The Toll Bridge (30 page)

As Jan returned to the living room by the back door Tess and Gill came in by the front. There was an awkward pause as Jan and Gill scowled across the room at each other.

‘Hi,' they said in inevitable comic unison.

‘I've explained,' Tess said quickly.

‘He's still sleeping,' Jan said.

‘I'll take a look,' Tess said, and hurried off, glad to escape.

Jan and Gill stood in silence contemplating each other, figures posed in a domestic still life.

When the silence became unbearable Gill said, ‘We should talk.'

‘Tess won't be long.'

‘But we must.'

‘Coffee or something?'

‘No! Thanks.'

Unable to help herself, Gill closed the living-room door. Her letters were gone. She let out a gasp.

Jan, knowing, said nothing but went to the fire, stirred it with a foot and laid on another log.

Gill wandered round the room, inspecting it distractedly. Before, she had always poked about among the things in Jan's room and he hadn't minded, had rather liked it, in fact, as he had liked her caressing him while they sat and talked – playing with his hair, fiddling with his ears, stroking his legs. He was one of those for whom physical contact, the language of the fingers, was a needed way of communication. But it was also a privilege of friendship. Handling his possessions was an extension of this tactile pleasure. Now he found Gill's assumption of the privilege irritating. He wanted to tell her to leave things alone as he would have told a stranger. He knew that this was unreasonable: Gill was only continuing their relationship from where they had left off. It was he who had changed.

‘Why didn't you answer my letters?' Gill said with the sudden brusqueness of someone forcing herself, through clenched teeth as it were, to speak. Having got it out, she turned to face him.

‘What's this about Adam?' Jan said.

‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing!'

‘Yes! No, not nothing. I don't want to talk about that, I want to talk about us. You're hurting me, you know that, do you?'

‘I don't mean to. It's just the way things are. Don't know what to say.'

‘That's a change!'

‘Is all this just because I stuck your letters on the door?'

‘No, all this is not
just
because you stuck my letters on the door, though that's bad enough. It's not even
just
because you didn't answer them, either. It's about what those things mean. Can't you see that? It's about you and me and about you paying me some
attention
. Don't you know how important that is to people?' Tears welled in her eyes. She brushed them angrily away. ‘No one has ever hurt me the way you have. Never! It hurts so much I don't know what to do!'

Tears flowed again. Again she wiped them away. Took deep breaths.

She turned impatiently from him, went to the front window pretending to look out at the bridge. Jan remained unmoving by the fire.

After a while she said, ‘Didn't mean to say that. Kept telling myself not to say things like that. It's so
boring
saying things like that!' She gave a little rueful laugh and slapped her thigh in frustration. ‘And I was determined not to cry. I don't want to. I'm not trying to use it against you.'

Jan, struggling with his own feelings, managed to say, ‘You know me well enough to know I don't think like that.'

She turned to face him again. ‘But I don't seem to know you well enough to know why you're hurting me the way you are.'

Jan couldn't look at her. ‘I'm not sure I know myself. That's why I'm here, to find out things like that.'

‘Can't we at least talk about it? Don't I deserve that? Don't you owe me that much?'

Jan heard himself take in and let out the long slow breath of resignation.

He nodded, unable to speak.

His silence was broken by Tess shouting his name.

For Tess, climbing apprehensively down the two narrow steps that led from the cockpit into the cold dammy gloom of the cabin, entering the boat felt like descending into a tomb.

She clasped her hand over her mouth as she looked down at Adam's unconscious pasty face and the blood-stained bandage wrapped like a
sweatband round his head. He was breathing heavily through a gaping mouth, each breath rasping in his throat.

There are moments that change people. No, wrong; try again. There are moments when people change. These moments are not isolated, not separate, not removed from the rest of life. They are not independent atoms of existence that suddenly break into your life for no reason. They are made, are created by the alphabet of your life – the ever-shifting phonemes of existence, which sometimes gather into concentrated patterns of such intensity, such unmistakable clarity and significance, that suddenly you know something about yourself, your own
self
, for the first time. Some hidden part of you enters your consciousness. Recognized, acknowledged, accepted, it becomes part of the you you know.

