period of rehearsal; I needed practice at living in Annabel’s skin. But was I nursing the same delusion-that she preferred to stay at home
So that evening I was agitated and upset with myself long before Silva came back from work. As usual her spirits dipped on finding there had been neither sight of nor word from Stefan all day, but this time she didn’t recover her optimism. She didn’t sigh patiently and wonder if a sign of him might come tomorrow. Ron’s quiet saintliness I found for once a little irksome. Although I had longed all day for their company, I discovered I didn’t have much to say to them after all.
A wet haze of mist lay over the river and blotted out the far bank. It was too humid to eat outside, so we had brought in picnic chairs and set them around the trestle table, and we sat with the door and windows open to catch the slightest breeze. But the air was chill and heavy with water; nothing stirred except an unpleasant cloud of midges in the doorway and the rainwater that had collected in the chimney and was dripping down the flue, hissing on the logs in the stove. Ron had managed to light it, but the flames were sallow and weak, and curls of bitter smoke leaked through the glass.
He had brought a tinfoil parcel of leftover baked potatoes. After hours wrapped in their own heat, their skins were wrinkled and soft like warm glove leather and they smelled like moist leather, too, salty and dank. I had fried some onions and heated up a tin of beans, and those smells mingled with the woodsmoke and wet rust smell of the stove and the wormy aroma of rain. I was irritated by the glances Ron and Silva cast me as we ate.
“I’m starving,” I said, not caring much. I did not mean it apologetically.
“She’s always starving,” Silva said. She was eating less and less. Ron watched me scrape the remains from her plate onto my own. I couldn’t help it if he thought I was greedy and fat. I started on my third potato.
“Really, I feel like eating meat,” I said. “I would even eat rabbit. I think there are rabbits in the woods.”
“I don’t think I could shoot a rabbit,” Ron said, “even if I had a gun.”
“Trapping is better,” Silva said firmly.
“But tomorrow’s Thursday,” Ron said brightly. “Buffet day. The meat tends to go, but there’ll be Yorkshire puddings over, and gravy.”
“Can you bring back burgers from the shop or something?” I asked Silva.
“I might get a bit of beef,” Ron said. “Or pork.”
“Sausages. I could eat sausages,” I said.
“You need proper meat,” Silva told me. “There’s a butcher in Netherloch. Maybe I could get there, somehow.” She looked at Ron. “Ron, you know why she wants meat? I will tell you. Your wife, did you have a wife? Did your wife have babies?”
“Silva!” I protested, with my mouth full.
“It’s all right. She… well… no. No babies,” he said. “We didn’t have children.” His face creased, and he pressed a finger and thumb against his closed eyes. After a moment he looked at us and said, “My wife, ex-wife… Kathy. Cleverer than me, she was, younger, career-minded. Made it to regional manager, never wanted children. And proud of it.”
“Proud she didn’t want babies?” Silva said. “Didn’t she love you?”
“Oh, I think she did,” he said. “For a while.”
“But
“Some people are,” I said. “They just are.”
“I thought there’d be time if she changed her mind. Later on… when we got divorced, I thought, probably just as well. No kids involved, getting hurt.” There were tears in Ron’s eyes now.
“You see, Ron, Annabel is soon having a baby. Annabel is going to be mama.”
“Silva! What are you telling him for?” I said. “Anyway, it’s not soon! Not that soon.”
“Yes, soon! So why he shouldn’t know? A baby, it’s good news.” Silva shrugged. “Anyway, it shows already. Soon you will be very big, then he’ll know.”
Ron was staring at me, and then at Silva, not sure if he was allowed to be pleased.
“A baby?” he said. “A baby, well. Well, then. Does that mean…” He hesitated and turned to me. “Does that mean, as long as… I mean, you might… I mean, will you be staying here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be staying here.”
I did not know if at that moment I was making the decision or just announcing it.
“And the… the baby’s…”
“The father?” What could I say? “The father. He’s a man who never… He’s like your ex-wife. Never wanted kids and proud of it. It’s over, and he won’t be bothering us. Ever.”
At last Ron’s face showed relief. “Right,” he said, standing up. He was smiling carefully, softly. “Right, so that’s the case. Well, there’s plenty I should be doing.”
He went outside, and soon I heard the regular chop of the ax on a fallen log he’d dragged down from the woods. Silva and I sat on for a little while until she announced she was going off along the shore. She did that more and more, disappearing downriver for long spells, needing privacy. When I asked her once where she went, she replied cagily there was a place she liked to sit. I ate everything that was left on the table, and then I washed up.
An hour later, the weather broke. Gusts of wind, suddenly cold, banged the door shut and pushed and pulled the trees. Then I heard distant groans of thunder, and the sky that had been oppressively still for days began to move, first with a crazy, pinkish yellow shimmering in one high eastern corner and then with clouds, darkening and roiling together low and close to the land. Slow, huge drops of rain hit the river. The thunder advanced, shaking the ground and crumpling the air, and after the second or third shot of lightning, rain began to stream from the sky. It spiked the ground around the cabin, obliterating the river and the far bank. A sheet of water cascaded from the edge of the roof and poured past the windows. From the door I could hear nothing but the drumming of rain over my head and the gurgle of the overflowing gutters. Ron dashed up from the jetty, carrying the ax and some tools he’d rescued from the boat. He dropped them just inside the door, grabbed his jacket, and ran out again, heading downriver. I waited, watching the sky throb with lightning, and after about twenty minutes he came back with Silva drenched and clutching his arm, shivering under the jacket.
I heaped more sticks into the stove to try to get a blaze going, and fetched towels. Silva changed into dry clothes, and Ron stripped down in the kitchen and wrapped himself in a blanket. I arranged his sodden things over chair backs. Then, because lightning was fizzing all around the cabin, I thought it best to turn off the electricity, so I made tea on the gas burner, and then we sat by the stove in candlelight, and the storm went on and on. There was some whiskey that Ron had brought ages ago, and he and Silva both took some to warm them up.
Silva had retreated into herself. I said she looked tired out, and she sighed and said she did need some sleep, and went to bed. Ron and I stayed by the stove. There was nothing to talk about, this late; we had made every remark it was possible to make about the weather. The thunder was distant now, and the rain had lessened but went on falling. Our candles burned down and went out one by one until I looked up and saw by the light of the last one that Ron’s cheeks were wet.
“Is it the smoke?” I said. “It’s got very smoky.”
He wiped his eyes but didn’t answer.
“It’s late now,” I said. “There might be more lightning on the river. You can’t go back tonight.”
He didn’t. Picking up the candle, he followed me into the room where I slept, and I rearranged the cushions and mattresses so we could both lie down. Without a word he took me in his arms in an embrace that was natural and warmth-seeking, nothing else. The smell of his skin was male, pleasantly sharp, like clean metal.
The rain pattered on the roof over our heads, and after the candle had burned down and died, he said quietly, in the dark, “A baby.”
He reached out and just once, over the covers, stroked his hand gently across my stomach, and then we slept.
This is what I learned after you went missing. I learned I would not die of my distress, not even when I wanted to. I would not altogether lose my mind, not even when I was afraid I must.
