The Toll Bridge by Aidan Chambers

  He pushed his plate away, took a drink from his mug of coffee, wiped his mouth with the back of his other hand.

  ‘That was six months ago. I ran out of money pretty soon. And it wasn’t that easy keeping out of sight. Tried Birmingham for a bit but that was pretty foul. Tried London and that was worse. Everybody’s out to get what they can from you. Some of the other kids were OK. But the guys around. Geez! Want everything, from your head to your arse. It’s bad news there, I tell you. I wasn’t having it, not me, might as well be dead. So I went on the tramp. Hedges are better than streets. Don’t reckon much to people neither. Mostly out for what they can get, what they can do you for. In the country you can usually scrounge something. Anyhow, I survived, didn’t I.’

  He laughs, but humourlessly.

  ‘Thing is, you get tired, you get really tired. You just ache for a place to stay, for somewhere you don’t have to get out of in the morning, somewhere you can crawl back into at night, somewhere that’s dry and warm, somewhere safe. They don’t tell you about that in the survival books. Don’t tell you what it’s like to feel you’re just a bag of rubbish, kicked around, useless, ugly, smelly, in everybody’s road. Don’t tell you nothing about that in books because you can’t know what it’s like, how bad it is, till you’re there, till it’s happened to you. And they don’t tell you about it, I suppose, because nobody can describe hell.’

  In the silence that followed I could neither speak nor move. The fire crackled in the hearth. The river surged under the bridge. Adam toyed with his mug, not looking at me. His skin shone, clean and fresh from his bath, his wet black hair hugging his round head.

  His physical presence was almost overpowering. I sat looking at him and knew that this time I couldn’t turn him out. Whatever his being here meant, its meaning included me. For better or worse and whether I liked it or not, there was no escape. Adam had come to stay.

  Letters

  1

  . . . WRITING FROM THE office, as there is news of your mother which I must give you without letting on to her. She doesn’t want you to know, but in my judgement it is best that you should so that you are prepared when you come home for Christmas.

  The fact is, your mother is going through a rough patch. Nothing you need be seriously worried about – she’s not suffering from a life-threatening disease. The problem is more emotional and psychological. But she’s going to need a great deal of support and understanding till she is out of the rough and back on the fairway again.

  The best way of explaining the problem is to give you the background, which means telling you something your mother and I have kept from you, believing there was no point in your being burdened with it. However, as it is partly the cause of your mother’s current difficulty, it is best that you know.

  I might add that this is not an easy letter to write. Please forgive any infelicities.

  You are of course our only son, but you are not our only child. Two years before you were born we had a daughter. We called her Amy. Sadly, she lived only five weeks. She died a cot death. Your mother blamed herself at the time, and has gone on blaming herself ever since, saying that if she had been more attentive we would not have suffered such a dreadful loss.

  Nothing anyone has said – the doctors, dose friends, or myself – has ever relieved your mother of the guilt she feels: I needn’t tell you that there was absolutely no question of your mother being in the slightest neglectful. She doted on Amy, as she always has on you, and gave her all the attention anyone could expect. Cot deaths are far from rare and the cause not at all understood. It was just another of those unfair accidents of life.

  The weeks after Amy’s death were not easy for either of us, but slowly we helped each other back to something like normal, though your mother was never again the carefree lass she was when we were first married. Your mother and I were completely in love when we married. We were at our happiest in each other’s company and never liked being apart. We shared the same interests and even liked the same friends – which I know you have already noticed isn’t at all usual! After Amy’s death it wasn’t quite the same, I’m sorry to say. We remained, and still are, as devoted to each other as before. But it was as though some part of us, something of our completeness, had been taken away and it was impossible to fill the gap.

  We did gain something, though, and I think this is also worth telling you while I am about it, as it is not the kind of subject you and I tend to talk about but which might be useful to you in your own life. What we gained was a different sense of the love that first brought us together. As I look back on it now, I realize that we might not have been in love at all but only have liked each other very much. From my experience as a lawyer I can tell you that many couples mistake liking each other for being in love. The divorce courts arc full of those who discovered the difference too late.

