The Toll Bridge by Aidan Chambers
I didn’t say any of that to Gill just then of course, and anyway she launched into the story of their romance as if she’d been waiting to be asked.
She’d had the hots for Jan-Piers for a few weeks before she got him to pay her any attention. Something about his eyes and (oddly to my taste) his ears, but mostly it seemed his legs, which she’d been able to view during compulsory games, when he played a bad scrum half at rugby, and to better effect when he was playing tennis, and to best effect of all during swimming sessions in the school baths. She was in the same year as Jan but not in the same class so she couldn’t get to him that way. There was gossip about him, isn’t there always, which said he didn’t have a girlfriend, steady or unsteady, and there were some in whose opinion he was a closet gay. This mix of information and guessery made Gill all the keener. Everybody agreed that Piers was quite bright if not outstandingly so – some said he had been accelerated too early by his pushy dad and that he was now running out of steam – but that he didn’t flaunt it and was in general OK if not particularly exciting and sometimes a bit standoffish and secretive. On this assessment Gill decided that the way to this man’s heart, probably to his penis as well, and for sure to his legs was via his head. So she started sending him intellectual morsels rather as in a different case she might have sent him love notes. Via the gossip line she researched his current fads, and sent him photocopies of poems, passages of prose, obscure footnotes from obscurer books, postcard pics of the appropriate personages (pin-ups for the mind), etc. etc., all accompanied by little offhand personal messages such as ‘I hear you like Dumpty Dum too. Have you come across this? Isn’t it great!’ (the appeal confrère) or ‘I can’t get the hang of these lines from XYZ. A mutual friend says you’re the expert around here on this kind of thing. Can you help?’ (the appeal supplicans). Mon dieu! But it cheered me to hear that Jan didn’t rise to this ploy, replying only with such putoffs as
‘I prefer page 86, it’s funnier’ or ‘Ask Fairbairn [one of the teachers], he’ll explain.’
Nothing daunted, Gill decided to take the bull by the horns (what a vivid cliché in this context, Jan would have muttered) and make the approach direct. Having carefully prepared herself for every hoped-for eventuality (i.e. like us all, living for her fantasies) she called at his house one evening about eight, Eng. Lit. set book in hand, and shot a nice line about having an essay crisis, and could Piers please rescue her (the approach damsel distrait) and give her a bit of help with lines twenty-five to eighty, Act Three Scene Two.
This time she made an impression even though that evening she got no further than Act Three Scene Two examined in close proximity with the desired as they sat side by side at the dining-room table while desired’s mother bobbed in and out every now and then, bearing first some fruit then some coffee and bickies and finally an offer (refused) of ice cream, all actually in aid of keeping an eye on sonnyboy and temptress.
Just before making her grateful what-a-relief thankyous and good-nights, Gill played an inspired unprepared gambit: Would Piers like to accompany her to the play at the Civic Theatre next Thursday, she had a couple of tickets, having intended to take a girlfriend, but the friend couldn’t go after all, the ticket was going begging, her dad had paid for both so if Piers would like to . . . well, she’d just love it. Why not? said Mum, by now won over, and Piers fell for it. (Oh Jan-Piers, I’d hoped you were made of sterner stuff!) Of course in truth she didn’t have a spare ticket at all, her friend had one of her own, and tomorrow Gill would have to persuade said friend to hand over said ticket as a matter of life or death, which said friend did, what else are friends for, though only after being let in on the reason and after promising a blow by blow (pardon, that one was accidental) account of the evening and to keep said friend informed of advances thereafter, which Gill did until things between her and Piers became serious, after which she naturally kept her mouth shut about the personal details. And she must have done pretty well with him that night (she said it was one of those times when everything goes just right) because only three days later, on the following Sunday afternoon, they were in her bed together while the rest of her family – parents, younger brother and sister – visited relatives for tea, she crying off because she had urgent homework to finish. From the faraway smile on her face when she described this moment in her story I could tell she had enjoyed her homework très bien.
I didn’t say anything, letting her savour the memory, but she suddenly came to with a jolt, her face clouded, and she looked at me with eyes pained with suspicion and an unasked question.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I said.
‘When I saw you at the party –’
‘Only a game. Didn’t mean a thing.’
She nodded but I could tell she didn’t believe me. Why should she? In her place I wouldn’t.
‘Why didn’t he ever write?’ she said. ‘Or even phone.’
‘Not because of anything between him and me.’
‘And pinning my letters to the back of the door –’
‘Honestly, Gill, I think you ought to ask him about that.’
‘Does he still have The Glums?’
‘Not lately. He’s a lot better than when he first arrived. Pretty normal, in fact, I’d say. Well – his normal anyway!’ Gill didn’t smile. ‘Not that I know what he was like before, so it’s hard for me to tell.’
