The Toll Bridge (34 page)

In the shelter Jan turned Tess to him and held her loosely, his arms round her neck.

‘Come on, this isn't my Tess.'

She tried to smile but was close to tears.

‘What's up?'

‘Everything.'

‘What's everything?'

‘The last few days, Adam, Gill, me – everything.'

Jan said nothing. Brushed wet hair from her eyes.

Tess sniffled, wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Hardly slept since Wednesday.'

Snow swirled round their feet. They nestled closer, Tess resting her brow on Jan's chest, his chin on her head.

‘And I'll have to see the doctor,' she mumbled.

Jan tried to take a step back to look her in the face but she prevented him.

‘What's matter? Are you ill?'

‘He'll give me a heavy lecture, I expect. You'll laugh.'

‘Why? What about?'

‘Taking stupid risks, not being responsible.'

‘What sort of risks?'

‘Wasn't going to tell you, but –' She sniffled and raised her head and wiped her nose again and could look him in the eyes now. ‘Thursday night, while you were at my place –' She paused, the words clogging in her throat.

Jan said, ‘I know.'

‘He told you?'

‘No.'

‘Guessed?'

‘Saw.'

Now it was Tess who tried to step back and Jan who held her still. He told her of his jealousy and his lust and about stealing out of the house and running to the bridge and peeking into the living room and watching her and Adam at it in front of the fire, and how happy he'd been for them. But he left Bob out of the story.

Tess squinted at him, tears staunched by an astringent douche of embarrassment.

‘You never!'

He nodded, grinning.

‘Pervert!'

‘Sexpot!'

‘Voyeur!'

‘Crrritic!'

They cuddled against the cold and hung on for a while before Tess said,

‘I will, though, have to see the doc I mean, and I'm worried sick.'

‘You'll be OK.'

‘How can you say that! How can you know! I was stupid. I've always told myself I'd never be that stupid, but I was, and now I'll have to have awful embarrassing tests and wait till the results come through, and even then, if I'm HIV, nobody can tell for months, longer – years –!' She was crying now.

‘Hey, hey! Steady!'

‘It's all right for you to say that! Steady! What does
steady
mean? Doesn't change anything, does it!' She stamped her foot in desperation.

‘I know, I know, but I don't know what else to say. I don't blame you or anything. And I'm not going to desert you whatever happens . . . I'm here . . . OK?'

‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know, I'm being hysterical, but I
feel
hysterical, dammit!'

‘Now listen, you! Don't you desert me now. You go twitchy, who've I got to keep me right?'

‘I need to be kept right sometimes as well, you know.'

‘Now she tells me! And I've always thought of you as confident, knowing who you are, what you want.'

‘Well, I'm not!'

‘You're not! Dear God, another shock! Well, it's enough for me that I believe you are, so don't go letting me down.'

He wiped her tears away and they clung to each other again, weaving gently back and forth, till Tess said,

‘Hello, friend.'

‘Hi, pal.'

‘I'm feeling the cold a bit.'

‘Me too. Want to go?'

‘Dunno whether I can face it.'

‘I'm hardly the one to say so, but maybe that's the very thing you should do.'

‘On the falling off a horse principle?'

‘Something like that.'

‘You know, when it comes down to it, you're a terrible moralist.'

‘There you go, insulting me again.'

‘Well, somebody has to tell you the truth about yourself.'

‘And what else are friends for?'

‘Something like that.'

Tess released herself, glowered at the snowbound scene around them. The breeze had dropped, the snow had eased. She said, ‘Come on then. Mount up.'

‘Joy at last.'

She laughed and turned to go, but before setting off, her back to him, said in a small voice, ‘Jan, seriously – do I matter that much?'

Jan took a deep breath. ‘Nobody more.'

Tess left a pause before saying, ‘Why?'

‘When I understand that myself, you'll be the first to know.'

She turned to face him again, smiling. ‘I was right to call you Janus.'

‘I know.'

‘Now you do, then you didn't.'

