Morag Joss - Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

The young man shook his head over Ron’s application. “Doesnae say so here, Mr. Sturrock,” he said.

“I can, I’ve worked boats,” Ron said recklessly. “Never thought to put it down, it was a while ago. Fishing, harbor boats. A thirty-footer’s no problem.”

Mr. Sturrock stared at him. “You kidding me?” He paused. “I’m no’ talking fucking barge holidays on the Norfolk Broads, mind. Have you got your ICC?”

“Doesn’t need an ICC,” the first man said. “He’s UK. Have you got your NPC?” He scanned the form. “No, well, you won’t, you’re fifty. Have you got NPC equivalent?”

“Not on me. But I could send for it,” Ron said. He could prevaricate over it for a while, if need be.

The two men looked at each other. “He has to be qualified, Mr. Sturrock. NPC, or equivalent,” the first man said.

“Aye, Davey, but we’re desperate here. If we give him a wee tryout now and he’s okay,” said Mr. Sturrock, “that’ll get us by for tomorrow at least. Alan’s down at the boat now, he can give him a go and see how he handles it. See what I’m saying?”

“Mr. Sturrock, he has to be qualified.”

“Come on, Davey, you want to spend the rest of the day trying to get somebody else frae fuck knows where?”

“I’m just trying to be thorough.”

“I’ve worked boats on and off since I was fifteen,” Ron said.

“But there’s the local knowledge,” the young man said, pulling a thick sheaf of papers from the desk and turning up the right page. “You’d need to familiarize yourself with ‘local seamarks, local traffic practices, mud banks, shoal waters,’ ” he read. “You’d have to ‘demonstrate knowledge of heights of tides, neap and spring tides and tidal streams, and local safe landing places according to differing weather conditions.’ ”

Ron nodded. At least not every term he’d just heard was unfamiliar. “It would be a matter of learning the local conditions. And being always safety-aware,” he said. “I learn fast.”

“Aye, and nobody else we could get at this fucking notice is going to have local knowledge either, are they?” Mr. Sturrock said. “And he’s qualified. Aren’t you, son? Mind you, I’ll take experience over a fucking certificate any day o’ the week,” he said, looking hard at Ron. “Paperwork to follow, eh? We just need a copy for the file here. You’ll get your paperwork in to Davey here right enough, won’t you?” He turned to his colleague. “I’m not paying eighteen men to stay idle for the sake of a wee bit of paper when I’ve got an experienced guy standing in front of me. Send him on down, and if Alan says he’s okay, put him on the day rate. Write down ‘paperwork to follow’ and we’re covered.”

The younger man shrugged and Mr. Sturrock smiled, and Ron signed.

I slept and slept, and I fell into dreams like long, perilous ruts, channels of movement that swept me along helter-skelter, not in pursuit or escape from anything I could name but with some formless, looming jeopardy present all around and above me. I slept all that night and for spells the following day, and if when I woke I saw or heard Silva nearby, stepping into the trailer or tinkering and fetching outside, I felt as though she was permitting me these collapsed hours as kindly as if she had put me to bed herself and told me to close my eyes and rest. I would come to, and lie there, slowly calculating the passing of seconds against the beating of my heart (would my baby have a beating heart yet?) while my waking thoughts began to tick once more to the rhythm of the day, of which, thank God, a little less would remain. The shaking that had been going on inside me since I walked out of the Invermuir Lodge Hotel abated. As I began to feel steadier, my sickness eased somewhat.

But my mind was empty, drab, as if it were choosing to turn away and live outside of what was happening to me. I slept through another night, and the next day I got up. But between sleeps, all I could do was sit outside wrapped in blankets, looking at the river. Silva watched me closely. I told her I had a nervous stomach, and she said she sometimes had one, too. The next time I felt sick she wouldn’t let me lie down or drink water. She tore a ragged triangle off the corner of a slice of bread, spread it with jam, and made me eat it. I felt better at once. She was taking me in hand in some way and I was grateful, but she didn’t know I was pregnant, of course.

She was restless. In the middle of the afternoon she took two empty containers and walked up to the service station. She was gone nearly three hours. Her absence filled me with terror. Having had her company for just a day and a half left me in such agitation at the thought of being alone again that when she came back I asked her sharply why she had been away so long.

“I needed to fill up with drinking water. I wanted to see what was happening. I was finding things out,” she replied, dumping the full containers on the kitchen counter. She told me the place was crowded with sightseers and journalists and drivers with trucks of supplies for the salvage work. There were also a lot of vagrants, turned off the wasteland behind the car park, and quite a few police. Not all the vehicles had been pulled out of the river yet, she said.

“There were thirteen survivors and they found nine bodies in the river. There’s four cars still in there. They can’t get them out yet because of the weather, it’s the big spring tides or it’s too deep or it’s the winds or something. They know who they are, all the people still down there. There’s seven.”

“How can they know, if they can’t get to them?”

She looked surprised. “Because they’re missing. Seven are missing. They’ve got their names. Their photos are in the papers, everywhere. They’ve told the families.”

Why did this shock me? Of course the victims would be counted and named; that anyone should die randomly and also remain anonymous would be an unbearably compounded sadness, and people are inquisitive about the deaths of others, even strangers on a list of lost and missing. The papers would keep a tally and reveal names and faces and describe good lives cut short and families bereft, it being an obligation of tragedy to ponder urgent reversals in the lives of those left behind, to bow gently in the direction of other people’s grief.

“So who are they?” I said. “Did you get a paper?”

“I saw them on the news in the cafeteria. There was a van with a father and his son and another man, they cleaned carpets. A woman tourist in a rental car, and a man and his secretary on business. Oh, yes, and a retired man coming back from golf. That’s the seven. So there you are.” Silva’s voice was newly fresh and relaxed, and her eyes shone. “You see? Nobody else.”

“You actually saw them? These people’s faces?”

She nodded. “They were all happy photos. Then I went outside. They’re clearing that dump down near the river. I saw trucks going in, same thing on the other side. There were people there just watching. I saw a man I know,” she said. “He was in the shop that day, I was talking to him the moment it happened. His name’s Ron. He asked if I was all right. I said it’s those poor people and their families I’m sorry for.”

I didn’t speak. I was picturing Col and trying the word families up against him, and it didn’t suit him. I couldn’t think of just the two of us as a family, and that was a relief. He would not suffer long or deeply for loss of me. He might remember things about me: my face, some words stored somewhere in his mind. I might even for a while warm his heart with an idea of love, now forever abstracted and beyond test, kept perfect by my absence. Then he would forget me, probably. I hoped he would.