weeks. Maybe it’s because I’m a
mother.”
“Well, but what will you do for food? You’ll need to go
shopping.”
“We’re fine. I can get up to the road and into Netherloch. I’ll
let you know if we need anything.”
“Well, OK. I’m on call for anything, all right? Tell her that.
Tell her she can call any time, just for a chat. Or text. And if
she changes her mind – ”
“I’ll tell her. Must go, bye,” Silva said, and hung up.
I
have no shoes.
I got up late and couldn’t find them, even though I knew I’d
taken them off sitting on my bed, as usual. I must have kicked them
underneath, I thought, and the size I am now I couldn’t go
scrabbling about hunting for them, so I went on bare feet to the
cabin door, which was open. From there I smelled burning and I saw
Silva a little way down the shore poking at a fire in the barbecue,
and I yelled at her I’d lost my shoes and would she come and help
me find them. She turned away, took the tongs and lifted one of my
shoes out of the fire. She was laughing. She held it up high to
show me. Flames were licking through the rope sole and canvas. Ashy
shreds and melting drops of rubber were falling off it.
Even though it was really too late to save it, I had to get down
there to stop her. But I couldn’t get farther than the concrete at
the doorway. The stones surrounding it were sharp and cold, and
slippery. I yelped and stepped back and burst into tears. “What are
you doing? Those are my only shoes!”
