Across the Bridge (35 page)

I turn and watch her. She slips again, falls sideways and lands
heavily on her hip. “Get down on your hands and knees,” I call out.
“Safer for the baby.”

Down she gets, lifting her backside high as the next contraction
comes. When it has passed, she begins to move forwards, sobbing,
lumbering on all fours and her belly hanging to the ground. I turn
and keep walking to the boat. I wait for her there, watching her
crawl after me.

When she gets to the jetty she takes fright again at the size of
the boat and how strong the river is, until I ask her if she wants
to go back up to the cabin. Just as I get her in, she falls
forwards onto her hands and knees and nearly tips the boat over.
Slowly she turns herself around and sits down in the stern. The
boat is so low in the water it wouldn’t take a very big wave to
capsize us. I hope I’ve timed this right. The river is at its
lowest ebb, the flow tide is just starting to come in. It will be
at its highest and strongest in about six hours.

I manage the rowing quite well, although we are going against
the incoming tide. We don’t speak, to begin with. I’m busy keeping
an even stroke, and she’s groaning and rolling about, almost
hysterical. I tell her it’s dangerous to throw herself about like
that, and she’ll slow us down.

“But it hurts! Oh, God it hurts, it fucking hurts!” she sobs,
rocking herself to and fro.

“Breathe the way you’re supposed to and keep still,” I tell her.
I’m already exhausted. My arms are aching and my heart is pounding,
and the bad thing is we have slowed down. Though the wind is
blowing hard down the estuary, in our favour, we are going against
the tide, and it is stronger than I expected. This is going to take
much, much longer than I thought.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

O
ut of my mouth comes
a little cry, more of surprise than pain. It’s nothing sharp or
stabbing. It’s like cramp, as if I’m being grabbed around the
middle and squeezed by a great pair of toothless jaws that crush
but don’t bite. I’m standing over a pan of water in the kitchen
that I’m heating up for something or other, and suddenly I can’t
remember what. Low down in my belly a hardening begins, the grab
tightens. I wait, watching the trembling surface of the water in
the saucepan with concentrated interest: a miniature ocean, wraiths
of steam wafting off it, tiny waves beating themselves out against
the side. Taking a deep breath isn’t as easy as it should be.
Suddenly I can picture my lungs hanging in my chest, two wrinkled,
complaining old bellows pushing for room. Next I realize the floor
is wet, my feet are wet from fluid that’s trickling down my legs.
Another band tightens around me, squeezes, and lets go just in the
split second before I’m going to cry out, this time in fear.
Instead, I breathe. It is so absolutely simple. And I am so
afraid.

I hurry to find Silva and blurt out that it’s starting, and she
takes in what I’m saying with a level look, staring me in the eyes.
She doesn’t glance even once at my stomach. She’s dismissive, in
fact, and I try to absorb some of her calm, but at the same time
her composure unsettles me. When she calls Ron he doesn’t answer,
and if this surprises her she doesn’t show it. She leaves him a
message and tells me there are hours and hours to go yet. The one
thing we’ve got is plenty of time, she assures me, and I force
myself to understand she is right. But although the gripping in my
belly has subsided, my fear rises. The cabin is tiny and hot, and
even with just the two of us, crowded. I never did find my phone,
so I have to pester Silva to keep trying Ron on hers. I get more
and more afraid. I can’t keep track of time, either. There is no
clock.

The next contraction comes a long time after the first, and once
it passes, my fingers and legs feel hopelessly weak, and it’s hard
to swallow. The evening is drawing in, and the day is turning
lopsided. The light from the stove, the only light in the room,
thrums with a bluish, fluttery gleam. I have to get away from here,
and I can’t.

But Silva’s right. There is plenty of time. There are more
contractions, at long intervals. Then they stop. Some more time
passes, and I wonder if they were contractions at all. It could
have been my stomach playing up, a confusion of the body brought on
by not much more than heavy food and anxiety. Whatever it was, it’s
stopped, thank God. And I’m glad I’ve gone through this, because
when it happens for real, in a week or two, I’ll be more prepared.
By then we will have seen Ron and I’ll be sure there won’t be any
difficulty reaching him next time. I’ve worn myself out with silly
fretting. Silva has withdrawn into one of her moods; she would like
to disappear off down the river as she usually does but can’t, I
suppose, because of me. The air between us reminds me of a sky
before a storm, charged with pent lightning. I’m still a little out
of breath. I make excuses and go to my room.

Later I get up with the intention of making Silva more cheerful,
but she has retreated too far. She isn’t hungry, she doesn’t want
to talk, she’s too bored even to listen to anything I might say.
And it turns out there is little time to spare for bringing her
round, anyway, because it begins again, it really does begin.

There is no doubting it this time. The contraction is painful,
and I tense myself against it, squeezing my eyes and mouth tight.
The next one comes and I do the same, clenching all my muscles
until it passes, and then I realize how tiring that is, and how
futile. I cannot hold them away. I am going to be seized by
another, and another, and many more, and worse, and I will not win
any struggle to prevent them hurting me any more than, if I were
walking into the sea, I could by force of will not be drenched by
waves breaking over my head. It will be a case not of staying dry,
but of not drowning. I must adjust my expectations: I have to be
delivered of this baby, and we both must stay alive, but I will not
escape injury. With this clear in my mind, I inform Silva that my
labour has begun.

