The Broken Bridge Read online

  There were old books in the living room. She was allowed to read books if she sat on the sofa with them. Sitting on the floor wasn’t allowed: we don’t sit on floors in this house, we don’t have dirty little girls who sit on floors in this house, we don’t read books on the floor. Ginny sat with her book on the sofa in the endless cold silence that smelled of furniture polish, the silence that was sliced into regular little pieces by the tick of the tall clock behind the door.

  Granddad kept licking his lips. His eyes were the same color as the blue in the curtains, and they didn’t look at you, they looked sideways past you. When he turned the page of a magazine he licked his forefinger and pressed it on the page, squeezing up the corner between his thumb and his wet finger just the way Ginny had done with the rug in the hall.

  AT BREAKFAST TIME on Saturday, Wendy Stevens phoned again, and Dad came back into the kitchen after taking the call and said, “Well, that’s it, love. I’ve got to go to Liverpool, sort things out.”

  “Has she died?”

  “Yes. Last night. Damn it, I should have gone yesterday, I knew I should. But she wouldn’t have known….”

  He sat down and pushed his cereal away. Ginny watched him carefully. His mouth was tight, and his eyes weren’t looking; they were focused on something a long way away.

  “Did you love her?” Ginny said.

  “Well, it’s complicated; you can’t tidy things up in a sentence or two….Sorry, love, I’m just thinking about it—it’s all rather mixed up. D’you want to come to Liverpool? I’ll only be going to see the hospital and the undertaker, I suppose, that kind of thing. Wendy Stevens. See the boy too. Poor kid. It won’t be very interesting, but come if you like.”

  “No! I can’t! I’m working…I mean, they’re expecting me, I can’t let them down….Anyway, I’d be in the way.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t, but okay. I don’t know when I’ll be back. You’ll be all right?”

  “Will you be bringing him back?”

  “No, no, not today. No, he’ll stay there till the funeral…next week sometime.”

  “What about Granddad and Grandma? Couldn’t they have him?”

  She heard the urgency in her voice. She hadn’t meant to sound like that, but everything was more urgent now that it was settled and there was no last-minute hope that she’d get better.

  “No. Impossible.”

  “Why do we never see them, Dad? It’s as if they’re dead or something. They looked after me once, didn’t they?”

  “I can’t stop and talk about it now, love. Sorry. But they’re out of the question. I’ll tell you more later—I’ve got to move.”

  He bent and gave her a scratchy kiss, and then he was gone. A couple of minutes later, she heard the throaty rasp of the car starting and driving away up the lane toward the main road.

  —

  Rhiannon was full of sympathy, but it wasn’t for her; it was for the mysterious Robert.

  “Imagine it,” she said, her beautiful eyes practically melting with tears. “He’s lived all his life with his mam and he doesn’t know anyone else, and she gets cancer and dies. Then he has to leave his home and go and live with strangers. It must be terrible for him.”

  Ginny was silent and a little ashamed. In fact, she thought, she was a lot ashamed, because she simply hadn’t considered that aspect of it at all.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I wish I knew what he was like. I wish I knew more about this woman—I mean, his mother. And my grandparents too. It’s weird, you know. I remember staying with them once when I was a kid, but I never saw them again. They never write or anything. And he never talks about them.”

  “Probably like Helen and my parents: they probably had a steaming row, and they’re both too proud to make up,” said Rhiannon. “I bet you.”

  “But how could he do that? I mean, how could he have a child with one woman and then go off and marry another one and never mention the first one? All this time I thought I was the only child, and then suddenly, bang, there’s another one….How could he do it?”

  “Ah, well, your dad’s just sexy.”

  “You reckon?”

  “Take my word for it.”

  “I’ll tell him—”

  “I’ll kill you. Don’t you dare.”

  Ginny wondered if that meant, according to Rhiannon’s theory, that Dad couldn’t be kind as well. But she knew it was too simple; things were more complicated than that.

  —

  That afternoon, she went to see Andy. When she arrived at the trailer, she found him spraying himself with aftershave lotion so pungent that it defeated even the reek of baked beans and smoked salmon.

  “What’re you putting that on for?” she said.

