I was angry. I suppose she didn’t know what it is to live in a country where you have no right to be, where you are grateful for even an empty shack. She didn’t understand that you’re always afraid. She didn’t understand that going unnoticed and surviving without begging counts as success. People don’t mean to be cruel, not always, but they only help their own. You never hope-never mind expect-that anyone is going to help
But after Ron left I didn’t say any of that, because I thought maybe she was that way because of her baby. It made you cautious, being pregnant. And she wasn’t suspicious about everything. She wouldn’t have been here at all if she hadn’t put her trust in me, another stranger, and I did want her here.
I turned and walked off the jetty. There was all the stuff still lying outside, the place dirty, so much to do. I hadn’t thought much about furniture yet, but there was the matter of cleaning, and a water supply. And what about power? There were light switches in the place as well as the fridge and the shower, so they must have had some electricity. Ron looked as if he would know about water tanks and generators and that kind of thing. You didn’t, not really, but you always managed to work things out well enough to get us by. You were always so proud of getting us by. You must be on your way home now, with Anna asleep on your back, I was thinking, and meanwhile I had the whole of our new house to fix up. Already I thought of it as our house.
Annabel watched me take the gas burner and cylinder inside, and she watched while I filled a water container from the river. All the time I think she was wondering if she believed in it, if it was worth all the work to get the place ready to stay in. A little while later, she followed me in and stood watching me in the kitchen. I had set up the gas and was heating the water to scrub the cupboards before I put plates and dishes away.
“Silva, you don’t need to,” she said. “I mean, we don’t need to do all this. We don’t have to live here if we don’t want to.”
“What do you mean? It’s a good place.”
“We could rent somewhere.”
“Don’t be stupid. I don’t make enough to pay rent.”
“I’ve got some money.” She pulled out an envelope and showed me a bundle of money. She looked ashamed of it.
“Where did you get that? You said you had nothing. You said you didn’t have enough money for one night in a hotel. Did you steal it?”
“No! I didn’t steal it. It’s mine. I mean, I want… It’s for both of us. The point is we’ve got it. So we could pay rent.”
“How much?”
“Three thousand.”
It sounded plenty. It was a lot, the amount we had saved and you had on you, minus whatever you needed to get by until you came back. But then I thought about it. Around here we would have to pay an expensive tourist rent, even if there wouldn’t be so many tourists this year because of the bridge. The money would be fine for a while, but it wouldn’t last long. The summer would come and go. Soon there would be a time when she couldn’t work, and then what? I couldn’t go and live in a place I wouldn’t be able to keep. While I was thinking all this, looking at the money she was holding out, the bills began to shake in her hands. The sickness was coming over her again, and she was looking at me, scared, her eyes begging me to save her while her face and her lips were turning white and gray. She shoved the money into her jacket and stumbled outside. I waited for a few moments while she retched, and then I followed with a cup of water and a biscuit. She was leaning against the cabin wall sucking in huge, deep breaths. I pulled her over to the heap of mattresses on the ground and made her sit down. It kept surprising me, how little she knew about taking care of herself.
“It’s a waste of money to pay rent,” I said. “This place is free.”
She drank down the cup of water. “It’s a wilderness.” She looked toward the steep bank of pines around the cabin. Beyond the trees that stood like guards three or four deep at its edge, the forest rose up into darkness in the shadow of the hill.
“How do we get out of here except by boat?” she said. “How far is it to the road? I can’t even see a path.”
“There must be a path. People got down here once, didn’t they? We’ll find a way up through the trees. It’s peaceful here. It’s safe.”
“But suppose I… What if one of us got ill? Suppose one of us needed something and we were stuck down here?”
“There would be two of us. And that’s only till Stefan comes. Everything will be all right when Stefan and…” My voice gave out. The single word of my daughter’s name was too much to say.
She turned away from me. “Yes, soon you’ll have your husband and your little girl,” she said. Was she scared I wouldn’t let her stay after that? But she sounded more sad than scared. Maybe she was jealous, but she would have her own baby soon.
“Yes. I’ll have Anna back,” I said, and tears rushed into my eyes. “Anyway, you won’t be ill much longer. It passes.”
She decided to ignore what I was really saying and lay back on the mattress.
“This place makes me feel lazy,” she said. “I like the sound of the river. You can hear it now there’s no traffic on the bridge.” She sighed. “I’m so tired. I could fall asleep.”
I wasn’t tired at all. “So we should stay here. We shouldn’t waste that money on rent. If we went somewhere else and I lost my job, Stefan wouldn’t know where to find me. If I’m not at the Highland Bounty, he’ll think of here at once. He knows I’d come here. He knows I love it.”
She didn’t trust what I was saying, but she wouldn’t say so. I could tell she believed you’d left me and taken my baby away. She didn’t know you, and what it was like, the three of us together.
“Anyway, soon you’ll need your money for other things.”
“Well, but I’ll get a job, at some point.”
“You’ll need it for your baby.”
She sat upright. “Why do you say that? Could you tell? How could you tell?”
“Do you think I’m stupid? Of course I can tell. Where’s the father?”
She shook her head. “He’s got nothing to do with it. I’m not with him. I’m going to manage on my own.”
“It’s hard. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“I’ll manage. Plenty of single mothers manage.”
“You don’t know anything. You’re lucky you’ve got me.”
She didn’t argue with that.
“Listen,” I told her. “Tomorrow I have to go back to Vi’s. You can come with me as far as the road. We’ll find a way up together. Then you can come back and unpack some of our things. Sleep. You can have the little room at the front. Get us some firewood. There’s lots of firewood. You’ll be fine. I’m going to look after you.”
PART II
He rose at five o’clock in the morning, was always first up and clattering to the shower before anyone else, trying to make as little noise as possible because the men he shared with worked until late at night. Because of his hours, he’d got a place in a mobile sleeper unit on the site, which he shared with other men who couldn’t get home between shifts. It was spartan: three narrow beds in cubicles, a small recreation area, and a shower room-but it was an improvement over sleeping in the Land Rover. Another identical unit was stacked above his, and alongside stood a third. He saw little of the other men; they pitied him his early hours, but he relished them, the quiet and space to himself before he was caught up in the flow of another day filled with people. Much as he liked being no longer alone, he found it exhausting.
