The Broken Bridge Read online

  “Well?” he said.

  “I wanted to ask you about my dad,” she said. “Tony Howard.”

  His mouth fell open. He was astonished, breathless. He couldn’t speak.

  She went on: “It was you that told Benny that he’d been in jail, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because that’s where I met him. Duw. It’s you….Tony Howard…Duw annwyl, I never guessed….”

  “What…?” Ginny’s mouth was dry. She looked at the old woman on the sofa. “Does your mam speak English?”

  “She won’t understand nothing. What d’you want to know?”

  “What was he in prison for?”

  “For kidnapping you,” Joe said. “That was it, see.”

  “What?”

  “He stole you from somewhere and ran off with you. It was in all the papers. Everyone in the prison, they thought he was a nonce, till he fought back. Then they found out the truth.”

  “What’s a nonce?”

  “You know, a man who molests kiddies. They thought he was one of them. But then the story come out that it was his own kid, like, and there was nothing bad about it, and it was all right after that. See, prisoners, they hate men like that. Kill em if they could. You ought to ask him, not me. What did you take my bloody jacket for, anyway?”

  “Because I…Oh, it’s too complicated. I can’t…”

  “What d’you mean? Think I’m thick or something? Think I’m stupid?”

  Behind Joe, sensing his slow-rumbling anger, his ancient mother was rocking back and forth, making crying sounds with her gaping mouth. Ginny looked from one to the other.

  “No, it’s not that—honest—I thought you got it from the broken bridge, Pont Doredig, and I—”

  “The what? Pont Doredig? What’s that?”

  Ginny closed her eyes. “It was a mistake. I heard this story about a car crash and someone stole a jacket from the car, and I—I thought it was that jacket. So I was going to take it back and…that’s all. But I was wrong, I see now. I got it all wrong. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it.”

  “I bought this jacket,” he said. “I never stole it.”

  Ginny wondered if she could ask about Andy and why Joe was chasing him, why Andy had paid that money at the fair; but she was already feeling sick from the closeness and the smell, and besides, whatever business Andy had with Joe was dark and private. And Andy would always know how to look after himself.

  Joe’s mother was saying something in a high, tremulous voice. Ginny couldn’t understand much, but she made out the word “black.” There was no getting away from it. Were all people crazy? This old woman was just another version of Grandma, a bit further gone, but fundamentally the same.

  She turned to leave and heard Joe say in Welsh, “Don’t worry, Mam, she’s not going to hurt you. She’s a friend, she’s Joe’s friend, see, she’s come to give Joe his jacket, she’s a kind girl, don’t you worry. We’ll take you up to bed in a minute, make you happy again. Have some cocoa. Don’t worry, now….”

  Ginny quietly made her way to the front door and left. What he’d told her about Dad was less of a revelation than his tenderness to the deranged old woman who was his mother. That put everyone to shame. Why did everyone but Joe Chicago treat their relatives so badly?

  But she itched to draw her. Like the picture Whistler made of his mother: the formal composition, the cool colors, but instead of the dignified old lady in her clean white bonnet and apron, this poor stained wreck in her nylon nightdress, the flesh withering on her arms, her swollen feet treading down the sides of the cheap yellow slippers.

  To draw her grandparents. Granddad: The Man Who Looked Away. Her grandmother, possessed. The need to put them down on paper was almost an ache; she would, she would…And Joe, his great coarse giant’s features, his greasy skin, the infinite gentleness in his eyes…How do you draw gentleness? What shape was that? What color? Look at Rembrandt. Learn.

  There was one more phone call to make. She found a booth by the harbor, put her phonecard in, and dialed. He snatched it up on the first ring.

  “Dad?”

  “Ginny—where the hell are you?”

  “I’m in Porthafon. I’m coming home. Is Robert—”

  “Robert’s here, yes. Whereabouts are you?”

  “By the harbor. There’s a bus—”

  “I’ll come and get you. It’ll be quicker.”

  “We’re going to have to talk, Dad.”

  “I know. I know….”

