The Toll Bridge (19 page)

‘Hey!' Tess called out.

We turned from our work. Her camera clicked.

‘Not again!' I said. ‘How many more?'

She was taking photos for an optional course on photography at school. She'd chosen the toll bridge as a topic, photographing it regularly for six months. At the beginning she thought it would just make an interesting subject, a study of stones and water and people and the effect on them of weather and the changing seasons. She called the finished portfolio ‘Tolling the Bridge'.

Adam enjoyed being snapped enormously, camping up the poses if he got the chance, which Tess liked for a while, but when she'd had enough of it, would creep up on us and take us unawares. Early on, she persuaded Adam to perform his Tarzan act for her (not that he needed much persuading of course), which she shot in black and white from various angles – on and under the bridge, from the garden, from the back-door steps, from the river (she had to get into the water for these shots and nearly died of the cold), even from above in the tree itself It took three sessions during which I was required to act as general runabout and slave to the pair of them. Of course I pretended to be sniffy about this at the time but I have to admit the resulting pictures are my favourites, beautifully capturing the sense of
movement and energy. (The school made Tess cut the sequence out of the portfolio before putting it on show with the work of the rest of the group because Adam was in the nude and Tess refused to crop away or cover with airbrushed shadows the full frontal naughty bits. Another example of how prissy puritanism still rides shotgun in certain sectors of the British social system. [– Compare and contrast in two hundred words the ‘page three' popsies in the tabloid dailies and then write three hundred words in their defence, imagining yourself to be one of the dishy dolls.])

6

One drizzly morning a Range Rover stopped at the door. I went out to take the toll but already the driver, a young guy, incipient version of B-and-G, dressed in a cheap grey junior businessman suit and sporting one of those fluffy moustaches that grow on the faces of insecure post-adolescents who want you to think they're older than they are, was hauling out of the back a large notice on a pole.
FOR SALE
, the notice said, and the usual details of agent's name and phone number. Plus the inevitable emblem – not head of Greek god, nor flourishing oak tree, nor prancing black stallion but blue swallow in full flight. Why never anything nearer the truth, like a brace of money bags or a vulture picking on a corpse or a shark with a bloodstained mortgage in its teeth? Stupid question, really.

What does puzzle me, though, is why we put up with such pollution of the mind. We go on and on about dodgy food and acid rain and nuclear radiation and other threats to our bodies but we don't bat an eye at abuse of symbols or poison pumped into our minds by advertisers and other con artists, or foul emissions spewed out every day by, for example, so-called ‘news' papers and politicians and TV's self-appointed public opinionaters. What's the point of a living body without a living mind to go with it?
Nichts.
All the evidence I need is here.

The driver, studiously ignoring me, was carrying the sign to the corner of the house.

‘Has Mister Norris OK'd this?' I asked.

‘And who might you be, squire?'

‘The toll keeper.'

Sizing up the stonework for a place to fix the pole, he said, ‘I'm impressed.'

He leaned the hoarding against the house, returned to the back of
his Rover from where he was taking a claw hammer and a handful of round-head spike nails when he caught sight, as I did from following the line of his surprised gawp, of Adam, who must have come outside while our backs were turned, quietly taken possession of the hoarding, and was now casually bearing it, raised like a banner, towards the bridge.

Speechless, the agent's agent watched as Adam, reaching the middle of the bridge, lifted the hoarding over the parapet, hoyed it into the river, ran to the other side, watched it float through and swirl away downstream, after which, without casting a glance in our direction, he walked calmly back to the house and disappeared inside.

Only then did the agent's agent find his voice.

‘Who the hell was that?'

‘Him? Just my assistant.'

‘Your
assistant
!'

‘Now you're impressed.'

‘What the shit does he think he's playing at?'

‘Pooh-sticks.'

‘Eh?'

‘Do return when you have obtained written permission to molest the building,' I said with all the hauteur I could assume, and stalked into the house, quietly closing the door behind me.

Adam was standing in the middle of the living room, clenched fist raised and pulling victory faces. We wanted to burst out but stifled ourselves in order to hear what went on outside for, there being no curtains, we didn't want to spoil the effect by being seen looking out. Not that there was long to wait before a cruel slamming of car doors, over-revved engine and squealing tyres told us all we needed to know.

A futile gesture but spine-tinglingly satisfying. Naturally, fluffy lip was back by noon, flapping an officious piece of paper in our faces and braying his
FOR SALE
sign to the wall with all the crucifying passion of a minion with a score to settle. Another episode in the comedy of rage.

