Across the Bridge (18 page)

Not far along was the place I had stopped the car to look at the
map. Had that been only five days before? Now the jagged bridge
ends stuck out from the far bank on the last bridge piers left
standing, and the twisted lanes of the roadway, torn and still,
dipped down to the river. The reflections of a line of emergency
lights along the remaining edge of the carriageway splashed in
broken bars of blue and orange off the grey water and detonated
behind my eyes in tiny explosive after-images. The helicopters
still roamed above, hovering low enough for gusts of air to blow
flecked and juddering waves in circles around the wreckage sticking
up from the surface. In the middle of the river, where three spans
of the bridge had collapsed and vanished, the water was flat and
empty. From here, the people struggling to save themselves would
have looked like flies spinning in a puddle.

When I got to the service station, I didn’t go in. Instead, I
cut across to the start of the track that led to the waste ground.
All the cars had been cleared from that part of the car park, and
the space was now the arrival point for trucks on their way down to
the southern bridge end. There were policemen on duty, some with
dogs, keeping spectators behind lines of tape on either side. I
joined the back of the group and watched. The track entrance had
been widened and a mobile office set up, its interior garish with
strip lighting. Inside, boxes and computers and telephones were
crowded on tabletops. Office chairs and filing cabinets, still
wrapped in plastic, stood against the windows. Men in yellow hard
hats went back and forth with flapping sheets of paper and two-way
radios, checking trucks and sending them on, past two bulldozers
and a digger that were levelling and pushing heaps of rubble into a
low, loose wall at the site’s edge. Some of the trucks were
covered, and most of the others carried machinery I couldn’t guess
the use of, but I also saw two carrying more portable cabins, and
on another a cluster of massive lights and chains and metal bars.
The air was loud with droning generators and grinding wheels.

Across the river, upstream from the slanting northern end of the
broken bridge, a muddy access road had been cut between newly
felled trees down to the water’s edge. There, a long area had been
levelled and a crane was at work, directed by salvage men stationed
on the last slope of bridge road and in boats around the wreckage.
A row of huge sheds was going up, and there was now an iron jetty
with dinghies moored to it, lifting and falling in the slight swell
of the ebb tide.

My attention was drawn back to my side of the river. Upstream
and some way over to the left was a stretch of scrubby land where a
few sheep grazed. Beyond the sheep, I could see some of the people
from the wasteland coming and going around a fire they had just
managed to light. Smoke swayed low and horizontal over the fields.
Paused in a landscape in which only fire smoke and a few sheep
moved, the human figures looked stranded out of their time, gazing
across into another age. But their displacement was timeless, just
another of the world’s arrhythmic visitations of calamity upon
dispensable, unrecorded lives.

I turned away. I was hungry in a way I hadn’t been for days. I
went first to the service-station shop, bought soap, a toothbrush
and toothpaste, and washed at a basin in the Ladies. In the café I
ordered shepherd’s pie and a pot of tea and took them to a window
table from where I could watch the trucks and workmen. As I
unloaded my tray I realized I was almost enjoying myself. I sat
down, poured out my tea and began to eat. These transactions with
strangers, no more than a few words and a polite glance over the
paying for things and the taking of change, were so easy. Nobody I
encountered had bothered to look at me. In a matter of a few days
everyone would have forgotten the face in the papers of the woman
tourist drowned in a rental car. Until then, invisibility, it was
turning out, could be pleasurable.

I started to make plans. Now that I was getting my nerve back,
renting a room somewhere as Annabel Jones wouldn’t be any more
difficult than ordering a pot of tea and the lunch special. When
Silva came back this evening, Stefan and Anna might be with her. In
the morning we’d explain everything, Stefan and I. We’d divide the
money and I’d be on my way, arranging my new life properly. I’d get
a place to stay and a few clothes and look for a job like Silva’s,
one that paid in cash. I could work for months before the baby was
born, and by then I would be used to my new name. For the first
time in days I was managing to look ahead. That was when, through
the window, I caught sight of Col.