  In the months after Amy died we learned that we needed each other because we loved each other, and not the other way around. For whatever it was that helped us through those awful weeks was more than only liking each other could have made possible.

  But your mother never recovered from the loss of her baby. Once we were on an even keel again, we both hoped that having another child would help heal the wound. And for a long time after you were born she did seem more like her old self. You were, as your mother has often told you, a wonderful little chap. Amy, in her short life, had been difficult. Her birth was difficult, she often cried for hours at night and was exhausting during the day. You were just the opposite. Your birth was quick and easy, you were always good-natured, quiet, a sound sleeper, and you continued like that as the years passed and you started school.

  Of course your mother gave you every waking moment of her life, never leaving you alone for an instant. Even at night she wanted you beside her. I remember it was only with the greatest difficulty that I finally persuaded her to put you to bed in a room of your own. You were more than three by then, long past the age when most children sleep by themselves.

  You see, the truth is that your mother invested everything in you, all of herself and her hopes for the future. We did try to have more children – I thought it would be a good idea from all points of view and your mother wanted it – but without success. And I suppose the disappointment of knowing there could be no more in the family strengthened her attachment to you.

  I have to confess that I often worried about your mother being so wrapped up in you but I hesitated to say anything, for how could I know that my worries were anything but jealousy – there were times when I was very jealous of the attention she gave you. However, in your later childhood, I did try to make sure you had some time away from your mother to prepare you and her for the break when it came. Not all of my efforts were appreciated! You’ll remember the Scouts was a great failure. As was my attempt to turn you into a golfing fan. But the school trips to France and Greece were useful, and you did enjoy our boating holiday on our own together when we taught ourselves to sail on the river not far from where you are now. In fact we sailed under your toll bridge more than once – well, not ‘sailed’ exactly, but dismasted and motored through, the arch being so low.

  Your mother was aware of what I was doing. I didn’t hide it from her. And one thing she never let on to you was how much she dreaded the day when you left home for good. She even found those times you and I were away very difficult to bear. She knew they were trial runs for the time when you left home permanently.

  Nevertheless, she wasn’t prepared for your departure this summer. She thought you would be at home for a year or two yet. And for some illogical reason, she doesn’t think of being at university as leaving home. But your decision to go for the toll-bridge job took her by surprise and the way you stripped your room and stowed away all your gear – your boyhood things and your books – before you left upset her further. It seemed so definite, so final. Almost like a rejection of us and of your home.

  I’m sure that is not how you meant it. And honestly, I’m no
t laying blame or saying what has happened since you left is in any way your fault at all. Please believe that. How hard it is to explain all this and not sound as if one is laying blame. (It has often struck me, as I sit in this office every day helping people sort out their problems, how bad I am at sorting out my own. Perhaps the truth is that none of us is much good at helping ourselves.)

  But all that is water under the bridge, if you’ll pardon the cliché. The bare facts of the current situation are these. Soon after you left your mother began to behave oddly. At first it was nothing more worrying than sudden outbursts of tears for no apparent reason. At these times she would weep uncontrollably in the way she did in the days after Amy died, a weeping that seemed full of rage as well as sorrow. Then she began having terrifying nightmares in which she quite literally tried to climb the wall in her efforts to escape apparently nameless fears. These woke us both with the violence of her movements and the sound of her screams.

  Then one day two weeks ago I was telephoned at the office by the manager of Binns. He had your mother with him. She had been apprehended shoplifting. As a result of that I discovered she had been stealing things for days previously from a number of shops. She had the stuff hidden away in your room – all baby things like talcum and clothes and toys.