‘Has he talked about me much?’
‘A bit. Now and then.’
‘You mean, he hasn’t.’
‘To be honest, no, not much. But he hasn’t wanted to talk about himself much, either – I mean, his home and everything.’
‘So what has he talked about?’
‘What he’s reading –’
‘Might have guessed.’
‘Movies, music, his work. People he’s talked to while taking tolls. Stuff in the news. What he’s thinking – you know how he likes to argue.’
‘Do I know!’ She managed a trace of a smile. ‘Sounds like his old self again. He’d lost that by the time he left home. Wasn’t reading anything except what he had to for school, wouldn’t go out, wasn’t even arguing, at least not about the things that interested him. All he did was row or bitch or groan on and on about being depressed and how stupid he was and how pointless life was. Or he’d pick fights with me over nothing – that was the worst. Wouldn’t have been so bad if the times between had been OK, like at the beginning, but they weren’t, we weren’t even having any sex by the time he left home. And what a change that was! Our first few weeks, he was all over me, couldn’t get enough, it was the only thing he seemed to want. I think he was catching up with what he’d missed. From Christmas to Easter we had a pretty good time, with only a patch of The Glums now and then, but during the Easter holidays the depression seemed to take him over and after that he got worse and worse. Funny when I think about it now – we had seven months together before he came here, only two months were the really bad times, but they seem like the longest part.’
‘Twenty-eight point five per cent.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Can’t help it, do maths at school. Two months is twenty-eight point five per cent of your seven months together. Not far off being a third. Probably more than a third if you add in the times when he had The Glums before he got really bad. And worst at the end. It must have been pretty awful, trying to cope with him and to help and getting nowhere.’
‘I kept trying to remind him of the good times in my letters, hoping it would help, because it’s always easier to remember the rotten times than it is to remember the good times, isn’t it, all the details, I mean, don’t you think?’
‘That’s why I like taking photos. Why most people take photos, in my opinion.’
‘To remind them of the good times?’
‘Well, people don’t take photos of unhappy times, do they, not usually. Some professionals do, but not ordinary people. Nobody wants photos of themselves being ill or being angry or crying or things like that. They want
‘And isn’t it funny how everybody has to smile, no matter what they feel like, nobody’s allowed to look sad, are they. And as soon as people realize they’re being taken, they start fixing their hair and tidying themselves up and pose and put on an act!’
‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, my dad says, but if I try to snap him he slinks away.’
‘Got to look your best, my mum says.’
We were laughing now and I saw how likeable Gill could be, what fun, if she were given a chance.
‘Do you take a lot of pictures?’ she asked.
‘Quite a few. I do Practical Photography as an optional at school.’
‘Have you taken any of Piers?’
‘Would you like to see them?’
‘Could I?’
‘They’re in my room.’
We viewed the pictures slouched on my bed. Fifteen or sixteen, starting with one taken the first week Jan was at the bridge and finishing with one taken a couple of weeks ago. Having gone through them once, Gill asked me to put them in chronological order. They hadn’t been taken at regular intervals, and Jan wasn’t in the same pose each time – they were snaps really, catching him off guard doing different things, I don’t like posed shots – but still, between the first and the last you could see how much he’d changed, how much better he looked, his face had filled out, his hair of course was very different – long and twerpishly tidy when he arrived, short and natural after he cut it. His body seemed more developed, not so skinny-willowy any more. He was a lot sexier, to be honest. In the early pics, whatever he was doing he looked crushed, dead-eyed, hang dog, an unsmiling withdrawn wimp. In the later ones, he was on the qui vive, sparkier, the difference between a plant drooping from lack of water and the same plant revived after a good drink.
Gill noticed, stared at the pictures one after the other, inspecting each closely, another plant slaking a thirst, but she said nothing. Two or three of the later pics included Adam and there were some of him on his own that I’d put to one side after sorting out the ones of Jan.
‘Who’s that?’ Gill asked as she went through the pictures for the third time.
‘You don’t know?’
‘No, who?’
‘Adam,’ I said as offhand as I could, not only because I expected Gill to react but also because the sight of him frightened me suddenly.
Gill stiffened, peered at the best shot of him, nose almost touching, then sat up cross-legged on the bed, holding the picture between her knees by thumb and first finger.
‘Good-looking,’ she said, trying to sound calm.
‘Too good –’
‘Not as tall as I thought, though.’
‘And stronger than he looks.’
‘Oh?’ She glanced at me to make sure she’d guessed right.
‘Told you you didn’t have to worry about Jan and me.’
‘Like that?’
‘Once. The night before last.’
I told her everything, trying to be offhand about that too but couldn’t help crying a bit by the end of course, it was all still so near the nerve and such a relief to tell someone. My turn to pass on the hurt.
