by Morag Joss
The bridge was of a deck truss design (here Mr. Sturrock produced from his pockets a handful of metal rods and sticks and laid them one against the other, explaining tension, compression, and load transfer), and in the collapse three of its spans had been destroyed. The final tests on the concrete and steel were still under way, but one theory was that salt used on the roads in winter might over several years have seeped into the concrete and corroded the reinforcing steel rods inside it, causing one or more piers to fail.
But why then, Mr. Sturrock’s listeners sometimes asked, were steel and concrete to be the main materials used in the new bridge? Why was the new bridge also to be of deck truss design, a precast, post-tensioned concrete box girder bridge (as the information pack had it), to be exact?
“Your concrete technology nowadays,” Mr. Sturrock told them, as patiently as he could, “is a far cry from what it was sixty years ago. Your concrete nowadays contains chemical additives that retard the corrosion of the steel rods. Plus,” he went on, “in this region, grit is now favored over salt for treating icy roads, so salt residues are a thing of the past. Plus, modern span bridge design nowadays incorporates what are known as redundancies, which means if there is a failure, the entire bridge doesn’t go down, and single spans can be repaired.”
Invariably Rhona led the groups away, reassured, to the service station for their complimentary refreshments, and invariably Mr. Sturrock complained all the way back over the river.
To Ron it was quite marvelous, this collaborative amassing and expending of expertise and ingenuity, and all for the future sake of perfect strangers crossing a bridge that was still to be built. He took it as evidence of something miraculous, this practical goodwill from one set of human beings—the surveyors, designers, engineers, builders—toward countless other, unknown human beings, many of them yet unborn. It was more than professional responsibility; it was more even than an assumption of good intent between people. Even while Mr. Sturrock was ranting about fucking busybodies and amateur know-it-alls, Ron felt there was no word for it but love. Then he would give himself a shake for getting soft, because whether these guys were filled with tenderness toward others or were just doing their jobs, bridges got built and they got built to stay up. Filtering out his feelings, Ron presented an information pack and all the technical bridge-building facts he could remember as unsentimentally as possible to Silva and Annabel, who weren’t in the least interested. They wanted to know about the cars still in the river.
“The poor people inside. I am so sorry for them,” said Silva, while Annabel nodded but said nothing.
But Ron had nothing to report about that, though he, too, was sorry. He was also sorry for some of the people who showed up for the bridge walks. He didn’t tell Silva and Annabel that many of them came and left white-faced in wretched silence, and that every time at least one person broke down and wept. Some were so stricken they had to be physically supported, and once a woman had fainted. He didn’t mention the regulars, either: those who turned up time and again, tense for new explanations, and those who were already weighed down by what they knew but who could not keep away. There was the ghoulish evangelical who, until Rhona barred him from coming anymore, enjoined the others in prayers of contrition because the disaster was the act of a displeased God. There was the big, solitary, tongue-tied man who drove up from Huddersfield every other weekend because, he said, he’d been in the area when it happened and, for reasons he wouldn’t bother the others with, couldn’t get it out of his mind.
After we had been here for about three months there came, in late May, a week of rain. The river ran high for two days and a night, and when it subsided it left a tide of stinking, sticky mud along the bank. Right in front of the cabin a swarm of flies spewed out of a dead fish stranded in a mesh of washed-up reeds and sticks. I had to take a shovel and push it back into the water. Inside, the cabin walls swelled, and mold bloomed on the ceilings. On the third night of rain, I found silvery slime trails and a snail on my bedding and couldn’t sleep. I lay wide awake, deciding I had to talk to Silva about buying camp beds and some other bits of furniture. There was no need to sleep on the floor and keep everything in boxes, as if we lived in a tent. Even after spending over five hundred pounds on the generator we could surely afford it, and Ron could pick up what we wanted from Inverness in his Land Rover and bring it up to the cabin by boat.