  “I’ll be waiting in Davy Jones’s Locker, okay?”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “Dad, can I talk to Robert? Is he there?”

  “Yes, here he is. See you soon.”

  The phone changed hands.

  “Ginny?”

  “Robert…Has he gone?”

  “No, not…Yes. That was the front door. Where the hell did you go? Where’ve you been?”

  “Oh, God, Robert. I’m sorry, leaving you and running out like that. I was just so confused….What did you do? You didn’t stay there?”

  “Not for long. She was crying and hitting herself with her fists—I’ve never seen anything like it—and he was just…He was dead scared; he was terrified. He gave me ten quid, you know. He…Just after you’d left, he called me into the front room while she was crying in the hall, and he shoved this money at me and said it was for both of us—”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Well, whatever. It was the only thing he could think of to do….But she said your mother was alive, didn’t she? Was that why…and all that racist crap…?”

  “Yeah. She’s alive. I’ve seen her, Robert. I met her last night.”

  “What? Where? What happened?”

  She told him everything that had happened, and she found herself thinking: It’s true, he’s my brother. I can tell him this, and he understands.

  She got to the end and said, “And then…I just wandered about, thinking. It’s crazy, you know. All my life I’ve been wondering about my mother and then I find her and you know what? I can’t feel anything at all. I thought I’d be so happy, I thought everything would be wonderful….And it isn’t. Nothing’s changed. Well, I’ve seen her paintings, and that’s important—”

  “Are they good?”

  “They’re…Oh, God, yes. She’s the real thing. No question. But I mean, having seen them, right, I know how I’ve got to paint. Not because she’s my mother, but because they…I can’t explain. But as for her being a mother, forget it. Oh, and I found out why Dad was in jail. He kidnapped me. Probably from those nuns or whatever. At least, that’s what Joe Chicago said.”

  “You’ve spoken to Joe Chicago?”

  “I’ve just been there. Robert, he was so kind to his mother….He looks after her. I never knew; I bet no one knows. She’s senile, she can’t feed herself or anything, and there he was, being all gentle….God, it’s stupid; I’m crying just thinking about it….”

  He was silent while she tried to gather herself together.

  “So when did you get back?” she said. “And Dad, what did you tell him?”

  “I phoned him last night. I told him where we’d been. I stayed the night with someone I know up near Liverpool and came back first thing this morning. I thought he’d be angry, but he was just worried.”

  “Yeah…Robert?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh, that quarrel we had. Calling you whatever I called you.”

  “Yeah, you went to town, didn’t you.”

  “I don’t mean it anymore. I didn’t mean it then.”

  “Nor did I.”

  “I was just so wrapped up in my stuff, I couldn’t…”

  “Yeah. Well, I thought we…when we were there, at the grandparents’…”

  “We were understanding each other then. Yeah. Right.”

  “But what a pair…Sh
e’s mad, isn’t she? I mean insane?”

  “Yeah. She must be. And all that Arthur and Kitty stuff…Do you remember Kitty?”

  “Yeah. I hated her. I think he was the one, Arthur, he was the one who was bound up in it all, emotionally….She was as hard as nails.”

  “Arthur and Granddad. It’s so weird. And when, you know, when he was saying about Dad and my mother—it was as if no one had ever done that before, as if it was the end of the world….”

  “The end of their world. Yeah, that’s right. And the way she turned on him—”

  “I remember that from when I was a kid,” Ginny said. “You know I told you I’d seen her hit him, when I was staying there before, I saw them through the glass in the kitchen door? Well, I’ve just remembered she turned on him then exactly like that. If she’d had a knife, I swear she’d have used it. I can remember it so clearly, him just turning away holding his arm and saying, Hush, for God’s sake. If he knew she was going to kill him, he’d ask her to do it quietly so they didn’t disturb the neighbors.”

  “Yeah, and spread some newspaper on the floor to catch the blood,” he said.

  They were silent for a moment.

  “It’s really strange how different Dad is,” Ginny said. “He’s not like them at all.”

  “Are you going to ask him about this kidnapping business?”

