Among the Missing

by Morag Joss

  But for several minutes I wait there gazing across, allowing her to think it might be him. Of course it’s cruel. But she deserves cruelty. Don’t you know what she did to you and Anna? I walk back to the cabin shaking my head. Oh dear, it wasn’t the boat.

  Out here in the fading light, her face is blotchy. She’s shivering and sweating and trying very hard not to cry again. Naturally I’m moved by her distress, but I resist the wish to take her in my arms by remembering exactly why it is she’s in all this trouble. Why she is in even more trouble than she understands yet. Of course it’s cruel, but has she not been cruel, is she not being cruel even now? She let her husband believe her dead in the river, she lets him go on believing it. Every day since the bridge went down she makes him suffer for the loss of her, as I suffer my loss of you. What is happening, what is about to happen, are what she deserves.

  We drink our tea. I make another pretense of calling Ron, and we wait by the light of the stove. Then the contractions stop. We wait. She shifts about, complains of backache, of gas, goes to pee. We wait, for an hour, and still no more contractions. Then she goes to lie down. When she gets up, it’s quite dark. She announces she is hungry and starts foraging in the kitchen. She comes back with a plate of crackers and cheese and, for God’s sake, beetroot.

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  I shake my head and turn away from the sound of crunching and the sight of her tongue licking crumbs from the corners of her mouth. She is joking now while she shoves the food in and chews. Her gusts of laughter smell of vinegar. She says the baby was just practicing, keeping her on her toes, she’s heard this can happen several times, up to three weeks before the birth. I have to agree this is possible, and then I find I have nothing more to say. The thought of this not being her time depresses me unbearably. I sit staring at the stove with my arms tight around myself. I have no taste for what I must do, I simply want to get it over with. If it becomes any more drawn-out than this, I am afraid I may be unable to go through with it.

  She slumps back to the kitchen with her empty plate, and it’s when she is calling out to me to let Ron know it was a false alarm that she has another contraction, one that stops her breath in her throat and produces a long, quiet moan. I wait, pretending I haven’t heard. After a quarter of an hour, she reappears.

  There’s a look on her face now that wasn’t there before, a steadiness. She is going into battle. When the next contraction comes, nineteen minutes later, she’s ready for it, and for the next one, another nineteen minutes later. In between, she walks up and down and gibbers on about Ron, will he bring her some shoes when he comes, because without them how will she get to the jetty? After another hour and three more contractions, I tell her it’s time to forget about him. He must have lost his phone or something. The contractions are getting stronger, and we must handle this ourselves. I remind her about the little white boat. I tell her we’ll take it downriver, keeping close to our side of the bank, and land it at the bridge jetty. Ron won’t be far away, but even if he can’t be found, somebody there will call an ambulance and it’ll come straightaway now that the bridge is open. It will get her over to hospital in Inverness within minutes.

  “And you’ve got at least twelve more hours to go,” I say. “Plenty of time.”

  She looks at me in terror. “We can’t go on the river in that boat! You know what Ron says, it’s not safe. And it’s pitch dark!”

  “Then you’ll have to have the baby here,” I tell her. “You couldn’t walk along the bank to the bridge jetty now, even with shoes. You can’t climb up through the trees to the road. Do you want to have it here? I’m not a midwife.”

  “I can’t even make it down to our jetty like this, in bare feet,” she cries.

  “Of course you can,” I say. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

  I can’t offer her my arm, can I, because I’m carrying her bag in one hand and the oars (which I brought into the cabin weeks ago to keep dry) in the other. She’ll have to manage. It’s a drizzly night, but a fuzzy three-quarter moon shines down through the cloud. This is helpful because I haven’t thought to bring a flashlight. Annabel hesitates. She peers through the dark to find an easy way down to the jetty, but there isn’t one. I shout at her to hurry up. Soon she is sliding around on clumps of wet, warty seaweed and sharp stones, falling and cutting her feet and hands, gasping with pain. Every step is treacherous. After half an hour she is not even halfway, and she screams at me that she’s going back. I shout at her not to be stupid. She has no choice. On she goes, yowling louder as she treads on lacerated feet through freezing saltwater puddles. When another contraction comes, she stops and moans and struggles to stay upright. I walk ahead, listening to her as she snivels and stumbles behind me.