  “You like it?”

  “It’s horrible! I’d rather smell sweat; I’d rather smell dirty socks, even!”

  “Ah, well, they’ll know I’m there anyway. You coming to the fair?”

  “Is it on? Today? Brilliant!”

  “Dafydd’s got the car working. You’re just in time—how about that. Who’s a lucky little Ginny, then?”

  He patted her cheeks with his aftershave-laden hands.

  “Ach,” she said, slapping at him but secretly delighted.

  Dafydd was a big, slow, sweet-natured boy of twenty or so. He had long black hair, like a heavy-metal freak, and strong, oil-stained hands that could do anything with machinery. When Ginny was much younger she’d fallen off her bike and twisted the handlebars. She’d hauled it tearfully to the garage on the main road, hoping they could mend it before Dad came home, and it was Dafydd who’d gently listened to her and taken the battered little bike and set the front wheel between his knees and twisted the handlebars till they were straight again. Better still, he’d shown her how to do it too. She’d fallen in love with him on the spot, but he was thirteen and she was nine, and so he was all but grown up and out of reach.

  Later he’d passed on to her the comics he loved to read, and they’d shared such delights as Tank Girl and Halo Jones and Watchmen and Raw and, best of all, Love and Rockets. When she looked at comics she felt a strange knowledge growing inside her, a mixture of excitement and certainty, and she copied the artwork until she could draw Batman and Superman and El Borbah and Maggie and Hopey and Tonantzín, all the classics, almost as well as the originals. Dafydd admired that as much as she admired his skill with engines, but he was still four years older; sixteen and twenty were almost as far apart as nine and thirteen. Besides, she thought now, with Rhiannon’s worldly wisdom, he was a kind person; Andy was the sexy one.

  “You coming to the fair, then?” Dafydd said, emerging from the hood of his ancient MG, parked out of sight behind the trailer.

  “Yeah! Great! I didn’t know it was on,” she said. “Is there room for me?”

  “You’re skinny,” said Andy, patting her bottom. “Fold your little drumsticks up and get in the back. Go on.”

  She did, and with Andy sitting like a lord in front of her, Dafydd got the engine going at the third attempt and they bumped off over the grass and through the gate.

  The road along the coast was busy. There wasn’t much of a bus service, which was why people used the train, but there was talk of the train service being cut; in which case everyone would have to have a car, Ginny thought, and pump more carbon dioxide into the ozone layer, or whatever it was.

  In the meantime, she loved sitting in the back of Dafydd’s fume-belching MG and listening to the boys talk. The wind rushed past her face, and the engine roared, and everything was fun.

  As they went below the Castle Hotel, Andy said, “Duck, lads, this is Carlos’s day for practicing his golf.”

  “Does he still have putting competitions on the roof?” said Dafydd.

  “No, he’s taken up driving now. He uses hard-boiled eggs,” Andy said quite seriously.

  “I don’t believe in Carlos! I think you’re making him up,” said Ginny.

  “No, it’s true!” said Andy. “There’s this l
ittle lad from Wrexham, on some training scheme—Carlos calls him Polka Dot cause of all his spots, right. Anyway, he says to him one day, Boil me up fifty eggs, Polka Dot, give ’em ten minutes, not a second less. So Polka Dot thinks he’s going to be let into some Cordon Bleu secret, and he counts out the eggs, one two three four fifty, boils ’em all for ten minutes. Now go up on the roof, says Carlos, taking a practice swing with a ladle, set ’em all up on the edge a foot apart, facing out to sea. Well, Polka Dot’s mystified, but Carlos is The Man, you don’t argue with The Man, and up goes little Polka Dot with this plastic bowl full of eggs, and taps ’em all on the end and sets ’em all up along the edge. Carlos goes up with his clubs and flies into a passion. You fool! he says. Whoever heard of pointed golf balls, you’ve got ’em on the wrong end, turn ’em over, turn ’em over! So Polka Dot has to crawl along, turning em all the other way up, only he’s so nervous he drops half of ’em into the flowerbed below, and Carlos makes him go and pick ’em up and make a salad out of ’em. Mustn’t waste food, he says, first duty of a good chef.”