‘Maybe that's the reason.'

As we came round the bend into the straight stretch of road leading to the bridge, Tess said, ‘Do you see what I see?'

An unmistakable figure in the middle of the bridge by the downstream parapet.

‘Now what's he up to?'

There was something about his posture that made the pit of the belly lurch.

‘He's fiddling with something round his ankles.'

‘Doing up his laces?'

It was hard to be sure through the curtain of snow.

Before we could see clearly, Adam stood up straight, leaned on the parapet, peered down into the river as if checking he was in the right place, shuffled round, hitched his bottom up onto the parapet, swung his legs up and then pushed himself to his feet.

By this time we were close enough to see clearly.

‘Rope!' Tess exclaimed. ‘Round his ankles!'

‘Christ, no!'

We started to run. A car appeared, driving slowly over the bridge from the other side.

‘Adam!' Jan shouted. ‘Adam! No!'

Adam's head snapped round in our direction. He yelled, ‘Go away!' and shuffled, trying to twist himself towards the river. The car, almost to him now, blew its horn. Adam swung in its direction, his hobbled feet slipped and he fell backward just as the car went by, hitting its roof, bouncing off, and falling to the road. The car swerved, braked, and, its wheels locking, skidded across the bridge, turning back to front as it went and ending up with an almost delicate bump against the corner of the house.

We reached Adam seconds later. He lay on his side, growling and groaning and cursing and holding his leg at the knee.

As we bent down to take hold of him a man's voice shouted from the car, ‘Don't touch him! Lie still!'

We both straightened up like children yelled at in school. The car was a black Ford Granada. We could see the driver through the windscreen, the wiper still going: short-cropped silver-grey hair, large round florid face; he was using a car phone.

But Adam went on howling in pain and anger. He tried to get up but instantly collapsed with an excruciating scream that shook us out of our schoolkid obedience. Jan pulled off his anorak, rolled it into a bundle and placed it under Adam's head before holding him by the
shoulders, all the time saying, ‘Steady, steady, take it easy, you mustn't move, looks like you've broken your leg.' Adam's face was pallid, a sickly yellow against the snow, except for the wound on his brow which shone a hot raw red.

While Jan tended Adam, Tess was examining the rope tied round his ankles, tracking its length over the parapet and down and looping back up again before it reached the water, the other end tied to the neck of one of the urn-shaped balusters. Her heart thumped with horror, for she realized what it meant; had sensed what Adam was doing from the moment she saw him.

‘We've got to fetch help,' she said and set off, only to be stopped by the man getting out of his car, holding out an arm and saying, ‘Hang on, where are you going?'

‘For help.'

‘Done. Phoned for an ambulance and the police. You'll be needed as a witness.'

Tess didn't like the sound of him: officious, overbearing. She said, ‘And I should fetch my dad.'

‘Why, what's he got to do with it?'

‘He's in charge of the bridge.'

The man hesitated, giving her a suspicious look before saying, ‘On the phone?'

Tess nodded.

‘Use mine. You shouldn't leave before the police get here.'

Tess got into the car. The driver walked over to Adam and surveyed the scene with a detachment that made Jan wonder whether he had any feelings.

‘What the hell was he up to?' the man said, but seeing the rope added, ‘Oh, yes, like that, is it.'

‘We can't leave him here,' Jan said, ‘he'll freeze to death.'

The man crouched down and inspected Adam's leg, feeling it as if prodding a marrow for ripeness. Adam let out a yelp. ‘Fractured, I'd say.'

‘The ambulance could take ages. Has to come from the hospital in town, and with this weather –'

The man straightened up. ‘Doesn't matter. Could be injuries to his back, his head, anything. Dangerous to shift him. And you know how bloody touchy the insurance is these days.'

Adam went suddenly silent. He stared at the man with wild panicked eyes.

Jan felt trapped, all the old home-school constrictions clamped over him again. He wanted to pick Adam up and run.

‘At least we should try and keep him warm,' he said, hearing the desperation in his voice. ‘I'll get some blankets.'