  I turn and watch her. She slips again, falls sideways, and lands heavily on her hip. “Get down on your hands and knees,” I call out. “Safer for the baby.”

  Down she gets, lifting her backside high as the next contraction comes. When it has passed, she begins to move forward, sobbing, lumbering on all fours and her belly hanging to the ground. I turn and keep walking to the boat. I wait for her there, watching her crawl after me.

  When she gets to the jetty, she takes fright again at the size of the boat and how strong the river is, until I ask her if she wants to go back up to the cabin. Just as I get her in, she falls forward onto her hands and knees and nearly tips the boat over. Slowly she turns herself around and sits down in the stern. The boat is so low in the water it wouldn’t take a very big wave to capsize us. I hope I’ve timed this right. The river is at its lowest ebb, the flow tide is just starting to come in. It will be at its highest and strongest in about six hours.

  I manage the rowing quite well, although we are going against the incoming tide. We don’t speak, to begin with. I’m busy keeping an even stroke, and she’s groaning and rolling about, almost hysterical. I tell her it’s dangerous to throw herself about like that and she’ll slow us down.

  “But it hurts! Oh, God it hurts, it fucking hurts!” she sobs, rocking herself to and fro.

  “Breathe the way you’re supposed to and keep still,” I tell her. I’m already exhausted. My arms are aching and my heart is pounding, and the bad thing is we have slowed down. Though the wind is blowing hard down the estuary, we are going against the tide and it is stronger than I expected. This is going to take much, much longer than I thought.

  Out of my mouth comes a little cry, more of surprise than pain. It’s nothing sharp or stabbing. It’s like cramp, as if I’m being grabbed around the middle and squeezed by a great pair of toothless jaws that crush but don’t bite. I’m standing over a pan of water in the kitchen that I’m heating up for something or other, and suddenly I can’t remember what. Low down in my belly a hardening begins, the grab tightens. I wait, watching the trembling surface of the water in the saucepan with concentrated interest: a miniature ocean, wraiths of steam wafting off it, tiny waves beating themselves against the side. Taking a deep breath isn’t as easy as it should be. Suddenly I can picture my lungs hanging in my chest, two wrinkled, complaining old bellows pushing for room. Next I realize the floor is wet, my feet are wet from fluid that’s trickling down my legs. Another band tightens around me, squeezes, and lets go just in the split second before I’m going to cry out, this time in fear. Instead, I breathe. It is so absolutely simple. And I am so afraid.

  I hurry to find Silva and blurt out that it’s starting, and she takes in what I’m saying with a level look, staring me in the eyes. She doesn’t glance even once at my stomach. She’s dismissive, in fact, and I try to absorb some of her calm, but at the same time her composure unsettles me. When she calls Ron, he doesn’t answer, and if this surprises her, she doesn’t show it. She leaves him a message and tells me there are hours and hours to go yet. The one thing we’ve got is plenty of time, she assures me, and I force myself to understand she is right. But although the gripping in my belly has subsided, my fear rises. The cabin is tiny and hot and even w
ith just the two of us, crowded. I never did find my phone, so I have to pester Silva to keep trying Ron on hers. I get more and more afraid. I can’t keep track of time, either. There is no clock.

  The next contraction comes a long time after the first, and once it passes, my fingers and legs feel hopelessly weak and it’s hard to swallow. The evening is drawing in, and the day is turning lopsided, upside down. The light from the stove, the only light in the room, thrums with a bluish, fluttery gleam. I have to get away from here, and I can’t.

  But Silva’s right. There is plenty of time. There are more contractions, at long intervals. Then they stop. Some more time passes, and I wonder if they were contractions at all. It could have been my stomach acting up, a confusion of the body brought on by not much more than heavy food and anxiety. Whatever it was, it’s stopped, thank God. And I’m glad I’ve gone through this, because when it happens for real, in a week or two, I’ll be more prepared. By then, we will have seen Ron and I’ll be sure there won’t be any difficulty reaching him next time. I’ve worn myself out with silly fretting. Silva has withdrawn into one of her moods; she would like to disappear off down the river as she usually does but can’t, I suppose, because of me. The air between us reminds me of a sky before a storm, charged with pent lightning. I’m still a little out of breath. I make excuses and go to my room.

