Across the Bridge (5 page)

Within six months Barry was my ex- fiancé and engaged to
somebody in Payroll. I may then have ‘devoted’ myself to my father
for sixteen years, denying myself the chance to meet someone else,
but for most of that time I had been too isolated and easily
discouraged to imagine any such thing, anyway. I did not, as I had
also told Col, ‘enjoy my life’, and if he left me I would spend the
rest of it mourning the expense of my error and trying not to think
too much about what it had displaced. It would be incalculable.

I would have to get rid of the baby. I could make arrangements
as soon as I got back. A month from now, it would be over. As soon
as I thought this I felt sick, and suddenly wanted my tea sweet,
though I didn’t usually. I reached into the sugar bowl and noticed
a folded slip of paper, crammed among the packets. It read, in
handwritten letters,

Cash for 4 door saloon in gc. Private Text CAR to
07883 684512

Discretion guaranteed

I drank my tea. I fingered the piece of paper, turning it over
and over. Practicalities flooded into my mind: all the reasons why
this was an outrageous thing to contemplate. What its consequences
would be in the next hour, the next twelve hours, in a day’s time.
I thought of a month from now, a year, ten years. I thought how
simple the next step would be. Merely texting one word to a
telephone number, such an insignificant thing to do. How could a
thing so small affect very much? I thought of my baby and the
decision I had just reached. I thought of the need to make this
effort to survive. I could settle the matter quickly. I drained my
cup and went outside.

I texted the word CAR to the number. My telephone rang, and a
man’s voice, foreign, harsh and breathless, asked me where I was
calling from. When I told him, he demanded I call him back in
exactly half an hour. I hung around shivering and then I did so,
and when he began to interrogate me, my voice shook. I realized I
didn’t know anything about the rental car except that it was a
Vauxhall. I read him the registration written on the key tab.

“I don’t know the exact model or the mileage. It’s pretty new, I
think,” I told him. There was a silence. “It’s silver,” I
added.

“Yes, I see it’s silver,” he said. “You sell or not? You waste
my time?”

I stared round at the car park, the fuel pumps, the café
windows, the scrub and farmland beyond, but I couldn’t see
anyone.

“You sell or not?”

“It’s just, the car…I don’t know if you…if you…” I said. “I
mean, I haven’t done this before. The thing is, I need money. The
car doesn’t actually – ”

“That’s none of my business. You need money, I need car. You got
a car, if I want it, I pay you cash. No papers. That’s it. OK?”

“OK. But I don’t even know who – ”

“No names! No documents, you understand? No papers. That way
it’s all private, OK?”

“Yes, but how much – ”

“Listen. You come back here tomorrow. Just you. You
understand?”

Just then I heard the cry of a young child in the background.
“Wait,” he said. He spoke a few words in another language. A pause,
then I heard him speak in English. “Ssh, hey, hey, Anna? It’s all
right, wait just a minute, Papa’s busy…”

I caught my breath. His voice had grown musical and soft.

There were some noises of movement and murmuring from the child
and then, “Good girl, Anna. Papa’s baby…”

He would think me insane if I began to cry.

“OK, listen,” he said to me. “So you come back tomorrow. Exactly
same place. Then you call me again, same time, I tell you where you
bring me the car. If car OK, we agree price, I pay, you get cash,
we both get discretion. We don’t say to nobody.”

His voice was changed, young and rounded and cadenced. I was
certain this gentler, slightly shy voice belonged to the person he
really was.

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” I said.

∨
Across the Bridge
∧

S
ince last year, a
certain mood would come over me at nightfall. When night masked the
trees around the trailer and turned the river water to ink and the
far bank was a steep black hulk against the softer dark of the sky,
I couldn’t tell what country this was, or what season or century.
Time and place were unnamed, it was night and it was anywhere and
any year, and that was all. The moon made me feel smaller and safer
than the sun. If it was a fine evening, I would go outside alone. I
liked to walk with my head thrown back, following the moon. I could
go in any direction I chose along the shore, and often I missed my
footing and nearly fell, but somehow I would still always be
following the moon. Wherever it led I followed, until my neck felt
stiff or I finally stumbled. I must have looked so silly. Then I
would do it all over again but imagine this time the moon was
following me, and it always did. Dreamy and drunk on moonlight, I
needed a while afterwards to steady myself and get used to being
back on the river shore by the trailer, for it really did feel as
if I’d been a long way away.
Moonbathing
was how I thought
of it.

