Morag Joss - Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

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 Silva has withdrawn into one of her moods; she would like to disappear off down the river as she usually does but can’t, I suppose, because of me.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.