Across the Bridge (20 page)

“Yes, they might have come here tonight,” Ron said again, “if
they’d seen a fire burning. But I don’t think they’ll bother us
now. It’s late.”

When he said ‘us’ I knew he intended to stay. He got to his
feet.

“But I’ll sit out another couple of hours, just in case. You two
should get to sleep.” He nodded at the long window seat. “If it’s
all right with you, I’ll bed down there in a while.” He opened the
door.

Annabel said, frightened, “But they’ll come when it’s light. If
not tomorrow, then in a day or two.”

“Sure enough, they’ll be along,” Ron said. “We’ll look at it all
in the morning.”

Annabel and I got ready for bed, shyly, saying little. Ron’s
presence was an excitement that neither of us chose to find words
for, nor were we able to admit that he made us feel safer. When we
were lying down and the candles were blown out, I think we were
both grateful for the dark, for not having to see each other’s
faces. But then came the tears that I had been holding back since
the morning.

“Don’t cry,” Annabel said.

How could I not cry? You were gone. I hid my face in the
bedclothes and cried until I was exhausted. She lay in the dark and
said over and over that you were surely safe somewhere and would
return soon. Maybe both of us knew that this was a prayer and not a
belief, but I let it comfort me anyway, and I fell asleep.

In the morning, Annabel was up first. She had hauled a tub of
cold water round the back of the trailer and was splashing in it
and singing, very badly, probably to let Ron know to keep his
distance. I went outside, leaving him on the long seat stretched
out under his blankets and his hands folded on his chest, like a
dead saint. Downriver, the bonfire remains were dark smudges on the
shore; nothing moved. The geese bobbed on the water, and I heard
the sad, wavering cries of the gulls scavenging on the incoming
tide. Annabel’s voice rose from behind the trailer, and I laughed
and called out to her to stop frightening the birds. The geese flew
up from the water with a great flapping of wings. Across the river,
my deserted cabin stood unchanged.

The cabin. It was the answer. It always had been the answer. You
were wrong about it and always had been. We should have been there
long ago. But surely even you could see that it was necessary and
urgent for us to go now. There was no danger there, nobody had been
near the place for a year and more. We would go across and live on
the other side, and the tramps would stay on this bank of the
river, near the service station and Inverness. They wouldn’t want
to come across, even supposing they could. There was nothing for
them in the forest. They could take the trailer if they wanted, I
didn’t care. The leaks were getting worse, and it wouldn’t last
another winter. We would have a proper little house, not large but
much bigger than the trailer. We would make it comfortable.
Besides, I had to live on the other side now to get to work, and
from the cabin there would be a way up through the trees to the
road, and from there it would be only a mile or so to the Highland
Bounty. And Annabel had nowhere else to go and nobody to care for
her. She needed someone. She could stay as long as she liked, and I
would look after her while I was waiting for you and Anna.

And you’d know to come and find me there. That was the best part
of it – knowing that when you came back and found the trailer taken
over by tramps, or empty, you’d guess where I was. That’s if you
even had to guess! Standing where I was now and looking across,
you’d be able to see me sitting on the jetty, waiting, the cabin
door open. Oh, Anna, I can see you watching me. I would hear you
the moment you called out for me.

I went back inside and shook Ron.

“Ron! Ron, wake up! Will you help us? Can you get us back over
the river? To our new place? Come, come and see. I need to take
everything, it will be many times across and back. Please, will you
help?”

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

I
t was Silva’s idea
entirely. I let her excitement enter me; even so, it floated only
on the surface of my feelings. Underneath, dread at what I was
doing and where it was leading me, like an undertow, pulled and
ebbed. I had to get away, and yet I did not go. I did not go. In
small, unguarded moments my fear swamped me, physically, leaving me
nauseated and struggling for breath. I fought it down; I ascribed
it to pregnancy, to shock, to the pure panic of displacement, to
anything but my guilt and the need to outdistance it. I denied and
resisted it. I was determined to erase the picture in my mind of
Col’s face as he stared at the wrecked bridge. I would not test my
reasons for disappearing from my life with him, for fear that the
ingenuity of my excuses might fail. Yet I did not go.

I had to inhabit the here and now, I told myself, live in the
present and pay no heed to the past. So, wanting to believe that
the future would take care of itself and that, meanwhile, constancy
to Silva would make me a little less reproachable for what I had
done, I went along with her excitement about the new place. Maybe I
could be on my way once I’d seen that she was settled and safe. It
did not feel like a trick of avoidance, quite, to dwell on her
pleasure in her plans for the cabin, and to share in it. It was
simply that, for the sake of Silva, the baby, and me, I could not
leave her now.

Ron set off early along the road to get back to the boat and
work his shift, promising to return later. Silva did not go with
him, and was surprised when I asked if it was all right for her not
to turn up for work.

“Sometimes I have other things I have to do,” she told me. “Vi
doesn’t care. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“But shouldn’t you call Vi and let her know?”

“Sure, I’ll call.”

I don’t believe she did. Soon we saw again, downstream, bonfire
smoke in the air and slow, dark figures moving at the river’s edge,
and we began loading Silva’s belongings into bags. With our arms
full, we made our trips singly to the old jetty upriver, so that
the trailer would not be unattended for even a few minutes. It did
not take us long to strip the place; although the jetty was a few
hundred yards away over difficult ground and we made several trips
each, the bags and implements and tools did not amount to much as a
whole family’s belongings. When we had finished, there was nothing
to do but wait in the trailer, not just for Ron to finish work but,
as he’d warned us, for the tide, which would not be high at the
jetty until about six in the evening.

The light was fading when we heard the boat and watched it chug
past us and up to the jetty. When it was moored, Ron came down to
the trailer and helped us with the heaviest things. He disconnected
the gas burner and brought it along with the gas cylinder, and went
back for the water containers and mattresses and seating. There was
nothing we might not need, he said. The cabin might be completely
empty. Silva shrugged. Ron and I exchanged a glance, but neither of
us added that it might not even be weather-tight, it might not be
habitable at all.

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 cabin 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 grey
paint over blistering, prefabricated hardboard. The flat sloping
roof of cracked bitumen sheeting was covered with a ragged blanket
of dropped 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 butt at one corner. The door was cheap, with a
plastic handle, and was padlocked. Ron had a toolbox in the boat.
He took a lump hammer, split the thin panelling 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 pin-ups must
have been displayed. The gingham curtains bore shadow stripes of
pale grey where light had fallen on the original dark blue, and
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, from where a back door, sagging from
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 mould and sloped downwards, and when
I trod near the centre 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 draught 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 rose and 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 OK 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
towards 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 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 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 into 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.