The Toll Bridge by Aidan Chambers
‘Ah yes, well, he’s right. The secret of a happy life.’
‘And the Crusoe stuff? How did that start?’
‘After he became eleven he was cheerful of course, and much more active. Instead of being withdrawn, he was quite a busy handful. He took no notice of his plastered-up leg. Paid it no attention. Just hobbled about regardless. So he’d have a plausible reason for it we told him he’d fallen out of a tree while climbing.’
‘What did you tell him was the reason for being locked up?’
‘He never asked. Perhaps the deep secret mind of his soul screened the question from his conscious everyday mind because it knew better than to let the question be asked.’
‘You mean, we only ask what we need to know?’
‘Something like that. Shall I go on?’
‘Please.’
‘In what we call the family room there are books and magazines. Among them was the comic-strip version of Crusoe that you saw. Aston became very attached to it. Acquired it as his own property, read it and read it, time and again. Not only that, he started talking about the story during his therapy sessions. When I realized this was more than a passing fancy, I bought him the copy he showed you of the original novel. He devoured it, every word. Began talking about Robinson, as he always calls Crusoe, all the time, as if he were alive and his best friend. He’d tell the story to anyone who’d listen.’
‘So he started to identify with Crusoe.’
‘No, no! You’re missing the point. He doesn’t believe himself to be Crusoe – that would be a kind of madness, and Aston isn’t mad, not at all. As I say, Crusoe is his friend, a companion, someone he admires and likes, who helps him through life, especially at a difficult time.’
‘So why Crusoe? Why that book?’
‘Now come on, don’t leave all the work to me.’
‘Well – whatever the reason, you’ll let him play it out? Build the fence and live like Crusoe and all that?’
‘We’ll see, I expect so, if that’s what he needs.’
‘Even sleep in his tent and everything?’
‘I doubt that he’ll want to. You’re quite right, it is a kind of play. A very serious game. You saw how he behaved. He knows what he’s doing, takes it totally seriously, but knows he’s playing, knows the boundary between the everyday real and the imaginary real. Both are real and he knows the rules that apply to each.’
‘But how long will it go on?’
‘Sometimes a phase like this doesn’t last more than a few days, sometimes it can go on for years.’
‘And how will it end? Will he become his proper age again?’
‘I’m waiting to find out. It’s like a story with an ending you can’t quite predict. It might end the way you think it will from all the clues, or there might be a twist in the tail. Or there might be no conclusive ending at all, it might just stop, in the middle of a sentence even. It’s my job to stay with the story and help him if I can while Aston works it out for himself. He’ll devise his own ending when he’s ready, which means when he’s got everything out of the story – out of the act of telling it – that’s useful to him. Then, perhaps, he’ll move on to another story, try out another imagined real, another version of himself, become yet another Aston. Till eventually he may even become the person the deep secret mind of his soul wants him to be, and then we’ll say he’s cured, though all we’ll mean is that he doesn’t need me or anyone like me any more, because this story is enough to keep him going on his own. He’ll be content with himself.’
One of the warders came up to us.
‘Wanted inside, doc. Darren trouble again.’
‘Be right there.’ The doctor stood up and held out his hand. ‘Got to go, sorry. Duty calls.’
I shook his hand. ‘Is it OK for me to come again?’
‘If you like. If you need to. And not too often. It won’t mean anything to Aston of course. But if it would make you feel better –’
‘It would. I mean, if he becomes the Adam who remembers me again, I’d like to be there, if he wants – Well . . . you understand?’
‘I think so. You’ve also got a story to tell. Everybody has.’
Acknowledgements
The publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following:
‘The Bridge’ from Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka.
Copyright 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1954, © 1958, 1971
Schocken Books Inc. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, published by
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House Inc. English translation. reprinted by permission of Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd.
This translation first published in England in 1973 by Martin Secker & Warburg Limited,
14 Carlisle Street, London WIV 6NN. Copyright © 1934, 1937 by Heinr. Mercy Sohn, Prague.
Copyright © 1946, 1947, 1958 by Schocken Books Inc.
This translation copyright © 1973 by Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd.
About the Author
Aidan Chambers lives in Gloucestershire with his American wife, Nancy, who is the editor of Signal magazine. He divides his time between his own writing and lecturing which he does extensively in Australia, the USA and Europe. His provocative and challenging novels for teenagers and young adults have won him international acclaim.
Postcards from No Man’s Land is the fifth novel in what he perceives as a sequence; this starts with Breaktime, continues with Dance on my Grave, and carries on through Now I Know to The Toll Bridge.
A sixth book is planned. Each novel stands on its own exploring a different aspect of contemporary adolescence.
Also by Aidan Chambers
BREAKTIME
DANCE ON MY GRAVE
NOW I KNOW
POSTCARDS FROM NO MAN’S LAND
THE TOLL BRIDGE
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 01281 8
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This ebook edition published 2012
Copyright © Aidan Chambers, 1992
First Published in Great Britain
Red Fox 1992
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Aidan Chambers, The Toll Bridge