Across the Bridge (36 page)

I did not expect this to be the hardest part of all. I imagined
myself with a lot to say. How jealous I was that she was carrying
her child after mine was lost, that I didn’t know what I would do
when it was born and she took it away, when she left me to be with
Ron and the child for ever. That I dreamed of stealing it. That for
a while stealing it was all I dreamed of.

Then how I was shown that it would not be stealing, but only
taking what is mine. I thought I had those words ready, too. How I
forgive
you
for the existence of this child, but I will
never forgive her, how unthinkable it is that she should have it to
love and keep for herself when she killed the child who was mine
and yours. I was going to tell her how I promise every day to come
back to you, that I have stayed alive just so that I can take this
newborn baby with me out onto the black rock and wait there until
the tide rises and carries us both back to you. I want to tell her
that she is going to watch her child disappear under the river, and
when she does she ought to remember that that is what she did to my
Anna. She is going to know my sorrow.

My love, I know you are with Anna, waiting for me and the baby
boy, and when the flow tide sweeps over the rock, we won’t
struggle. I shall let it bear us down to the riverbed, and we shall
all be together.

But when I try to say any of this, the words sheer off and
crumble against my chattering teeth and I feel myself getting
dizzy, falling and breaking apart. It’s like demolishing a wall and
discovering I also am the wall. Every blow I inflict I also take.
I’m made of it, I’m a part of it. I get to my feet and walk away
towards the river with the little thing in my arms, taking
Annabel’s bag with me. The screams that follow me now are more
agonized and urgent even than the sounds she made when he was
forcing her body to open and expel him, and now his fists beat the
air and from his mouth come wave upon wave of a bleating cry that
answers his mother’s.

All this while the river has been rising and the boat is now
afloat. I wade in, place him on the bottom, and push off into the
current. The rock is almost half under the water, so I will be able
to climb onto it. But it will be difficult, as there is nowhere to
attach the boat. I bring it alongside and wedge the prow in one of
the rock’s jutting angles. But it won’t stay there long. I have to
find a place where I can grab hold and get out of the boat and onto
the rock. I will need both hands, so I sling the bag over my
shoulder and pull the child in under my clothes, against my bare
chest, and bind him to me using a sweater from Annabel’s bag, tying
him close with the sleeves. From the shore she is screaming at me
to come back. I want her to be watching, but knowing that she is
makes me feel sick and empty.

I use one oar to steady the boat as best as I can in the
current, then I count to three, drop the oar and throw myself at
the rock. I land on all fours and hang on until I am able,
carefully, to move one foot, then a hand, then the other foot. I
crawl forwards. It’s slippery, and I struggle to keep hold but not
cling too close, lest I crush the child. I crawl to the middle of
the rock and lie on my back for several minutes before sitting up
and unwrapping him.

His head drops back on his flimsy neck, his eyes are closed. I
feel his face with the back of my hand. It’s cold. I cradle his
head and wail. I intended to take him with me when I drown, but now
he’s dead, and his death pierces me to the heart. I clasp him to
me, and from the riverbank Annabel screams again. Then he stirs,
and before I know what I am doing I am weeping, and laughing and
covering the top of his head with kisses. The little thing was
asleep! He fell asleep against my breast, his face bloody and gluey
with birth slime stuck fast to my skin. I wrap him up warm again
and hold him close, and rock him back and forth. His mouth turns to
my nipple, and he latches on and sucks. After a moment he tugs
himself away from me, his mouth opens again and he screams. I hear
Annabel’s voice calling back to him. I have failed him, for of
course my breast is dry. I do not understand why it distresses me
that I have nothing to give him. Just then a high wave hits the
edge of the rock and rolls like a cold wet cloth over it, soaking
my legs. I do not understand why I lift him clear, taking care to
keep him dry.

Behind me there’s a scraping noise, and I turn just in time to
see the tide nudge the prow of the little white boat clear of the
rock. It clunks two or three times as it goes, then spins free and
is borne away upriver. From the shore, Annabel pleads for her baby.
Holding him tightly to me with one arm, I use my free hand to reach
into my pocket for my phone. Another freezing wave slides over the
rock, and he cries and cries for his mother while the wind cuts
into my back.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

C
olin had called Ron
and asked if they could meet up in the evening of the day the
bridge reopened. He had something to show him. Something he was
doing for his wife and the baby.

