Across the Bridge (19 page)

“Are you locking up, Vi? Want me to do it?”

“I’ll do it myself. In my own good time,” Vi said. She lifted
her glass and swigged. “Go on, fuck off home.”

“Bye, Vi. Don’t fall asleep there, now.”

Vi didn’t hear. She was bending into the shelf under the
counter, looking for her bottle.

Outside, Ron lit a cigarette while Silva picked up the
sandwich-board sign and took it inside. When she came back, he
nodded towards the Land Rover and Silva clambered up into the
passenger seat. As they drove off, Vi was staring out at them
across the window display of faded boxes and dusty bars of fudge
with her drink in one hand, waving with the slow, clawed fingers of
the other. Ron pulled onto the road and turned left towards the
bridge.

“Stop, what are you doing? This is the wrong way!” Silva said.
“We can’t go over the bridge, we have to go to Netherloch. To the
little bridge.”

Ron shook his head. “There’s a bottleneck at Netherloch. If we
go that way it’ll be over two hours. This way you’ll be across in
less than twenty minutes. You won’t even get your feet wet.” He
smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you row. Trust me.”

“Row? We are going in a boat? I can’t! I can’t go in a
boat!”

“Why not? You want to swim?”

“I can’t swim!”

“Well, you’ll be better off in the boat then, won’t you?” Ron
laughed, rolled down the window and threw out his cigarette
end.

“I can’t go in a boat!”

The sudden rush of air from the window felt white and clear, a
beam of cold light. Silva was aware he had half-turned and was
looking at her and at the same time was somehow, almost magically,
keeping his attention on the road. He had careful, strange eyes,
and he put them to work like a camera; they travelled out and over
her as she sat there, dissolving the shadows around her so that she
might be unconcealed to him, fixed and memorized. She felt she was
being recorded as a specimen, categorized; she was an example of
something or other, but she had no idea what.

“You can go in a boat.” He spoke matter-of-factly, winding the
window up. “You’ll be fine.”

For a while Silva stared ahead at the road until she felt safe
enough, in the dark of the cab, to look at Ron again. She could see
that his face was grainy with white stubble, and his square, shaved
head sat on his shoulders like a boulder on a ridge. Why had she
agreed to this? She had no reason to trust him. The back of the
Land Rover was dark but obviously not empty: every bump and curve
in the road brought dull clunking noises from the uneven mass of
vague, heavy shapes behind. There could be guns in there. Knives.
Chains. Rope. Even with just a pickaxe and spade he could kill her
and nobody would ever know. Or out there on the river, in the pitch
dark, he could push her overboard. She turned back and gazed
through the window. Her body might be buried among the trees or
under the dark hills or lost at the bottom of the river, and Stefan
would never know where she was. Would Anna, growing up, explain her
mother’s absence to other people with three words:
she went
missing
? It came to her suddenly that disappearance was worse
even than death.
Where were they?

“You’re not from round here,” Ron said.

“No.”

“But you’re not a tourist. Are you a student?”

“No.”

“Your husband. What sort of work was it you said he was looking
for, again?”

“I didn’t say.”

He gave a short laugh and lifted his hands from the wheel for a
moment, in mock fear. His eyes rested on her again.

“OK. None of my business. Here we are, anyway,” he said, tapping
on the steering wheel with straight, thick fingers, and turning off
the road on to a gouged-out patch of land lit by a single orange
light and bordered by a chain-link fence. He parked beside a
security shed and got out, took a hard hat and a torch from the
back of the Land Rover and spoke a few words to the man at the shed
window. The man snorted and shrugged, then handed another hard hat
out through the window, which Ron told Silva to put on. The man
came out and unlocked the gate in the fence.

“‘Night, then, Ron. ‘Night, madam,” he said, assessing Silva as
she walked through. “Mind how you go.”

“She’s just going across the river,” Ron said.

The man laughed. “Hard hats must be worn at all times!” he
called after them.

