The Broken Bridge Read online

  “Why don’t you go in the bloody lot and turn round there?” shouted one of the drivers.

  “There must be a catch in that,” Andy said. “What d’you reckon, Gin? Sounds too easy to me.”

  “No; do that,” she said.

  Stuart nodded, and the BMW surged forward. The trailer door flew wide open with a bang, and a plastic bucket fell out. Andy stood in the middle of the road, nodding wisely.

  “See,” he said. “I told you there was a way of doing it.”

  The first car hooted, and Andy jumped aside, taking the bucket with him. The cars in the line followed Stuart into the lot, the drivers scowling and frowning at Andy, who stood holding the bucket like someone collecting for charity. It took less than a minute for Stuart to turn the car around and come out again, facing up the lane. He stopped for Andy and Ginny to get in, and said, “Where do we go now?”

  “Up to the railway bridge,” said Andy. “We can’t get into old Alston’s field down here anyway.”

  “Well, why did you come all the way down?” Ginny asked.

  “To pick you up,” said Stuart.

  She was sitting in the front, Andy in the back, and now as she looked at Stuart she felt overcome with shyness again. He must be a film star, she thought; no one could be that handsome and not be famous for it. He had dark curly hair and bright-blue eyes, and his clothes were like his car, expensive and luxurious: soft cream trousers and dark-blue polo shirt. His bare feet on the pedals looked tough and expert.

  “What do you do, Ginny?” he said, maneuvering smoothly past another car.

  “Oh, I’m at school,” she said. “That’s all. What about you?”

  “I’m a playboy,” he said.

  “You know that house by the Yacht Club?” Andy said from the back. “The one on stilts? Stuart’s renting it.”

  “Oh, I love that house!” Ginny said.

  “You know it, then?” said Stuart.

  “Only from the outside.”

  “You’ll have to come and visit.”

  The one-story wooden house was built like a boat, with railings around a flat roof and portholes instead of windows. When the tide came in, the house stood above the water on its stilts, and a flight of steps led down to where a dinghy was usually tied up. Ginny had loved it from the moment she’d first seen it, but she’d never found out who lived there. Now that Stuart had come to enter her kingdom, though, the least she could do was pay it a state visit.

  “Is this where we go?” he said.

  He turned the car into the courtyard of the shop by the railway bridge, then waited while Andy opened a gate into the field next to it. They bumped over the tussocky grass to the far corner. There was a hedge that separated it from the trailer site, and in the very center of the field stood the half-built shell of Mr. Alston’s house, with piles of bricks and a cement mixer beside it.

  “Where d’you want it?” said Stuart.

  “This’ll do,” said Andy.

  They got out, and Andy began to screw down the legs of the trailer.

  “Can I look inside?” said Ginny.

  “Help yourself,” he said. “Put the kettle on, that’s what you can do. We’ll have some coffee.”

  It was a shabby, battered old trailer, and worse inside than out, with holes in the hardboard paneling and yellowing tape over a crack in the window and a broken catch that wouldn’t hold the cupboard door shut. There were two foam mattresses on the bunks and a couple of sleeping bags lying in a pile of dirty clothes on the floor.

  She found a kettle and a plastic container of water and some matches, and lit the gas in the tiny stove, holding the kettle in place while the trailer rocked and shook as they settled it on its legs. When the water boiled, she found some more or less clean mugs and made the coffee. There was no milk, of course, and no sugar, either. When she opened the little kitchen cupboard, a powerful fishy smell came out, and she wrinkled her nose and took a step back before looking more closely. A vast pink slab was lying there sweating.

  “What on earth is that thing in the cupboard?” she said, taking two mugs of black coffee outside. Andy and Stuart were sitting on the step, and they moved to make room for her between them.

  “Oh, that’s me smoked salmon,” said Andy. “We better finish that off tonight; it’s getting a bit vigorous. You fancy a slice now?”

  She made a face.

  “You not having any coffee?” Stuart said to her.