I didn’t speak of it to you. I knew you would have found it
amusing. You’d have snatched it away and held it out of my reach
while you scrutinized it, you would have tossed it around for fun
and handed it back to me a little spoilt. Though you never meant to
be unkind.

And though it was funny, I didn’t do it for amusement. Though I
was soothed by it, it wasn’t for relaxation. It was surrender. I
gave myself up to it long, long before it was dark. Even when Vi
wasn’t being difficult, I would be looking forward to the day at
work being over. Part of me would yearn all day long for the coming
reward, to be absorbed and lost in the moon. You knew that much, I
think. You would gather wood while it was still light and stack it
around the circle of rocks we’d built on the ground between the
trailer and the riverbank, and you would bring out chairs for us
and a blanket for when the evening got colder. You’d light the fire
while I was settling Anna in bed, so I would be guided down to you
by the orange glow and the crackle of burning sticks. At night the
noise of traffic passing on the bridge far away downriver settled
to the occasional whirring rise and fall as cars in twos and threes
approached and crossed over. That was soothing, too.

I liked it best when you found silvery, fallen tree branches for
the fire, which burned with the baking smell of old, sun-parched
timber. Sometimes we had to burn scrap wood that people had dumped
along the verge at the top of the track: bits of old furniture,
broken doors – once, nearly the whole side of a garden shed – and
then the fumes would be harsh and toxic and the fire would flare
with blistering paint and melting glue.

That night the flames were different, a sulky, wavering yellow
giving off greenish clouds of smoke with a sharp, rotten smell.

These sticks are damp. They must have been lying in the water, I
said, poking at one with my foot. Did you pick them out of the
water? The smoke smells of weeds. And dead fish.

You grunted. It’s all I could get, I didn’t have time to go
getting dry stuff. We’ve used up all there is round here, the only
dry stuff’s a mile down the shore. Anna was too tired.

You didn’t have time? What else did you do today?

Nothing much. Went up to the service station to fill the water
cans. Anna ate nearly a whole muffin.

That’s a long walk for her. No wonder she was tired.

Well anyway, after that I didn’t want to take her along the
shore. I can’t carry her
and
drag wood back all this way.
It’s enough just getting the water.

You need to get something to fetch it in. Maybe you could make
something. You could get some old wheels from somewhere, make a
little cart. You could give her rides in it, she’d love it. You
could pretend – 

I saw your face and stopped speaking. You glared into the fire,
then you got up and kicked a sticking-out branch farther into the
flames.

Little rides for Anna? Little rides in a little cart? Yeah,
let’s pretend. Let’s make Stefan play fucking games all day. But we
won’t let him do any proper work, will we? Not for money.

Stefan, don’t. You can’t – 

You turned and stood away, out of the circle of warmth.

You treat me like a kid! he said. I should be making proper
money so we can get out of here. But you don’t want that, do you?
You want things as they are, you want me wasting my time making
little fucking carts!

Of course I don’t. You know I hate us being like this.

No, you
like
it. You like us right here, living like
this. Well, I don’t, I’ve had enough. I’m going to change
things.

Don’t be stupid! Somebody’s got to look after Anna. OK, I’m the
one with the job, is that my fault? Tell me what I’m supposed to
do. Give up a job to let you borrow money we’ll never pay back? So
you can drive people around all day in a cab that’ll never belong
to you?

I’ll get a cab some other way.

What other way is there? Everybody needs a loan to get started,
and we are not borrowing money from those bastards. We’d never get
away from them. I’m not stopping you making things better, I’m
stopping you being stupid, I’m stopping you walking into
trouble.

