Morag Joss - Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

I watched Ron’s study of her, wishing that he would not find her worthier of his scrutiny than I was, yet what I felt was not jealousy. It wasn’t that. It was a need for him to know about me, and about you and Anna. I didn’t want him puzzled by her instead. There was a satisfaction in knowing there was more I could have told him about her than he would be able to tell from looking. Dressed, she was almost sexless. I had seen her naked. I could have described the line of her back, the tilt of her breasts, the curve of her flank. I could have mimicked the sheltering, modest gesture of her hands across her stomach as she stood in the bathtub under the flow of steaming water over her shoulders. I liked keeping all this to myself. My knowledge of her body, that there was a baby growing inside it, had a power only for as long as I did not share it.

“Yes, they might have come here tonight,” Ron said again, “if they’d seen a fire burning. But I don’t think they’ll bother us now. It’s late.”

When he said “us,” I knew he intended to stay. He got to his feet.

“But I’ll sit out another couple of hours, just in case. You two should get to sleep.” He nodded at the long window seat. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll bed down there in a while.” He opened the door.

Annabel said, frightened, “But they’ll come when it’s light. If not tomorrow, then in a day or two.”

“Sure enough, they’ll be along,” Ron said. “We’ll look at it all in the morning.”

Annabel and I got ready for bed, shyly, saying little. Ron’s presence was an excitement that neither of us chose to find words for, nor were we able to admit that he made us feel safer. When we were lying down and the candles were blown out, I think we were both grateful for the dark, for not having to see each other’s faces. But then came the tears that I had been holding back since the morning.

“Don’t cry,” Annabel said.

How could I not cry? You were gone. I hid my face in the bedclothes and cried until I was exhausted. She lay in the dark and said over and over that you were surely safe somewhere and would return soon. Maybe both of us knew that this was a prayer and not a belief, but I let it comfort me anyway, and I fell asleep.

In the morning, Annabel was up first. She had hauled a tub of cold water round the back of the trailer and was splashing in it and singing, very badly, probably to let Ron know to keep his distance. I went outside, leaving him on the long seat stretched out under his blankets and his hands folded on his chest, like a dead saint. Downriver, the bonfire remains were dark smudges on the shore; nothing moved. The geese bobbed on the water, and I heard the sad, wavering cries of the gulls scavenging on the incoming tide. Annabel’s voice rose from behind the trailer, and I laughed and called out to her to stop frightening the birds. The geese flew up from the water with a great flapping of wings. Across the river, my deserted cabin stood unchanged.

The cabin. It was the answer. It always had been the answer. You were wrong about it and always had been. We should have been there long ago. But surely even you could see that it was necessary and urgent for us to go now. There was no danger there, nobody had been near the place for a year and more. We would go across and live on the other side, and the tramps would stay on this bank of the river, near the service station and Inverness. They wouldn’t want to come across, even supposing they could. There was nothing for them in the forest. They could take the trailer if they wanted, I didn’t care. The leaks were getting worse, and it wouldn’t last another winter. We would have a proper little house, not large but much bigger than the trailer; we would make it comfortable. Besides, I had to live on the other side now to get to work, and from the cabin there would be a way up through the trees to the road, and from there it would be only a mile or so to the Highland Bounty. And Annabel had nowhere else to go and nobody to care for her. She needed someone. She could stay as long as she liked and I would look after her while I was waiting for you and Anna.

And you’d know to come and find me there. That was the best part of it-knowing that when you came back and found the trailer taken over by tramps, or empty, you’d guess where I was. That’s if you even had to guess! Standing where I was now and looking across, you’d be able to see me sitting on the jetty, waiting, the cabin door open. Oh, Anna, I can see you watching me. I would hear you the moment you called out for me.

I went back inside and shook Ron.

“Ron! Ron, wake up! Will you help us? Can you get us back over the river? To our new place? Come, come and see. I need to take everything; it will be many times across and back. Please, will you help?”

It was Silva’s idea entirely. I let her excitement enter me; even so, it floated only on the surface of my feelings. Underneath, dread at what I was doing and where it was leading me, like a dragging undertow, pulled and ebbed. I had to get away, and yet I did not go. I did not go. In small, unguarded moments my fear swamped me, physically, leaving me nauseated and struggling for breath. I fought it down; I ascribed it to pregnancy, to shock, to the pure panic of displacement, to anything but my guilt and the need to outdistance it. I denied and resisted it. I was determined to erase the picture in my mind of Col’s face as he stared at the wrecked bridge. I would not test my reasons for disappearing from my life with him, for fear that the ingenuity of my excuses might fail. Yet I did not go.

I had to inhabit the here and now, I told myself, live in the present and pay no heed to the past. So, wanting to believe that the future would take care of itself and that meanwhile constancy to Silva would make me a little less reproachable for what I had done, I went along with her excitement about the new place. Maybe I could be on my way once I’d seen that she was settled and safe. It did not feel like a trick of avoidance, quite, to dwell on her pleasure in her plans for the cabin, and to share in it. It was simply that, for the moment, for the sake of Silva, the baby, and me, I could not leave her now.

Ron set off early along the road to get back to the boat and work his shift, promising to return later. Silva was surprised when I asked if it was all right for her not to turn up for work.

“Sometimes I have other things I have to do,” she told me. “Vi doesn’t care. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“But shouldn’t you call Vi and let her know?”

“Sure, I’ll call.”

I don’t believe she did. Soon we saw again, downstream, bonfire smoke in the air and slow, dark figures moving at the river’s edge, and we began loading Silva’s belongings into bags. With our arms full, we made our trips singly to the old jetty upriver, so that the trailer would not be unattended for even a few minutes. It did not take us long to strip the place; although the jetty was a few hundred yards away over difficult ground and we made several trips each, the bags and implements and tools did not amount to much as a whole family’s belongings. When we had finished, there was nothing to do but wait in the trailer, not just for Ron to finish work but, as he’d warned us, for the tide, which would not be high at the jetty until about six in the evening.

The light was fading when we heard the boat and watched it chug past us and up to the jetty. When it was moored, Ron helped us with the heaviest things. He disconnected the gas burner and brought it along with the tank, and went back for the water containers and mattresses and seating. There was nothing we might not need, he said. The cabin might be completely empty. Silva shrugged. Ron and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us added that it might not even be weather-tight, it might not be habitable at all.