  “I’ve seen the mugs,” she said.

  He looked at his doubtfully but sipped anyway.

  “What do you really do?” she said. “You’re not really a playboy, are you? I didn’t think they were real.”

  “Oh, they are,” he said. “They play polo, they gamble, they go skiing and motor racing and jet setting.”

  “Not here, though,” she said.

  “No; I’m on holiday,” he said. “All that pleasure, it wears you out. No; really, I’m an anthropologist.”

  “A what? Do you go in jungles and things?”

  “Not if I can help it. I study religion, magic, witchcraft. I was in Brazil earlier this year. Fascinating.”

  “Have you been to Haiti?”

  “Yes, I have, actually.”

  “My mother came from there.”

  “Did she? Do you speak Creole?”

  “No. She died when I was only little. I’ve never been there.”

  “It’s an amazing place. I spent some time with a voodoo priest, learning all about it.”

  “Could you teach me about voodoo?”

  “Sure.”

  “You ought to do voodoo on Joe Chicago,” she said, turning to Andy.

  She felt him tense. He didn’t say anything for a moment or two, and Stuart turned to see why.

  “Who’s Joe Chicago?” he said.

  “He’s a thug,” said Andy. “White trash.”

  “Why’s he called Joe Chicago anyway?” said Ginny.

  “That leather jacket he wears, it comes from Chicago,” Andy explained.

  “Is that all?”

  “It’s true!”

  “But that’s as if I called myself Ginny Korea because of my sneakers,” she said.

  “Why’s he after Andy?” Stuart asked her.

  “He won’t tell me,” she said.

  “You want to stay away from him,” said Andy shortly. “He’s horrible, he’s dangerous. Don’t have nothing to do with him.”

  He wouldn’t say any more. Presently Stuart said he had to go and see about renting a boat. “Come and visit my house,” he said before he drove off. He’d left most of his coffee, Ginny noticed.

  “Is he rich?” she said.

  “His dad’s a millionaire. But he’s too busy to spend his money, so Stuart spends it for him.”

  “He’s nice. I like him.”

  Andy had closed his eyes. They sat there in the sun, listening to the shouts of children on the beach or in the sand dunes and the sound of a distant aircraft taking off across the estuary.

  “Andy,” she said after a few minutes, “when you were a kid, did you feel different from everyone else because you were black?”

  He didn’t answer for such a long time that Ginny eventually prodded his foot with hers.

  “I’m thinking,” he said. Then he said, “I feel different for all sorts of reasons. Being black’s one, of course it is. Being adopted’s another. Being…well, everything else I am. Course I feel different.”

  “Do you know who your real parents are?” she asked.

  “No, and I don’t care, either.”

  Ginny couldn’t believe that. She said, “But don’t you want to know where they came from and who they were? They might be nice. They might be really glad. You can do that now; I read about it. If you’re adopted, you can find out who your parents are.”

  “Nice,” he said bitterly. “Hundred to one, you know what she is, my mother? She’s a prostitute. And my father, he’d be one of her customers. Then when I was born she ditched me somewhere
and the council shoved me off on them down there.” He nodded toward the south, meaning the town where his adoptive parents lived. “Nice, you reckon? Bloody rubbish. You think I want to look it all up and find that out? I couldn’t care less about her. She just left me, didn’t she? To hell with her. I don’t want to know. I am what I am. I’m free, see. I got no ties.”

  She leaned against the doorframe, watching him. He was gazing down at the grass; she couldn’t see the expression in his eyes, but she felt it to be distant and cold.

  “Different…” he said after another pause. “I can’t go anywhere without being different. I’m not even the same as other black kids. When I was in Bristol, right, doing my catering course, I felt a bloody idiot because these other guys, black guys, they came up to me first day and started talking dialect, patois, you know? Rasta kind a ting, maan? Well, Duw, I never felt such a fool in all me life. I couldn’t understand a word….And what could I say? Sorry, fellers, I can’t understand you, I’m Welsh? Ridiculous. Okay, I sound Welsh, but I’m not Welsh….Not African, either. I’m just a white kid with a black face, that’s what I am. Don’t belong anywhere.”