Ron led the way down a track of deep tyre ruts, past giant
machinery and stacked stone blocks and mounds of sand, still under
a misty glow from the moon. Bright electric light and music and
men’s voices from other sheds at the far edge of the site spilled
over the darkness. When they reached the jetty, Ron handed Silva
the torch and swung himself down a metal ladder into a motor launch
bobbing in the inky water. Silva handed over her bag and the torch,
and he helped her down and onto a long seat that ran around the
sicie of the boat. He started the motor, and at once from somewhere
among the sheds and piles of machinery the barking and howling of
several dogs rose into the air. The engine stalled. The barking
grew louder and more vicious; a man’s voice shouted. Silva turned
to Ron.

“Security. They’re locked in. Don’t worry.”

At that moment the boat surged away from the jetty with a force
that pushed her hard against the stern. Her hands found a rope, and
she clung on. Icy spray flew up and soaked her face as the boat cut
a way through the water into darkness and into a night wind that
carried the scent of oil and seawater.

Out on the river it was impossible to speak above the noise of
the engine and the wind. Ron took off his hard hat and motioned to
Silva that she could do the same. Immediately her hair flew up in a
tangle, and as she pulled at it and tried to gather it into a roll
under the collar of her jacket, she heard him laugh. The pitch of
the motor rose, and the boat rocked and raced on. In another two
minutes they were more than halfway across, and Ron slowed down.
The wind eased and the black water turned satiny under the light of
the mooring they were heading for, the pontoon at the construction
site near the bridge’s south end. But Silva could see that the bank
was dotted here and there by tiny bonfires, glowing on the shingle
between the river and the heavy dark shadow of the scrub that grew
almost to the water’s edge. She strived to get her bearings in the
dark. Beyond the last of the bonfires, the bank curved inwards, and
set deep and hidden in that curve some way farther up was the
trailer. The last fire couldn’t be all that far from it. Or were
there more fires around the bend in the river, presently out of her
sight line – or could there be one
at
the trailer? Could it
be Stefan? Ron cut the engine, brought the boat to, jumped out and
attached the rope. He helped Silva onto the jetty.

“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” he said. “You made it safe
and sound.”

Silva was peering anxiously upstream. “What are those
fires?”

“Tramps, turned off their patch. Where they camped out, it’s the
salvage site now,” Ron said. “They won’t be bothering you. Don’t
worry.”

She fixed her attention on the lights of the service station up
ahead, across the cleared waste ground, then glanced again at the
bonfires receding into the dark of the riverbank. “Well. Well,
thank you. I should go.”

But she stood where she was. How could she move from here, not
knowing what the fires meant? She didn’t know whether to run
towards or away from them.

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. I mean – ”

“Where do you live?”

“I – up there.” She nodded in the direction of the service
station and the road. “Not far from there.”

“Come on, then. I’ll go with you.”

“Aren’t you going back across?”

“Don’t need to rush back. Come on.”

He steered her up from the jetty and across the ground that,
just as on the opposite side, was now a site for the bridge salvage
and rebuilding.

When they got to the service-station entrance he said, “You
hungry? I am. Want some coffee?”

Silva shook her head. “I need to go.”

“You always look frightened. Are you in trouble? Where are you
going?”

She waved a hand vaguely down the road. “Not far.”

“How far? You can’t just head off into the dark on your own on a
busy road.”

“It’s really not far. I’ll be fine. My friend will be waiting
for me.”

“Well, I’ll just make sure of that. I’ll walk you home.”

“It’s all right. I don’t need you to come.”

But she did, and Ron was already walking ahead. “Come on,” he
said, turning back to her. “Damn, I forgot the biscuits,” he said,
searching his pockets. “Never mind. Come on. It’s too bloody cold
to hang about.”

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

S
ome time after it
was properly dark, one of the bonfires went out. Soon after that
the other grew bigger, burning fiercely enough to send smoke high
into the night air, where in the moonlight it drifted like a grey
veil over the river. As the flames flew up I thought I caught the
sound of faint voices raised in satisfaction, or triumph. Maybe
some form of cooperation was at work and two groups had joined
around one big fire, or maybe one group had overwhelmed the other.
I couldn’t tell. I stayed outside wrapped in wads of bedding,
listening for anyone who might be approaching in the dark along the
shore. From time to time I dozed.

