Morag Joss - Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

“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.

Then how I was shown that it would not be stealing but only taking what is mine. I thought I had those words ready, too. How I forgive you for the existence of this child, but I will never forgive her, how unthinkable it is that she should have it to love and keep for herself when she killed the child who was mine and yours. I was going to tell her how I promise every day to come back to you, that I have stayed alive just so that I can take this newborn baby with me out onto the black rock and wait there until the tide rises and carries us both back to you. I want to tell her that she is going to watch her child disappear under the river and when she does she ought to remember that that is what she did to my Anna. She is going to know my sorrow.

My love, I know you are with Anna, waiting for me and the baby boy, and when the flow tide sweeps over the rock, we won’t struggle. I shall let it bear us down to the riverbed, and we shall all be together.

But when I try to say any of this, the words sheer off and crumble against my chattering teeth and I feel myself getting dizzy, falling and breaking apart. It’s like demolishing a wall and discovering I also am the wall. Every blow I inflict I also take. I’m made of it, I’m a part of it. I get to my feet and walk away toward the river with the little thing in my arms, taking Annabel’s bag with me. The screams that follow me now are more agonized and urgent even than the sounds she made when he was forcing her body to open and expel him, and now his fists beat the air and from his mouth comes wave upon wave of a bleating cry that answers his mother’s.

All this while the river has been rising and the boat is now afloat. I wade in, place him on the bottom, and push off into the current. The rock is almost half under the water, so I will be able to climb onto it. But it will be difficult, as there is nowhere to attach the boat. I bring it alongside and wedge the prow in one of the rock’s jutting angles. But it won’t stay there long. I have to find a place where I can grab hold and get out of the boat and onto the rock. I will need both hands, so I sling the bag over my shoulder and pull the child in under my clothes, against my bare chest, and bind him to me using a sweater from Annabel’s bag, tying him close with the sleeves. From the shore she is screaming at me to come back. I want her to be watching, but knowing that she is makes me feel sick and empty.

I use one oar to steady the boat as best I can in the current, then I count to three, drop the oar, and throw myself at the rock. I land on all fours and hang on until I am able, carefully, to move one foot, then a hand, then the other foot. I crawl forward. It’s slippery, and I struggle to keep hold but not cling too close, lest I crush the child. I crawl to the middle of the rock and lie on my back for several minutes before sitting up and unwrapping him.

His head drops back on his useless, flimsy neck; his eyes are closed. I feel his face with the back of my hand. It’s cold. I cradle his head and wail. I intended to take him with me when I drown, but now he’s dead, and his death pierces me to the heart. I clasp him to me, and from the riverbank Annabel screams again. Then he stirs, and before I know what I am doing, I am weeping and laughing and covering the top of his head with kisses. The little thing was asleep! He fell asleep against my breast, his face bloody and gluey with birth slime stuck fast to my skin. I wrap him up warm again and hold him close, and rock him back and forth. His mouth turns to my nipple, and he latches on and sucks. After a moment he tugs himself away from me, his mouth opens again and he screams. I hear Annabel’s voice calling back to him. I have failed him, for of course my breast is dry. I do not understand why it distresses me that I have nothing to give him. Just then a high wave hits the edge of the rock and rolls like a cold, wet cloth over it, soaking my legs. I do not understand why I lift him clear, taking care to keep him dry.

Behind me there’s a scraping noise, and I turn just in time to see the tide nudge the prow of the little white boat clear of the rock. It clunks two or three times as it goes, then spins free and is borne away upriver. From the shore, Annabel pleads for her baby. Holding him tightly to me with one arm, I use my free hand to reach into my pocket for my phone. Another wave sweeps over the rock, and he cries and cries for his mother while the wind cuts into my back.

Colin had called Ron and asked if they could meet up sometime on the evening of the day the bridge reopened. He had something to show him. Something he was doing for his wife and the baby.

“What is it?” said Ron.

“Tell you when I see you,” Colin said. “It’s nothing spectacular. Just want to show somebody, if that’s okay.”

Ron agreed. He had no idea what, if anything, he might tell Colin about Annabel. I know a pregnant woman; that’s a coincidence, isn’t it? I know a pregnant woman, she turned up after the bridge fell down, maybe it’s your wife? Even supposing- supposing -Annabel was Colin’s wife, she must have had good reasons to stay away from him. What right did Ron have to interfere? And what would be the point, when the body of Colin’s wife was probably a clean skeleton at the bottom of the river, the boneless embryo of Colin’s child long disintegrated? That was what Colin-and he-had to accept. There was nothing he could say about Annabel that would not do more harm than good.

He trudged down from the sleeper unit through the mud toward the jetty and the new walkway leading under the bridge. The construction site had been emptying for days and was now deserted and almost cleared; the casting sheds downriver had already been dismantled and removed, and massive crisscrossed ruts and divots of earth marked the departure of the heavy plant. Only a few huts remained; a dozen dumpsters were filling up. The sleeper unit was due to be removed on Monday, and then Ron would be fending for himself again, bedding down in the back of the Land Rover, waiting for the baby’s birth. He was still needed for a while to run the boat, for inspectors checking the new sections of the bridge, and for journalists, but soon he would be gone himself. Where to, he had no idea. He could form no picture of a future for himself that did not include Annabel and the baby and if necessary, he quite willingly supposed, Silva, too.