to our side of the bank, and land it at the bridge jetty. Ron won’t be far away, but even if he can’t be found, somebody there will call an ambulance and it’ll come straightaway now that the bridge is open. It will get her over to hospital in Inverness within minutes.
“And you’ve got at least twelve more hours to go,” I say. “Plenty of time.”
She looks at me in terror. “We can’t go on the river in that boat! You know what Ron says, it’s not safe. And it’s pitch dark!”
“Then you’ll have to have the baby here,” I tell her. “You couldn’t walk along the bank to the bridge jetty now, even with shoes. You can’t climb up through the trees to the road. Do you want to have it here? I’m not a midwife.”
“I can’t even make it down to our jetty like this, in bare feet,” she cries.
“Of course you can,” I say. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
I can’t offer her my arm, can I, because I’m carrying her bag in one hand and the oars (which I brought into the cabin weeks ago to keep dry) in the other. She’ll have to manage. It’s a drizzly night, but a fuzzy three-quarter moon shines down through the cloud. This is helpful because I haven’t thought to bring a flashlight. Annabel hesitates. She peers through the dark to find an easy way down to the jetty, but there isn’t one. I shout at her to hurry up. Soon she is sliding around on clumps of wet, warty seaweed and sharp stones, falling and cutting her feet and hands, gasping with pain. Every step is treacherous. After half an hour she is not even halfway, and she screams at me that she’s going back. I shout at her not to be stupid. She has no choice. On she goes, yowling louder as she treads on lacerated feet through freezing saltwater puddles. When another contraction comes, she stops and moans and struggles to stay upright. I walk ahead, listening to her as she snivels and stumbles behind me.
I turn and watch her. She slips again, falls sideways, and lands heavily on her hip. “Get down on your hands and knees,” I call out. “Safer for the baby.”
Down she gets, lifting her backside high as the next contraction comes. When it has passed, she begins to move forward, sobbing, lumbering on all fours and her belly hanging to the ground. I turn and keep walking to the boat. I wait for her there, watching her crawl after me.
When she gets to the jetty, she takes fright again at the size of the boat and how strong the river is, until I ask her if she wants to go back up to the cabin. Just as I get her in, she falls forward onto her hands and knees and nearly tips the boat over. Slowly she turns herself around and sits down in the stern. The boat is so low in the water it wouldn’t take a very big wave to capsize us. I hope I’ve timed this right. The river is at its lowest ebb, the flow tide is just starting to come in. It will be at its highest and strongest in about six hours.
I manage the rowing quite well, although we are going against the incoming tide. We don’t speak, to begin with. I’m busy keeping an even stroke, and she’s groaning and rolling about, almost hysterical. I tell her it’s dangerous to throw herself about like that and she’ll slow us down.
“But it hurts! Oh, God it hurts, it fucking hurts!” she sobs, rocking herself to and fro.
“Breathe the way you’re supposed to and keep still,” I tell her. I’m already exhausted. My arms are aching and my heart is pounding, and the bad thing is we have slowed down. Though the wind is blowing hard down the estuary, we are going against the tide and it is stronger than I expected. This is going to take much, much longer than I thought.
Out of my mouth comes a little cry, more of surprise than pain. It’s nothing sharp or stabbing. It’s like cramp, as if I’m being grabbed around the middle and squeezed by a great pair of toothless jaws that crush but don’t bite. I’m standing over a pan of water in the kitchen that I’m heating up for something or other, and suddenly I can’t remember what. Low down in my belly a hardening begins, the grab tightens. I wait, watching the trembling surface of the water in the saucepan with concentrated interest: a miniature ocean, wraiths of steam wafting off it, tiny waves beating themselves against the side. Taking a deep breath isn’t as easy as it should be. Suddenly I can picture my lungs hanging in my chest, two wrinkled, complaining old bellows pushing for room. Next I realize the floor is wet, my feet are wet from fluid that’s trickling down my legs. Another band tightens around me, squeezes, and lets go just in the split second before I’m going to cry out, this time in fear. Instead, I breathe. It is so absolutely simple. And I am so afraid.