7

After three weeks of painting and decorating I began to feel ill. Irritated lungs, runny nose and eyes, heavy aching head, dizziness sometimes, queasy stomach, wanting to puke. This went on for a day or two, me thinking I was coming down with the flu, when one
night I woke up and made it to the back door just in time. Soaked in fever sweat, freezing in the night frost and dark December air, I threw up till there was nothing left to throw and retching was itself a pain. When it was over I stumbled back inside, washed, drank a glass of water, stirred up the slumbering logs on the fire, and hunkered as close to the warmth as I could, shivering, sniffling, and miserable.

Adam didn't move. I resented that for a while, all my only-son reflexes, I suppose, conditioned to expect coddling and consolation. But as the spasm wore off I was pleased he'd stayed where he was. This was the first time since I came to the bridge that I'd been physically ill. It had never occurred to me that I would be. Now it had happened I felt suddenly vulnerable and was glad there was someone else in the house, but I certainly didn't want him fussing over me, and suggesting remedies.

Once I was warm again and the spasm was properly over, I felt so washed out and weary all I wanted was to crawl back into bed. Which I did, and slept so soundly that I didn't wake next morning till I heard Tess's voice saying my name. She was standing by my bed dressed in her biking leathers, Adam at her side.

‘Hello. Are you all right?'

‘What time is it?'

‘Eight thirty. Is anything wrong?'

‘Just a bit queasy.'

‘You don't look too terrific.'

Adam said, ‘He was spewing half the night.'

‘I'll get up.'

Tess said, ‘You might be better in bed. Was it something you ate?'

Adam said, ‘We both had the same.'

He was, as ever, the epitome of health, being one of those people who look tanned even in the dead of winter.

‘I'm all right.'

They looked at me like mourners surveying a corpse.

‘Shove off. I want to get dressed.'

‘If you're sure,' Tess said.

‘I'm sure, I'm sure. Go!'

They went, closing the door behind them. There was mumbling from outside before Tess's bike started and drove off, not over the bridge, as it should have done if she were on her way to school, but towards the village. So I wasn't surprised when Bob Norris turned up
twenty minutes later in his van, Tess puttering along behind. By then I was sitting by the fire, feeling like Lazarus, nibbling half-heartedly on a piece of dry bread, which was the only food I could face.

‘Traitor,' I muttered at Tess when she and her father came in with that apprehensive look people wear when visiting the uncertain sick. Adam, who had been outside taking tolls, tagged along behind.

‘What's this?' Bob Norris said in his foreman's bantering style, which he hadn't been using much lately. ‘Skiving, is it? Day off? General strike? Go slow? What?'

‘Inquisition followed by public burning, by the looks,' I said trying to respond in kind, but it sounded more like accusation than joke. While I sat quiet I seemed fairly normal; as soon as I spoke, or worse, moved, I knew I wasn't.

‘Haven't lost your appetite, I see.'

‘Favourite breakfast, dry bread.'

‘Stomach is it? Bad chest, snotty nose, dizzy head?'

‘Flu, I expect. Nothing to bother about.'

‘Sick in the night though.'

I glared at Tess.

‘Painter's colic,' Bob Norris went on. ‘Breathing those fumes for too long. Not enough fresh air. Not enough ventilation. Windows shut at night to keep out the cold.'

‘I'll take a walk.'

‘You'll do nothing of the sort. You'll come home with me in the van. The wife'll see to you. You need some time out of here and a day or two recuperating before things get worse.' He turned to Adam, who was leaning in the doorway. ‘Can you cope without him?'

‘Sure.'

Tess said, ‘I could stay and help. We're not doing much at school.'

Her father gave her a wry glance. ‘You've done your bit for today, girl. Best get going, you're late already.'

‘Girl indeed!' Tess stretched up, pecked a kiss on his unshaven cheek and said, ‘I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.'

‘Eh?'

And bending down, pecked a kiss on my cheek too. ‘O, flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!' I was too addled to remember what she was quoting. ‘Get well soon, dear Jan.' And she clumped away in her biking boots. ‘See you, Adam. ‘Bye all.'

Mrs Norris fed me bread and milk, a potion for sickly children I'd only ever read about in books, hustled me into the spare bedroom, and left me luxuriating between fresh-smelling pink flannelette sheets, a radio playing quietly, curtains drawn against the light, and firm instructions that I must sleep. A brisk good-humoured spoiling quite different from my mother's all-consuming full-time attention.