This is how Jan thought later.

Tess, overcome in the cabin at the sight of Adam, knew only the impact of the moment as the narrowing cone of the past few weeks, past few days, past few hours, past few minutes reached a concentration sharp enough to penetrate her soul.

What phonemes spoke to her as she stood in the waist of the boat?

Regret: limb-weakening, stomach-sickening

Fright: bowel-loosening, nerve-jangling, sweat-making

Pity: tear-inducing

Disgust: fist-clenching, mouth-twisting

Anger: breath-catching, heart-gripping

And, counterpoint to these negatives, a positive that held them in play as the pulsing rhythm of a harmonic holds discords, the beat of the heart driving the flow of blood, she was also possessed by (God, how words fail us now!)

Joy

Gladness

Exhilaration

Zest

As she endured this, Tess felt as if she were split in two: one part of her suffering regret and guilt and sorrow; the other dispassionate, detached, cool, observing the self who suffered and taking pleasure in it.

How can I be like this? she wondered. Am I mad? Or sick? Or am I wicked? Evil?

Tess did not know whether she believed in Evil – in an entity, an out-there presence or force. The Devil. Her mother did. But Tess regarded that as a hangover from her mother's Catholic convent-school upbringing. Her father never used the word. She didn't know whether he believed in Evil or not. He always avoided talking of such things. Right and wrong, yes, he talked about that. But never about Evil. She herself had never thought it mattered enough to think about. Yet here she was, using the word about herself! Was it her mother speaking in her?

Tess had sometimes caught herself thinking and saying things that came straight out of her parents' mouths. Just as she sometimes caught herself walking like her mother or using her hands like her father. Or, most disturbing, she'd look in the mirror and suddenly see not her eyes but her father's, not her nose but her mother's, and always her father's wide mouth – his lips, their shape and length and thickness, and the odd little upward curve at the left-hand corner that made her look even when blank-faced as if she were smirking slightly, a feature that sometimes landed her in trouble with touchy teachers. How weird, she thought, to be such a mix-and-match product of your parents. And not only your parents but of all your ancestors back to Adam and Eve!

Eve and evil! Dear God! No, not evil, whether Evil existed or not. A stupid idiotic muttonheaded cretinous moronic crapbrained grade-A fool perhaps, but not evil. And not sick. Just a doltbungler. Not mad. Just a pukefaceturdtwit. And enjoying it!

She went on bludgeoning herself with words till the tears ran; and observed herself crying with pleasure. She was glad that all this could happen to her, she wouldn't deny it, which was not mad nor sick nor evil but life, human life – being alive. Pleasure not at
what
she had done or what she was, but
that
she had done and that she was. The tears were merely an outward and visible sign that she wished for better
than
she had done and than she was.

Perhaps it is in this attitude to herself that Tess differs most from Jan: she glorying in what she is, what life is, happy or sad, and, yes, bad or good, a born optimist; he suspicious of himself, sceptical of life, a born pessimist. Tess feels at home in the world, at home with it; Jan feels a stranger, a visitor only, uncomfortable with the world, alien even, someone waiting, bags packed, ready to leave.

Foraging such thoughts, chastened in her soul, she wiped the tears away, before bending over Adam to give him a critical look.

As her face came close to his, Adam's eyes opened and he saw her.

Tess stepped back, letting out a little gasp. Adam sat up, mouth gaping as if to shout, but no sound came.

‘It's all right, it's only me!' Tess spluttered.

Adam's mouth moved as if talking fast but again no sound came. His eyes were wide and wild. He sprang to his feet, the blanket tumbling from him, but sat down again on the edge of the bunk as if felled by a blow, his face wincing with pain. He put a hand to his head, found the bandage, felt it with both hands, panic now adding to the look of pain.

‘Don't move!' Tess said. ‘You've hurt your head.' And instinctively took a step towards him, but Adam scrambled away along the bunk until he was wedged against the bulkhead, glaring at her like a wounded cornered animal.