We had electric light now, a fluorescent strip in the kitchen and single bulbs hanging from the ceilings. The friendly buzz of the little fridge and fresh milk were still novelties. There were also two or three electrical outlets so, for just a bit more expense, we could have a lamp or two, maybe even music, and with the rainwater fast collecting in the roof tank, we might soon be able to use the shower, although, like Silva, I had grown to enjoy the ritual of our outdoor baths in heated-up river water. The prospect of such luxuries was thrilling. There would be no harm in spending a little money on a few more comforts. I began to think about a cot for the baby, a small chest of drawers, pretty curtains.
Then on the following day, for the first time, I was bored. The weather was depressing, and there was little I could do around the place. I was desperate for company and had too much time on my hands. I began to have doubts. Why, if I really wanted to get away and start my life again, was I holed up in a water-soaked shack within sight of the scene of my “death”? What was wrong with me that I couldn’t tear myself away from the ruined bridge or from Silva, the only connections I had between my old life and this one? Why was I willing to use money to establish an invisible existence at the cabin, when I could just as easily use that money to travel away from it?
I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter how far from that old life I had managed to go, as long as I had gone. I told myself it was not merely natural but necessary to stay. I had to stand by Silva, and besides, it would be wiser for the baby’s sake to remain here for the time being rather than find a place elsewhere, and alone. This was a period of rehearsal; I needed practice at living in Annabel’s skin. But was I nursing the same delusion—that she preferred to stay at home for the time being, until she felt a bit more like going out—that had kept my mother captive for thirteen years? The fact was I had chosen confinement and concealment. I remained in a hideaway rather than risk venturing into the open. I had struck out for the freedom to go anywhere in the whole world, and was afraid of freedom.
So that evening I was agitated and upset with myself long before Silva came back from work. As usual her spirits dipped on finding there had been neither sight of nor word from Stefan all day, but this time she didn’t recover her optimism. She didn’t sigh patiently and wonder if a sign of him might come tomorrow. Ron’s quiet saintliness I found for once a little irksome. Although I had longed all day for their company, I discovered I didn’t have much to say to them after all.
A wet haze of mist lay over the river and blotted out the far bank. It was too humid to eat outside, so we had brought in picnic chairs and set them around the trestle table, and we sat with the door and windows open to catch the slightest breeze. But the air was chill and heavy with water; nothing stirred except an unpleasant cloud of midges in the doorway and the rainwater that had collected in the chimney and was dripping down the flue, hissing on the logs in the stove. Ron had managed to light it, but the flames were sallow and weak, and curls of bitter smoke leaked through the glass.
He had brought a tinfoil parcel of leftover baked potatoes. After hours wrapped in their own heat, their skins were wrinkled and soft like warm glove leather and they smelled like moist leather, too, salty and dank. I had fried some onions and heated up a tin of beans, and those smells mingled with the woodsmoke and wet rust smell of the stove and the wormy aroma of rain. I was irritated by the glances Ron and Silva cast me as we ate.
“I’m starving,” I said, not caring much. I did not mean it apologetically.
“She’s always starving,” Silva said. She was eating less and less. Ron watched me scrape the r
emains from her plate onto my own. I couldn’t help it if he thought I was greedy and fat. I started on my third potato.
“Really, I feel like eating meat,” I said. “I would even eat rabbit. I think there are rabbits in the woods.”
“I don’t think I could shoot a rabbit,” Ron said, “even if I had a gun.”
“Trapping is better,” Silva said firmly.
“But tomorrow’s Thursday,” Ron said brightly. “Buffet day. The meat tends to go, but there’ll be Yorkshire puddings over, and gravy.”
“Can you bring back burgers from the shop or something?” I asked Silva.
“I might get a bit of beef,” Ron said. “Or pork.”
“Sausages. I could eat sausages,” I said.
“You need proper meat,” Silva told me. “There’s a butcher in Netherloch. Maybe I could get there, somehow.” She looked at Ron. “Ron, you know why she wants meat? I will tell you. Your wife, did you have a wife? Did your wife have babies?”