I hurry to find Silva and blurt out that it’s starting, and she takes in what I’m saying with a level look, staring me in the eyes. She doesn’t glance even once at my stomach. She’s dismissive, in fact, and I try to absorb some of her calm, but at the same time her composure unsettles me. When she calls Ron, he doesn’t answer, and if this surprises her, she doesn’t show it. She leaves him a message and tells me there are hours and hours to go yet. The one thing we’ve got is plenty of time, she assures me, and I force myself to understand she is right. But although the gripping in my belly has subsided, my fear rises. The cabin is tiny and hot and even with just the two of us, crowded. I never did find my phone, so I have to pester Silva to keep trying Ron on hers. I get more and more afraid. I can’t keep track of time, either. There is no clock.
The next contraction comes a long time after the first, and once it passes, my fingers and legs feel hopelessly weak and it’s hard to swallow. The evening is drawing in, and the day is turning lopsided, upside down. The light from the stove, the only light in the room, thrums with a bluish, fluttery gleam. I have to get away from here, and I can’t.
But Silva’s right. There is plenty of time. There are more contractions, at long intervals. Then they stop. Some more time passes, and I wonder if they were contractions at all. It could have been my stomach acting up, a confusion of the body brought on by not much more than heavy food and anxiety. Whatever it was, it’s stopped, thank God. And I’m glad I’ve gone through this, because when it happens for real, in a week or two, I’ll be more prepared. By then, we will have seen Ron and I’ll be sure there won’t be any difficulty reaching him next time. I’ve worn myself out with silly fretting. Silva has withdrawn into one of her moods; she would like to disappear off down the river as she usually does but can’t, I suppose, because of me. The air between us reminds me of a sky before a storm, charged with pent lightning. I’m still a little out of breath. I make excuses and go to my room.
Later I get up with the intention of making Silva more cheerful, but she has retreated too far. She isn’t hungry, she doesn’t want to talk, she’s too bored even to listen to anything I might say. And it turns out there is little time to spare for bringing her round, anyway, because it begins again, it really does begin.
There is no doubting it this time. The contraction is painful, and I tense myself against it, squeezing my eyes and mouth tight. The next one comes and I do the same, clenching all my muscles until it passes, and then I realize how tiring that is, and how futile. I cannot hold them away. I am going to be seized by another, and another, and many more, and worse, and I will not win any struggle to prevent them hurting me any more than, if I were walking into the sea, I could by force of will not be drenched by waves breaking over my head. It will be a case not of staying dry but of not drowning. I must adjust my expectations: I have to be delivered of this baby and we both must stay alive, but I will not escape injury. Now that I know this, I inform Silva that my labor has begun.
I am measuring time in spaces between the pains, and in waiting for Ron. My legs are shaking, and there’s a tinny taste in my mouth. Silva moves around quietly, talking to me about breathing. It must be her way of hiding her own anxiety, but her voice seems to have hardened. She is completely unhurried and practical. Still Ron doesn’t come, and when she announces we have to give up on him and go downriver by ourselves in the rowing boat, she becomes almost brusque. I daren’t think about the possibility that she is as frightened as I am, for I am in pain-worse than I ever imagined-and so I try to concentrate instead on what I must do to get away from here. I need to find people who can do something about the pain. I am not so out of my wits that I do not grasp that in order to do that, though it terrifies me, I will first have to cross the broken stones and slippery rocks in the dark. Then I will have to go in the tiny rowing boat onto the rushing black river. But however I get there, I have to get to a hospital.
By the time we reach the place, the tide is rising. I lift the oars, and we drift until the wind pushes us over close to the bank opposite the flat rock in the river. Annabel has been sitting hunched up with her eyes tight shut and doesn’t see what’s happening until the boat starts bumping against the half-submerged boulders close to the shore. I guide us through the maze of rocks while she gasps and peers around in the dark.
“What are you doing? Where are we?” she asks.
“Be quiet,” I say.
When I’m close enough to the shore, I jump out and try to haul the boat up. With her in it, I can’t get it more
