Across the Bridge (25 page)

He didn’t. Picking up the candle, he followed me into the room
where I slept, and I rearranged the cushions and mattresses so we
could both lie down. Without a word he took me in his arms in an
embrace that was natural and warmth-seeking, nothing else. The
smell of his skin was male, pleasantly sharp, like clean metal.

The rain pattered on the roof over our heads, and after the
candle had burned down and died, he said quietly, in the dark, “A
baby.”

He reached out and just once, over the covers, stroked his hand
gently across my stomach, and then we slept.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

T
his is what I
learned after you went missing. I learned I would not die of my
distress, not even when I wanted to. I would not altogether lose my
mind, not even when I was afraid I must.

To begin with, the passing of time with no news sharpened the
pain to the point that I couldn’t bear any more. Then there came a
day when the passing of more time with no news blunted the pain a
little. No news was better than bad news, it meant hope, and it
brought a little calm. This was the beginning of fooling myself,
the beginning of knowing that fooling myself was what I must do. A
way must be found to survive, and it was in my nature, then, to
find that way.

And after another little while, the pain, which I didn’t expect
would go away, burrowed deeper into my life. It found its place and
made its home there, and I let it. It took up room that everything
else in my life moved over and made for it. It was just with me,
like the sound of my own breathing, while I did all the other
things that happen every day. I brushed my hair, counted change,
put on my shoes, took off my shoes, and it was there alongside me:
pain, and no longer shocking. It became ordinary, as familiar as
the mug I drank tea from in the morning. By the time it was like
that, that was how I wanted to keep it. I was grateful to be at
least used to it.

I discovered also that I could not lie awake weeping for ever.
Sleep came, if only in short, fretful waves, and when it did, it
brought dreams that were sometimes merciful. I dreamed once of
walking into a small, bright field, sunny and sweet-smelling, and
all at once I forgot the way I had come to arrive there and did not
want ever to leave it. And that was how it was also sometimes when
I was awake. I could be busy in the shop, or talking with Ron,
listening to some story of Annabel’s, or just sitting on the
riverbank watching the birds on the rock, and suddenly I would
notice that for the past little while I had been carefree, as if
I’d been standing in my small bright field. I had let go of
everything in my mind that lay behind or ahead of the little
pleasure of that moment. Then I would be ashamed, for what sort of
mother and wife enjoys herself when her child and husband have
disappeared? By being careless of you even for a minute, maybe I
had made it harder for you to come back. As soon as I could, I
would hurry to my room and place fresh flowers for you, light a
candle and pray for your return, but also for your forgiveness. I
would swear never to let you out of my thoughts again, I vowed to
walk a thousand miles barefoot to find you. And when, as it always
did, my despair returned, I gave in to it quietly, knowing I
deserved it.

Yet the world goes on, and I went on. I rose every day and
managed to dress myself in the wrong clothes, clothes that were
happy and summery, soft old cotton skirts, trainers for getting up
through the forest in the morning – I even tied up my hair with
that plastic flower you bought me last year at the service station.
The tourists had come, so the shop was busy and I was working more
hours. Vi was having one of her good spells. The warmer weather
helped her. She stayed sober, mostly, and sometimes even took
half-days off and disappeared in her rusty red van, coming back
with her hair done, and once a birdbath from the garden centre. But
she was also harder to please. One day she told me if I didn’t
learn to smile at the customers, I could make myself scarce, and I
did try, by thinking of the cabin and imagining you back there with
Anna, counting the geese on the water. I told myself the world goes
on, and the river and the sun go on, and if I also could go on, and
even smile, then you could, too. You were still in the world, and
you would come back. It could not be otherwise. Now, after all
these weeks, the way that I walked each day up through the forest
to the road had become a path, well worn and easy to tread.

