Morag Joss - Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

I waited while Ron and Silva took the first load over. Ron returned alone and made four more crossings, bringing me over on the fifth with the last load. The jetty on the far side creaked and swayed, and the white rowing boat moored there was a useless wreck, half-submerged and filled with rotting river flotsam. I could not see how it even stayed afloat.

Silva had been all around the place, trying to peer in through the curtained windows. Up close, the cabin, set on a plain concrete platform, was unromantic. What had looked like silvery, weathered timber from the other side of the river was a scaly wash of gray paint over blistering, prefabricated hardboard. The flat, sloping roof of cracked bitumen sheeting was covered with a ragged blanket of fallen branches and cones and dead pine needles, and bright green streaks ran down the back and side walls as if the embrace of the forest were an encroaching stain. Moss and tree debris clogged the gutters that were supposed to channel rainwater into a covered water barrel at one corner. The door was cheap, with a plastic handle, and was padlocked. Ron had a toolbox in the boat. Now he took a hammer, split the thin paneling around the hasp, and dug into the frame with a chisel until the door hung open.

It struck me later, not at the time, that Ron stepped across the threshold and held the door open as if it were his own place, and that as we followed him in, all his attention was directed to us and not to the room we were all seeing for the first time. The disturbance of stagnant air as we entered raised dust and the warm, peppery smell of wood and linseed, and I sneezed, catching also the sharpness of old fire ash and cigarette smoke. The patchy linoleum floor was grainy with dirt and dead insects and soot blown down from the stove. Ron pulled back the curtains on their sagging wires, watching us like an eager host, scanning our faces for signs of disappointment.

In silence but for the scrape of our feet and the hollow creaking of the floor, we roamed and inspected the place as if each of us were there alone, privately assessing it against the unspoken measure of our own hopes for it, and our own needs. Within the small space, the distances between us expanded and grew vast.

The cabin must once have been a restroom or shelter for forestry workers. A black stove stood in a brick alcove, and a pile of magazines, a bucket of logs, and a poker sat alongside. The magazines, all dedicated, unsurprisingly, to naked girls, were dated between 1999 and 2002. In one corner a plywood tabletop and its two trestles were stacked against the wall next to a shelf holding a beer glass and three pub ashtrays. Two wall boards were marked with fuzzy, darker rectangles where notices and pinups must have been displayed. The gingham curtains bore shadow stripes of pale gray where light had fallen on the original dark blue. They were oddly homey, perhaps made by a wife or a girlfriend; perhaps there had been times when the workers had stayed here overnight. Behind the main room was a windowless kitchen with a sink and plastic-fronted cupboards. A small fridge stood open under the counter, the handle encrusted with dirt and rust. A door at one side led to a tiny vestibule, where a back door, sagging in its frame, led outside. We could have squeezed through it instead of busting the lock on the other door; now both would have to be mended. Off the vestibule there was one other door, behind which was a chemical toilet and a shower of the kind people use in caravans.

There were two much smaller rooms next to the main one, completely empty. In the one at the back, the window glass was cracked and had been sealed over with tape, now a dry, flapping shred. The floor was dark with mold and sloped downward, and when I trod nearer the center of the room, it tipped a little and a gap opened under the bottom edges of the walls that met in the far corner, and a draft of cold air blew in around my feet. Roots had lodged themselves there and were pushing in like damp fists. I went outside and saw that some tree roots had split the concrete platform and were taking hold in the join between the side and back walls and along the line of the cabin’s base. I thought of calling out to Ron to ask if it could be mended, and then I wondered why I was so ready to consult him. He was a stranger, and my inclination to depend on him was foolish. I would not ask.

I wandered down onto the jetty, and very deliberately I turned and gazed back; for Silva’s sake (I believed) I needed to see the cabin from a little distance, to judge the idea of living in it as plausible or not. As I looked, Ron came out and pulled a couple of bags from the doorway over the threshold. I saw him move across the window, while Silva carried a bundle of something inside, out of sight. They passed to and fro for a while in this quiet little duet of housekeeping, and I felt a pang of exclusion. I was glad when Ron came to the door and beckoned me back.

“Place looks okay for now,” he said, to both of us. “The logs are dry and the flue’s all right.” He looked at his watch, then nodded toward the boat. “I have to go.” I glanced at Silva. Did she feel, as I did, a sudden unreasonable resentment, as sharp as fear, that he was going? Silva and I, even between us, might not get things right. I didn’t want to be left, and I was annoyed with myself that I didn’t want to be left.

“I’ll have a proper look round tomorrow,” he said, addressing me as if he knew. “See what needs doing.”

“Why are you helping us?” I asked.

“I thought you could do with it.” He motioned across the river. The trailer looked deserted and hopelessly vulnerable. The bonfires still burned.

“Maybe, but that’s not the point. Why are you-”

“I’ll be back tomorrow. So don’t be frightened if you hear the boat.”

“I’m sure it’s very kind of you. But why?”

“I want to,” he said, awkwardly. “I just do what I can.”

“But why?” I knew nothing about him. “Do you live here? Where are you from?”

“Be quiet, Annabel. Of course, we’ll pay you,” Silva said, quickly. “And we are grateful.”

Ron shook his head. “I just do what I can,” he said again, “and you don’t pay me anything.”

“Come tomorrow and there will be food,” she said. She sounded shy. “Not grand food, but you will be very welcome.”

He smiled and nodded and left. As he turned the boat in to the river tide, I called out to thank him, but he didn’t hear above the noise of the motor and the cries of the geese as they rose. Silva and I stood for a while on the jetty, watching the frill of the boat’s wake disappear and the geese glide back in pairs onto the silver-smooth water around the black rock.

I was angry. I suppose she didn’t know what it is to live in a country where you have no right to be, where you are grateful for even an empty shack. She didn’t understand that you’re always afraid. She didn’t understand that going unnoticed and surviving without begging counts as success. People don’t mean to be cruel, not always, but they only help their own. You never hope-never mind expect-that anyone is going to help you , so you don’t start asking questions and looking suspicious because someone shows you kindness. If you have the luck to find it, you take kindness. You take it while you can and put it down to the way this world works. If something good can come along, then something good can also be taken away. You take the good while you can.

But after Ron left I didn’t say any of that, because I thought maybe she was that way because of her baby. It made you cautious, being pregnant. And she wasn’t suspicious about everything. She wouldn’t have been here at all if she hadn’t put her trust in me, another stranger, and I did want her here.