Tess retreated to the cabin door, at a loss to know what do, jabbering, ‘It's only me, Tess, you've had an accident or something, I'm not sure, but anyway calm down, it's OK, I'm not going to hurt you.' She heard herself laugh in the hysterical way people do when they're frightened. ‘Should I get Jan? You'd probably prefer to talk to him.'

She began to back out of the cabin. ‘Stay quiet. Put a blanket round you, you're only in your – you'll get cold, it's freezing in here, you probably have concussion or something, I'll just fetch Jan, hang on –'

As soon as she was on the bank she started yelling Jan's name.

Jan came running. Gill followed as far as the steps outside the back door.

‘Something's up,' Tess said, meeting Jan halfway across the lawn. She was trembling. ‘He woke up and went crazy. I thought he was going to attack me.'

‘Bloody hell!'

‘It might be just because it's me. You know – he might be scared of what will happen after last night. He might be all right with you, he knows you best –'

In the cockpit Jan bent down to look into the cabin. Adam was hunched up in the far corner of the bunk, a blanket gathered round him.

‘Hey, Adam,' Jan said quietly, cheerily, ‘it's me. You OK?'

No answer. Adam's eyes, ringed with dark circles, blazed at him.

Jan straightened up, looked at Tess watching from the bank, shrugged at her, bent to look at Adam again.

‘How'd you like to come into the house where it's warm?'

No reply. Jan stepped down one step into the cabin, Adam stiffened, Jan stopped.

‘Look, it's all right, what're you worried about?'

He took another step.

‘I'm on my own.'

Another step brought him to the cabin floor.

Adam was shaking his head and making pushing-away movements with a hand. His mouth was working too but all that came out were gasping breaths.

Jan said quickly, ‘I'm coming no further, it's OK, I'll just sit here, all right? Just want to talk to you.'

Adam waited. Jan perched on the edge of the bunk, ready to flit, his eyes never leaving Adam as he tried to weigh up his odd behaviour. By instinct he kept up a flow of soothing placatory talk.

‘What's up? Is it your head? Does it hurt? I think you banged it somehow, anyway there's a cut just above your forehead, not a big one, but it was bleeding and I bandaged it, I think it'll be OK, nothing serious, it'll heal in a couple of days, but you might be suffering from a bit of concussion, what d'you think?' He paused. No reply. ‘I don't know what happened, probably an accident. D'you remember?' No reply. ‘Well, you really were soaking it up last night, you have to admit.' He tried a smile. Nothing in return, only the puzzled frightened watchful stare. ‘Probably suffering from a hangover as well.' Still nothing. ‘Damn near blotto, I expect.' He returned his face to its concerned serious look. ‘You don't remember anything about last night?'

A pause. Then Adam shook his head, just once, but enough. A small triumph.

‘No, well, I'm not surprised, to be honest. You'll be fine by tomorrow. Need to sleep it off, I guess. How about coming into the house? It's warm in there. The old fire blazing. I'll make you something to eat if you like. Some breakfast maybe, eh? Then if you want you can go to bed. Sleep better in your own bed. How about it?'

He felt like an over-tolerant dad wheedling a pesky infant.

Adam shifted, easing forward from his position huddled in the
corner. His mouth started working but again made no sound. He jabbed a finger at his face followed by a frustrated gesture that signalled, ‘I can't, I can't!'

Jan said, appalled, ‘You can't talk?'

Adam shook his head, eyes pleading.

‘Grief!' Jan heard himself say before he could prevent it. A new panic flushed through him. He'd heard of concussion causing temporary loss of memory but never of it causing loss of voice. What if Adam was really badly hurt? Brain-damaged even?

‘Look, Adam,' he said, man-to-man serious now, ‘we'd better get a doctor, there might be –'

The effect was alarming. Adam sprang to his feet, wild and hunted again, and frantically waving both hands,
no no no
. Jan jumped up too, thinking he was about to be attacked, his own hands raised as a man at gunpoint. ‘Right, OK, no doctor, no doctor –'

The pair of them were square to each other now, an arm's length apart, Adam poised for flight, the blanket thrown aside.