  Later I get up with the intention of making Silva more cheerful, but she has retreated too far. She isn’t hungry, she doesn’t want to talk, she’s too bored even to listen to anything I might say. And it turns out there is little time to spare for bringing her round, anyway, because it begins again, it really does begin.

  There is no doubting it this time. The contraction is painful, and I tense myself against it, squeezing my eyes and mouth tight. The next one comes and I do the same, clenching all my muscles until it passes, and then I realize how tiring that is, and how futile. I cannot hold them away. I am going to be seized by another, and another, and many more, and worse, and I will not win any struggle to prevent them hurting me any more than, if I were walking into the sea, I could by force of will not be drenched by waves breaking over my head. It will be a case not of staying dry but of not drowning. I must adjust my expectations: I have to be delivered of this baby and we both must stay alive, but I will not escape injury. Now that I know this, I inform Silva that my labor has begun.

  I am measuring time in spaces between the pains, and in waiting for Ron. My legs are shaking, and there’s a tinny taste in my mouth. Silva moves around quietly, talking to me about breathing. It must be her way of hiding her own anxiety, but her voice seems to have hardened. She is completely unhurried and practical. Still Ron doesn’t come, and when she announces we have to give up on him and go downriver by ourselves in the rowing boat, she becomes almost brusque. I daren’t think about the possibility that she is as frightened as I am, for I am in pain—worse than I ever imagined—and so I try to concentrate instead on what I must do to get away from here. I need to find people who can do something about the pain. I am not so out of my wits that I do not grasp that in order to do that, though it terrifies me, I will first have to cross the broken stones and slippery rocks in the dark. Then I will have to go in the tiny rowing boat onto the rushing black river. But however I get there, I have to get to a hospital.

  By the time we reach the place, the tide is rising. I lift the oars, and we drift until the wind pushes us over close to the bank opposite the flat rock in the river. Annabel has been sitting hunched up with her eyes tight shut and doesn’t see what’s happening until the boat starts bumping against the half-submerged boulders close to the shore. I guide us through the maze of rocks while she gasps and peers around in the dark.

  “What are you doing? Where are we?” she asks.

  “Be quiet,” I say.

  When I’m close enough to the shore, I jump out and try to haul the boat up. With her in it, I can’t get it more than halfway out of the water. “Get out,” I say.

  “Silva, please!” She’s crying and clutching her belly. “What’s going on, where are we? We’re not at the bridge, this isn’t the jetty!”

  “Get out,” I say.

  She does as I tell her, protesting the whole time, and straightaway topples into the water. She begins to sink in the mud. When I drag her to her feet, she’s soaking wet and shivering and there’s weed sticking to her face. As soon as she has enough breath to speak, she starts on at me again. I tell her she’s getting hysterical and give her a good slap.

  She follows me quietly enough after that, up the scree of stones to the place where the trees meet the shore. I sit down, and she collapses beside me on the ground a few yards from your memorial.

  “Silva, please! Why are we here? Silva, please, what’s going on? Silva, listen! I’ve got to get to hospital—”

  “Do you see that?” I say quietly, pointing.

  “What? The stones? That pile of stones? What about it?”

  “Pile of stones?” I reach over and grab a handful of her hair and turn her head. “Look at it. A pile of stones? Those stones, they are for Stefan and Anna. The people you killed. They are why you’re here.”

  “Killed? I didn’t kill anyone! What are you talking about? Oh, God!” She grits her teeth and pulls away as the next spasm starts in her belly. I let go of her hair and stand up. She rolls with the pain, holding herself tight. She draws in her legs, moaning. When the contraction passes, she sits herself up. She begs me to take her to hospital, she tells me to calm myself. She tries to talk to me about the baby. Please, think of the baby, she pleads. For the baby’s sake, she has to get to hospital.

