The Toll Bridge (16 page)

ONE DAY WE
were painting the bedroom when we heard a noise like the sound of drunken children echoing up the approach road. We dropped our brushes and rushed outside, janitors ready to do a Horatius.

But there was no need of defence. Along the road came a party of about twenty Down's people. Four of them were in wheelchairs. One, a young man who was singing loudly in a strange tuneless falsetto, had no legs.

They weren't drunk on anything but happiness because they were having a trip out on a sharp, frosty, sunny December day. Five or six caretaking adults were sprinkled among them, shepherding them along and tending to the chairborne.

This patter of humanity strode, wobbled, limped, danced, skipped, hopped, rolled in well-behaved disarray towards the two of us, as we stood by habit in the middle of the road outside the toll-house door.

‘Hello! Hello!' unembarrassed voices called as they approached. ‘It's Timmy's birthday. Happy birthday, dear Timmy, happy birthday to you!'

Timmy was the legless young man.

‘This is a toll bridge,' one of the minders said. ‘It's very old.'

‘As old as Timmy?'

‘What's a toll bridge?'

‘Dong, dong, dong.'

‘You have to pay to cross.'

‘Do we have to pay?'

‘I haven't no money.'

‘Timmy doesn't have to pay, does he, not on his birthday, do you, Timmy?'

We were surrounded, our hands taken and caressed, our arms
stroked. Faces beamed at us, some dribbling, others open, all glad to see us as if coming upon friends.

‘You've been painting,' a girl said to me.

‘There's a notice that tells who has to pay.'

‘Where, what does it say?'

‘I've no money today.'

‘I like painting. I like the smell. Painting smells like you.'

‘Well, it says “Four wheels twenty pence. Lorries and trucks fifty pence. Two wheels and pedestrians free.”'

‘What are pedestrians?'

‘We are pedestrians.'

‘Where are you painting? I'd help but it's Timmy's birthday and we're taking him out. He's eighteen.'

‘Pedestrians are people walking.'

‘Eighteen means you're grown up. I'm fifteen.'

‘Four wheels pay,' Adam said, finding his voice and giving in

kind. ‘Two legs go free.'

‘We've two legs.'

‘We go free.'

‘Timmy's on four wheels though.'

‘So is Janice and Rachel and Jason.'

‘Oh, Jason, you have to pay. Twenty pence!'

‘Do I?'

‘And Janice and Rachel.'

‘Not Timmy though, eh, it's his birthday.'

‘But he's on four wheels. We had to pay to cross the Seven and it was my birthday that day. They didn't make allowances.'

‘Allowances.'

‘It doesn't mean wheelchairs, does it?'

Adam said, ‘No, no. I'll tell you the rule. It's like this. Four wheels pay. Two legs go free. No legs get paid.'

‘Get paid!'

‘Where does it say that?'

‘What – you pay Timmy?'

‘And Rachel and Janice and Jason,' Adam said, ‘because they can't go on two legs.'

‘They can sometimes.'

‘But not today,' Adam said.

‘Not that far.'

‘There you are, Timmy,' Adam said, pulling coins out of his
pocket. ‘That's your fare for crossing the bridge. And are you Rachel? OK, that's for you. And Janice. And Jason.'

There was an alarming cheer from the pedestrians.

‘I needn't have legs if you don't want me to.'

‘We'd better be getting on,' called one of the minders.

‘We have to be getting on,' several voices ordered.

‘What are you painting?'

‘How much did he give you, Rachel?'

‘We could come back this way and get some more.'

‘What'll you spend it on?'

‘I'll save it.'

‘Bye.'

‘You smell lovely. You could come with me if you like.'

‘Come on, Sarah. The man's busy.'

‘Kissy kissy.'

‘Dong, dong, dong.'

Back inside, Adam grabbed his brush and slashed and slashed at the wall. Paint flew.

‘Hey, steady, man, steady!' I shouted, guarding my eyes with an arm. ‘What's up, what's the matter?'

He waved his brush towards the bridge and the dying sound of the Down's party. ‘That's the matter! That!' A different Adam. The other Adam: the one only in the eyes before, now in this angry, violent moment all of him. ‘The sodding rotten unfairness of it.'

‘Being born like that?'

‘Not their frigging fault. Didn't ask to be born. Life! Bloody life!' He hurled the brush down and left the room. There was brittle silence for a few minutes before I heard him filling a glass at the sink. I got on with the painting. When he came back he was Adam again and calm.

I said, ‘At least they seemed happy.'

‘Happy? Yes, sure, really happy. A laugh a minute.'