‘Where from?'

It struck Jan that the man didn't know who he and Adam were.

‘The toll house. We live here.'

His eyes swam. He glanced down at Adam, beautiful lost desperate frightened Adam-that-was-not-Adam, in whose eyes glaring back at him he read the same understanding: that this was the beginning of an end. He bent down, kissed him on the forehead, said quietly, ‘I'll be back. I'm going for some blankets.'

[– The rest of that day was horrible.

– One of the worst of my life.
The
worst.

– Do we have to write it all?

– Do I, you mean. The police, the ambulance, your father, that bull-headed Granada lout, all of them wanting to know who Adam was and what had happened and how and why and the lout yammering on about his precious car and his insurance and how innocent he was and how obvious it was what Adam had been ‘up to', and Adam being taken away and them not letting us go with him. It was awful.

– So do we have to write it all? Just thinking about it makes me feel sick.

– The thing I shan't ever forget, even if I forget all the rest of it, is them lifting Adam into the ambulance, strapped down, and him pleading for me to help him, and not being able to do
anything
, not a thing, and the doors closing and the ambulance driving off across the bridge and disappearing through the snow like a sarcophagus on wheels. I dream about it.

– I know, I know.

– And do you know that ‘sarcophagus' comes from a Greek word meaning ‘stone that devours flesh'?

– No, I didn't know that and I think I wish you hadn't mentioned it.

– Appropriate though, don't you think? Poetic. Remember how spelled he was by the stones in the Kafka story?

– I told you this part would get you all upset.

– Upset! What's wrong with being upset? Should I just dam it all up, keep it in, wear a good old English stiff upper lip?

– Don't.]

Of course, as soon as they discovered we didn't know who Adam really was, consternation collided with the vent. What on earth did we think we were doing? Didn't we know what a risk we'd taken? What if he were a violent nutcase? Didn't Jan realize how irresponsible he'd been? Et cetera,
ad infinitum.
They demanded the whole story. We gave them an edited version with the ultra-private bits left out.

The mills of officialdom ground small. Telecommunications bleeped all day. One of Tess's photos of Adam was sent for matching against mugshots in the missing persons / wanted files. A policeman with a Dutch-uncle manner and a cool smile hinted about the possibility of charges against us for aiding and abetting and being accessories after the fact should Adam turn out to be ‘a naughty sort of laddie'. Statements were culled and written and signed.

Could I [Jan] see Adam?

Breath sucked between clamped teeth: No, no, not till everything was properly sorted out.

How was he?

In good hands, a bad break but he'd mend.

Had he said anything?

Nothing to report on that one, ‘old son'.

At least they agreed there was no need to contact Jan's parents ‘unless and until anything untoward comes to light'.

All this at the toll house: a couple of policemen, Bob Norris, Tess and Jan, the Granada driver having been dealt with first and sent on his way.

A bizarre moment in the middle of the questioning: They decided to break for coffee. Because they were in Jan's place, he was asked to make it. Mind-split from shock, observing himself performing the chore. The bobbies and Bob Norris warming their backsides at the fire as if they'd just dropped in for a friendly visit, discussing the weather and the prospects for the local soccer team. Jan glanced at Tess who was sitting forlornly at the table. She got up and joined him.

‘I'm going on ten,' she murmured. ‘What about you?'

‘Old enough to be sent to bed without any supper.'

‘That's what comes of being caught wanking in public.'

‘How crude.'

‘In training for life in the slammer.'

‘Is there anything we can do?'

‘Weep?'

‘Not in front of the children.'

‘I'm sorry, Jan.'

‘If I'd been here – if I hadn't left him –'

‘It's not your fault, don't blame yourself.'

One of the policemen returned to the table saying, ‘Now, you two, how about that coffee?'

And the questioning began again and went on till they'd had enough or got what they wanted and went, leaving us ‘in your tender care, Mr Norris. You'll see they behave themselves, won't you, and that they remain in the locality in case we need to question them further.'