transformed,
reinvented, valid? It came to me, as I fell asleep, that that was
what I was waiting for, and that I had always gone about my life
this way, looking with yearning across distances. I had reached
from my father’s sickness-bound house in Portsmouth towards a
far-off, more authentic self as Col’s wife; now I was reaching from
the flatness of our marriage for the distant picture of us as
parents. I heard again the cry and the scrape of rocks as Stefan
stumbled and fell, casting Anna away from him towards her safe,
soft landing. I saw them as they had sat in the trailer, looking at
each other, and when they turned to me, their faces wore frayed
smiles, full of sadness because they knew I was incomplete in some
way, lacking something specific, like money or an important fact,
but something they didn’t have a word for. And for all they could
not say quite what it was, it was something definitive and
tremendous, and they were regretful that by not having it I was
excluded and set apart from them. I pulled a pillow across the bed
and held it in my arms against my stomach. I watched the red
numbers of the clock alarm at the bedside wink in the gloom, and I
fell asleep again. I was awakened by a text message from Col.
Soaking freezing. Going for drink their hotel F Aug.
Back at 7.
I turned and stretched out on my back, relieved. I was still
groggy, and the square of light from the window showed a sky
silvery with cold and fading towards evening. Fort Augustus was
twelve miles farther west of Invermuir. It was just after four
o’clock. Now I could stay warm and rest for at least another hour,
which would be time enough to get used to the thought of going out
again.
I got up to make a cup of tea. Instead of switching on a lamp, I
turned on the television, for its flickering light rather than the
actual pictures, and I kept the volume off. It wasn’t until after I
had filled the little kettle from the bathroom tap and come back to
plug it in that I took any notice of what was happening on the
screen.
I was watching trembly pictures of a man with a fishing rod
standing by a river. He was showing off and smiling. He turned to
the water to cast, concentrating for a moment or two, sideways from
the camera. The picture swung up to the top of the rod and back
down, the man grinned and cast again. It was an amateur video; it
must have been one of those programmes of supposedly hilarious
home-video clips and in a minute there would be a mishap: he’d fall
in the river, a gull would land on his head, something like that.
But in the instant before I turned away, the man’s body jolted and
his knees buckled. He turned abruptly upriver and dropped the rod.
When he spun round a second later to look at the camera, his face
was frightened and bewildered. Then he was shouting and waving his
arms, and he ran off, out of the frame. The camera swung away; the
picture tilted up, zigzagged and hit darkness, and then it began to
jerk irregularly and very fast, up and down. Black bars broke
across the image; the person with the camera was running through
trees. When the picture settled, it was trained on the water. It
focused in, silently, on the distant bridge.
The bridge I had crossed that day was untying itself from the
earth. Its taut steel curves were loosening, its angles unfolding
and turning slack. Cables were swaying and bending out of the sky,
curling down and inwards and falling in cast-off tangles into the
water. Around and underneath them, across the river, cars careered
off the tilting road and sent up white explosions of foam as they
hit the surface. I turned up the sound and now the cries of the man
with the fishing rod mingled with creaks and a hollow roaring from
the bridge and the coming-and-going groan of the wind, or perhaps
it was not the wind but the breathless rasps from the man who kept
hold of the shaking camera when all he must have wanted to do was
turn his eyes away and weep. But he held on, and then came
reinvented, valid? It came to me, as I fell asleep, that that was
what I was waiting for, and that I had always gone about my life
this way, looking with yearning across distances. I had reached
from my father’s sickness-bound house in Portsmouth towards a
far-off, more authentic self as Col’s wife; now I was reaching from
the flatness of our marriage for the distant picture of us as
parents. I heard again the cry and the scrape of rocks as Stefan
stumbled and fell, casting Anna away from him towards her safe,
soft landing. I saw them as they had sat in the trailer, looking at
each other, and when they turned to me, their faces wore frayed
smiles, full of sadness because they knew I was incomplete in some
way, lacking something specific, like money or an important fact,
but something they didn’t have a word for. And for all they could
not say quite what it was, it was something definitive and
tremendous, and they were regretful that by not having it I was
excluded and set apart from them. I pulled a pillow across the bed
and held it in my arms against my stomach. I watched the red
numbers of the clock alarm at the bedside wink in the gloom, and I
fell asleep again. I was awakened by a text message from Col.
Soaking freezing. Going for drink their hotel F Aug.
Back at 7.
I turned and stretched out on my back, relieved. I was still
groggy, and the square of light from the window showed a sky
silvery with cold and fading towards evening. Fort Augustus was
twelve miles farther west of Invermuir. It was just after four
o’clock. Now I could stay warm and rest for at least another hour,
which would be time enough to get used to the thought of going out
again.
I got up to make a cup of tea. Instead of switching on a lamp, I
turned on the television, for its flickering light rather than the
actual pictures, and I kept the volume off. It wasn’t until after I
had filled the little kettle from the bathroom tap and come back to
plug it in that I took any notice of what was happening on the
screen.
I was watching trembly pictures of a man with a fishing rod
standing by a river. He was showing off and smiling. He turned to
the water to cast, concentrating for a moment or two, sideways from
the camera. The picture swung up to the top of the rod and back
down, the man grinned and cast again. It was an amateur video; it
must have been one of those programmes of supposedly hilarious
home-video clips and in a minute there would be a mishap: he’d fall
in the river, a gull would land on his head, something like that.
But in the instant before I turned away, the man’s body jolted and
his knees buckled. He turned abruptly upriver and dropped the rod.
When he spun round a second later to look at the camera, his face
was frightened and bewildered. Then he was shouting and waving his
arms, and he ran off, out of the frame. The camera swung away; the
picture tilted up, zigzagged and hit darkness, and then it began to
jerk irregularly and very fast, up and down. Black bars broke
across the image; the person with the camera was running through
trees. When the picture settled, it was trained on the water. It
focused in, silently, on the distant bridge.
The bridge I had crossed that day was untying itself from the
earth. Its taut steel curves were loosening, its angles unfolding
and turning slack. Cables were swaying and bending out of the sky,
curling down and inwards and falling in cast-off tangles into the
water. Around and underneath them, across the river, cars careered
off the tilting road and sent up white explosions of foam as they
hit the surface. I turned up the sound and now the cries of the man
with the fishing rod mingled with creaks and a hollow roaring from
the bridge and the coming-and-going groan of the wind, or perhaps
it was not the wind but the breathless rasps from the man who kept
hold of the shaking camera when all he must have wanted to do was
turn his eyes away and weep. But he held on, and then came
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