  Binns didn’t prosecute, thank goodness. They are as familiar in their trade as I am in mine with this syndrome. Middle-aged women are sometimes afflicted with it. It goes with the menopause. I don’t know whether you know anything about the female menopause. I doubt if they taught you about it at school. Though I can’t think why not when you consider that my medical reference book begins its entry on the subject with the words: ‘Sometimes called the change of life, the menopause is the middle-aged counterpart of adolescence, and its effects are comparable, and as natural.’ No wonder a lot of middle-aged parents have trouble with their teenage children, if they are all suffering from their own versions of adolescence at the same time! Not excluding you and me and your mother. I suppose it is happening more than it used to because these days so many women don’t have children until they are into their thirties.

  Normally, or at least as far as I understand it, I’m not a professional expert, the menopause goes along with having hot flushes, when the woman blushes for no identifiable reason and often in a way that embarrasses her, and breaks out into very heavy sweats. This is often followed by bouts of cold shivers brought on, apparently, by a terrible nervousness, an anxiety that your mother says makes her feel breathless with panic. At these times she gets quite worked up about small things that actually don’t matter, like forgetting to put the money out for the milkman or mislaying her reading glasses, and she worries about the house burning down while she’s out shopping or burglars getting in when she’s on her own.

  Then there are other symptoms: headaches and bouts of feeling dizzy, and she sometimes finds it hard to concentrate on anything – even on TV, which is saying something. She can also be grumpy and easily offended, which, as you know, is quite uncharacteristic of her. For example, she saw me brush a cobweb out of a corner of the living room yesterday and became quite agitated, saying I was criticizing her housekeeping. Her appetite swings about as well; one day she’ll vastly over-eat and another day she’ll hardly eat anything at all. She says she doesn’t decide these things, they simply happen.

  As I say, all this is entirely normal, according to the doc, and is suffered by thousands of middle-aged women. The shoplifting isn’t exactly normal, of course, but isn’t unusual either, and not intentional. Your mother didn’t plan it or do it for gain. The truth is the whole unhappy event seems to have nothing whatever to do with what anyone wants, least of all your mother, but is simply a matter of biology.

  I say simply. Of course there is nothing simple about it. Knowing the background helps a little, I hope, but certainly doesn’t explain anything. All I want to do in writing to you like this is to prepare you for when you come home and to ask that you try just to accept it, and help your mother by letting her behave in whatever way she feels she must, without making life worse for her or making her feel guilty or a failure because of what is happening.

  It is something we should all three talk about together. Your mother and I have been learning to do this since the incident at Binns and I think it would help us all if you could talk about it too. But that must come from your mother to begin with, and at the moment she fears what your reaction will be if you know what has happened. More than anything, she fears the loss of your love and respect. That is why this letter must be only between the two of us. I’m sure in my own mind, dear lad, that you’re mature enough now to cope with this kind of crisis.

  If you’d like to talk, phone me at the office about five one evening, or write to me here if that suits you better, marking the envelope ‘Private and Confidential’.

  Your mother will give you the everyday news when you ring as usual on Sunday . . .

  2

  . . . that you’ll let us come and pick you up. But you sounded a touch fed up, darling, I know that tone in your voice, are you sure you are all right? Are they working you too hard, I expect they are from what you said about decorating. It is such a silly business when you could be doing so much better here but I have promised your father I won’t go on about it so will say no more now.

  Your father also says I should tell you that I haven’t been too well lately, nothing serious, don’t worry, a temporary blip due to my age, which comes to us all, sweetheart, I’m afraid. I’ve been just a little off colour, that’s all, and not feeling myself. By the time you come home I expect it will all be over and I’ll be fit as a lop again. We can’t expect to be on top of things all the time can we, everyone has their lows, as you know only too well, my darling, but you are getting over it, that’s the great thing, so maybe the toll-bridge job hasn’t been all a waste of time.

