The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman
There was no end to these surprises, she thought numbly. First I have a long-lost brother, and then he turns out to be the legal son. No—what was the word? Legitimate. So that made her illegitimate. Born out of wedlock. A bastard. That’s what they’d have said in the old days.
Not that anyone cared about that now, except that because of it she felt herself being pushed further and further to the edge of things. All the sympathy she’d been carefully educating herself to feel for Robert was blown away in a moment, so it couldn’t have been very real, she told herself. She was being shoved aside by this invisible cuckoo, this white son and heir of a proper marriage, while she was the result of something like an affair with a breakfast lady….
The food was getting cold on her plate. He wasn’t touching his, either.
“When’s he coming, this Robert?” she said. Her voice sounded shaky.
“The funeral’s on Wednesday. I’ll go up for that and bring him back. Ginny, he’s a nice boy. None of it’s his fault—”
“Oh, sure,” she said savagely. “It’s probably nobody’s fault. It’s probably just something you get, like measles or something. Nobody could have guessed, could they? Absolutely unpredictable…”
She’d never felt so angry, never been so surprised at herself, at him, at everything. She shoved her plate away and stood up.
“You don’t understand—”
“How can I understand when you don’t bloody well tell me things?” she stormed at him, feeling lightning in her eyes.
“Ginny, wait—”
“What’s the point? What else are you going to tell me? You found me in a ditch or something?”
“Listen…I know I should have told you before; I’ve already said I’m sorry about that. I realize now—”
“It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it? What else is there? What else is he going to do me out of?”
“He’s not going to do you out of anything, Ginny, for God’s sake—”
“He already has!”
“No, he hasn’t. Come on, this doesn’t change anything as far as we’re concerned. We’re the family, you and me; we’ll always be okay. He’s the one who’s lost, he’s the one who’s hurt.”
“Okay! Okay! D’you think I don’t realize that? I just don’t know what else you’re keeping from me—I mean, what else is there? All that stuff about Haiti—is that not true, either? Did she come from Jamaica or something? Or was she real in the first place? Did you just get me from a children’s home? Or maybe she wasn’t an artist—is that it? Maybe she was just a shop assistant or something, maybe you just fancied her when you went in to buy a pair of socks, and then you were stuck with me as a result—”
“Ginny, this isn’t getting us anywhere. If you knew how much I wish—”
“I don’t care what you wish, Dad, I really don’t.”
“At least let me—”
“And you couldn’t even keep her paintings! Couldn’t even keep one of them!”
She flung her chair aside and rushed out, slamming the door, and ran down toward the beach, away from the house, away from home, away from him.
SO GINNY still had no answer to the question at the front of her mind: what was he like, this brother? She’d wanted to ask when Dad came home the night before but, feeling sorry for him, hadn’t brought it up; she’d been going to ask that morning, but he’d gone out; and now they wouldn’t speak till one of them made the first move toward friendliness again. They so seldom had rows that this state was uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and Ginny found herself wondering what exactly she had said, and whether any of it was unforgivable.
But it was his fault, she told herself savagely, as she sat in the dunes and trickled hot sand over her bare feet. He had no right to keep that secret. I should have known…
Finding out something about yourself that other people have known and haven’t told you makes you feel stupid, as if they were laughing at you for being so naive. Dad had known, this Janet had known, even Robert had known—they’d all known Dad wasn’t married to Maman; it was only she who hadn’t. She felt angry, and foolish, and sorry for herself.
She stayed out till five o’clock, dozing in the dunes, wandering among the rock pools, gazing for half an hour or more at one particular sea anemone; and she went home at half-past five only because it was nearly time for the Yacht Club.
The restaurant was never very busy on Sundays, so there might have been time to sit and chat with Andy, except that he was in a surly, scratchy mood for once; or it might have been that the whole world was irritated and ill at ease with itself. On the way home again, she found herself wandering, more and more slowly, wishing time itself would stop.
Dad was watching television with half his attention, the rest being paid to some papers spread out on a board across his lap.
“There’s some salad in the kitchen,” he said shortly.
“I had something to eat at the Yacht Club,” she said, pausing inside the door.
The silence between them trembled for a moment. If he’d looked up at her it might have broken, but he didn’t.
She pretended to look at the TV for a moment and then went out and shut the door.
Actually, she hadn’t eaten at the Yacht Club, and as she had hardly started her lunch before the row began, she was hungry. Ignoring the salad, she cut some bread and spread it thickly with peanut butter and took it, with her sketch pad and charcoal, up to the main road.
There she sat on the wall in the golden light and tried to capture the precise way the road dipped and curved, flowing like a gray river between its grassy banks. Charcoal was better than pencil for that—you could rub it on thickly, push it around with your fingers, express the flow of it. This was still her kingdom, after all; she hadn’t been disinherited of that. And she claimed it not through birth but through love and talent, and she thought sometimes, when she looked at her work as objectively as she could, that she was talented. This sketch was alive. It showed not only the road but her feelings about the road; it expressed movement and restlessness and energy.
