The Toll Bridge (3 page)

‘If you'd like something to eat,' I say, weakened by his lost look, ‘there's bread on the table.'

He doesn't respond.

‘Adam?'

Nothing. I touch him on the shoulder. He recoils. His eyes, flicking into focus, widen as though in fright at seeing me beside him. I'm sure he is going to scream, but he catches himself, and smiles, grins rather, just like last night when I switched on the light, a fox's grin, wide-mouthed, lips stretched, showing bright handsome teeth.

‘There's bread on the table,' I repeat, ‘if you want it.'

‘Ah!' he says. ‘Right.' Springs up, full of energy again, attacks the loaf and honey with a taking-it-for-granted greed that rekindles my anger, and makes me decide I don't care who he is, I don't want to know, I don't want him here disturbing my life with the switchback emotions he stirs up, I've got to get rid of him as soon as I can.

6

A car horn sounds in the road. The postman with a parcel and a letter, the parcel addressed in Mother's writing, the letter in Gill's.

As the van drives off towards the village Tess Norris comes puttering along on her Suzuki 150, L-plate flapping. Two wheels cross without paying, but she always stops for a talk. Not that she'd pay anyway. Her father is in charge of the toll bridge and of maintenance on the estate. My boss, a joiner by trade and the sort of man who can turn his hand to anything. Tess is on her way to school, her last year, English Lit., French, and Maths.

‘Dad says can you manage without being relieved today? Urgent job at the hall.'

Her voice is muffled by her helmet and the putter of her engine. Her dark hazel eyes, all that's visible of her face, rouse me the more for being framed by the mask of her visor. The rest is ambiguous in old black leathers with a red flash down the sides. And biker's boots.

‘I'll be OK.'

‘Want anything?'

‘A loaf and a jar of honey.'

‘Already?'

I thumb at the house. ‘Visitor.'

‘Male or female?'

‘Male.'

‘Thought you were a hermit.'

‘Invited himself.'

‘Oh yes! I'll have a look this after.'

‘Be gone by then I hope.'

She taps my parcel with a black-gloved hand. ‘Weekly survival kit?'

‘What else?'

‘Mummy's boy!' She laughs and revs. ‘See you.'

‘Cheers.'

7

The hardest part, I'm finding, of telling this story –
one
of the hardest parts – is not only getting everything in, but getting everything in in the right place. Maybe this is the right place to explain about Tess.

I first met her the day after I arrived, just at the moment when I was wondering what the hell I had done. The day before, still high on adrenalin, the empty, damp bleakness of the house hadn't mattered, had even seemed just what I wanted. Satisfactory neglect. All the clutter of home left behind, all the suffocating
stuff
I'd grown up with cut away at last. Room to think. Make everything the way I wanted it, starting from scratch. From scratch with the house, from scratch with myself.

‘You've not brought any bedding and such,' Bob Norris said. ‘Told you at the interview that you'd need it.'

‘I'll be OK for tonight.'

‘I could fetch a few essentials from home to tide you over.'

‘I'll be OK, thanks. You said I'd have a couple of days to settle in. I'll go out tomorrow and buy what I need.'

‘Must like roughing it. But I suppose you do at your age.'

I spent a miserable night. Couldn't get the fire going, not knowing how to deal with a damp chimney or a wood fire, filled the house with choking smoke instead. Sandwiches, brought from home, tasted like cold dishcloth and gave me indigestion. An apple, to follow, only increased my hunger. All there was to drink was water because I didn't have tea or coffee or any of the everyday things you usually take for granted. By the time I hit bottom about ten o'clock, admitted defeat,
and walked to the village, the shops were shut of course, and at the pub door I suddenly felt such an idiotic mess I couldn't face the questions I knew the locals would ask. (The toll bridge and its fate were headline gossip I could have guessed even if Bob Norris hadn't already told me.) So I trailed back to the bridge and curled up as best I could in the only easy chair, hoping sleep would bring tomorrow quickly.

But I had reckoned without the night noises of a lonely riverside house, and without my own nervousness. Not the nervousness of fright, I wasn't scared, but the nervousness of being on my own for the first time in my life and of not knowing. Not knowing what caused the noises or why, not knowing if the skitterings across the floor were made by mice, whether the flitterings in the roof were birds roosting there that might invade my room, whether the ceaseless slurge of water passing under the bridge, sounding so much louder, more powerful, in the night, seeming to fill the house, meant the river had broken its banks and was flooding the place.

Once my mind is fixed on something I can't bear not knowing about it. So whenever a new sound caught my attention I got up to find out what caused it, which meant any warmth I'd managed to cook up, huddled in the chair, escaped, and I came back, usually little the wiser, chilled again, wearier, and narked.

In the way it often happens after a bad night, I fell asleep at last when dawn came, a smudged grey light that morning. And was woken, the next minute it seemed, the room bright with sun, by Bob Norris rattling at the door and calling my name, my mouth like a sewage farm, my body gutsick, painfully stiff, and my mind confused, not remembering where I was.

Bob laughed and teased, not taken in by the show of cheerfulness I tried to put on, and left me to pull myself together while he stood outside taking the few early morning tolls. I washed, brushed my teeth (still didn't need to shave more than twice a week), changed into fresh underclothes and shirt. But though this helped me feel physically better, the thought that already I had laundry to do and no one to do it for me and no washing machine to throw it into, finally made me face what I had brought upon myself.

All night long I'd told myself I was bound to feel strange at first, I'd soon settle down, get used to the place, make myself comfortable. But the sight of dirty clothes lying on the crushed old armchair in that bleak slummy room zapped any remaining particles of confidence and I wondered what the hell I was doing there.

Which was the moment when Tess walked in, carrying a bulging plastic bag and a blanket. Not, this first time, on the way to school, it being a Saturday, nor dressed in her biking leathers but in a loose white shirt and baggy washworn jeans and tennis shoes, a mane of lush jet-black hair framing the firm outlines of her face.

‘Is it all right to come in?' she said, dumping the blanket on top of my laundry. ‘Dad asked me to bring you this stuff.' She unpacked her plastic bag onto the muck-stained once-white pine table. Half-used packet of cornflakes, quarter of home-made brown loaf, jar of marmalade, bottle of milk, three eggs in a carton, quarter pound of farm butter, knife, fork, teaspoon, plate and mug, roll of paper towel. ‘Should see you through till you can shop.' She looked me over as I stood gawping across the table. ‘I'll give you a hand, if you like. You won't know your way around yet.'

All I could think was: Shut up, go away, I don't want any help, I'm going home, this is all a stupid mistake. What I managed to say was, ‘Thanks, sure, yes, I could do with some help.'

[– What you didn't know at the time was that I was thinking: Why can't this creep look after himself? What's wrong with him? Why didn't he sort himself out yesterday? Why should I spend my Saturday morning booby-sitting him? I'd planned to play tennis but Dad asked me to help because he was worried you might be disheartened and leave. Then he'd have trouble manning the bridge again. Did he ever tell you that you were the only applicant willing to take the job?]

So there I was that first Saturday morning, cold, hungry, aching, bog-eyed, wanting only, longing, to bolt back home at whatever cost of derision, but my way out blocked by this high-energy girl standing between me and escape like a jailer (which she was, after all, as she was only there to help keep me there).

This is how my friendship with Tess began, the first true friendship of my life. My closest friendship still.

8