  “Oh, go on, it’s not true,” said Ginny, but she felt as happy as if it had been.

  Dafydd parked the car in a side street, and they swaggered into the harbor parking lot, where the fair had set up. The smell of hot dogs, the crash of amplified rock and roll, the hum of electricity filled the air. The best time to come was after dark, but any time was good. They went on the Flying Jets and the Dodgem Cars, and Andy put his arm around her shoulders while she drove and crashed and spun; they climbed the rickety old Helter-Skelter and stood at the top, making it sway from side to side, till the owner yelled up to quit it and get on down; they shied at coconuts and got none, they shot at Ping-Pong balls on jets of water and Dafydd won a teddy bear, they played the arcade games in the tent; and there they came face-to-face with Joe Chicago.

  Ginny was playing a pinball game, with Andy banging the table for her, when suddenly he fell silent. Ginny felt a rush of fear and looked up, and there was Joe Chicago not two feet away, staring at Andy with bleak hot eyes.

  He was big, but his bulk looked like muscle, not fat. Lank strands of sandy hair seemed pasted to his greasy head. The famous leather jacket was open, and she saw a thick fur lining and thought how hot he must be, but he seemed as cold as ice.

  She felt a hand on her arm: Dafydd, tugging her gently away. She went with him and left Andy there, seemingly at his ease, talking expansively to Joe Chicago as if they were the best of friends.

  “What’s he want?” said Ginny. “Why’s he after Andy?”

  “ ’Cause Andy’s a bloody fool,” said Dafydd. “He gets mixed up in things and he doesn’t know how to get out of it. You keep away from that guy; let Andy sort it out.”

  She stood by Dafydd while he played a machine that picked up candies with a crane and dropped them into a tray. He managed to get two, his deft oil-stained hands working their usual charm over machinery, but Ginny kept her eyes on Andy, and she saw Joe Chicago suddenly, without warning, punch Andy hard on the upper arm, a vicious blow that knocked him sideways a couple of feet. She gasped, but Andy didn’t seem at all worried, and no one else appeared to have noticed. Ginny was breathless. Without showing the least sign of surprise or alarm, Andy took a couple of ten-pound notes from his pocket and handed them to Joe Chicago, who nodded and strolled away without looking back.

  The whole scene lasted hardly more than a few seconds, but the strange atmosphere between Joe and Andy left Ginny weak. She suddenly seemed to have looked into a pit of dark and strange behavior of which that punch was only a symbol, a pit that had opened for a moment and then closed again, leaving the sunny surface of the world shadowy and insubstantial.

  “Here, have it,” said Dafydd, pushing a toffee into her hand.

  “But did you see—”

  “Let Andy sort it out,” he said again. “Don’t worry about him. He’s got more lives than a cat. Talking of cats, let’s have a hot dog….”

  Two minutes later they were all eating soggy hot dogs dripping with grease and ketchup.

  “Boiled onions,” said Andy in disgust. “I ask you. I should’ve brought Gertie along—we could have had a slice off her.”

  “Who’s Gertie?”

  “That bloody smoked salmon,” said Dafydd. “Honest, I’m going to sling it out. I’m fed up with it.”

  “She’s just getting ripe,” said Andy.

  “It lies there singing in the dark,” said Dafydd. “It’s going to climb out the cupboard and kiss me one of these nights. Aye, aye, look, here’s a Ghost Train….”

  They’d missed it the first time round. Of all the fairground rides, Ginny loved the Ghost Train best of all, and this looked like a good one, the ghosts howling and clanking away inside and Freddy Krueger brandishing his iron fingernails on the front.

  Andy wouldn’t go on it; he said he was too highly strung. Ginny scoffed and got into the nearest carriage with Dafydd, who paid, and then the siren howled and off they went, bashing through the double doors into the raucous darkness.

  Skeletons leapt out, phantoms gibbered, ghouls gnawed corpses, and evil banshees wailed; it was the best Ghost Train Ginny had ever been on. But suddenly everything stopped. The carriage lurched to a halt, the light on the nearest coffin went out, and the distant thud of the generator faltered and died.

  They sat in the darkness and silence.

  “What’s going on?” said Ginny.