Working, she decided, was the best thing in the world. Even better than knowing who you were was knowing what you had to do.
As she drifted down to the house again in the dusk, she wondered if her mother had felt like that. Those lost paintings…If only she could find them! They might show her the answer to that unspoken question of Stuart’s, the problem of how to paint, the problem of finding a tradition for herself.
But she felt strong, as she let herself in, strong and in control. She pinned up the drawing beside her bedroom door and looked at it as she got undressed for bed. It was good. She was going to find a language, even if she had to invent one.
And as she went to sleep, she thought: Suppose the pictures are still around somewhere? They might not have wanted them, this Haitian family. They might just be in storage, or even in a gallery. Anything might have happened; Dad might not have told all the truth still.
—
Wednesday, when it came, was an anticlimax. Dad phoned from Liverpool, after the funeral, to say that he’d be coming home alone after all: Wendy Stevens would be bringing Robert down the next day.
It felt like being reprieved, but it left her frustrated. What could she do with this freedom? She spent most of it, in fact, with Rhiannon, staying overnight at her house and leaving a message on the kitchen table for Dad to see when he got home Wednesday night.
They’d come to a sort of truce by that time. They’d had to; neither of them wanted anger in the air when Robert arrived. So they’d talked a little more, but Dad still hadn’t told her much about Robert. Her brother was quiet, reserved, polite, with dark hair, and that was all she learned. So for Ginny, he was still little more than a blank, which she filled in alternatively with a cold, evil, triumphant usurper and with a bewildered, lost, unhappy semi-orphan. The latter idea was largely Rhiannon’s, and Rhiannon had a different idea about Ginny’s own background too. It was much better like this, she sa
Thursday passed in a jumpy, nervous blur. Wendy Stevens and Robert were due at half-past five, and Dad said he’d be back from work in time to greet them. Ginny had got the evening off from the Yacht Club, and she spent the afternoon with Rhiannon, getting a lavish tea together: finding the one tablecloth they had, ironing it, setting the tea out on the lawn with currant bread and butter, scones, jam, ginger cake, and the bone-china tea set they’d bought for some reason years before and never used. The tea was her idea: her contribution. She hadn’t told Dad.
“We’re going to leave decorating his bedroom till he comes,” she said. “Let him choose. I suppose that’s best, really.”
“Suppose you fall in love with him?” Rhiannon said. She was lying in the hammock watching Ginny fussing with cups and saucers. “Apparently it often happens.”
“What d’you mean?”
“When long-lost brothers and sisters meet. They fall in love,” Rhiannon said complacently. “With what they’ve got in common, it’s just too much to control. There’s an irresistible sexual current….”
“Oh, don’t be stupid. I never heard anything so bloody cracked, even from you.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. God, I better go. They’ll be here soon.”
She scrambled up, but Ginny shoved her back. “No! Listen! I just remembered something. You know the broken bridge? Pont Doredig?”
“Yeah? What of it?”
“Dafydd Lewis told me the story. Did you know what happened?”
Rhiannon shook her head. “Something about a car crash…I don’t know. What was it, then?”
Ginny told her what Dafydd had said. As she recounted the story of the abandoned baby in its fur-lined coat, and the coat’s disappearance and the baby’s death, she found her eyes pricking embarrassingly with tears. Luckily, Rhiannon was just as affected. But Ginny had something else to add.
“Listen,” she said. “I saw Joe Chicago at the fair. Close up. And I saw his jacket, and that had a fur lining….”
“Oh, don’t be stupid! It couldn’t be him.”
“It could be.”
“Oh, go on. That’s mad….”
“But listen…He was in jail, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, but—”
“And it was about fifteen years ago, Dafydd reckons, and Joe Chicago must be thirty at least, so he could have been fifteen or more then….He could easily have done it.”
Rhiannon watched her, pretending a skeptical look.
“The thing is…”
“What? I bet I’m right. I bet that’s what he went to jail for.”
“The thing is I don’t reckon that story’s necessarily true. I mean…who’d go off and leave their child alone in a car like that?”
“Plenty of people,” Ginny said firmly. “It happens all the time. Anyway, I know it’s true. I bet if we looked through the paper we’d find it, eventually, in the files in the library….Hey, could your sister ask her husband about it?”
Rhiannon’s face was too mobile and expressive to hide her interest. She wasn’t convinced, but Ginny, seeing she was intrigued, felt a shiver of pleasure: here was something other than Robert to occupy herself with. A private mystery.
“Well, she might,” said Rhiannon.
“Let’s go and ask her!”
“What, now?”
“No; course not. Later on sometime. I’d like to see her again anyway.”
“Okay,” said Rhiannon, nodding. Then she rolled over and got out of the hammock. “I’m going to go. I’m getting nervous—they’ll be here in a minute.”