  Now, my dear, you must let me know what you’d like for Christmas, or give me a hint at least, it’s so silly to give unwanted gifts to someone of your advanced age, being, as your father insists on telling me every day, no longer a child, just so they’ll come as a surprise. Much better give something that’s wanted, so do say and I’ll get it. I saw a very nice calfskin wallet that might be useful in Dressers this week when Mrs Fletcher was hunting for a Parker ballpoint for her Brian, who, by the by, has upset the applecart by announcing that he doesn’t think teaching is his cup of tea after all and wants to leave college and go into computer software, which he says would pay better and have better prospects and suit him more. It seems his first taste of the classroom put him right off children, but then he never did have much patience which you certainly need with children, so perhaps it will be better for the children in the end if he does something else, though at the moment his mother doesn’t agree and is very down about it.

  I have always thought I would have liked teaching and even been good at it for I love children, as you know, and do have patience I think I can say without being immodest, but all I wanted at 16 was to get a job and have a lively social life and went into secretarial work instead, where anyway I met your father so some good came of it. Though this last few weeks since you left I have been thinking how nice it would have been to have a profession to take up again in my middle years. Your father suggests I should find a job of some kind anyway, as I have so much time to spare, not having you to look after, though my office skills are pretty rusty now, but I expect I could soon buff them up with a bit of effort and perhaps a refresher course. I quite fancy becoming proficient with a word processor, which these days is a requirement, and office life can be enjoyable if the place is well run and the other staff amenable. One thing for sure is that I wouldn’t want to work in your father’s office again, he’s far too relaxed with the juniors if you ask me.

  Well, we can talk about all this at Christmas and you can advise me. After all, new horizons might buck me up, don’t you think . . .

  A Kind of Talisman

  1

&n
bsp; NEXT MORNING I woke regretting that I’d given in the night before. And to such a sob story, even if it were true. In the cold grey grainy fog of a late November dawn, when your clothes are clammy and the house smells of tacky new paint laced with the heavy sweaty tang of decorator’s dust, then reigniting the living-room fire from the remains of last night’s cinders and getting washed in tepid water at the kitchen sink and making breakfast are tedious enough. Having to attend to someone else as well – the space he occupies, somehow making the place seem smaller than it is, too small now, his coming and going, his noises and smells, his grunts and sighs and coughs and sniffs and belches and farts, his behaviour at the sink, splashing water onto the bench where I’m trying to cut bread and make toast for HIM, dammit, as well as myself – having to think instead of zombie your way into the day was enough to make me wish I hadn’t been such a soft touch.

  To make things worse, while Adam scoffed bread and honey as if stoking up for a winter famine, I got to reckoning the financial cost of letting him stay. Two can live as cheaply as one? Tell it to the birds. Two can live as cheaply as two. Or three, if one of them eats like Adam did that morning.

  I soon learned that he usually ate very little, it was just that he liked snacky bits at times when I didn’t – I’m a regular meal, no snacks eater, due to strict training as a child. In fact, I was the problem. I’d make plenty for two, serve him as much as myself and he’d leave half, which I threw away, till I realized after two or three days what was happening and gradually cut his share down. Not that Adam noticed. And eventually I learned how much to give him in order to satisfy his appetite with just enough left over that could safely be kept cold for him to snack on when he wanted. I even got to the point of enjoying this secret game. The pleasure came from the skill of judging exactly how much food to make, how much to serve up at the meal and which things in the meal would do for snacks or keep till next day, when I could use them as part of another meal. He liked potatoes, for example, and he liked them done in their jackets in the fire, and he liked them mashed and fried. So I’d do more in their jackets than I knew we’d need, keep the leftovers till next day, when I’d mash them up and fry them as potato pancakes. I don’t think he ever noticed that the pancakes were the old potatoes done that way. Which was another part of the game and the pleasure: his not noticing what I’d done. Of course, the weather being cold, stews were good, and keeping a stew pot of cheap scrap-ends going on the fire was easy. I simply chucked in any leftovers so that over a few days it went from being a meaty stew to being a thick vegetable soup. It was cheap and Adam could snack on it whenever he liked.