  “Bloody right. Before I come home, I’m going to get everything out of him. I mean it. If not, that’s the end for him.”

  They talked a little more, but it didn’t matter what they said; it was enough to be talking like friends. They said good-bye, and Ginny went to have some coffee in Davy Jones’s Locker, sipping it slowly, looking out across the parking lot until she saw the white VW Golf come to a halt at the far side.

  She shouldered her rucksack and went out to meet him.

  “HELLO, DAD.”

  “Hello, Ginny.”

  She clicked the seat belt on and settled the rucksack down between her feet as he put the car in gear and drove away. It was a good thing the night was hot; she would have missed that jacket otherwise, she thought.

  He was silent beside her as they went out over the toll bridge and took the flat road south along the coast. There was a bright moon shining on the great hills to the left, the distant endless dunes far off to the right. Ginny realized that she was going to have to speak first, but at the very moment she thought that, he surprised her by saying, “Robert told me you’d been to your grandparents’. And what happened. Was it much of a shock?”

  “Dad…I’ve seen Maman. I spoke to her last night. You knew she was alive all this time, didn’t you?”

  Silence. His profile was clear in the dim light reflected from the road, and she stared at him mercilessly, trying to see any wavering, any weakness, any similarity to those doomed people in Chester. There was hardly any. He was quite different from them, and all she could see in his expression was sadness.

  He slowed the car down, looking for somewhere to stop, and finally pulled up in the gateway to a field beside the road. He switched off the engine and the lights. All around them the wide night was silent; and then he began to speak.

  “We should have done this years ago, shouldn’t we? Talk, I mean. But things were okay for such a long time; I suppose we just talked about easy stuff like what are we going to have for supper and where shall we go on vacation….Anyway, we’ve come to it at last. The reason for all of this is quite simple, Ginny: it’s fear. Fear is why it happened, fear is why I haven’t talked about it. That’s the reason for everything.

  “I grew up afraid, Ginny. I was frightened every day of my life till I left home, and sometimes I’m still frightened now. Frightened of different things, but once you’re marked…

  “What was I afraid of most…Well, I was afraid my father would hit me, which he did. But not very afraid of that, and that stopped anyway as I got bigger. I was mainly afraid my mother wouldn’t love me, I think. What would happen to me if she didn’t love me anymore I couldn’t imagine, but it would be…it would be terrible.

  “Some of the things that happened…

  “I think the earliest memory I have, the very first thing I remember, is her beating me. Not smacking me or clouting me round the head but spanking me, and in public. I must have been about three. It was in a shop, some department store, and I’d taken something from one of those child-height displays and refused to put it back. I can’t remember what it was, even, but I remember her tearing down my trousers, and my pants, and bending me over right there in the middle of the crowd and lashing at me with her open hand. And I remember screaming, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ and twisting my head to look for him, and reaching out with both arms, and I remember him standing a little way off looking in the other direction, though I knew he could hear me. I remember it all now, as if it had only just happened.

  “Then when I was six or so she found me with my cousin Lucy. Lucy was a bit younger than me, and we were playing in the bedroom. And like all kids, I suppose, we were curious about each other’s bodies, and we were comparing ourselves with each other in the most innocent way when the door opened suddenly and there was my mother. And her expression changed in a second. She seemed…it was as if she’d instantly gone mad, in a kind of explosion.”

  He stopped. Ginny murmured, “Yeah. We saw her do that….”