I did not know until that moment how well I had come to read his
feelings from the hunch of his shoulders, the bowing of his thick
head. He stood motionless and alone, close to where I had stood
only minutes ago. I was surprised that he was there at all; my
disappearance would have delayed his return home on Friday, our
departure date, but once he learned that my car was in the water
with my body inside it, what could he achieve by staying? There was
nothing to wait for, nothing he could do here. What was to be
gained by staring at the bridge with puzzled, blinking eyes,
tipping his head back and scanning the sky in a gesture of
endurance, looking so bruised and forsaken? I felt a flare of
anger. How dare he appear in this way, as if some truly dreadful
blow had been dealt him, when all he had lost was
me
? There
could be no possibility he was truly suffering; he had made it
perfectly clear he could take or leave me. I could hardly bear to
look at him.

Yet I stayed at the window. He had only to turn his head and
some invisible wire connecting us would have fizzed to life and
directed our eyes straight towards each other’s, and my deception
would have been over. For a moment I was so curious I almost wanted
it to happen. Or, if he didn’t turn his head, I could just get up
from here and go to him. But it was too late for any such move.
If you want to make a go of it with me, fine, I’ll make a go of
it with you. But not with a kid
. I remained where I was. Then
he took out his mobile phone, snapped some pictures, and trod
heavily away.

Soon he was out of sight. I waited another half an hour until I
could be sure he had gone, and then I returned, walking fast all
the way, to the trailer.

By the time I got there it was pouring, and I sat inside and
stared as raindrops pitted the water. When it stopped I went
outside. The river lay like a swathe of thick, dull cloth under the
pall of the clouds and seemed barely to flow. I could not stay
here. The sight of Col had shown me that I had to act urgently to
put distance between my old life and the new one. It was
distasteful to linger in this way, like a mourner at my own
funeral. The trailer was damp and falling apart; what had been
asylum was now a rotting prison. If I did not get out at once and
rejoin the living, my defiant vanishing act would amount to nothing
but a self-imposed shackling to a dead end where I was alive to
nobody on earth except Silva.

Besides, I could do nothing for her by staying. How would it
help for me to stay and witness any more of her faith that Stefan
and Anna were coming back, when I was too cowardly either to
encourage her hopes or to destroy them? The best thing I could do
for her would be to leave some money and be gone by the time she
returned. I would write her a note explaining – only in part – why
I had left. I could not be sure that she would be able to read much
English, and she might ask someone she knew – her employer,
probably – to read it for her. I could not tell her anything that
mentioned the car and gave me away. But the truth was I could not
tell her everything anyway. I did not have the courage.

The only paper I could find was a colouring book of Anna’s, and
I carefully removed a page she had already scrawled over and wrote
on the back of it.

Dear Silva
,

Thank you for the food and accommodation and for
looking after me when I was unwell. Your hospitality was very
welcome at a time when I needed it, and I valued your company very
much
.

I apologize for telling you I didn’t have enough
money on me for a hotel when I first arrived. It wasn’t true, but
for complicated reasons I had to say it. It is a long story how I
came to turn up at your place. I enclose herewith a sum to
reimburse you for expenses incurred during my stay and also as a
token of my gratitude. I hope it will be useful to you in the
future, whatever it may bring
.

I regret I was unable to let you know in advance
that I was leaving today. I hope your husband and daughter are now
back safe and sound
.

Yours
,

Annabel

I knew my letter was formal in a way that was odd in the
circumstances, but I didn’t know how else to do it. It took me much
longer to compose than I thought it would. I had deliberately let
my mobile phone run out of charge, so I could not know the time
exactly, but I had reckoned it was the middle of the afternoon when
I began the letter. By the time I had finished and folded fifteen
hundred pounds into the single sheet of paper, I could hardly see
to write. Daylight was fading and the sky was lowering with waiting
ice. Maybe it was later than I had thought, after all, and I
remember thinking that this was a good thing. It shortened the
interval until Silva’s return, when the trailer would be unattended
with the money inside, lying on the table. But when I closed the
door and went down the steps onto the shore, I saw at once that I
couldn’t leave.

