There were two much smaller rooms next to the main one, completely empty. In the one at the back, the window glass was cracked and had been sealed over with tape, now a dry, flapping shred. The floor was dark with mold and sloped downward, and when I trod nearer the center of the room, it tipped a little and a gap opened under the bottom edges of the walls that met in the far corner, and a draft of cold air blew in around my feet. Roots had lodged themselves there and were pushing in like damp fists. I went outside and saw that some tree roots had split the concrete platform and were taking hold in the join between the side and back walls and along the line of the cabin’s base. I thought of calling out to Ron to ask if it could be mended, and then I wondered why I was so ready to consult him. He was a stranger, and my inclination to depend on him was foolish. I would not ask.
I wandered down onto the jetty, and very deliberately I turned and gazed back; for Silva’s sake (I believed) I needed to see the cabin from a little distance, to judge the idea of living in it as plausible or not. As I looked, Ron came out and pulled a couple of bags from the doorway over the threshold. I saw him move across the window, while Silva carried a bundle of something inside, out of sight. They passed to and fro for a while in this quiet little duet of housekeeping, and I felt a pang of exclusion. I was glad when Ron came to the door and beckoned me back.
“Place looks okay for now,” he said, to both of us. “The logs are dry and the flue’s all right.” He looked at his watch, then nodded toward the boat. “I have to go.” I glanced at Silva. Did she feel, as I did, a sudden unreasonable resentment, as sharp as fear, that he was going? Silva and I, even between us, might not get things right. I didn’t want to be left, and I was annoyed with myself that I didn’t want to be left.
“I’ll have a proper look round tomorrow,” he said, addressing me as if he knew. “See what needs doing.”
“Why are you helping us?” I asked.
“I thought you could do with it.” He motioned across the river. The trailer looked deserted and hopelessly vulnerable. The bonfires still burned.
“Maybe, but that’s not the point. Why are you-”
“I’ll be back tomorrow. So don’t be frightened if you hear the boat.”
“I’m sure it’s very kind of you. But why?”
“I want to,” he said, awkwardly. “I just do what I can.”
“But why?” I knew nothing about him. “Do you live here? Where are you from?”
“Be quiet, Annabel. Of course, we’ll pay you,” Silva said, quickly. “And we are grateful.”
Ron shook his head. “I just do what I can,” he said again, “and you don’t pay me anything.”
“Come tomorrow and there will be food,” she said. She sounded shy. “Not grand food, but you will be very welcome.”
He smiled and nodded and left. As he turned the boat in to the river tide, I called out to thank him, but he didn’t hear above the noise of the motor and the cries of the geese as they rose. Silva and I stood for a while on the jetty, watching the frill of the boat’s wake disappear and the geese glide back in pairs onto the silver-smooth water around the black rock.
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 you, so you don’t start asking questions and looking suspicious because someone shows you kindness. If you have the luck to find it, you take kindness. You take it while you can and put it down to the way this world works. If something good can come along, then something good can also be taken away. You take the good while you can.
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.”