by Morag Joss
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 refrigerator 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 her voice mail. Now I scroll through the call records, and since late August there are no numbers either received or dialed except mine. There is nothing recorded between then and the eighteenth of 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 turns 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 in the White Hart, over New Year? Was she there for the holidays, with the husband? There is an argument with the husband, is that it? Then she flirts with 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 we 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.
On 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 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 the 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 labor 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, okay. 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 abo
ut hunting for them, so I went on bare feet to the cabin door, which was open. From there I smelled burning and 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!”
“They don’t fit you,” Silva called. “And they stink!”
She dropped the shoe she’d been holding back in the fire and lifted the other. There was less than half of it left, only a blackened piece of the sole with a rag of burnt fabric attached.
“You’re insane! What am I supposed to wear?”
She dropped it, too, and stirred the fire around, then put down the tongs and walked calmly back. “They’re not worth crying over. They were bad for your feet. And you lie around all day, you don’t need shoes,” she said, walking past me.
“Of course I need shoes! I can’t go out without shoes!”
“Well, there might be flip-flops in Netherloch. I’ll get you some. If I go.”
That was four days ago, and she hasn’t been anywhere except to her place along the river. I’ve put my phone somewhere and I can’t find it, so I asked her to call Ron and get him to buy sneakers or something for me and bring them next time he comes. But he hasn’t come.
“Where’s Ron? When is he coming, did he say?” I ask.
Apart from anything else, my feet are cold most of the time, and I can hardly reach my toes to rub them. There were some thick socks of Ron’s around someplace, but I can’t find them now, either.
“He’s busy, he said. There’s a lot going on to get the bridge ready in time.”
“But he hasn’t been here all week. He never misses more than a day. Ask him when he’s coming.”
“He’s extra busy. He’ll come when he can.”
“I’m going to find my bloody phone and call him and see if he’s all right. It must be somewhere. Have you seen it?”
“I haven’t seen it for days.”
I look for it again all morning, but I don’t find it. These days everything’s in a muddle and things do go astray. It’s somewhere around, no doubt. But Silva’s never far away, so it’s not essential for me to have it at hand. I ask her to send Ron another message, asking him to come as soon as he can, with some shoes.
“I still can’t find my phone. And I do need shoes,” I tell her when we have lunch, which is pasta again with something out of a tin. “I have to get out. I’m supposed to walk every day! Please ask him if he can get something size 9.”
“I’ll ask him,” she tells me. “There’s no need to be upset. You’re getting yourself in a state.”
“No wonder! I haven’t been able to get farther than the door!”
“It’s quite normal to feel restless at this stage. But you should be doing less, not more.”
“And ask if he can bring some apples or something. Or oranges. Tomatoes, anything fresh.”
“I’ll ask him. But he’s very busy. Go and rest.”
This is how it goes every day now. She’s always telling me I’m too restless, and probably I am, but never for long. After a while a terrible listlessness will creep over me and I have to give in to it. I lose things and get annoyed with myself (the phone still hasn’t turned up), and I’ll try to settle to some knitting or tidying, but very often I just sit or lie looking at the ceiling. My back aches constantly.
I miss Ron. He has told Silva he’ll be here any day, but still he doesn’t come. She feeds me in the middle of the day now, big, hot platefuls of spaghetti with tomato sauce, or macaroni and cheese, and I eat from boredom, not knowing where I have room to put so much food. Afterward I’m even more sleepy. When I’ve rested, I often feel bloated and itchy, so I’ll go out and stand on the freezing damp concrete for a few moments to breathe in cool air and look at the river. The scent of pine from the forest has turned brackish, and every day the sky is full of geese, circling in wide, fluttering arrows, preparing to migrate. If it’s not raining, I drag a chair to the doorway and sit and watch them for a while, wretchedly sluggish, wondering if even after the birth my distended, straining body will ever feel or look like mine again. But my feet are always freezing, and it’s too cold to stay there, even wrapped up, and anyway soon Silva complains I’m letting cold air in, or blocking her way.
Ron went back to sleeping every night in the mobile unit with the other men. His reappearance went without comment because neither his presence to begin with nor his many later absences had been noticed particularly; the unit was a place where the men went just to sleep, and there was a high turnover as shift patterns became more complex.