  “Right!” Ginny said. “That’s just what I feel, exactly what I feel!”

  “You’re all right anyway. When you draw pictures, it doesn’t matter what color you are.”

  “Ah, no,” Ginny said. “That’s not true. I think it does matter. I think there might be a difference between the way white people paint and the way black people do. Just as there’s a difference between French paintings and Chinese paintings…You can see it.”

  “What is it, then? What’s the difference between black art and white art?”

  “That’s what I don’t know, you see! That’s the point! That’s why I said I feel like you, I don’t know where I belong….”

  “Right. So you’re free, then, ain’t you?”

  “Free?”

  “Free to do anything. Like me. I don’t know where I belong, so I’m free. No one’s got a hold on me.”

  Except Joe Chicago, thought Ginny. But he wouldn’t tell her anything about that. And it was more difficult than she’d said, more difficult than she could explain. After a while they went and bought some ice cream from the two old ladies and looked on the beach for crabs, but the crabs must have been hiding, because they didn’t find a single one.

  GINNY was good at drawing; everybody said so. The teachers would soon find out how good her pictures were and put them on the display board. At one school she tried drawing badly on purpose, but they still praised her and still pinned up her pictures. Then she saw how stupid they were at that school, and hated them for it, and grew so unhappy she could hardly breathe.

  That was the place where they lived in a basement. Dad slept in the sitting room and she had the only bedroom. The stove and the fridge and the kitchen sink were all in the sitting room too. There was a little boy who lived upstairs. They used to play in the yard together, but he was always crying. He got scratched by a cat once and had to be taken upstairs to lie down. When they’d taken him up, Ginny stayed in the yard alone, making a town for her plastic rabbit to live in among the flowerpots behind the big coal bin, wondering if the little boy would die from the cat scratch.

  In another school she had to wear a dark-green uniform with a straw hat held on by a tight elastic band under her chin. The playground was two streets away, and they walked there in pairs, each girl holding her neighbor’s hand. Ginny had to walk with a girl called Jackie. Jackie kept letting go of her hand, until the teacher saw and told her off.

  Ginny had a photograph of her mother in a leather frame, which always stood beside her bed. Everyone said how alike they looked. Her mother was called Maman, which was French. Ginny spoke to Maman every night, asking her to ask the Virgin Mary to send some angels to guard her against bad dreams. Once some girls wanted to tell her a secret, and so that she wouldn’t give it away, they made her swear on her mother’s deathbed. She was very frightened. She thought about it that night and couldn’t get it out of her mind. She imagined a deathbed as a special sort of bed which was delivered to the house when it was time for you to die, and you’d know, everybody would know, and slowly it would get closer to bedtime and you wouldn’t want to go to bed, but you must, you had to, it was time. What happened on the deathbed was too horrible to think of. She lay rigid that night, and when Dad came in to kiss her, as he always did before he went to bed, he found her pillow drenched with tears. She couldn’t explain it at all.

  JUST AS Ginny was leaving next morning to go to the Dragon, the phone rang. She recognized the caller’s voice at once and found her heart thumping, because it was Wendy Stevens.

  “Hello, Ginny! Is your dad in?”

  “No, he’s at work. D’you want his number? He’s probably in the office—”

  “I’ve got his work number, thanks, love. I thought he’d be at home, for some reason.”

  “Oh. Well…”

  “Don’t go. Are you busy?”

  “Well, I’ve got a job to go to, I’ve got to be there in half an hour, but…”

  “A job? What’re you doing, then?”

  “In a café. Nothing special.”

  “Nice. Listen…Did your dad say anything the other day after I left?”

  “What, about you?”

  “Yes. About why I came.”

  Now her knees were trembling. Ginny sat down on the floor and steadied her elbow against the wall.