My first thought when I heard footsteps from the track and then
Silva’s voice, followed by a man’s, was that she had found Stefan.
But in an instant I knew it wasn’t him. The voice was older and
deeper, and she was speaking as if to a stranger.

“I am here now, thank you.” The man said something I didn’t
hear. I got to my feet and called out.

They came around the side of the trailer, and we all stood for a
moment, trying to see one another in the dull moonlight. The man
was solidly built, that was all I could make out. Then Silva gave a
cry and rushed forwards to hug me. I felt my breath catch in my
throat, and my eyes filled with tears, but over her shoulder I saw
the man watching us steadily, as if trying to find something out.
Would not a normal person have looked away at such a moment?

“They haven’t come up here, have they?” Silva asked, withdrawing
from me and looking downstream. “Are you all right? They haven’t
come this way?”

The man was gazing towards the fires.

“Thank God you’re back,” I managed to say.

“You’re so cold,” she said.

“I had to stay out to watch. I couldn’t light a fire. If I’d lit
a fire they’d have come.”

“They might have done,” the man agreed.

“This is Ron,” Silva said. Her voice lifted when she spoke his
name. “He brought me across the river. This is Annabel, my
friend.”

He nodded at me. “You all right?” He spoke without smiling,
though his words came through the dark as if he required an
answer.

Silva said, “You’re so cold. Come on, get inside.”

We went in and lit candles. Silva used the gas ring to boil
water and make tea. Ron and I watched her, and in between we
watched each other. The trailer was cramped, and we settled onto
seats and moved as little as possible, like tired roosting birds.
We hardly spoke. It was too late – and our being all together too
unexpected – for polite conversation among strangers. Besides, all
the questions that came to mind (
Why did you come here? Where do
you live? Who are you?
) would, out loud, have sounded not
curious but distrustful. And the remarkable thing was that although
I knew I should be wary, because everything about his sudden
appearance here with Silva begged such questions, I felt I could
trust him.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

S
tefan, I wonder if
you would have liked her. Over the three or four days we were
together I had got used to her, but when I saw Ron staring at her
by the candlelight in the trailer, I could see what he saw. It was
not that she looked strange or remarkable, though she kept the
shape of her body disguised in her clothes and had a lumbering,
secretive walk that suggested neither woman nor man, adult nor
child. There was nothing about her, apart from her clothes, that
stayed the same long enough for me to be sure she looked a
particular way and not another, that she was a person like this,
not like that. Her face changed with every turn of her head, her
eyes large and seeing, then hooded and looking away, her lips drawn
in tightly, then spilling with words. Her skin would be white and
soft and new-looking, then dry and unhealthy. Her hands were as
heavy as clay in her lap until her fingers fluttered like pages
falling from a book as she pushed her hair back off her face. And
the tangled reddish hair on the top of her head reminded me of kemp
on the back of some aged mountain animal, and then she pulled it
around, and behind her ear it dropped on her neck in silky,
baby-like coils the colour of charcoal. She looked neither happy
nor sad, rich nor poor, old nor young. She had not an appearance at
all so much as an atmosphere about her, of doubt and restlessness.
It was as if, although present, she could, in her mind at least,
leave and rejoin our company at will. In the close, glowing space
we three shared that night in the trailer, she came and went like
the ghosts of many people.

I watched Ron study her, wishing that he would not find her
worthier of his scrutiny than I was, yet what I felt was not
jealousy. It wasn’t that. It was a need for him to know about me,
and about you and Anna. I didn’t want him puzzled by her instead.
There was a satisfaction in knowing there was more I could have
told him about her than he would be able to tell from looking.
Dressed, she was almost sexless. I had seen her naked. I could have
described the line of her back, the tilt of her breasts, the curve
of her flank. I could have mimicked the sheltering, modest gesture
of her hands across her stomach as she stood in the bathtub under
the flow of steaming water over her shoulders. I liked keeping all
this to myself. My knowledge of her body, that there was a baby
growing inside it, had a power only for as long as I did not share
it.