The Toll Bridge (23 page)

Before long Adam has cast himself as a one-man repertory theatre: MC, sergeant major, DJ, mein host, pack leader, party clown, games master. That is, he becomes one of those people who get a kick out of powertooling everybody else. Embryo dictator.

He insists we play some games.

Game One. The Balloon Burst, otherwise known as the Pelvic Bang.

The boy holds a blown-up balloon in front of his crotch. Or stuffs it up his shirt or sweater, as preferred. The girl has to burst the balloon by thrusting her pelvis at it, front on. Close encounters of the pudic kind. Which end in giggles and, on the occasions when the balloon goes off, in exaggerated shrieks. Some cheat by using finger nails or other penetrants.

I opt out, not needing to pretend needing a leak.

On my way back I'm groped at the bottom of the steps by a cruising figure dressed entirely in black.

‘Sorry, not my line,' I mutter.

‘Could give you a nice surprise. It is a surprise party after all, and you're the party boy.'

‘Thanks for the offer.'

‘Don't know what you're missing.'

‘No, well, another time maybe.'

‘Name the day. I do house calls.'

‘Don't call me, I'll call you.'

‘You've no heart.'

‘Nothing against you or anything.'

‘Forget it, chuck. Not my lucky night is all.'

He pecks me on the cheek, the rough male kiss of blankets, allows his hands to linger before saying, ‘No hard feelings!' and fades away.

It's all happening. You can't say I lack for excitement or that I don't see life stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Would I have had better luck on the grand tour?

Back inside, Adam is starting yet another game, the remaining participants behaving like nine-year-olds going on seven. Those who have dropped out are mostly draped around the edges of the floor engaged in whatever other party games have taken their fancy. Playing at experimental physiology being the popular choice.

Tess grabs my hand. ‘Come on, you can partner me for this one.'

Game two. The Ping-pong Ball.

The boy stands. The girl kneels down in front of him, puts a table-tennis ball inside one of the boy's trouser legs and works it up with her fingers from the outside until she reaches the crotch over which she manoeuvres the ball and then lets it fall down the other trouser leg. The winner does it the fastest. Naturally, everybody goes as slow as she can.

Like mere pastime stories, this game creates a lot of excited anticipation at the beginning, has an extended middle with plenty of sexy high drama that climaxes in sometimes unexpected thrills, after which it ends with a quick denouement.

This evening there are predictable actions, reactions and dubious dialogue, especially during the crotch scenes.

Tess and I went third. She is busy crossing my crotch and making a meal of it to considerable encouragement and applause, coming at me from front and back at the same time, when Gill appears in the front row of the stalls, sober and ominous and travel-weary.

I don't see her straightaway because I have my eyes screwed shut. I am thinking of a butcher's slaughterhouse, as a matter of fact, in an effort to control my privates by taking my mind off what is happening to them. So Tess at last finishes with my crotch and the ping-pong ball is dribbling down my other leg when I open my eyes with relief only to find Gill glaring at me. Even then I don't react immediately. My first thought is that she is an hallucination brought on by the multicult punch while having my bat and balls played with by someone other than myself for the first time since Gill and I were last together months ago. Only when it dawns on me that she is not gazing at me with the sloe-eyed Mona Lisa smile her face usually assumed during such activities, do I accept that she really is there, touchable flesh, spillable blood, and distinctly unhappy.

4

Outside in the road, where I hustled Gill, Tess following as it dawns on her who this is, I said:

‘What the hell are you doing here?'

‘I was invited.'

‘Invited?'

‘Me,' Tess butted in, ‘I invited her.'

‘You? What for?'

‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.'

‘When?'

‘What?'

‘Didn't think,' Gill said, stunned, ‘it would be such a big party.'

‘Wasn't meant to be,' Tess said, ‘just a bit of fun.'

‘So I saw.' Gill looked at me then Tess then me again.

‘Nothing like that,' Tess said.

‘Could have fooled me.'

‘Come on, you know what parties are like.'

‘Look,' I said. ‘What are you doing here? What are you two up to?'

‘Us two up to!' Gill said. ‘Don't you mean you two?'

‘I told you,' Tess said, ‘it isn't like that. Just a game.'

‘You planned this just to humiliate me.'

‘What the hell are you going on about?' I said.

‘Shut up, you,' Tess said. ‘This is between me and her.'

‘I've never seen you like this.'

‘I've never seen you like that.'

‘Look, Gill –' Tess said.

Heavy metal started pumping out of the house.

‘– I thought it would help him to see you –'

‘Help me?'

‘– I thought you wanted to see him.'

‘How would you know what I want?'

‘Your letters were –'

‘You've read my letters?'

‘Oh,
merde!
'

‘You showed her my letters!'

‘Look, piss off, will you, I didn't ask you to come here.'

‘Thank you! Thank you very much! It's only me you're talking to – your girlfriend.' Looking at Tess. ‘At least I thought I was!'

‘Typical male,' Tess said.

‘Eh –?'

‘Yes,' Gill echoed, ‘typical male. In the wrong so turn violent. At least you could say sorry.'

‘Hang on a minute, I wasn't the one who started this.'

‘All everybody else's fault, I suppose,' Gill said.