  “The generator’s packed up,” said Dafydd. “We’ll be here forever. What it is, they need some more ghosts, probably. Just our luck.”

  Someone called from outside. “Don’t move! We’ll get the power back on in a minute!”

  From somewhere ahead in the darkness, a muffled voice said, “Can’t we walk out?”

  “No! Stay there! Stay in the carriage!”

  Then it was silent again. Outside there was all the noise of the rest of the fair, but it only made the silence in the Ghost Train deeper. Dafydd lit a cigarette, and the glow of light and the smoke around his face made him look like a god in a mysterious temple, surrounded by incense.

  “Dafydd?” said Ginny after a while.

  “Yeah?”

  They were speaking quietly, almost whispering.

  “Is Andy in trouble?”

  “No more than usual. Just let him be, I would.”

  “Has Joe Chicago been in jail?”

  “Well, that’s what they say. I wouldn’t know, myself.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Then she thought of something else.

  “Dafydd, you know Pont Doredig?”

  “Oh, the broken bridge, aye. Up Gwynant. I used to go swimming up there.”

  “What happened to the bridge? Why’s it broken?”

  “Oh, that was years ago. This bloke was driving up there one night with his kid in the car, only a baby, and it was a winter night with snow all over the place. I don’t know exactly what happened, whether he skidded or went through the wall or something, but anyway he had to leave the car there and go for help. He left the kid there, in the car, wrapped up in this fur-lined jacket, sheepskin, I suppose, to keep it warm. When he got back from the nearest farmhouse or the phone box or whatever, the jacket was gone, stolen, and the kid was dead. Frozen stiff. That’s it, really. I don’t know who the bloke was or if they ever found out who nicked the jacket or what.”

  Ginny sat there in the dark, her mind spinning. She could see it: the white desolation, the car abandoned on the bridge, a dark figure making off with the warm fur-lined jacket….

  “It is true?” she managed to say.

  “True? Well, as far as I know. It happened a long time back, mind. Ten, fifteen years, maybe more. Why d’you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. I just went up there the other day, and I heard it was called the broken bridge. I just wondered….”

  They were trying to start the generator outside. Ginny was glad of the noise, because it helped to cover up the shaking of her voice, and g
lad of the dark, because there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the generator caught, and the power came on again. A siren howled beside them, the carriage lurched forward, one final skeleton sat up in its coffin, and then they were outside, blinking and shielding their eyes from the bright day.

  “Sorry about that,” said the boy in charge, hauling the carriages forward.

  Andy was trying to get him to refund the fares.

  “They could be severely psychologically damaged,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Exposing them to spiritual dangers and phantom anxieties, it’s a case for the law courts.”

  The boy looked down at him. “Piss off,” he sneered.

  “Ah, yes,” said Andy. “I see your point. Very well argued case. Sounds watertight to me…”

  They left the Ghost Train and wandered out of the fair. It was nearly time to go home. Ginny wondered what Dad was doing now, whether he’d seen Robert yet, when the funeral would be, a dozen other questions; but more than that, she found herself gripped by the story of the broken bridge. Deep inside her, something had been changed, and she knew that the story was part of her now, part of what made her what she was. But as for what it meant…

  “It was nice in there,” said Dafydd, getting into the car. “I liked it.”

  “What?” said Andy.

  “The Ghost Train. You could have a nice nap in there if it wasn’t haunted, like. Ah, well. Let’s go home, see if Gertie’s got into my sleeping bag.”

  SOMEONE had been murdered in the woods. Ginny knew what “murdered” meant, because Maeve had told her: it meant someone cutting you with a knife so that all your blood ran out, and in a few seconds you were dead. When Ginny looked out the trailer window she saw dark water dripping off the leaves, running down each surface, and pouring off the point like a little spout. And there was water inside the trailer too, because the window was misty with tiny little drops of it. When you drew on it with your finger, you squashed them together and made a little river, and it ran in a jerk to the bottom.

  The gaslight made a hissing noise. Maeve told her that another little girl had touched it and her skin had stuck to the bright part and come right away, so she had one finger that was only bones, no skin, no fingernail, just like a skeleton.