Watching Annabel grow big made all this both better and worse.
Everything she was becoming was a mirror of my own childbearing and
of my aching. Her belly began to swell as mine had, sooner than she
thought it would, and I also watched her become happy in a way she
wasn’t expecting. But I was. I know what it does to you to carry a
child you love before it is born. When you love that way, the baby
knows it, and grows. I remembered a woman from our village, they
talked about how she married a brute, a real rough brute, because
of his land and businesses, and her misery to be carrying his
child. She couldn’t bear the bulk of it, its weight in her like his
weight upon her, they said. She couldn’t forget her disgust over
how it got there, that boulder of a child filling and stretching
her. Blameless thing, that baby withered and died inside her, and
they said it was hatred of its father that killed it.

Never mind. That was a long time ago and far away. There was
much to do here, and Annabel was not as good at thinking ahead as
she thought she was. She had nothing to do all day but take care of
things at the cabin, and she did, in her way. Not in the way I
would, but I didn’t complain. It was important not to upset her, so
I did not let her see that her standards were not my standards. I
was glad to have Ron there in the evenings. He kept the peace
without knowing it. He was so sweet and quiet and grateful, and he
did so much for us.

I wasn’t surprised when I got up the day after the storm to find
him in the kitchen making three cups of tea. Too dangerous last
night to go back in the boat, he said, so he’d slept in front of
the stove. I was sorry he hadn’t had a mattress, but I liked it
that he stayed. With the storm going on outside, I had lain awake
for a while thinking that if our cabin had been put here for just
this purpose, to be filled with people who needed a haven, there
would surely be another place like it somewhere that was sheltering
you. I prayed for your arms to be around her, wherever you were,
and I fell into a deep sleep. I was sure a part of me knew Ron was
there all night, and that was why I slept.

The weather had cleared, and Annabel got up and went to wave him
off from the jetty. When she came back I said to her that Ron was a
blessing, it was good he had stayed. She nodded.

“It would be good if he could stay more,” I said. “We should get
something for him so he doesn’t have to lie on the hard floor.”

For once Annabel had been thinking ahead, because she agreed
with that as if she had already planned for it in her mind.

To keep her happy, I let her go off shopping the next Sunday
with Ron. I wanted to be by myself, and with her gone I could
attend to some of the cleaning she hadn’t done very well. There was
nothing I wanted to buy anyway, but she needed some bigger clothes,
and there were places in Inverness where they could get folding
beds, some pillows and other things. She was excited about going
out, and I tidied her up, I brushed her hair myself. But I couldn’t
do anything about the sleepy, foolish look that had come into her
eyes. She hadn’t been away from the cabin for many weeks and she
looked strange and distant, drugged on solitude. Ron had the Land
Rover waiting on the road, and she set off up through the forest in
her unironed man’s clothes with her belly large and her hair thick
and springy, panting with every step. Soon she wouldn’t be able to
make it up the steepest part. As I watched her go, I was anxious. I
hoped she wouldn’t attract too much attention. But I was also
afraid to be letting her disappear out of my sight and into a world
that could swallow up the people I loved.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

A
s Ron drove towards
Netherloch, my excitement disappeared and I felt only fear. The
people at the Invermuir Lodge Hotel would certainly know that one
of those lost on the bridge had been a guest there; quite probably
the press had turned up to interview the staff about the tragic
couple. What if one of them, the nice waitress, say, saw me and
remembered me? And don’t people always notice pregnant women
anyway? I would have to spend the entire day with my collar up,
staring at pavements, my heart thumping and sweat pouring down my
body. I gazed out of the window and wondered if my mother,
noticeably pregnant with me, had once ventured out like this and
also found her courage melting away the moment she left the shelter
of the house.

Ron said, “Some year for foxgloves, this. Just look at them
all.”

There were lots of them, growing tall in the banks among the
bracken and at the forest edges under the shade of the pine trees.
I agreed, pretending I had noticed them, too.

“Sure sign of a good summer, foxgloves,” he said. “A hot, dry
summer.”