I am measuring time in spaces between the pains, and in waiting
for Ron. My legs are shaking, and there’s a tinny taste in my
mouth. Silva moves around quietly, talking to me about breathing.
It must be her way of hiding her own anxiety, but her voice seems
to have hardened. She is completely unhurried and practical. Still
Ron doesn’t come, and when she announces we have to give up on him
and go downriver by ourselves in the rowing boat, she becomes
almost brusque. I daren’t think about the possibility that she is
as frightened as I am, for I am in pain – worse than I ever
imagined – and so I try to concentrate instead on what I must do to
get away from here. I need to find people who can do something
about the pain. I am not so out of my wits that I do not grasp that
in order to do that, though it terrifies me, I will first have to
cross the broken shingle and slippery rocks in the dark. Then I
will have to go in the tiny rowing boat onto the rushing black
river. But however I get there, I have to get to a hospital.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

B
y the time we reach
the place, the tide is rising. I lift the oars, and we drift until
the wind pushes us over close to the bank opposite the flat rock in
the river. Annabel has been sitting hunched up with her eyes tight
shut and doesn’t see what’s happening until the boat starts bumping
against the half-submerged boulders close to the shore. I make a
way through the maze of rocks while she gasps and peers around in
the dark.

“What are you doing? Where are we?” she asks.

“Be quiet,” I say.

When I’m close enough to the shore, I jump out and try to haul
the boat up. With her in it, I can’t get it more than halfway out
of the water.

“Get out,” I say.

“Silva, please!” She’s crying and clutching her belly. “What’s
going on, where are we? We’re not at the bridge, this isn’t the
jetty!”

“Get
out
” I say.

She does as I tell her, protesting the whole time, and straight
away topples into the water. She starts to sink in the mud. When I
haul her to her feet she’s soaking wet and shivering. There’s weed
sticking to her face. As soon as she has enough breath to speak,
she starts on at me again. I tell her she’s getting hysterical, and
give her a good slap.

She follows me quietly enough after that, up the scree of stones
to the place where the trees meet the shore. I sit down, and she
collapses beside me on the ground a few yards from your
memorial.

“Silva, please! Why are we here? Silva, please, what’s going on?
Silva, listen! I’ve got to get to hospital – ”

“Do you see that?” I say quietly, pointing.

“What? The stones? That pile of stones? What about it?”

“Pile of stones?” I reach over and grab a handful of her hair
and turn her head. “Look at it. A pile of stones? Those stones,
they are for Stefan and Anna. The people you killed.
They
are
why you’re here.”

“Killed? I didn’t kill anyone! What are you talking about? Oh,
Godl
” She grits her teeth and pulls away as the next spasm
starts in her belly. I let go of her hair and stand up. She rolls
with the pain, holding herself tight. She draws in her legs,
moaning. When the contraction is over, she sits herself up. She
begs me to take her to hospital, she tells me to calm myself. She
tries to talk to me about the baby. Please, think of the baby, she
pleads. For the baby’s sake, she has to get to hospital.

“The baby’s sake? Your baby?” I take her mobile phone from my
pocket and fling it at her. It lands on a rock, and the casing
splits. She scrabbles for it, picks it up and another bit breaks
off in her hand.

“Why have you got my phone? Where did you find it? Silva, what
is going on!”

“My Stefan. You’re having his baby, aren’t you? My husband’s
baby. That’s why he gave you our money.”

“What? Silva, no! No, I swear! It’s not his, of course it’s
not!”

“You spoke to him before he died. It’s your fault they were in
that car.”

“Oh God, no! Silva, listen. Listen, yes, I spoke to him, I met
him. But only once. Please – ”

“It’s because of you they’re dead. And you think that baby’s
yours?”

“Silva, listen! The car, and the money. I needed money. I wanted
to tell you – ”

I step forwards and, making sure not to miss, I kick the phone
out of her hand. As she screams, the phone flies away and lands
somewhere in the dark behind us. She cradles her hurt hand in the
other one and sits sobbing, pushing herself to and fro, telling me
I have to believe her. The next contraction will be coming very
soon. I wander away some distance and find a place where I will be
out of the wind. Then I sit down to wait.

It’s very cold. As the hours pass, she calls out for me,
urgently at first, with a note of hope in her voice that I might
really come to her. Later she cries out in pure desperation. I hear
her vomit. She tries to get up and come to me, but collapses again
and again. I grow used to the raging, gurgling cries and the
teeth-gritted roars. The sound carries over the water and is lost
on the wind. On and on it goes. I sit and watch the tide.

The struggle approaches its end, as it must. When I finally go
to her, she’s on her back with her knees drawn up, and between her
legs she’s split and bloodied and gaping, like a half-skinned
animal. I lean down, and she clutches my wrist and won’t let it go.
She’s babbling, and on her face is a look of disbelief and outrage.
She is panting and straining down mindlessly, and eventually from
between her legs there appears a glistening mound. She writhes and
pushes, digging her fingers deep into my arm. I wrench my arm away,
and with the next push she lets out a scream, and now the baby’s
head bulges out and wobbles in my hand, and as she screams again
one shoulder and then the other come slithering bumpily out of her,
and then its flailing stick arms appear, and all the rest, all the
warm, bloodied tangle of it. There’s so much of it, now the
unfolding legs and the feet trailing strings of stained slime and
wet twisted cord and, also, a surprising amount of dark blood. I
let all of it slide into my hands. I cup the back of the baby’s
head and rub its scrunched face and then comes a crackle of mucus
from its open mouth and a rush of air, a splutter and a wheezing
cry. Annabel’s hands reach out. She’s crying. I am, too, as I draw
the child into my own arms. Its head lolls, it turns its face to my
chest. Annabel strains forwards but can’t get up.

“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 sac 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.”