“What is it?” said Ron.

“Tell you when I see you,” Colin said. “It’s nothing
spectacular. Just want to show somebody, if that’s OK.”

Ron agreed. He had no idea what, if anything, he might tell
Colin about Annabel.
I know a pregnant woman, that’s a
coincidence, isn’t it? I know a pregnant woman, she turned up after
the bridge fell down, maybe it’s your wife?
Even supposing –
supposing
– Annabel
was
Colin’s wife, she must have
good reasons to stay away from him. What right did Ron have to
interfere? And what would be the point, when the body of Colin’s
wife was probably a clean skeleton at the bottom of the river, the
boneless embryo of Colin’s child long disintegrated? That was what
Colin – and he – had to accept. There was nothing he could say
about Annabel that would not do more harm than good.

He trudged down from the sleeper unit through the mud towards
the jetty and the new walkway leading under the bridge. The
construction site had been emptying for days and was now deserted
and almost cleared; the casting sheds downriver had already been
dismantled and removed, and massive criss-crossed ruts and divots
of earth marked the departure of the heavy plant. Only a few huts
remained, a dozen skips were filling up. The sleeper unit was due
to be removed on Monday, and then Ron would be fending for himself
again, bedding down in the back of the Land Rover, waiting for the
baby’s birth. He was still needed for a while to run the boat, for
inspectors checking the new sections of the bridge, and for
journalists, but soon he would be gone himself. Where to, he had no
idea. He could form no picture of a future for himself that did not
include Annabel and the baby and, if necessary, he quite willingly
supposed, Silva too.

The ground for the memorial garden, reached by the walkway under
the bridge and stretching for an acre beyond it, had been pushed
into a succession of improbable hollows and mounds and phoney
undulations. In the moonlight, it lay bare, whimsical and
miniaturized; stone walls only inches high curved around elliptical
flower beds full of bark mulch, and a path of crazy paving wound in
and out, connecting places where the ground swelled randomly into
small circles of cobbles. It ended in a large and still unpaved
circle overlooking the river. Nothing was finished and nothing had
been planted yet. The landscaping ended abruptly next to a
padlocked and fenced enclosure full of upright saplings, their
roots wrapped in sacking, and stacks of stone slabs and bags of
sand. Ron turned and walked back the way he had come. He waited for
Colin by the railings, where a flight of stone steps set into the
wall led down to a small landing stage; it was intended that
visitors would be able to travel to the garden by boat from
Inverness.

The strobing headlamps of cars on the bridge above him hurt his
eyes; below the railings, the night wind chopped the surface of the
incoming tide. From this angle, almost under the bridge, he could
barely see the service station across the river, but the place
would be full. There was a reception going on there to mark the
reopening. High sodium lights over its car park and petrol pumps
cast an orange haze into the sky.

Colin appeared, hands in pockets, and greeted Ron without a
smile. “Hiya. Something going on over there, all right. I thought
there would’ve been people over here, too,” he said.

“Not much to see, yet,” Ron answered.

“No,” Colin said, looking round. “You can see it better on the
website. Come on.”

Ron followed Colin back into the garden.

“Here,” Colin said. They were at one of the places where the
path became a circle before leading out and away again around the
curve of another artificial hillock. “Here’s where it’s going,” he
said. “Right here. I’m getting a memorial bench. She’s going to
have a memorial bench with her name on it. What about that?”

“That’s a great idea,” Ron said.

“Sustainable hardwood, three hundred pounds,” Colin said
proudly. “Expensive item. They bolt them to the ground. Fifty for
the plaque. And I’m sponsoring a rosebush for the baby, that’s
another forty. Then fifty pounds a year after that for four years.
All proceeds will go towards the upkeep of the garden.”

“And you’ll be able to come in the summer and sit here.”

“Yeah. Won’t bring them back, though.”

“But it’s a nice thing to do.”

