Across the Bridge (2 page)

As their boots creaked across the floor, I thought well, maybe
it could still be a good day or at least, like other days in the
past five months, a good enough one, a day whose course would offer
up to us any number of chances to overlook the disenchantment of
our late and incongruous marriage. I poured my husband more coffee.
We had already learnt to fill the place of love with an obscuring
politeness; we observed the etiquette of keeping our disappointment
quiet with upbeat conversations over practicalities, like
optimistic gardeners keeping an unpromising surface raked and hoed
in the hope that a flower might be growing underground. Above all,
we extended to each other self-serving magnanimity in the granting
of opportunities to spend time apart. On this off-season budget
break in Scotland (which we were not calling a honeymoon, it being
as near as we would ever come to one and yet nowhere near enough),
we were keeping our voices bright, trading all the usual cliches to
excuse ourselves from each other’s company: not wanting to ‘get in
each other’s hair’, we were each ‘doing our own thing’. Col was
doing ‘guys’ stuff’, I was ‘chilling out at my own pace’. Col had
rented a car, an expense he could barely afford, which made our
separate agendas easier and perhaps almost natural. On this
particular day he was ‘getting his money’s worth’ out of it by
letting me drive myself up to Inverness to window-shop and visit
the museum, while he went kayaking. We were, in fact, on two quite
different holidays.

The hotel was built at the top of an incline, and the bay window
looked down over the beer garden, still dank under dawn shadows, as
the sun was not fully risen. Rain and melting frost dripped from a
black monkey-puzzle tree onto the twiggy roof of a gazebo filled
with stacks of empty bottle crates and drifts of dead leaves. Banks
of chilly-looking cloud weighted the sky above the main road going
north past the garden railings; beyond the road, the river flowed
over rocks into glossy brown pools that spun with curls of
froth.

“I’m afraid it’ll rain on and off all day,” I said. “I hope the
weather won’t spoil it for you.”

“A bit more rain won’t hurt,” he said. “If it rains, it rains.”
He cleared his throat. “It might dry up in Inverness.”

“It might. I won’t mind,” I said, my eyes still on the river.
“That current’s very fast. You wouldn’t want to capsize in
that.”

“Well, if it’s raining, I’ll be wet anyway, won’t I?” he said.
“That would be quite funny.”

I cast him too bright and grateful a smile, as if capsizing into
rivers were some huge amusement I’d forgotten about. We went quiet
again. Our table was crowded with white china and over-large spoons
and knives that made too much noise, beneath which our silence
seemed delicate and even meaningful, which it was not. But nor was
it desolate, I thought. Incongruous it certainly was, after a year
of Internet romance via an online chat room for housebound
caregivers, finally to meet and within six weeks get married, all
in a rush. But was it such a mistake to be in a hurry to ignore the
undertow of something missing, to prove ourselves still
marriageable before the notion of being in love, fast receding,
could vanish utterly? After all, no marriage was ever spontaneous,
and most between people over forty were arranged, somehow or other
and for any number of fragile reasons, among them a fear of
loneliness. That was by no means a small thing. Col’s parents had
been dead for three years (he had kept up his membership in the
caregivers’ chat room, out of familiarity), and he stayed on alone
in their house in Huddersfield; my father had just died, leaving me
with no reason to stay in Portsmouth. These seemed good reasons,
not bad ones, to chain ourselves to the mediocre but likeable real
forms of each other that we encountered face to face, and put aside
our hankering for the early, impossible, younger-seeming versions
of ourselves we had come to know at our computer-aided
distance.

His mobile phone burbled, and he took it out to read the
message. “That’s them telling us to bring waterproofs,” he said.
“We’re in for a soaking. Time I was going.”

“There’s something I should tell you,” I said, quickly. “I’m
pregnant.”

“
What?
” He flinched, then looked away.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Oh, God,” he said, blowing out his cheeks. He pushed himself
back as far as he could get without moving out of his chair, and
then, of course, the first thing that would spring to anyone’s mind
sprang to his.

