looked puzzled for a moment, I think because the idea of doing otherwise had never crossed his mind. I didn’t want him to leave, but I couldn’t say if that was from a desire to be with him or because I was afraid of coping with Silva alone. Two weeks ago we had made love, he and I, but not since, nor had we talked about what happened. So we were not lovers, exactly, but what were we? The question was tangential now; Silva was our only concern. Maybe it didn’t matter at all. He promised to return in the afternoon.
In the boat going over, Mr. Sturrock, huddled in his waterproof jacket, said, “Did you see that, the wean’s giraffe? In the paper?” He wiped a fleck of rain from his cheek. “Wee soul.”
Ron nodded. He wanted to tell Mr. Sturrock about Silva, bereft and weeping. He wanted to tell anyone who would listen how she was suffering. It grieved him that Stefan and Anna were to be unclaimed and dispossessed in death as they had been in life, the small history of the family as erasable, finally, as a drawing in an exercise book.
“The poor mother,” he said.
“Aye, whoever she is,” Mr. Sturrock replied.
Rhona was waiting under a lime green umbrella. She had pacified the irate customers from the last tour with lunch vouchers for the service station and had also cut the bookings back down. The small gathering now with her stood with the somber decorum of the previous groups; despite their garish wet-weather clothes, they looked like people at a funeral. The big, reticent widower from Huddersfield was there again, aloof in his sadness.
Summer was already in decline. The early morning sun had vanished, and there was a spit of rain in the chill wind that blew up the estuary, raising short white combs of spray off the water. The tree shadows cast on the river margins had grown longer, and in the forest a single stand of larch trees was turning from green to bronze.
Mr. Sturrock introduced himself and began his talk, counting the same points off on his fingers, inserting the same statistics, breathing in the same places. Ron stood at the back with Rhona, who was absorbed in sending text messages. The audience stood lulled, reassured, a little bored. Following Mr. Sturrock, they tramped with a scraping of feet between lines of hazard cones along the bridge approach to the farthest point of the old, ripped- up roadbed. At the barrier a few dozen feet from where the jagged edge of the tarmac dipped down toward the river, they halted and gathered in a semicircle. Collars and hoods went up; out here, squalls from the river blew hard around their heads and down their necks. Calling above the wind, Mr. Sturrock launched into his lecture on the nature of estuaries and the design options for the estuary bridge designer.
“… here you can see that each tendon contains twenty-seven strands of steel and each strand has seven wires. The post-tensioning counteracts sagging and adds strength to the spans.”
This was the point at which he invited people forward to see the new concrete and steel segments, and warned them about slippery surfaces and going too close to the edge. One by one people broke from the group and went to look. But the widower hung back, staring at the ground, and at first paid no attention when Rhona touched his arm.
“You okay, Colin?” she asked.
Colin looked up, pulled his arm away, and walked to the barrier. When he reached the edge, he turned to the others and raised a hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, just for today, if I may have a minute of your time.” He opened and closed his fists as he spoke, and his voice and big body were full of confused, flashing energy. “I have something I want to say.”
Rhona froze. Mr. Sturrock took a few steps toward him.
“You’re all right, son,” he said. “Remember where you are, now.”
Colin threw out an arm to hold him at bay. “There’s something I need to say!” He paused, expecting to be stopped. “I want to… well, anyway… here…” He reached in his inside pocket and brought out a small toy dog with floppy ears and huge, mawkish eyes. A red felt tongue lolled out of its mouth. From the other pocket he fished out a posy of artificial flowers set within a ruff of plastic lace and tied with a ribbon.
“I wanted… It’s just a gesture,” he said, reddening and unfolding a piece of paper. Aloud he read, “For the two victims.”
Ron strained to hear the words above the sighing of the wind. Colin threw the posy and toy dog into the water and took from his pocket a red rose, a rigid, dry-looking thing on a long stem.
“My wife… This is for my wife. She also died here. And I just want to say to her, not that she can hear me now… you don’t know what you’ve got till you lose it. It’s no good wishing for a second chance, but if I could make it up to you, I would.” He sucked in a huge breath to steady himself. “I didn’t give you flowers when you were alive, and I should’ve. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
He let go of the rose and a current of air caught it and blew it high into the sharp wind. It all but disappeared against the grimy rain and river spray and lowering clouds, until it finally came to land on the water too far away to look at all like a rose anymore. It floated there diminished and misplaced, a dark, untidy twig. Rhona stood open-mouthed. Gradually people fanned out past Colin to the barrier to watch his offerings bob on the waves and begin to sink.
One man turned back. “Well said, there, sir,” he said.
Someone else said, “So say all of us,” and began to applaud, and the others joined in. Colin broke away, and walked off fast back up the ruined road. Rhona hurried over to Ron.
“Christ, what next?” she said. “I can’t take this! I
Ron followed the man up across the site and into the service station cafe. At the counter he caught up with him.
“I’ll get this, mate,” he said. “Go and find us a seat, okay?”
He bought coffee for himself and hot chocolate for Colin, remembering something vague about sugar and stress. When he brought it to the table, Colin was sitting with his hands over his face.
“Here you go, Colin.”
Colin lowered his hands and nodded thanks. His eyes were red-rimmed. “Was it okay? Me coming out with all that?” he asked in a shaky voice.
Before Ron could speak, Colin waved his answer away. “I had to say it. Needed saying. Even if nobody was interested.”
“I’m very sorry about your wife. It’s a terrible way to lose somebody.”
“Yeah.” Colin’s eyes filled with tears. He wiped them away, lowered his head almost to the table, and took a slurp of his hot chocolate. “Well, there you go.”
“People say the worst part is the waiting, don’t they,” ventured Ron. “The not knowing. I can believe that.”
“Five months I was waiting. Then when they brought that car up and she wasn’t in it, the police were straight round. I thought they’d come to tell me she could still be alive. Still hoping, see? Stupid, but I was. Only they acted like I’d killed her. Took the place apart, went through the whole thing over and over again.”
“Bloody hell. Must’ve made it even worse.”
“Had to rule out foul play, they said.”
“Were you married a long time?”
Colin blinked several times and shook his head. “You married?”
“Was once,” Ron said. “Long time ago, now.”
“Got kids?”
“No.”
Colin shrugged as if he’d lost interest. He picked up his mug and stirred his drink hard and began feeding it into his mouth with his teaspoon. Ron watched him, wondering if he was too upset to talk any more or if he was a person who didn’t mind long silences. He thought it likely to be the second and a few months ago would have accommodated it easily, being then that kind of person himself. He could leave now and tell Rhona that Colin was all right. But he said, “So you come up from England, is that right? I’ve seen you at every walk. Where are you from?”
He didn’t in the least care where Colin was from, but it was necessary to pull words, on neat and neutral subjects, into the empty space between them.