There seemed little else to say after that. The sounds of the
bridge reached them as a rushing noise, like approaching weather;
the bare, unplanted earth and the briny estuary smelled of winter.
They wandered back to the river and leaned on the railing. Ron
wanted to get away, and he wanted to get Colin away, too. A
vandal-proof bench surrounded by a furze of low-maintenance
municipal shrubs; even with a wife’s name on it, just how was that
‘a nice thing to do’?

“Your wife. Suppose she, if she – ” Ron began, then hesitated.
He nodded back towards the garden. “Never mind. It’s a very nice
thing to do.”

Colin blinked and sucked in a deep breath. “Thanks, mate. Fancy
a pint, if you’re not too busy?” he asked, with so much hope that
Ron couldn’t refuse. They were on their way up to the Land Rover
when Ron’s phone rang. It hadn’t rung for days.

“Silva? What’s the matter?” He listened for a moment. “Christ,
no. Oh, Christ! Silva!” He ended the call and began running back
down towards the jetty.

“Come on! Hurry up!” he shouted to Colin over his shoulder.
“Come on!”

When they got to the boat, Ron set Colin at the prow with a
torch. Then he turned the launch upriver towards the cabin,
straight into the flow of the still incoming tide.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

W
hen I try to move,
blood gushes from me. It’s hot and thick, and there is far, far too
much of it. My eyes are streaming with tears, so I can hardly see
her, but she’s sitting on the rock with my baby bundled to her, and
she’s got her head tipped towards the sky as if she’s looking up at
the bridge. Lights streak across it, white in one direction, red in
the other. My throat is raw with screaming. I can see the white
rowing boat out on the water bright in the moonlight, a little
silver thing rocking in the black and silver river. Then I see a
wave wash it loose from the rock, and now it is spinning away with
the rising tide. Now my child is trapped. My child is screaming for
me, but when I try to raise myself to stand up, my head swims and I
fall back. My heart thumps all through my body, and there is
another gush of blood. I scream again and roll myself over, and
crawl down to the shore. The blood pours. Though I’m almost down on
the ground, it tilts up, turns black, and hits my face.

I open my eyes and manage to raise my head and spit some of the
freezing grit out of my mouth. I hear a boat, a boat coming nearer
and nearer, with the tide. There’s a darting light on the water. I
know the sound of Ron’s boat. I hear his voice and want to call
back, but with every breath I feel dizzy, and he wouldn’t hear me
above the engine noise. He’s shouting to Silva. The river is
swirling under me now as I lie on the shore. Somehow I drag myself
to my feet and try to take a step forwards. I scream and fall
again, into deeper water.

The stinging cold steadies me, and I scream out again. Ron’s
boat is on the far side of the rock now, and I can’t see it, but he
is on the rock, crouching down to her. She’s sitting in a flow of
water, and he is taking the bundle from her arms. Another wave
breaks over the rock and pushes at them. Silva slides away. I can’t
see Ron clearly any more. The boat’s engine surges wildly. I
struggle to my feet again, ankle-deep in water now, but I slip in
the mud and can’t get up. I scream out again, and there comes
another surge of the engine, almost out of control, and then the
boat appears from around the rock, making for the shore. Ron is
standing on the rock, and he has got Silva to her feet somehow and
is holding on to her. The boat’s engine stalls. Then it stops.

In the sudden silence, the light on the boat turns a giddy half
circle as the tide catches the prow and spins the boat upriver. I
watch it drift away from me, the light bobbing and fading. I glance
back at the bare rock. A wave washes over it. Ron and Silva have
gone. With the next wave, the rock will vanish under the tide.

Then the engine coughs and roars, and the boat makes a crazy
turn into a heavy wave. The light beam sways across the river and
onto the shore. I close my eyes. For several moments, everything is
quiet but for the chug of the boat and the running river. Blood
warms the water lapping between my legs. The boat engine stops. I
can’t scream, and I can’t open my eyes. I do not believe I shall
open them again. I hear the splash of slow, wading steps coming
towards me. I hear my baby’s cry, and I hear Col’s voice, calling
out my name in the dark.