The Toll Bridge (7 page)

‘For God's sake, don't encourage him,' I said while we ate.

‘Why not? I like him.'

‘I told you – he wants to stay.'

‘He'd be fun. No one would mind.'

‘I'd mind. There's something odd about him.'

‘Odd?'

‘The way he looks sometimes.'

‘You just don't want any competition.'

‘Rubbish! Anyway, it doesn't matter what you think, the toll bridge is my place, I'll decide who stays there, thanks.'

She laughed. ‘I'm going to call you Janus.'

‘Who's he when he's at home?'

‘The Roman god? Well, pre-Roman actually.'

‘Don't know any gods, I'm glad to say.'

‘You ought to know Janus, though. For one thing he's the god of bridges.'

‘Terrific.'

‘As well as doors and passages and archways. And he has two faces. So he can see what's coming both ways, I suppose.'

‘Or going, depending on how you look at it.'

‘You keep the bridge and you're also two-faced, so I'll call you Jan, son of Janus.'

‘Compliments now.'

‘Well, you are. In the nicest possible way of course.'

‘And what way is that?'

‘Take Adam.'

‘You take him, you're the one who's after him.'

‘Are you sure about that?'

‘What?'

‘You say he's odd but really you're jealous because he's more good-looking than you and because I fancy him.'

‘I get it – it's the truth game.'

‘And you're being two-faced about Gill, who you're keeping on a string while making eyes at me.'

‘I like that! You don't mince words once you start.'

‘I've been kind to you till now because you weren't very well.'

‘But not any more?'

‘I reckon you're about as normal now as you'll ever be, don't you, Jan dear?'

‘Prefer my proper name, if you don't mind.'

‘You call me Tess. Just because I'm big-hearted enough to fetch your groceries from Tesco's sometimes. Why shouldn't I call you Jan? What's sauce for the goose.'

‘Jan's a girl's name.'

‘It's both, as a matter of fact. It means John in some languages. But when I use it it means a junior Janus who looks both ways at once and can't make up his mind which way to go because he doesn't know whether he's coming or going.'

There was a roaring cheer from the pub.

‘Sounds like a winner,' Tess said.

‘I suppose that means we'll be graced with the presence of the adorable Adam again just when we're having such a deliriously cosy chat.'

Another prolonged roar.

Tess said, ‘You know it can only be friends between us? I mean, I like you a lot. But in the sort of way sex would spoil somehow.'

‘Spoil!'

‘Honest . . . Janus!'

‘D'you have to call me that?'

‘Yes, let me, go on, I like it!' She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

I was supposed to smile. ‘All right, have it your own way.'

‘Good. I win.'

‘Was it a competition?'

Another, more drunken roar.

‘There's a lot of it about.'

Followed by screams and shouts and then a sudden silence.

I recited,

‘One of yours?'

‘D.H. Lawrence.'

‘How do you do it?'

‘What?'

‘Remember all that stuff.'

‘Don't know. Always have. A gift, I suppose.'

‘What teachers call clever, you mean.'

‘Having a good memory?'

‘For facts and figures and quotations and stuff like that. Not for people. Not for things that matter. No wonder they put you a year ahead. But get back to money.'

‘Doesn't everything always.'

‘There's nothing wrong with filthy lucre. Depends how you use it.'

‘And how you get it maybe? Just think – they were like us once, that lot in there. Ordinary, normal, sane, poverty-stricken schoolkids.'

‘Is that how you feel, like an et cetera schoolkid?'

‘Yes and no. Yes up to the last few weeks, and no, not since The Glums started to clear. Don't know what I feel, to be honest, except empty. Haven't a clue what I want, either. Not whatever is supposed to come next though. Grown up or adult or whatever. Do you?'

She was feeding snips from her sandwiches to a family of mallards cadging on the water at our feet, who gobbled, cackled, and paddled off, as if they knew there was nothing more to be had from us.

‘Don't think about it too much.'

‘You're all now, you! Do you want to be, though? Adult and all that.'

‘Don't you?'

‘Not if it means being lumbered with some endless job and a family and a mortgage and a house to do odd jobs on every weekend or any of that sort of garbage.'

‘All that responsibility is what you mean.'

‘Yes, OK, all that responsibility. I don't want it, thanks. But I don't want to go on being a schoolkid, either. Had enough of that.'

‘Stuck in limboland, then, aren't you? Don't know whether you're coming or going. Like I said – facing both ways again.'

The barman who'd served us came across the grass with the forced nonchalance of someone on an urgent mission who at the same time is trying not to frighten the paying customers and, crouching down between us, said, ‘Weren't you with the young guy in the grotty blue sweater?'

We nodded, sensing trouble.

‘Well, he's stirred up a bit of aggro in the bar.'

‘What's happened?' Tess asked.

‘Wanted to have a go with the yard-of-ale but the others wouldn't let him – they were having a competition, you see. Your friend insisted, and there was a bit of a row. Someone grabbed the yard, but it broke and, well – your friend cut himself. There's blood spilt and beer and not a happy reaction from the others. Could you come and help sort him out?'

‘The idiot,' I said.

‘Come on,' Tess said. ‘We can't just leave him.'

‘Yes, we can. We're not responsible.'

‘We brought him.'

‘So? We don't have to take him back, do we? He's a sponger. He'll just upset everything. Let him take care of himself.'

But I followed her into the pub.

6

Inside there is the kind of unnatural quiet with dark mutterings, and resentful glances, and one or two people determinedly ignoring what's going on that you only get in the aftermath of an unpleasant scene in a public place where people are supposed to be enjoying themselves.

The yuppies and undergrads have separated to either side of the disaster area, their undisguised belligerence directed at Adam, who is slumped in a chair in the middle of the deserted arena, wild-eyed and sullen. A brisk middle-aged woman, whom I take to be the landlady, is bandaging his left hand while a young barmaid mops the floor round their feet.

Tess and I edge our way through the throng, me trying to pretend we're nothing to do with this and are invisible anyhow, and take up stations on either side of the wounded public enemy.

‘You all right?' Tess mutters.

‘Yeah, I'm OK,' he says and suddenly turns on that surprising vulpine grin. It's as though he's a character in a play whose reactions are remotely controlled by a mischievous dramatist.

‘Look,' says the landlady, ‘it would be a good idea if you got him out of here.'

‘Haven't had my go yet,' Adam says and stares nuke-eyed at the yard boys.

Tess says, ‘We'll take you home.'

‘Home?' I mutter.

‘Shut up and help,' she mutters back, and, taking Adam by his good arm, says firmly, ‘Come on, we're leaving.'

Irresistible Tess. Adam allows her to lead him away without another word, me following, a reluctant rearguard.

7

How easily circumstances change people, their moods, their feelings, their attitudes to themselves and the world around them. An hour earlier as we rowed upriver, relaxed, happy in the sun, I'd felt part of the landscape – at one with the world. Now, everything is reversed, Adam broodily nursing his hand, sitting where I had sat, in the stem cosied up to Tess, me tense as I row us downstream, sweating in what now seems an unfriendly sun, and feeling awkward, like an alien.

For a while I take out my simmering anger on the river, sculling through the water with as much force as I can. But soon my strength weakens; then only words will do.

I say, glaring at Adam, ‘You're a pain in the arse, you know that, don't you!'

He refuses to look, his head turned away.

‘Leave him alone,' Tess says. ‘I'd have thought you'd be on his side, not on theirs.'

‘I'm not on their side and I'm not on his, I'm on my own.'

‘Selfish prig! You don't deserve any friends.'

‘He's nothing but trouble.'

‘And you're a jerk.'

‘Oh, get stuffed!'

8