“How far? You can’t just head off into the dark on your own on a busy road.”
“It’s really not far. I’ll be fine. My friend will be waiting for me.”
“Well, I’ll just make sure of that. I’ll walk you home.”
“It’s all right. I don’t need you to come.”
But she did, and Ron was already walking ahead. “Come on,” he said, turning back to her. “Damn, I forgot the biscuits,” he said, searching his pockets. “Never mind. Come on. It’s too bloody cold to hang about.”
Some time after it was properly dark, one of the bonfires went out. Soon after that the other grew bigger, burning fiercely enough to send smoke high into the night, where in the moonlight it drifted like a gray veil over the river. As the flames flew up, I thought I caught the sound of faint voices raised in satisfaction or triumph. Maybe some form of cooperation was at work and two groups had joined around one big fire, or maybe one group had overwhelmed the other. I couldn’t tell. I stayed outside wrapped in wads of bedding, listening for anyone who might be approaching in the dark along the shore. From time to time I dozed.
My first thought when I heard footsteps from the track and then Silva’s voice, followed by a man’s, was that she had found Stefan. But in an instant I knew it wasn’t him. The voice was older and deeper, and she was speaking as if to a stranger.
“I am here now, thank you.” The man said something I didn’t hear. I got to my feet and called out.
They came around the side of the trailer, and we all stood for a moment, trying to see one another in the dull moonlight. The man was solidly built; that was all I could make out. Then Silva gave a cry and rushed forward to hug me. I felt my breath catch in my throat and my eyes filled with tears, but over her shoulder I saw the man watching us steadily, as if trying to find something out. Would not a normal person have looked away at such a moment?
“They haven’t come up here, have they?” Silva asked, withdrawing from me and looking downstream. “Are you all right? They haven’t come this way?”
The man was gazing toward the fires.
“Thank God you’re back,” I managed to say.
“You’re so cold,” she said.
“I had to stay out to watch. I couldn’t light a fire. If I’d lit a fire, they’d have come.”
“They might have,” the man agreed.
“This is Ron,” Silva said. Her voice lifted when she spoke his name. “He brought me across the river. This is Annabel, my friend.”
He nodded at me. “You all right?” He spoke without smiling.
His words came through the dark as if he required an answer.
Silva said, “You’re so cold. Come on, get inside.”
We went in and lit candles. Silva used the gas burner to make tea. Ron and I watched her, and we watched each other. The trailer was cramped, and we settled onto seats and moved as little as possible, like tired roosting birds. We hardly spoke. It was too late-and our being all together too unexpected-for polite conversation among strangers. Besides, all the questions that came to mind (Why did you come here? Where do you live? Who are you?) would, out loud, have sounded not curious but distrustful. And the remarkable thing was that although I knew I should be wary, because everything about his sudden appearance here with Silva begged such questions, I felt I could trust him.
Stefan, I wonder if you would have liked her. Over the three or four days we were together I had got used to her, but when I saw Ron staring at her by the candlelight in the trailer, I could see what he saw. It was not that she looked strange or remarkable, though she kept the shape of her body disguised in her clothes and had a lumbering, secretive walk that suggested neither woman nor man, adult nor child. There was nothing about her, apart from her clothes, that stayed the same long enough for me to be sure she looked a particular way and not another, that she was a person like this, not like that. Her face changed with every turn of her head, her eyes large and seeing, then hooded and looking away, her lips drawn in tightly, then spilling with words. Her skin would be white and soft and new-looking, then dry and unhealthy. Her hands were as heavy as clay in her lap until her fingers fluttered like pages falling from a book as she pushed her hair back off her face. And the tangled hair on the top of her head reminded me of kemp on the back of some aged mountain animal, and then she pulled it around, and behind her ear it dropped on her neck in silky, babylike coils the color of charcoal. She looked neither happy nor sad, rich nor poor, old nor young. She had not an appearance at all so much as an atmosphere about her, of doubt and restlessness. It was as if, although present, she could, in her mind at least, leave and rejoin our company at will. In the close, glowing space we three shared that night in the trailer, she came and went like the ghosts of many people.
I watched Ron’s study of her, wishing that he would not find her worthier of his scrutiny than I was, yet what I felt was not jealousy. It wasn’t that. It was a need for him to know about me, and about you and Anna. I didn’t want him puzzled by her instead. There was a satisfaction in knowing there was more I could have told him about her than he would be able to tell from looking. Dressed, she was almost sexless. I had seen her naked. I could have described the line of her back, the tilt of her breasts, the curve of her flank. I could have mimicked the sheltering, modest gesture of her hands across her stomach as she stood in the bathtub under the flow of steaming water over her shoulders. I liked keeping all this to myself. My knowledge of her body, that there was a baby growing inside it, had a power only for as long as I did not share it.
“Yes, they might have come here tonight,” Ron said again, “if they’d seen a fire burning. But I don’t think they’ll bother us now. It’s late.”
When he said “us,” I knew he intended to stay. He got to his feet.
“But I’ll sit out another couple of hours, just in case. You two should get to sleep.” He nodded at the long window seat. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll bed down there in a while.” He opened the door.
Annabel said, frightened, “But they’ll come when it’s light. If not tomorrow, then in a day or two.”
“Sure enough, they’ll be along,” Ron said. “We’ll look at it all in the morning.”
Annabel and I got ready for bed, shyly, saying little. Ron’s presence was an excitement that neither of us chose to find words for, nor were we able to admit that he made us feel safer. When we were lying down and the candles were blown out, I think we were both grateful for the dark, for not having to see each other’s faces. But then came the tears that I had been holding back since the morning.
“Don’t cry,” Annabel said.
How could I not cry? You were gone. I hid my face in the bedclothes and cried until I was exhausted. She lay in the dark and said over and over that you were surely safe somewhere and would return soon. Maybe both of us knew that this was a prayer and not a belief, but I let it comfort me anyway, and I fell asleep.
In the morning, Annabel was up first. She had hauled a tub of cold water round the back of the trailer and was splashing in it and singing, very badly, probably to let Ron know to keep his distance. I went outside, leaving him on the long seat stretched out under his blankets and his hands folded on his chest, like a dead saint. Downriver, the bonfire remains were dark smudges on the shore; nothing moved. The geese bobbed on the water, and I heard the sad, wavering cries of the gulls scavenging on the incoming tide. Annabel’s voice rose from behind the trailer, and I laughed and called out to her to stop frightening the birds. The geese flew up from the water with a great flapping of wings. Across the river, my deserted cabin stood unchanged.
The cabin. It was the answer. It always had been the answer. You were wrong about it and always had been. We should have been there long ago. But surely even you could see that it was necessary and urgent for us to go now. There was no danger there, nobody had been near the place for a year and more. We would go across and live on the other side, and the tramps would stay on this bank of the river, near the service station and Inverness. They wouldn’t want to come across, even supposing they could. There was nothing for them in the forest. They could take the trailer if they wanted, I didn’t care. The leaks were getting worse, and it wouldn’t last another winter. We would have a proper little house, not large but much bigger than the trailer; we would make it comfortable. Besides, I had to live on the other side now to get to work, and from the cabin there would be a way up through the trees to the road, and from there it would be only a mile or so to the Highland Bounty. And Annabel had nowhere else to go and nobody to care for her. She needed someone. She could stay as long as she liked and I would look after her while I was waiting for you and Anna.