The Toll Bridge (27 page)

Adam was also pleasantly warm under the blanket, which is more
than I could say for myself. The exertion of getting him into the cabin and tending him had kept me warm – in fact I'd been so busy that I hadn't been aware of the cold. Now that he was settled and all I had to do was sit there and keep watch, I quickly cooled till I was shivering and had time to notice how I felt. Which was bone weary and miserable. The muscles in my arms and legs didn't just feel weak, to say which implies they still had some strength, but were in an anti-energy crisis. I was sure that if I stood up my legs would flobble under me like a couple of sausage balloons losing air. And if there'd been anything to drink, which I dearly craved, I couldn't have picked up the glass because my arms would have lolloped around as they do when you've lain on them too long.

Sleep was also something I longed for but couldn't achieve. Sitting up, I'd nod off and startle awake again at once. Lying down, the bitter cold seemed worse and woke me up. And so sitting up and lying down by turns a dreary hour passed.

I didn't get far, wondering what to do next, either. The only thought that occupied my mind with any tenacity was a dreary sequence of variations on the theme of unfairness. Which went something like this:

How in hell has all this happened to me? Just because I've been fool enough to give houseroom to a down-and-out would-be squatter, a half-drowned burglar with a big cock and the smile of a dog on heat? Just because of an accident, a quirk, a happenstance – unplanned, unintended, unwanted, unwilled, unprovoked (after all, I'd only been minding my own business stuck out in the middle of nowhere), uninvited, unannounced, undeserved, unforeseen, unforetold, unforgivable, unimagined, unfair.

Unfair, that's what it is, unfair, unfair, unfair.

Et cetera. On and on.

Unfair is such a playground word. The kids' game complaint. The blub of the impotent. The rail of the naïve against the wily. The howl of the baby-innocent against the street-wise. The battle cry of those who desire that no one in the world shall be better off than they are themselves. The pule of the weak benighted temporary deluded mistaken human race against the unthinkable unplumbed unmoved eternal infinity of the vast unregarding forever. What fools these mortals be.

I sat there, lay there, huddled against the frosted night, and whinged.
I'd come to this place, this wilderness, to escape imposition, to strip myself down in order to gain control of myself and build myself up in my own image, and what had happened? Taken over and buggered up, sod it!

Oh, lusty satisfaction of the sexual curse!

4

The Gaz lamp stuttered; fuel running out and no spare can. I took a close look at Adam before the light died. Sound asleep, lying on his back, one bare arm curled loosely round his head, a patch of dried blood staining the bandage that circled his brow. The failing light softened the features of his face, deepened the blackness of his dishevelled hair, lent the patina of stone to the folds of grey blanket that cloaked his body like a shroud – disturbing image of a sculpted memorial to a fallen soldier. Not one of those hero-lies, no no, but a boy cut down before the truth of life had woken him from the sleep of innocence.

Soon the cabin would be as dark as the grave. Already it was cold enough for a tomb and I cold enough to be a ghost. Certainly, I felt like one, standing over Adam, as if waiting to welcome him to the afterlife, a prince of death beside a sleeping beauty.

Smiling to myself at that thought, I bent down and kissed him lightly on the cheek. But he flinched at the touch of my chilly lips, shifted his head away, caught at his breath, drew his exposed arm under the blanket, turned onto his side, and slipped into deep quiet slumber again.

For sure, being no prince of any kind I lacked the magic touch.

At that moment, as if on cue, the light went out with a final flare and an expiring hiss.

5

Sailors say the dogwatch is the worst. Four till six in the morning. Sitting in the deep before-dawn dark with only my own thoughts for company, this dogwatch was the hardest time of my time at the
bridge. A time of reckoning. Of recognition. A slithery time of fractured memories bobbing up from buried passages of my life, and only intuition for guide – the ancient way of knowledge that bridges old Adam to new.

6

The minutes flicked, the hours passed, the smudge of dawn finally arrived. Seven thirty-five. Time to make a move.

We settled down for the night, Gill in the spare room next to me in mine. But after half an hour, when I was warm and cosy and might have drifted off, I heard Gill's door open and the bathroom door close, followed by the pitiful sound of retching.

I went to the bathroom door and said as softly as I could, ‘Gill, are you OK?' No answer, just more retching. Mum poked her head out from her room, the very thing I was hoping wouldn't happen. I waved her back inside, whispering, ‘I'll look after her,' and luckily she didn't insist.

After a few minutes Gill came out looking sheepish (why do people feel guilty when they've been sick?), I asked her if there was anything that would help, she said that it sounded silly but what she wanted more than anything was a bowl of cornflakes and warm milk, so downstairs we went to the kitchen, which was at least toasty warm from the Aga, where I sat her at the table, heated some milk, and let her make her own cornflake mix, which ended up a soggy stodge that she gobbled up as if she were starving.

After that we sat back and looked at each other. Neither of us said anything for quite a while, the house breathed around us, the coal in the Aga shifted in its belly, the kitchen clock click-clacked.

Now I could look at her properly, not fashed by goings-on at the bridge, and she'd had a wash and tidied herself up, I could see that she was actually rather pretty, sexy even, blonde straight hair, triangular face, wide apart large blue eyes, a straight firm slim nose, long mouth with full lips, good and attractively irregular teeth, chin a little too sharp-pointed perhaps, and a slim figure. Not good hands, though – too plump, thumbs a bit stubby – no match for her boyfriend's.

Out of genuine curiosity and not just for something to say, I asked her how she and Jan got together. ‘Piers,' she said, ‘I can't
think of him as Jan, sorry!' ‘Piers,' I said. It always seemed such a naff name to me, Piers Plowman at one end (not Jan at all!) and Piers out-of-the-top-drawer at the other (not Jan either), but nor was he a Pierre or a Peer or a Pedro or a Pietro or a Pyotr or a Cephas or any kind of Peter, which was too stone-age man to suit him, no rock he, and no no no not a Pete or a Pet, none of those, and yet they say what's in a name – everything, it seems to me. People should be careful with their names and the names they give their children. In fact in my opinion there ought to be a custom whereby everyone has a chance to pick the name they want for themselves when they are, say, sixteen or eighteen or whatever age we're supposed to become adult. After all, actors change their names to fit the image they want (Marion Michael Morrison became John Wayne, ‘nuff said), writers often have pen names (George Eliot = Mary Ann Evans, George Orwell = Eric Blair), nuns and monks take different names (Sister Mary Joseph could once have been Ms Cheryl Smith, God help her) and of course women are always changing part of their name when they get married and thereby become the nominal possession of their husband and
history
, a slave collar that won't be hung round my neck by anyone, let me give notice.