  “No,” she said.

  “He didn’t tell you about what’s happening in Liverpool?”

  “Liverpool…I don’t know what you mean. What is happening?”

  “Well…Oh, look, let me ring him now. He’ll tell you himself; it’s better.”

  “No! Wait! What is it? Please tell me! I asked him about you the other day, but he wouldn’t say anything. I knew there was something wrong. But if you’re thinking what I think you are, it’s not true, it’s a lie, I swear it.”

  There was a silence then for a second or two.

  “What d’you mean, love?” said Wendy Stevens, in a different voice. “What do you think I’m thinking?”

  “About…You’re investigating him, aren’t you? Isn’t that it?”

  “Investigating him? Whatever for?”

  Now it was Ginny’s turn to pause.

  “I thought someone might’ve—you know—might have told you something that wasn’t true. About him and me. You know, like you read in the papers, when they take kids into care. That’s why I thought you’d come, you see. I was afraid…”

  “Let me get this straight. You thought I was checking up on whether your father was abusing you? Is that what you mean?”

  “Yeah.” Ginny felt breathless. “Yeah, that’s it. And if it wasn’t that…well, us being different races. I know they don’t like white parents having black kids. So I thought maybe it might be that….I don’t know.”

  “That’s only a guideline, and it only applies to adoption or fostering, and you’re not adopted or fostered, you’re his child, so forget that. As for the other thing—is he abusing you?”

  “No! God, no! Course not!”

  “I never thought he was. It wasn’t that at all. But you mean you’ve been thinking this all the time? Didn’t you ask him about it? Actually, no, it wouldn’t be easy, would it?”

  She was sounding far more straightforward and sensible than she had the other day. Maybe it was because Ginny couldn’t see her smiling all the time; or maybe she wasn’t smiling now.

  “Well, what is it about, then?” Ginny said, worried differently but no less worried.

  “That’s why I need to talk to him. I don’t think I ought to tell you like this, over the phone.”

  “But you can’t leave it like this! I won’t see him till nine o’clock, probably; he’s working late….You’re not going to split us up? You’re not going to take me away?”

  She knew she sounded distressed, but she couldn’t help it; she genuinely didn’t know what
powers they had.

  “No,” said Wendy Stevens. “No one could do that. No one wants to do that, even if they could.”

  “Then what’s it about? Is it about my mother? Is she alive or something?”

  That was a shot in the dark: about the wildest thing Ginny could think of. Wendy Stevens hesitated again.

  “What do you know about your mother?” she said.

  “Only what he’s told me. She died soon after I was born.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Right. Well, listen, Ginny. What’s going on concerns your dad, but not in a bad way, not in any way that’ll split your family up or anything of that sort. But he’s going to have to tell you what it is; I can’t. It wouldn’t be right. What I’ll do is I’ll ring him now at work and tell him what’s going on, so he’ll know, and I’ll tell him what we’ve said this morning—”

  “Don’t tell him what I was worried about!”

  “The abuse business?”

  “Yeah. Don’t tell him that, please. I don’t want him thinking…Just tell him I was worried, okay?”

  “I understand. And listen, Ginny…I’ll be coming down again in a couple of days. We’ll have a talk then, if you like.”

  “Oh…right. Why are you coming down?”

  “That’s what he’ll have to tell you. You better get off to your job now; you’ll be late.”

  “Yeah…Thanks.”

  “Ta-ra, Ginny.”

  The phone receiver buzzed in Ginny’s hand. She stood up slowly and replaced it.

  —

  She had a lot to tell Rhiannon and no time to tell her in; the Dragon was busier than at any time she’d known it, and what with serving coffee, clearing dirty cups away, selling doughnuts and scones and pieces of Mrs. Calvert’s homemade cake, and trying to get the tables clear and set up for lunch with their salt and pepper shakers and sugar packets and plastic ketchup bottles, she hadn’t managed to exchange two words with her friend all morning.