“Silva!” I protested, with my mouth full.
“It’s all right. She … well … no. No babies,” he said. “We didn’t have children.” His face creased, and he pressed a finger and thumb against his closed eyes. After a moment he looked at us and said, “My wife, ex-wife … Kathy. Cleverer than me, she was, younger, career-minded. Made it to regional manager, never wanted children. And proud of it.”
“Proud she didn’t want babies?” Silva said. “Didn’t she love you?”
“Oh, I think she did,” he said. “For a while.”
“But proud she didn’t want babies?” she said again, shaking her head. She didn’t understand it.
“Some people are,” I said. “They just are.”
“I thought there’d be time if she changed her mind. Later on … when we got divorced, I thought, probably just as well. No kids involved, getting hurt.” There were tears in Ron’s eyes now.
“You see, Ron, Annabel is soon having a baby. Annabel is going to be mama.”
“Silva! What are you telling him for?” I said. “Anyway, it’s not soon! Not that soon.”
“Yes, soon! So why he shouldn’t know? A baby, it’s good news.” Silva shrugged. “Anyway, it shows already. Soon you will be very big, then he’ll know.”
Ron was staring at me, and then at Silva, not sure if he was allowed to be pleased.
“A baby?” he said. “A baby, well. Well, then. Does that mean …” He hesitated and turned to me. “Does that mean, as long as … I mean, you might … I mean, will you be staying here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be staying here.”
I did not know if at that moment I was making the decision or just announcing it.
“And the … the baby’s …”
“The father?” What could I say? “The father. He’s a man who never … He’s like your ex-wife. Never wanted kids and proud of it. It’s over, and he won’t be bothering us. Ever.”
At last Ron’s face showed relief. “Right,” he said, standing up. He was smiling carefully, softly. “Right, so that’s the case. Well, there’s plenty I should be doing.”
He went outside, and soon I heard the regular chop of the ax on a fallen log he’d dragged down from the woods. Silva and I sat on for a little while until she announced she was going off along the shore. She did that more and more, disappearing downriver for long spells, needing privacy. When I asked her once where she went, she replied cagily there was a place she liked to sit. I ate everything that was left on the table, and then I washed up.
An hour later, the weather broke. Gusts of wind, suddenly cold, banged the door shut and pushed and pulled the trees. Then I heard distant groans of thunder, and the sky that had been oppressively still for days began to move, first with a crazy, pinkish yellow shimmering in one high eastern corner and then with clouds, darkening and roiling together low and close to the land. Slow, huge drops of rain hit the river. The thunder advanced, shaking the ground and crumpling the air, and after the second or third shot of lightning, rain began to stream from the sky. It spiked the ground around the cabin, obliterating the river and the far bank. A sheet of water cascaded from the edge of the roof and poured past the windows. From the door I could hear nothing but the drumming of rain over my head and the gurgle of the overflowing gutters. Ron dashed up from the jetty, carrying the ax and some tools he’d rescued from the boat. He dropped them just inside the door, grabbed his jacket, and ran out again, heading downriver. I waited, watching the sky throb with lightning, and after about twenty minutes he came back with Silva drenched and clutching his arm, shivering under the jacket.
I heaped more sticks into the stove to try to get a blaze going, and fetched towels. Silva changed into dry clothes, and Ron stripped down in the kitchen and wrapped himself in a blanket. I arranged his sodden things over chair backs. Then, because lightning was fizzing all around the cabin, I thought it best to turn off the electricity, so I made tea on the gas burner, and then we sat by the stove in candlelight, and the storm went on and on. There was some whiskey that Ron had brought ages ago, and he and Silva both took some to warm them up.
Silva had retreated into herself. I said she looked tired out, and she sighed and said she did need some sleep, and went to bed. Ron and I stayed by the stove. There was nothing to talk about, this late; we had made every remark it was possible to make about the weather. The thunder was distant now, and the rain had lessened but went on falling. Our candles burned down and went out one by one until I looked up and saw by the light of the last one that Ron’s cheeks were wet.