In the canteen a squabble erupted over all the extra men Jackson the cook was now expected to cater for; he stormed out and was replaced by a young man called O’Dowd, who went through his workday saying as little as possible. His sullenness spread, somehow, or maybe it was just a deeper concentration now that the end of the project was in sight, or maybe it was simple fatigue that had set in among the men. In any case, there was less banter, and that suited Ron. He felt some of the old talent return to him, acquired after his release from prison, of concentrating only on what was in front of him, on the immediate task in hand, no matter how trivial. He made himself notice frivolous details: the tiny whoosh of a cascade of sugar from the packet into a mug of tea, the smell of rain on concrete, the color of toothpaste. He moved from job to job in this way, trying not to think about Annabel, refusing to bring to mind Colin’s face and voice, and still less his words. Suppose he was wrong about it all? Suppose Annabel wasn’t the missing wife? Why had he interfered? If she was his wife, and she wanted to keep away from him, why shouldn’t she? It was none of his business. Yet the thought of it—a father grieving unnecessarily for his unborn baby and its mother—nagged at him.
He couldn’t stop himself sending Annabel messages every day to tell her he’d come as soon as she wanted him to. Only occasional, meaninglessly breezy answers came back. He called her a number of times, but she never picked up. He tried Silva several times also, and she answered once. Her reassurance that all was well was terse. He wasn’t wanted. He decided to go on forcing the small things to absorb him, immersing himself in a private world deliberately shrunk to leave little room for hurt.
Do you remember Anna’s birth? I never saw you so scared, before or since. I can still see your face, and I can hear her first squeezed-out, mewly cry. I hardly remember the pain.
I’m watching Annabel carefully, but not in the way she thinks. She can’t think, actually. She’s lost the power of thought. She’s had only three contractions and it’s nearly two hours since the first one, but she’s been fretting and hefting herself around as if she’s got a bucking bull in there. Weeping, now.
“Try him again! Why isn’t he answering? He promised, oh, he promised,” she wails.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Don’t worry, you’ve got hours and hours yet. I’m sure he’s still busy and can’t pick up his voice mails, that’s all. He must be busy at the bridge. It reopened today, you know.”
She does, of course, know. We watched it all from here. The bridge reopened at noon, and traffic has been streaming along it for four hours. Now the afternoon is fading and the bridge lights sparkle in strings in the sky across the river. Headlamps are gleaming through the dusk, and again the constant groan of traffic is in the air. The last time I heard that I was in the trailer, lying with your arm around me, and Anna asleep between us.
I’m making a show of timing the contractions. Thirty minutes. I’ll keep her thin
king they’re at thirty minutes even as they gradually crowd together and come at her every twenty-five, twenty. I don’t want her to panic. We have to spin this out for hours. I do want the child born alive, and her alive to see it.
“Why not go and make sure all your things are together?” I say. “It helps if you move around. I’ll make a cup of tea and try Ron again.”
She has packed and repacked her overnight bag a number of times already, but at least doing that occupies her. She gnaws her bottom lip, nods, and hauls herself to her feet.
In the kitchen I put on the kettle, and while she wanders around picking things up and putting them down, I stand in the doorway and say loudly, with the phone at my ear, “Hi, Ron, me again. You got my other messages? It’s coming, she’s started, it’s all going fine. But will you get here as quick as possible? Can you call me back? We’re okay, but we need you here now. She really needs to be in hospital soon, okay? Call me back, okay? Soon as possible!”
Annabel appears from her room, looking brave. She pulls in a long, deep breath and lets it out slowly. She thinks I dialed Ron’s number before I spoke.
“He’ll be on his way the minute he hears that,” she says, trying to keep her voice smooth. “Won’t he, Silva? Nothing to be worried about. Is there? And it’s all going fine! It takes hours, doesn’t it?” She glances at the door. “I heard something! I heard the boat! I’m sure it’s him, go down and see! Go and wave, make him hurry!”
I pretend excitement. “Maybe you’re right! Quick, come on!”
We go outside. While she dances at the doorway on her bare feet, I run down to the jetty and scan the water. There’s a heavy drizzle falling, and the river and sky are the same gray. Of course it’s not the boat. It was probably a truck on the bridge. I haven’t spoken to Ron for days and days. I’ve replied to maybe one in ten of the messages he sends to Annabel’s phone. Anyway, he thinks the baby’s not due for another two weeks.