Gill sat and listened, didn’t react, didn’t interrupt, didn’t cry along with me, just sat there, cross-legged, her eyes never leaving me, the picture of Adam held between her knees, till I’d finished the story and had scrambled off the bed for a tissue. Then she said, ‘You’ll be OK. You know how it is.’ Very matter-of-fact. So there’s a cold side to her, I thought as I mopped my eyes, and said,
‘Till one day it really is what you dread.’
‘But he was all right with you? I mean, he wasn’t violent or anything.’
‘No no. Well, a bit. But –’
‘If it was him.’
‘There weren’t any other Adams around, not that I know of.’
Gill stacked the photos like a pack of cards, the one of Adam and Jan on top, which she sat staring at, face in hands, elbows on knees, broody.
This is no good, I thought. At this rate we’ll end up clinically depressed ourselves.
‘Let’s get some sleep,’ I said. ‘And tomorrow, I mean this morning, let’s go and face those two. They’ve both got some explaining to do.’
Gill reacted like a startled rabbit. ‘I couldn’t, I can’t.’
‘I know how you must feel, but honestly, it’s the only thing to do. We’ll go together, I’m used to Adam, I know how to handle him, you needn’t worry about him, if that’s what bothers you. You know what boys are like, they’ll pretend nothing’s happened if we let them, they’ll just go on as if everything’s all right. Well, something has happened and it isn’t all right, and we’ve got to sort it out for our own sakes, never mind theirs.’
‘Only . . . I feel so confused, so humiliated.’
‘I know. Me too. And we’ll go on feeling like that unless we do something about it.’
I don’t remember any more of what we said, not accurately enough to write it down. Nothing of any importance I don’t think, but we burbled at each other about the usual things, this time seen through the fog of the night’s events. If the earlier talk had been about passing on the pain, now it was about calming each other down, jollying each other along, edging ourselves towards doing what we both knew had to be done.
It was four o’clock before Gill’s eyes began to close – I was telling her about them putting the toll house up for sale and why we didn’t want them to – till finally she dropped off completely, half curled across the diagonal of the bed, head to foot. I slipped a pillow under her head, lay down beside her, covered us with the duvet, and was soon asleep myself.
Morning After
1
ADAM WAS STILL dead to the world. But he couldn’t stay where he was much longer. He needed what the house offered: fresh water, food, clothes, warmth. How to get him there? Carry him? Too far. Float him in the boat? Current against us. Nothing else for it: tow.
Hauling a boat the size of a four-berth cabin cruiser upriver on your own isn’t easy at the best of times. This was not the best of times. Doing it without anyone to steer is murder. The bow keeps nudging into the bank and sticking. After a couple of bodged goes that got me all of ten metres nearer destination in as many minutes, I managed to secure the tiller with just the right amount of turn to edge the boat out and counter the tendency of the tow rope to drag it into the bank. After that things went well if you allow for a few minor impediments along the way, like slipping every few paces on the muddy path and twice being dragged backwards by the pull of the current when my stamina ran out, requiring me to dig in and hold everything at a stop while I caught my breath and untwisted my muscles.
Tug-of-war donkey work for the four hundred metres to the bridge. The world a collision of contraries: The boat wanting to glide away from the bank and slip downstream, me pulling it into the bank and forcing it upriver against the current. The morning air biting from overnight frost, me sweating from the effort but feeling frozen. Dawn of a new day, me unslept from the old, a refugee from the night. Adam flat out and sleeping in the boat, unaware of anything, me puffing and panting and struggling and aware of every straining cell in my body and of the impelling world around.
all things counter, original, spare, strange;
whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
with swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim . . .
Gerard Manley Hopkins lifted my spirits, helping me find in the tug and swing, dig of heels, cut of rope, pain of breath, stretch of muscle, the Force of dotty Dylan T.’s breath
that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer,
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
&
Helping me know again that
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
Poetry is useless, it never changes anything? Tugging the boat upstream, four hundred metres metered by metre. By life lines changed. It changes me. Useful to have something that enables you to be useful.
2
Inside, the house was a tidy mess. My guts said, Go now, never come back. My mind said, There is only one thing for it, knuckle down.
Leaving Adam in the boat, tethered where I could keep an eye from the living-room back window, I set to work.
First, blankets and pillows and a drink of water into the boat for Adam. Still out. Fixed him up as comfortably as I could, left the glass of water on the table where he’d see it if he woke, and went back to the house. I wanted everything ready before taking him inside.
Next, the fire resurrected.
Then, every scrap left from the party stuffed into rubbish bags:
a shoal of plastic glasses,
a contagion of empty cans and bottles,
an epidemic of crunched and squashed, trodden and half-eaten scraps of food,
a gallimaufry of discarded clothes:
a sicked-on sweater,
a crotch-stained pair of women’s tights,