The Toll Bridge (12 page)

As we watch Tess putter away, the stink of hedge-bottom twitches my nose.

‘Look,' I say, ‘you're not ponging the place out again. Before we eat you're having a bath.'

‘Yes, Dad,' Adam says. ‘Lead me to the water.'

There was no bathroom complete with all mod cons, only one of those galvanized tin tubs, wider at one end than the other, like a man-sized sardine can without a lid. Or a coffin, depending on your mood. You see them in old photos of working-class houses, where they're usually hanging on the wall outside the back door.
The Road to Wigan Pier
through D.H. Lawrence country. The toll-house tub was kept in the basement, had to be carried up to the living room when needed, where it had to be filled by using a length of hosepipe from the only hot tap in the place, which was at the kitchen sink.

There was an immersion heater in a tank in the roof above the sink, but as I had to pay for the electricity out of my piffling wage, I used it as little as possible. An electric kettle was enough for ordinary purposes, or, better still because it cost nothing if the fire was in, an old iron cauldron Bob Norris had given me, which I kept simmering on the hearth.

Two or three times during my pre-Adam weeks Mrs Norris took pity and persuaded me to have a bath in their house. ‘I'm sure it's easier than all that palaver, and you can give yourself a good soak,'
she said and, laughing, ‘You must look like a man half drowned in his coffin sat in that affair.' I've always liked Mrs Norris. She has the knack of being kind without making you feel obligated or done good to.

If I hoped all the palaver of bathing would put Adam off staying more than a night I was wrong. He revels in it like a kid in his play pool. And makes about as much mess.

While I clear up the painting gear from where he's dumped it (labourer now even to my own labourer, I grumble to myself), he prepares a place in front of the fire, lugs the tub up from the basement, strips, then ponces about with the length of hosepipe, obscenely camping up a weird song which he's learned from God knows where.

Funny, raunchy, lightly done – I can't help watching and I can't help laughing. Even though a part of me wants to stop him – for I didn't like the way he was taking my place over, turning it into a kind of theatre for himself.

Of
himself would be more accurate. What fixed me was, yes, his energy and the comedy of his randy send-up of this silly song (which I only discovered afterwards is a nursery rhyme – God, the things we stuff into children's heads!). He'd make an amazing actor, the kind who compels attention all the time, not just because of his talent, but because of his unpredictable personality, the game he plays of pretending to act a part which is actually a disguise for revealing a truth about himself.
Yet at the same time he's so crafty in displaying the disguise that the audience are never quite sure whether they're seeing the character who belongs in the play or the actor himself.

It was then, that evening, that I was won over by Adam. Won over
to
him I mean. Yes, sure, for a while I kept up a pretence of not wanting him around, but it was only pretence. Another pretending, this time as self-protection. From that evening on he fascinated me. As I watched him perform I felt he was ruled by some deeply hidden, risky secret. And I wanted to know what it was.

7

When he's done, and we've cleared up the mess he's made and I've cooked beans on toast, we sit either side of the table, Adam's skin still glowing.

‘Look,' I say, ‘there's some things we better sort out.'

‘Like what?'

‘Like I don't know anything about you.'

A suspicious look while he shovels beans, his fork in a fist-grip.

‘Does it matter?'

‘Yes, if you're staying. No promises though.'

‘Cautious bugger.'

‘Cautious maybe, anal screwer never. For a start, what's your name?'

‘. . . Adam!'

‘But Adam what?'

‘Adam in the back seat. Adam in the hay. Adam on the kitchen table.'

‘Groan. I meant your last name.'

‘Haven't made my mind up yet.'

‘Oh, come on! Stop messing about.'

‘It's true. Never knew my parents. Brought up in a children's home. They made me leave when I was sixteen. So I reckon I can have whatever name I like. Nobody else cares a toss so what's the odds.'

‘Well, how old are you now?'

‘Seventeen. Just.'

‘And what have you done since they chucked you out?'

‘Odd jobs and that. But I wanted to travel a bit so I come down here. Haven't had much luck with a job though.'

I gave him a long stare.

‘That's not what you said before.'

He didn't look at me. Went on shovelling beans.

‘When?'

‘In the boat, going to the Pike.'

‘What did I say?'

‘That you'd been chucked out of home by your father because you were always having rows and he was unemployed and you had two sisters still at school.'

Now The Grin. The Teeth. The Eyes. The Unblinking Gaze.

I gaze back, unblinking, unsmiling, daring him. ‘Not that I believed you.'

‘No? . . . Yes, well, I made it up, didn't I.'

‘Why?'

‘Don't want everybody knowing your personal details. Never know who you're talking to. People take advantage.'