  “The baby’s sake? Your baby?” I take her mobile phone from my pocket and fling it at her. It lands on a rock, and the casing splits. She scrabbles for it, picks it up, and another bit breaks off in her hand.

  “Why have you got my phone? Where did you find it? Silva, what is going on!”

  “My Stefan. You’re having his baby, aren’t you? My husband’s baby. That’s why he gave you our money.”

  “What? No! Silva, no, I swear! It’s not his, of course it’s not!”

  “You spoke to him before he died. It’s your fault they were in that car.”

  “Oh God, no! Silva, listen. Listen, yes, I spoke to him, I met him. But only once. Please—”

  “It’s because of you they’re dead. And you think that baby’s yours?”

  “But Silva, listen! The car, and the money. I needed money. I wanted to tell you—”

  I step forward, and making sure not to miss, I kick the phone out of her hand. As she screams, the phone flies away and lands somewhere in the dark behind us. She cradles her hurt hand in the other one and sits sobbing, pushing herself to and fro, telling me I have to believe her. I wander away some distance and find a place where I will be out of the wind. The next contraction will be coming very soon. I sit down to wait.

  It’s very cold. As the hours pass, she calls out for me, urgently at first, with a note of hope in her voice that I might really come to her. Later she cries out in pure desperation. I hear her vomit. She tries to get up and come to me but collapses again and again. I grow used to the raging, gurgling cries and the teeth-gritted roars. The sound carries over the water and is lost on the wind. On and on it goes. I sit and watch the tide.

  The struggle approaches its end, as it must. When I finally go to her, she’s on her back with her knees drawn up, and between her legs she’s split and bloodied and gaping, like a half-skinned animal. I lean down, and she clutches my wrist and won’t let it go. She’s babbling, and on her face is a look of disbelief and outrage. She is panting and straining down mindlessly, and eventually from between her legs there appears a glistening mound. She writhes and pushes, digging her fingers deep into my arm. I wrench my arm away, and with the next push she lets out a scream and now the baby’s head bulges out and wobbles in my hand, and as she screams again one shoulder and then the other come slithering bumpily out of her, and then its flailing stick
arms appear, and all the rest, all the warm, bloodied tangle of it. There’s so much of it, now the unfolding legs and the feet trailing strings of stained slime and wet, twisted cord and, also, a surprising amount of dark blood. I let all of it slide into my hands. I cup the back of the baby’s head and rub its scrunched face, and then comes a crackle of mucus from its open mouth and a rush of air, a splutter and a wheezing cry. Annabel’s hands reach out. She’s crying. I am, too, as I draw the child into my own arms. Its little head lolls; it turns its face to my chest. Annabel strains forward but can’t get up.

  “Let me see! Oh, let me see! Is it all right?” she cries. “Let me see! Give it to me! What is it?”

  “I have to wrap him up,” I tell her. “He’s shivering. It’s a boy.”

  And to you I whisper, though there is no need to whisper for she does not understand a word, that we have a son.

  I pull a towel and a cardigan from her bag and wrap the baby up and lay him on the ground. She falls back, exhausted. I wait until the cord stops pulsating, and then I cut it using the string and scissors I brought. The child is now separate from her.

  “Please. Please let me have him,” she croaks. But before I can answer she cries out and gasps. “Oh, God! Oh, God, what’s happening? I’m bleeding! Help me, I’m bleeding! What’s happening?”

  Sure enough, blood is pouring from her, along with ropes of steaming membrane.

  “It’s the afterbirth,” I tell her. “Push.” She obeys, still moaning to be given the child, and eventually the flabby, dark, veined sack is delivered. She tries to wriggle away from it, leaving a heap of shining pulp and a slippery trail behind her on the stones. The air is thick with the smell of blood.

  “Give him to me, please,” she weeps. She is shuddering with cold and shock. “Let me have him.”

  I did not expect this to be the hardest part of all. I imagined myself having a lot to say. How jealous I was that she was carrying her child after mine was lost, that I didn’t know what I would do when it was born and she took it away, when she left me to be with Ron and the child forever. That I dreamed of stealing it. That for a while stealing it was all I dreamed of.