  “That’s the part that stays with me,” Dad went on, “not Lucy’s little body but the sheer terror I felt when my mother leapt at me. She sprang at me and snatched me up, half-clothed as I was, and she ran with me into the bathroom. I remember what I did, and this’ll sound strange, but I swear it’s true. I flung my arms around her neck and kissed her again and again and I cried, ‘I love you, Mummy, I love you….’ Terror, you see. But it was no good. She tore my hands away and flung me down into the tub so hard I thought she’d killed me. Then she wrenched at the hot tap, and as the water came out, scalding, splashing down at me, she held me under the stream of it and said I was filthy, I was dirty scum inside and out, she was sickened and disgusted, I was unwholesome, I stank…

  “But I loved her, Ginny, you see, I loved her because she was my mother, and because I loved her I thought she must be right, it must be true what she said. So all the time I was struggling to protect myself from the hot water I remember hoping that she wouldn’t think I was struggling because I didn’t love her, or that I was trying to hurt her, and I remember grabbing her sleeve, her red cardigan sleeve, and sobbing out that I was sorry, I was sorry, I was sorry. But she looked down at her arm with my tears and snivel all over it and she snatched it away, and pulled off the cardigan, and plunged that under the tap to scrub off the mess.

  “Then she made me wait downstairs, out of the way, in the dining room, still without trousers and pants, and she rang my Auntie Mary, my father’s sister. And a little later Auntie Mary came to take Lucy away. I’ve never seen her from that day to this. We were so friendly and happy together. I remember waiting at the dining room door, hoping to hear Lucy’s voice, and not wanting to touch any of the furniture in case I dirtied it.

  “One more memory. I had a teddy bear, the only soft toy I had. The rest of my toys—I had plenty of them— the rest were cars and trains and guns and construction kits. I was never short of things to play with, but I didn’t love them like I loved my bear. He slept in my bed till…I don’t know when it happened, but I’ll never forget it, never. Not till I die.”

  He swallowed hard. Ginny couldn’t move. He was clutching the steering wheel with both hands, staring ahead down the empty road. He went on:

  “It was a winter night. I’d stolen a bar of chocolate from the news dealer’s shop round the corner. I’d never done it before and I don’t know why I did it then, but there I was, lying in bed with the light out, eating this chocolate, feeling smug because I had it and guilty because I knew I shouldn’t. I stayed awake for a long time. And bit by bit the guilt grew and took over, and I hid the rest of the chocolate under my pillow and clung to Tedd
y.

  “Then I started to cry. And my mother, who was coming up the stairs, she heard me and came in, and she saw the chocolate on my face and pulled the pillow away, and I knew what was going to happen, because her eyes flicked to Teddy and then she snatched him away from me.

  “ ‘He doesn’t want Teddy anymore,’ she said. ‘He wants chocolate instead. He’s too old for Teddy. Teddy will have to be killed.’

  “Then she was gone, down the stairs in a flash, and I ran screaming after her, but she went out the back door into the darkness and locked it behind her, and I heard terrible chopping sounds. They kept a little ax there, to chop the kindling wood. I clung to the back door, trying to drag it open, and then I fled, I ran into the sitting room, absolutely incoherent with terror, couldn’t breathe, hardly, and I threw myself at my father, who was watching the television.

  “But all he said was ‘No, no, go back to bed, there’s a good boy,’ and even in the state I was in I could tell he was frightened too. Then he looked up at the doorway and quickly pushed my hands away, because there she stood.

  “D’you know, her face was full of sorrow. She opened her arms to me and because it was what I needed I ran to her and sobbed, and I found myself saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry….’

  “She took me upstairs and laid me back in my bed and explained—I remember her soft voice and the perfume she used to wear—she explained how when teddy bears weren’t loved properly anymore they had to be killed. Teddy had had to be chopped up, and it was very sad, but if I’d loved him more I wouldn’t have wanted to eat chocolate instead. Then she kissed me and wished me happy dreams, and went out and shut the door and left me in the darkness.

  “Till the moment I die I’ll never forget that, that desolation, that misery. You might think I’d hate her, but feelings, I don’t know, they’re not that predictable, are they? In fact, after that, I was desperate with love and fear. I clung to her, I smothered her with affection, terrified that she’d think I didn’t love her.

  “Now I can see what she did to me, now I can see that she made me want to apologize to her for not loving her enough….Well, there are times when I could willingly go there and kill her. I still wake up now, a grown man, I still wake up in the night sweating with fear and rage and hatred. I can only excuse her by thinking that she’s mad. But I can’t forgive him. I’ll never forgive him.