‘Have I?'

The Grin vanishes, leaving a blank-faced cold look, and suddenly occupying the eyes the other Adam, the one I'd always sensed behind The Grin – wary, troubled, a little frightened, the one who made me curious.

‘Not yet,' the other Adam said.

Then The Grin banishes him again.

I say, trying to keep my own eyes steady, ‘Why should I believe the orphan story?'

He shrugs, lifts his plate and, his eyes still on me, licks it clean.

‘Good, that,' he says, putting the plate down.

I scowl.

He brazens it out. ‘Want me to wash up?'

I don't respond.

‘All right,' he says after a long pause, ‘I'll tell you. But you have to promise to keep it to yourself. I don't want other people knowing. Not Tess, neither.'

‘Why?'

‘I just don't, that's all.'

‘Depends what it is.'

‘Nothing bad. I just don't want people knowing.'

‘Why me, then?'

‘Well, like you said, you've been OK.'

‘And you want to stay.'

‘Yes, well, that as well.'

‘So?'

‘Promise.'

‘Cross my heart.'

He huffs and toys with his fork for a while, then sighs and says, ‘I was adopted. When I was little. A baby. They told me when I was eight. All this stuff about how it was better for me than for other kids because they chose me. Other kids – their parents just had to take whatever they got. They were all right, my parents. The people I called my parents. They were nice and everything. But I just couldn't accept it. I hated being adopted. It felt like a disease. I wanted to know who my real parents were but they wouldn't tell me. Said they didn't know. When I was grown up, they said, I could try and find out for myself, if I still wanted to know. I hated them for that. I thought they ought to find out for me. I thought they ought to want to know for themselves. I mean, wouldn't you – wouldn't you want to know? Where you come from? Why they, why they got rid of you? Had to. Or wanted to. Or were made to. Sometimes that happens, doesn't it, young girls, they make them give their kids away. Don't they? Anyway, I kept asking, kept on and on, wanting to know, and them saying they couldn't find out, weren't
allawed
to find out. I didn't believe them. This went on till I was thirteen, fourteen, and we started having fights about it. I'd shout, call them all the names I could think of, break the place up, do anything to upset them. I was only trying to make them find out. I ran away once, tried to, but the police caught me before I got far. I hadn't planned it, just did it on the spur of the minute, so I bungled it. But that decided me. I planned the next time, every detail. Day, time, what to take, where to go, how to get there, how to cover my tracks, not leave clues, even disguised myself – dyed my hair, wore glasses, changed my clothes as soon as I was out of town. I reckoned they'd find out what clothes were missing and describe them to the police, thinking that's what I was wearing. So I'd bought some things specially and stashed them in a hut and changed into them. I saved money for months. Read about living rough. Did everything I could think of to make sure I'd get away and not be picked up again. Just wanted to vanish. And then, when they'd forgotten about me, or given up, and I could move around openly again, then I'd find out about my real parents. And when I know that, then I'll decide who I belong to. What my last name is. Who I am.'

He pushed his plate away, took a drink from his mug of coffee, wiped his mouth with the back of his other hand.

‘That was six months ago. I ran out of money pretty soon. And it wasn't that easy keeping out of sight. Tried Birmingham for a bit but
that was pretty foul. Tried London and that was worse. Everybody's out to get what they can from you. Some of the other kids were OK. But the guys around. Geez! Want everything, from your head to your arse. It's bad news there, I tell you. I wasn't having it, not me, might as well be dead. So I went on the tramp. Hedges are better than streets. Don't reckon much to people neither. Mostly out for what they can get, what they can do you for. In the country you can usually scrounge something. Anyhow, I survived, didn't I.'

He laughs, but humourlessly.

‘Thing is, you get tired, you get really tired. You just ache for a place to stay, for somewhere you don't have to get out of in the morning, somewhere you can crawl back into at night, somewhere that's dry and warm, somewhere safe. They don't tell you about that in the survival books. Don't tell you what it's like to feel you're just a bag of rubbish, kicked around, useless, ugly, smelly, in everybody's road. Don't tell you nothing about that in books because you can't know what it's like, how bad it is, till you're there, till it's happened to you. And they don't tell you about it, I suppose, because nobody can describe hell.'

In the silence that followed I could neither speak nor move. The fire crackled in the hearth. The river surged under the bridge. Adam toyed with his mug, not looking at me. His skin shone, clean and fresh from his bath, his wet black hair hugging his round head.

His physical presence was almost overpowering. I sat looking at him and knew that this time I couldn't turn him out. Whatever his being here meant, its meaning included me. For better or worse and whether I liked it or not, there was no escape. Adam had come to stay.

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