I have to get a car! Can’t you see? As soon as I’m getting fares
we can pay rent, get a proper place, and we’re out of here!

Stefan, if you borrow from the kind of people who’d lend to you,
the car will never, ever be yours. You can’t own your own car in
this country. You don’t even
exist
in this country.

Loads of people do it! Tell me how else we get out of here!

You haven’t been talking to them, have you? Is that where you
were today, in the city? You haven’t talked to them, have you?
Stefan!

Listen, in two years, maybe three, we’d have good money. We’d
owe nobody.

Suppose it goes wrong? Suppose you’re on somebody else’s patch
or the car’s stolen? Suppose there isn’t enough business? Those
bastards, you think they’re going to say, Oh, Stefan, you’re a nice
guy, that’s OK? They’ll burn the car, that’s the least they’ll do.
They could burn it with you in it.

Oh, come on, those are fucking scare stories!

No, Stefan, they’re not. And you know what else? They take the
woman and sell her to get back at him, they sell her to other men.
Children, too, even children.

OK, what do you want me to do? You want my balls on a fucking
plate?

Stefan, stop it. You’ll wake up Anna.

No, go on, tell me what to do! We can’t go back home, we don’t
exist here, we can’t go anywhere else. So what’s the big plan,
Silva? We go to your magic fucking cabin across the water, live in
a fairy story, is that it? Is that the big plan?

You strode down the shingle to the river edge and started
chucking stones into the water. We’d had this fight so many times,
I knew enough to leave you for a while. I shivered inside the
blanket and stared up at the stars. There were many sounds: the
hiss of damp wood burning and the scrape of your feet on the shore,
the
plock
of stones going into the river and the burr of
traffic under the sky. I said your name, but you didn’t come back.
I called out again, into the dark.

Stefan? Maybe I can get an extra job. Get more hours. We’d save
that way. I might find something where I could take Anna, and then
you could work too. And anyway when the season starts you can work
in the bar again, like last year, at the White Hart.

The noise of stones hitting the water stopped. You trudged back
to me and sat down by the fire.

You can’t do any more hours. If we got the car, I could work
every night. There’s loads of cabs in Inverness without licences,
they never check. I’d work the airport, clubs.

We were silent for a while, imagining it.

The weekends, guys coming off the rigs, they drink hard, they
always need cabs. It’s good money. You could stay with Anna instead
of working for that cow.

Oh, Vi’s all right. When she’s sober.

Your voice was very quiet, as it was when you were either really
angry, or lost in a dream. I knew it very well, the way you
withdrew into yourself. You had begun to shrink a little, rubbing
your face and sighing as though the rage in your brain was rising
from the surface of your skin like a sort of dangerous, flammable
vapour that had to be wiped away and expelled in slow, careful
gusts. I took your hand and started to say something. I didn’t
think you were really listening, so I stopped speaking, but you
didn’t snatch your hand away. We sat like that in silence for a
long time, moving only to put more wood on the fire. From time to
time you looked at me as if you wanted to speak.

Suddenly you sat up very straight. Sssh, you said, and you
stared through the darkness towards the river, cupping your free
hand to your ear. Listen!

What? I squeezed your fingers tight. What is it? What’s
wrong?

My heart started to bump. We’d heard about them, homeless
vagrants wandering out from the shelters they’d made under the
bridge, high on drugs, in gangs. We were at least a mile away and
there was no easy path along the riverbank, but it had happened a
couple of times about three years ago, a couple of old caravans in
a field near the service station had been set on fire. That was why
you wouldn’t leave Anna and me alone at night last summer. You’d
stayed on working in the bar, refused when they offered you the
night-porter job. If anyone found the track down from the road we’d
be OK, you always said, because you’d be there. We’d hear anyone in
plenty of time to get away and hide. They wouldn’t know the
riverbank as we did and they’d be too stoned to think of staying
quiet. We’d be OK.