“Don’t tell her about it before we go,” Ginny said. “I want to ask her myself.”
“All right. But I bet you’re wrong.”
“I’m right,” said Ginny. “No question.”
—
At half-past five, Ginny heard Dad’s car turn into the lane. She shut the comic she’d been reading and swung one leg over the side of the hammock. She’d been afraid Wendy Stevens would arrive first, leaving Ginny to meet Robert on her own.
She looked down at the tablecloth spread out, the milk jug, the sugar bowl, the teaspoons, and suddenly thought how pretentious, how fake, what a condescending gesture it was. Was it too late to put it all away? Hide it, pretend it had never crossed her mind?
She heard Dad opening the front door and then heard another car turning into the lane and stopping, and Dad calling to someone, “Hi! You made it, then,” in a false, hearty voice; and she lay back, thinking: Well, it’s not such a big thing. He might be really nice, and I don’t have to spend all the time with him anyway. Brothers and sisters don’t necessarily, do they?
“Where’s Ginny? Ah! Lazing in the hammock!” Cringe-making jolliness, she thought. Please be natural, Dad….
She sat up. Wendy Stevens was just coming out the kitchen door, dressed in a suit again, looking too hot, too strained.
“Hi,” she said, and Ginny smiled and stood up.
Behind her was Dad, and behind him was Robert.
They looked at each other with instant, savage, and mutual hatred.
She saw a thin, stoop-shouldered boy with pale skin and lank brown hair. His face was narrow, foxy, and sullen. Everything about him, every line of his body—and she prided herself on reading appearances—spoke of suspicion, reserve, a sort of mistrustful contempt. He was taller than she was by a couple of inches, and she found herself standing up straight and holding her chin high to face him. There was a moment’s silence while they measured each other like that, and then Wendy said, “Hey! What’s all this? Been making tea for us, then?”
“Ginny, why don’t you show Robert the bathroom?” said Dad.
He was nervous. He hadn’t said a thing about all the work she’d put into getting this bloody tea ready. She just nodded.
“It’s this way,” she said to Robert, coldly, and went past him into the kitchen.
She saw a shabby suitcase in the hall, standing next to a dusty cardboard box containing cassettes. Was that all he had to bring with him? Now she was confused again, as if she felt pity.
“I’m sorry about your mum,” she said, not looking at him.
He said nothing. She thought he was just being rude, until she caught a glimpse of his expression: it was one of utter misery.
“Your bedroom’s here,” she said, opening the door on the landing, “and the bathroom’s over there. There’s a loo downstairs as well.”
He nodded. He hadn’t spoken yet.
On her way back, she glanced into the box of cassettes and saw names she’d never heard of. No clue there, then.
“Ginny, this is a smashing tea,” said Wendy Stevens, buttering a scone.
“Yeah, well, I thought…”
“Great, love,” said Dad.
Dad was sitting on the grass, Wendy in the deck chair. She exchanged a look with Ginny; Dad wasn’t looking at either of them.
“Your dad tells me you’ve got an evening job,” she said. “Are you working tonight?”
“No. I’ve got the time off. It’s not much anyway. I’m just helping in the kitchen of this restaurant.”
“Because I thought we might have a chat, maybe, before I go.”
“Oh, right. Okay. Are you going back to Liverpool tonight?”
“I’ve got to. Busy morning tomorrow. Ah, Robert, love…”
He came and sat awkwardly on the grass, as far away from Ginny as he could get while still being approximately part of the group.
“Tuck in,” said Dad. “Ginny’s done a good job here.”
Oh, these scalp-crawling pleasantries, how they made Ginny cringe, and how she wished she’d just spent the afternoon hanging about with Andy or Stuart and rolled in later, casual, indifferent. When you try to be friendly you expose yourself to so many embarrassments, she thought. It’s probably better to be selfish and say to hel
She wasn’t aware of how rebellious and angry her expression was becoming, nor of how she was shredding a paper napkin between her fingers, folding and tearing, folding and tearing, her eyes down, staring at nothing.
Wendy Stevens saw, though, and put her plate down. “Ginny,” she said, “come and show me where your restaurant is.”
Ginny blinked and nodded. “Right,” she said, standing up.
Robert watched them go from the corner of his eyes. He still hadn’t said a word.
“I don’t really want to see the restaurant,” said Wendy as they walked out into the lane. “Anywhere’ll do.”
“We could go down to the beach, if you want.”
“Okay. Anywhere.”
As they walked, Ginny trailed her hand along the warm stones of the wall. “You know what this feels like?” she said after a minute or so.
“What? Tell me.”
“It feels like being invaded. He doesn’t belong here. He obviously doesn’t want to be here. He obviously hates me.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I’m not; it’s a fact. Couldn’t you see how he looked at me? I’m not bothered by what he thinks anyway; it makes no difference.”