Downstream, between where I stood and the wrecked bridge end,
two small fires at the river’s edge were burning through the blurry
dusk. It was not difficult to gauge their distance from me; the
nearer of the two had been set on a jutting-out part of the bank
where three or four felled tree trunks lay on the ground. I had
wandered down there several times in the past few days; it was a
tricky walk over slippery rocks and around ponds of mud, and
possible only at low tide, but it took no more than ten minutes. If
the tramps displaced from the waste ground had encroached as far as
that already, they could easily come farther. The trailer was set
well back and under trees, and could not be seen from their
bonfire, but if any of them wandered along and found the trailer
empty, of course they could easily steal the money and take the
trailer over for the night. And for all nights to come. I might
trust to the coming darkness to keep them from exploring any
further today, but I would have to stay outside on the lookout in
case they did. And I was going to be very cold. I couldn’t risk
drawing their attention by lighting a fire for myself.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

V
i was sitting at the
stove with a shawl round her shoulders and a tumbler of red wine in
her hand when Ron returned to the shop. She looked up from a
magazine spread over the counter. Her eyes were sour and watery,
and her mouth was puckered and stained dark with wine, like a patch
of decay starting on a small, bruised piece of fruit.

“Cold out there,” Ron said.

“You’ll have to be quick, I’m closing early.”

“Where’s Silva?”

Vi pushed herself up a little in her chair. “Silva!” she yelled,
then slumped back. “You come from the river?” she asked, swinging
her glass towards the darkness on the other side of the window.

“You could say that.”

“Terrible thing.”

Ron wandered farther into the shop, looking at the shelves,
sniffing gently as if he found the air, laden with paraffin and
wine, too heavy to breathe.

“It’s self-service,” Vi said. “Take a basket. Aye, terrible
thing, that bridge.”

She gulped some of her drink and returned to her magazine. Ron
brought a packet of biscuits back to the counter.

“Drowning your sorrows, then,” he said, placing a five-pound
note on the counter.

“Keeps the cold out,” Vi said, but she stood up and placed her
glass out of sight under the counter. She put the note in the till
and started pulling coins out for the change, counting aloud, but
her voice slowed. She stared at the money in her hand, dumped it
all back and started again.

“Can’t add up the day,” she said, trying to smile. She made
another mistake, turned the coins from hand to hand, counted them
into her open palm, and dropped them. They fell rattling over the
counter and cascaded onto the floor. Swearing, she ducked to pick
them up and almost knocked over the stove as they rolled away. As
she resurfaced, she swayed forwards and gripped the back of her
chair, but it screeched away from her and she nearly fell.

Ron looked over his shoulder. Silva was walking down from the
back store with her bag on her shoulder, wrapping her scarf round
her neck, smiling.

“That’ll be four pounds, twenty-five pence I’m owed,” he said,
turning back to Vi.

“Well, it’s on the bloody floor. You’ll need to come back for
it.”

“I’d like my change, please.”

Vi slammed the till shut. “You’ll have to come back the morn.
We’re closed.”

“Come on, Vi, I’ll do it,” Silva said, moving behind the counter
to open the till. Vi shoved her away. “Don’t you touch my bloody
money! We’re closed!”

Silva looked at her for a moment, then pulled her purse from her
bag and counted out four pounds, twenty-five pence.

“Here, take it,” she said to Ron. “It’s better not to argue with
her. It’s all right, I got paid today. I’ll get it back
tomorrow.”

“Sure? Well, thanks.” Ron took the coins and picked up his
packet of biscuits. Vi was now back in her chair with her glass in
her hand.