‘Life
is
unfair. You knew that already.'

‘Just let's get on, OK?'

2

Like the early morning, when we were on our own together the evenings were a problem for a while. Reading: I liked it, Adam didn't. He could settle to nothing for very long, except TV. Obsessed
with old movies. Watched them tranced, sitting square to the screen only an arm's length away. Nothing distracted him, not moving about, not singing, not asking a question, not fetching logs, not washing up with a clatter, nothing except standing in front of the set, which I once did and never did again because his reaction was ugly. I thought for a second he'd flatten me.

So he was happy enough when there was an old film to watch. He'd be there sometimes well into the early hours, long after I'd gone to bed; and next morning he'd be fresh as a spring lamb. Sleep, for him, was like food – he didn't need much, would snack when he felt like it. Often we'd stop work for a drink and he'd fall asleep for ten minutes and wake up ready for work as soon as I made a move. Though I always felt that he was still aware while he was asleep of what was going on, as if he were watching through closed eyes. Like a snoozing cat.

I'm not like that at all. Seven hours a night, and I hate cat-napping during the day. Don't like old movies either, and am easily distracted no matter what I'm doing, reading especially. Reading is an essential part of my life, basic as breathing, eating, sleeping, crapping. Without it for more than a couple of days I feel my mind dying. More than just my mind. My soul dying. If soul means what my dictionary says:
the essential part or fundamental nature of everything, the seat of human personality, intellect, will and emotions.

This was something Adam could never understand. Five or six days after he came to stay, clearing our stuff out of the bedroom, Tess helping, he said:

‘What d'you want all these books for?'

‘There aren't that many,' I said.

‘A hundred and eight,' Tess said. ‘I counted.'

‘I've over a thousand at home.'

‘Glad we're not painting your place,' Adam said.

‘Bookworm . . .' Tess said.

‘Chewing his way through paper.'

‘. . . Bibliophile.'

‘What d'you do with them all, once you've read them?'

I said, ‘For a start, you can do more with books than you can with people, judging by the way you two carry on – or don't carry on as it happens. Here, grab these.'

‘Go on then,' Adam said as I piled books into his cradled arms, ‘tell us. What can you do with books you can't do with people?'

‘Not another of your games, for God's sake, not while we're doing this.'

Tess said, ‘Go on, tell him. I'll start you off. You can read them, which,' she added pointedly to Adam, ‘is certainly more than you can do with some people.'

‘You can write in them,' Adam said. ‘I've seen him do it. Bloody vandal.'

‘Buy them.'

‘You can buy people,' Adam said.

‘Sell them, then.'

‘You can sell people as well. Seen it done. But why not sell these, Jan? We could have a party on the proceeds.'

‘Hasn't he told you? He doesn't like parties.'

‘Must be defective, poor sod.'

‘It's what comes of biblioboring.'

‘We should do something about that.'

‘Educate him in everyday life.'

‘You'll do no such thing,' I said.

‘Use them to hold things up,' Tess went on, ‘like wonky table legs.'

‘And hold things down. But you can use people for that as well.'

‘If you're lucky,' I said.

‘Give them away as presents,' Tess said.

‘Burn them to keep the place warm.'

‘Fascist,' I said.

‘Cover up nasty cracks in the wall,' Tess said pertinently.

‘I'll tell you one thing,' I said. ‘They don't play up the way people do.'

‘Or get ill,' Tess said.

‘Or puke,' Adam said.

‘Or cry,' Tess said.

I said quickly, ‘Or eat or drink or nick your clothes or take holidays or sleep or poop or doublecross or answer back or desert you when you need them or want to be paid or take the huff or need decorating or get The Glums or have a menopause or murder or torture or fight wars –'

‘Sometimes cause them,' Tess butted in.

‘– or do anything except look attractive while they wait for you to do whatever you like with them, like
read
them. OK – is that enough for now, can we get on?'

‘I'm knackered after all that,' Adam said. ‘I thought books were supposed to be relaxing.'

‘And while we're on the subject,' I said, ‘we'll have to do something about you and the telly and me and reading, unless you want to go into exile in the basement every night.'

‘Why?' Tess said. ‘What's the matter?'

That explained, she said, ‘Easy. I've a set of headphones I used when I wanted to watch the telly at home and nobody else did. Now I've one in my room I never use them. Adam can borrow them, so he can watch while you read.'

‘Brilliant,' Adam said.

‘Only takes feminine lateral thinking.'

‘You can go lateral for me any time.'

‘I said
thinking
.'

3