My head is exploding.

‘If you'd answered Gill's letters –'

‘Instead of ignoring them –'

‘I tried.'

‘Excuses.'

‘Excuses.'

‘Oh for Christ's sake! Get lost, will you! Both of you. Just leave me alone.'

‘You said that before. And what do I find?' Gill shouted – the music is
very
loud by now. ‘But all right, if that's the way you want it. Two can play that game.'

She turned and stalked into the house.

‘Now you've done it!' Tess said. ‘Couldn't you just have been nice to her, nothing strenuous, nothing too extreme, just ordinary everyday glad to see you stuff, I mean she is your bloody girlfriend after all . . . oh, Christ! . . . 
Merde!
' and after uttering a few home truths in my direction she sloped off into the house.

I felt deeply furious and miserable and wanted to hit them both, hard. The old Adam. Or Cain, more accurately: mark of. Loud echoes of the old Glum enemy rumbled in my guts.

I couldn't believe all this was happening. Stared at the house. The
FOR SALE
sign crucified to the wall was defaced with luminous spray paint into
PATHS FOR ALE
. Heavy metal pulsed from the house. Sex-teased squeals and hyena laughter punctured the beat.

They'd completely taken it over, polluted it, the place where I was recovering, stripping myself down, remaking myself, had been invaded, desecrated, defiled, raped.

Suddenly I hated them.

Yes, Gill, Adam, Tess as well.

All of them.

Paradigm of humanity.

I hated their noise,

their occupation of my space,

hated their sprawl and splurge and clutter and mess.

The splat of their lives.

Hated most of all the pretended individuality of their slavish conformity.

They were not me, nothing I wanted or wanted to be, everything I did not want. Defined by negatives. There was no way I was going back inside while any of them were still there. Trespassers. But there was no way I could get shot of them either, not in the state they were in by now. Worse still, the state I was in myself.

I stood there trembling with impotent rage.

What to do?

Where to go?

Nothing.

Nowhere.

Not with people.

To hell with people.

Nowhere where they'd find me.

I crossed the road and leaned on the bridge and glared downstream, my mind a match for the pummelling noise behind me and the surging swirl beneath my feet.

Just then a thin moon splintered from a bank of clouds, its mist-smeared light revealing the shrouded shape of a wintering cabin cruiser snugly tethered to the bank a couple of fields away downstream.

Because he wasn't there, Jan doesn't know what happened next so I'll tell it, but I'd better say at the start that I'm not a writer, not like Jan is, he really loves it, anyone would have to, to work all day then come home and write most of the evenings, not to mention weekends. I have to prise him from his room if I want him to go out, and God knows when he gets to bed most nights. I'm bad enough, being addicted to watching videos in bed, I can still be at it, eyes glued at two in the morning, but if I go to the bathroom to try and break the spell he's still there scribbling away. I think he's only ever really truly happy when he's writing, it's the only time when he's in focus – when he's doing what he says he lives for.

I envy him, because there's nothing that's like that for me. Well, sex of course, but that's different, that's because I'm human, it's nothing extra, nothing special. What makes me happiest, as a matter of fact, is just life. I mean eating and sleeping and having sex and lying in the sun and playing tennis, and reading a really gripping book curled up on my bed, and being with friends, and wearing just the right clothes, and looking, just looking, at other people doing ordinary things, ‘watching the passing' my grandmother used to call it. I completely lack ambition, I suppose, I'm just happy to be here and to enjoy what comes along.

Some of my friends ask why I let Jan stay with me, he can't be much fun they say, but they don't see the best of him because he's so private. Writing Adam's story has something to do with his hiddenness. I think it's a story about himself, maybe a declaration. I'm not sure. But what I am sure of is that he needs me to be here, or rather he needs to be here with me. Not that I do much for him. I don't do his laundry, for instance, and he feeds himself (and me as well) most of the time, and being an inveterate tidier he tends to do most of the house cleaning. In fact, he doesn't make any demands, I wish he would sometimes because it's nice to be asked to do things for a
friend, but he never does, I have to suss out what he wants and then offer or just get on and do it. I've talked to him about it, of course, we talk about
everything
, which is another reason why I like him so much (love him, I suppose), and he goes on about imposing on people, hating to feel that someone is doing something for him only because they have to, or worse, because they've been manipulated into doing it, emotionally blackmailed.

[– Aren't you supposed to be telling what happened after I left the party?

– I'm going to, be quiet, please.

– And you're the one who says she doesn't like writing!

– It's just the way it's coming out.

– You never could tell a story.

– Rubbish, there's more than one way to tell a story.]

The first day I saw him, standing in the toll-house living room, he looked like the ghost of a ghost. Bony-thin to the point of wispy, blenched, miserable, those big, gripping, hard, grey-green eyes red-rimmed and bleary and staring at me with a mixture of fright and defiance. So first it was the eyes that got me and then later, as he picked through the stuff I'd brought and the eyes were busy elsewhere, it was the hands – long-fingered, thin-boned, talking hands. (I have a thing about hands, I love them, I think they're one of the most beautiful parts of the body, but I can't stand people with ugly hands, especially short stubby fingers and fat palms.)