“Lovely,” I said, not meaning it, imagining the hot, dry summer
my mother was carrying me and Annabel Porter died. Maybe someone
raised an eyebrow at her rounded stomach and crossed the street,
maybe a neighbour, bitter on the Porters’ behalf, hissed
“
child-slayer
” as she walked past. Or did the people she met
assess her with remote, grieving eyes and say nothing? Perhaps
things like that happened, perhaps none did. It’s possible that
every single bit of evidence of my mother’s defamation she conjured
up herself, out of nothing but her sense of sin.

“A hot, dry summer. We don’t get many of those,” I said.

“Not like we used to. Not like the summers you look back on,
when you were a kid.”

I wanted to tell Ron that I never did look back on them, at
least I tried not to. I wanted to tell him about the later summer,
when I was thirteen, the one my father said sent my mother over the
edge, though in truth the weather had little to do with it. We both
knew it had been coming for years, but we needed an additional
factor, one beyond our control, to blame for an occurrence that we
failed to prevent.

It was the summer holidays, and nearly all the girls I knew from
school had gone to the seaside or to visit relatives. We, of
course, were staying at home.

“Here,” my mother said one afternoon, “take this on down to your
dad at work. It’s just a list. A few things we need to get.” She
handed me a small envelope. “Tell him I’m not up to much,” she
added, as if her not doing the shopping was unusual and required
explanation. Her voice sounded careful and hurting, as if there
were too many bones in her throat.

She was lying on the sofa with a handkerchief balled in her
hand; tears had been spouting from her eyes all day. I didn’t ask
why she had put a simple shopping list in an envelope. I asked if
it was her hay fever, one of several euphemisms we used to cover
her various states of collapse. She said it was.

“I’m just not up to much. Stay while he reads it, you hear?” she
said, with her eyes closed. “Don’t skip off. He’ll need you.” More
tears trickled from under her eyelids.

“You mean I’m to stay and help carry things back? I’ll take a
basket then.”

She took my hand and looked at me.

“Go now and you’ll be down there before five. You’ll find him
all right, he’s doing holiday relief in the outer office.”

I nodded. “I’ll push the bike home. He can carry the
basket.”

She closed her eyes again before she let go of my hand. “I’m
sorry,” she sighed. “I need some peace and quiet now. Be a good
girl. Mind the road.” I put the shopping list in my pocket and left
her alone.

But before I set off I went into the bathroom, and that was when
I discovered the blood between my legs. I went quietly up to my
room. I knew what was happening, in theory; some of the girls in my
class had already started, and one or two actually talked about it.
But I felt disorientated and shy, and there was the practical
problem of what to do about it. Before I could go out I needed help
from my mother and I couldn’t go to her; she was vacant and
inaccessible, crying on the sofa and wanting peace and quiet. The
afternoon was muffled and hot, and I realized then that warm
sunshine no longer meant, and never would mean again, perfect play
weather, hours and hours for swings and sandpits and running across
the grass. I would never be carefree again. The day had turned
wearyingly complicated and the heat treacherous; it would make me
sweat, and itch, and smell. I lay on my bed unbearably dismayed,
with my hands folded over a wad of paper tissues pushed up between
my thighs, and I fell asleep.

I woke less than an hour later, in a panic. It was after four
o’clock, and I couldn’t delay it any longer. I went in search of my
mother. The house was empty. I found her hanging from a flex
attached to a metal spar in the garage roof, her face black and her
neck broken.

Dear Gerald

Please forgive me there is nothing else I can do
to keep going. It is taking me over and getting worse and worse.
Thank you for everything Gerald I know it hasn’t been easy. You are
a good man, you will both do better without me. She doesn’t need me
any more she is not a baby any more. I can go at last. I know I am
a coward but I have to let go of it all. Please try and understand
it’s for the best
.

Love to you both

Irene

If she ever has a baby you need to warn her, make
sure she knows it can happen just out of the blue
.