“God. I mean, but aren’t you – ”

“I thought I was too old, too! It is a surprise. A mum at
forty-two!”

“But you’re supposed to be getting a job in Huddersfield.”

“Well, and I will, when I can. Is that all you’re going to
say?”

He looked at me hard, as if searching for something to admire.
“You know we both need to work. It’s not my fault I don’t bring in
enough.”

“Col, I know, but I can’t help it. It’s happened.”

“I don’t make enough for two, never mind three. You’re supposed
to be looking for a job.” He gulped from his coffee cup and crossed
his arms. “Anyway, I don’t want kids. I told you from the start. I
told you, for God’s sake.”

“Yes,” I said, “but that was before. Ages ago, online. Before
we’d even met.”

He tipped his head and gazed at the ceiling for a while. His
face was just as it had been when he was rubbing at the tablecloth.
Was this the same to him as a dropped, greasy knife – an accidental
mess, not much to do with him? Another blunder?

“It is a shock, I didn’t expect it, either! But I didn’t do it
on my own. Please don’t act as if I should say sorry or something!”
I said, trying to sound light. “It must happen all the time. Other
people manage it.”

“I said I didn’t want kids. I said so. I said so right from the
start, when we were getting to know each other.”

But we didn’t get to know each other, I wanted to say. That
wasn’t knowing each other. This is.

“We said lots of things then. We hadn’t really met, that was
just online chatting. It was the Internet, it wasn’t real.”

“It was real!” he said. “It was real as far as I was concerned.
I meant what I said. I don’t want kids. They ruin your
lifestyle.”

“
Lifestyle?
Have we got a lifestyle?”

He glowered at me. “I don’t want kids.”

“But why not?”

“Why
not
? Because I don’t. For a start we can’t afford
it. Anyway, it’s not why I don’t, it’s why all of a sudden I’ve got
to want a kid just because you’ve changed your tune. Why should I
change my mind just because you have?”

“Why? Because I’m having one! And because…well, because most
people have them. They aren’t all miserable about it, are they?
They manage!”

He shook his head from side to side and glanced out of the
window.

“OK, so, money. Have you got money?” He placed his fingertips on
the edge of the table as if he were changing the subject.

“Money? For today? Oh, yes. I’ll be fine, I don’t need much,
just enough for lunch and the museum. I’m not planning on buying
anything. And there’s plenty of petrol.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean for this. I haven’t got the
money, and neither have you.”

“But it’ll be fine, we’ll manage! Because people do. You’ll
see!”

“Even suppose you live off me for the next nine months, what
about after? You haven’t got any money.”

“Babies don’t need all that much to begin with,” I said,
arranging my ideas about it on the spot, allowing pictures from the
back of my head to press forwards. “People might give us things. I
bet we can get good stuff second-hand. On eBay.” There was a
silence. “I’ll knit!” I said, happily.

“The bit you got when your dad died. That’s gone, isn’t it?”

“More or less. But look, Col, please.”

I had less even than he thought I had. Back when I never dreamed
it could matter, I’d told him I would inherit my father’s house
when he died; it was the only thing I could say to the Internet
Col, lest he think me a gold-digger and vanish. I didn’t tell him
until later that I’d remortgaged and remortgaged the house so my
father and I could go on living in it. When it was sold, it had
paid off the debt and left a little that I’d spent on getting
married and small expenses since then. If I’d had even a little put
by, I could surely have persuaded him it would be enough to see us
through until the baby was born.

“Well, then. Even if you went back to work after, we’d be
shelling out for the rest of our lives. Kids don’t live on air. I’m
nearly fifty, I don’t want to work my backside off for the next
twenty years. I can’t afford it.”

Why do we assume that ponderous, plain, clumsy people are more
loving than everyone else, that what slows them down is a hidden
burden of tenderness that does not encumber those who are quick and
thin? I stared at him, this man who was now my husband, with his
sullen voice and broad, shiny face and the bulky body I knew so
well now. But I knew nothing, I realized, of these reserves of
hostility – that they existed in him at all, never mind that they
were so easily tapped, so available to be sent spilling into his
dealings with me.