“Is it the smoke?” I said. “It’s got very smoky.”
He wiped his eyes but didn’t answer.
“It’s late now,” I said. “There might be more lightning on the river. You can’t go back tonight.”
He didn’t. Picking up the candle, he followed me into the room where I slept, and I rearranged the cushions and mattresses so we could both lie down. Without a word he took me in his arms in an embrace that was natural and warmth-seeking, nothing else. The smell of his skin was male, pleasantly sharp, like clean metal.
The rain pattered on the roof over our heads, and after the candle had burned down and died, he said quietly, in the dark, “A baby.”
He reached out and just once, over the covers, stroked his hand gently across my stomach, and then we slept.
This is what I learned after you went missing. I learned I would not die of my distress, not even when I wanted to. I would not altogether lose my mind, not even when I was afraid I must.
To begin with, the passing of time with no news sharpened the pain to the point that I couldn’t bear any more. Then there came a day when the passing of more time with no news blunted the pain a little. No news was better than bad news, it meant hope, and it brought a little calm. This was the beginning of fooling myself, the beginning of knowing that fooling myself was what I must do. A way must be found to survive, and it was in my nature, then, to find that way.
And after another little while, the pain, which I didn’t expect would go away, burrowed deeper into my life. It found its place and made its home there, and I let it. It took up room that everything else in my life moved over and made for it. It was just with me, like the sound of my own breathing, while I did all the other things that happen every day. I brushed my hair, counted change, put on my shoes, took off my shoes, and it was there alongside me: pain, and no longer shocking. It became ordinary, as familiar as the mug I drank tea from in the morning. By the time it was like that, that was how I wanted to keep it. I was grateful to be at least used to it.
I discovered also that I could not lie awake weeping forever. Sleep came, if only in short, fretful waves, and when it did, it brought dreams that were sometimes merciful. I dreamed once of walking into a small, bright field, sunny and sweet-smelling, and all at once I forgot the way I had come to arrive there and did not want ever to leave it. And that was how it was also sometimes when I was awake. I could be busy in the shop, or talking with Ron,
listening to some story of Annabel’s, or just sitting on the riverbank watching the birds on the rock, and suddenly I would notice that for the past little while I had been carefree, as if I’d been standing in my small, bright field. I had let go of everything in my mind that lay behind or ahead of the little pleasure of that moment. Then I would be ashamed. For what sort of mother and wife enjoys herself when her child and husband have disappeared? By being careless of you even for a minute, maybe I had made it harder for you to come back. As soon as I could, I would hurry to my room and place fresh flowers for you, light a candle, and pray for your return, but also for your forgiveness. I would swear never to let you out of my thoughts again, I vowed to walk a thousand miles barefoot to find you. And when, as it always did, my despair returned, I gave in to it quietly, knowing I deserved it.
Yet the world goes on, and I went on. I rose every day and managed to dress myself—in the wrong clothes, clothes that were happy and summery, soft old cotton skirts, sneakers for getting up through the forest in the morning—I even tied up my hair with that plastic flower you bought me last year at the service station. The tourists had come, so the shop was busy and I was working more hours. Vi was having one of her good spells. The warmer weather helped her. She stayed sober, mostly, and sometimes even took half days off and disappeared in her rusty red van, coming back with her hair done, and once a birdbath from the garden center. But she was also harder to please. One day she told me if I didn’t learn to smile at the customers, I could make myself scarce, and I did try, by thinking of the cabin and imagining you back there with Anna, counting the geese on the water. I told myself the world goes on, and the river and the sun go on, and if I also could go on, and even smile, then you could, too. You were still in the world, and you would come back. It could not be otherwise. Now, after all these weeks, the way that I walked each day up through the forest to the road had become a path, well worn and easy to tread.