“Look, Col, it’s a shock, of course it is. But when you said you
didn’t want kids, that must’ve been the
idea
of kids. Of
course you didn’t want them when you were single, on your own. Now
it’s different. OK, we didn’t plan it, but it’s real, it’s actually
happening. A real baby.” I couldn’t stop my face breaking out in a
smile. “I thought you might have noticed something.”

He looked at me blankly.

“It’s for real,” I said, encouragingly. “This isn’t the Internet
now.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said.

“I’ve been feeling pretty sick. But that’s normal.”

“Look. Are you really sure? It’s not like it shows,” he
said.

Just then his phone burbled again. He read the new message and
then stretched back and stabbed in a reply.

“They’re waiting for me,” he said, standing up and pocketing the
phone. “So, how far gone are you?”

“Oh, there’s bags of time to get used to it,” I said. “It’s not
due till the beginning of October.”

“No, I mean,
how
far gone?”

“Only about five weeks. Did you really not notice anything? I
probably haven’t been all that much fun to be with!”

He shrugged.

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t last long, the sick stage. I’ll be
right as rain in a few weeks,” I said.

He hesitated, his hands on the back of his chair, then jammed it
in under the table. “Listen. How many ways do I have to say it? I
don’t want a kid. You can’t spring this on me. I’m not prepared to
have a kid. So you’ll just have to do what you have to do. Deal
with it.”

“Deal with it? What are you saying?”

“I’m saying 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. A kid was never in
the plan, there’s no way we can afford it. If you get rid of it,
fine. If you keep it, also fine, but you’re on your own.”

“You’re telling me to get rid of a healthy baby? To have an
abortion?”

“I’m telling you I don’t want a kid. I’m not telling you what to
do, it’s up to you. I’m not forcing you.”

He left before I could say any more. A few moments after he had
gone, the waitress padded forwards to remove our breakfast dishes.
“Take your time,” she said to me. “No rush.”

I did take my time. For several minutes I stared out of the
window. The waitress returned and began wiping the sideboard. I
closed my eyes, and when I opened them again it was like arriving
back in the room after an absence to find it bigger, or at least
empty of something it had contained before. The yellow electric
globe lights on the walls shone with an old, dusty warmth. The sun
was rising higher, burning proud of the horizon and casting streaks
of silver light across the garden and in over the windowsill. The
waitress set to work with a vacuum cleaner. I fancied she started
at the farthest corner of the room so as to disturb me least – that
was sweet of her. She smiled as she finished up and left, trailing
the vacuum behind her on squeaky casters. Then a different waitress
came with trays of glasses and cutlery wrapped in paper napkins and
began to set tables for lunch.

I had no idea what I was going to do. When the sun was shining
small and high and pale through a veil of rain above the river, I
got up and walked away.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

H
e missed the
passengers, not for their company but for giving his journeys
purpose. Alone, his travelling was just driving. That was why,
summoning all his courage, he stopped outside Doncaster one rainy
day in early September for two hitch-hikers, Canadian students
heading for Scotland. They were trying to get to Edinburgh in time
for some festival whose name they couldn’t pronounce but which,
they assured him, was an ancient Celtic celebration of the end of
summer.

“It’s her that really wants to go. She’s really into folklore,
aren’t you, sweetheart?” the boy said adoringly, and wrote down the
name of it –
Samhraidhreadh
– on the back of his
girlfriend’s hand while she laughed because the pen was tickly. He
pulled her wrist forwards to show Ron, and Ron had never heard of
it and couldn’t pronounce it either. But something about their
journey touched him – its pilgrim zeal, its pointlessness – and in
a demonstration of goodwill that he did not really feel he took
them all the way to Edinburgh, thinking that to perform, however
disinterestedly, an act of kindness might bring flooding back a
former true impulse to be kind, the way he might swing a numbed
limb to and fro hoping that movement would restore sensation.