The Broken Bridge

by Philip Pullman

  Within half an hour Ginny felt so much at home that she was able to tell them she was going to work at the Dragon as well.

  “That bugger Calvert, he’s neurotic,” said Harry. “Don’t you think he’s neurotic, love?”

  “If he wasn’t when you started going on about him, then he should be by now,” said Angie, who was stirring some kind of sauce.

  “Oh, come on,” said Harry, “you should hear what he says about this place. It’s slanderous, I swear it is. And what’s that I saw on the wall there the other day? I was just looking through the window as I went past—has he got paintings hanging up there?”

  Painting was Mr. Calvert’s latest hobby. Ginny felt she ought to defend him, though privately she thought his pictures were terrible.

  “He does them himself,” she said. “They’re—”

  Harry was fascinated. “He did ’em himself? He does these paintings and hangs ’em up in his own café?”

  “He sells them,” Ginny told him. “They’ve all got prices on.”

  “What? He actually sells ’em? Are they any good?”

  “Well…”

  “Don’t lie, girl,” said Angie. “I can tell.”

  “How much does he ask for ’em?” said Harry.

  “Forty pounds, fifty pounds, that sort of price.”

  Ginny was cutting up French-style loaves into chunks and putting them in little baskets. Harry picked up a piece and absentmindedly started tearing it apart, he was so interested in these paintings of Mr. Calvert’s.

  “And has anyone bought one?” he said, throwing a piece of bread into his mouth.

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask tomorrow.”

  “Look at you, you messy pig,” Angie said to him. “Crumbs all over you. Get out, go and do some work, go on.”

  Winking at Ginny and tossing up another piece of bread, Harry Lime went out without the lemon he’d come in for. Angie saw it on the table and asked Ginny to take it through to the bar.

  “Silly bugger, he’d forget his trousers if they weren’t sewn on,” she said.

  When Ginny got back, there was someone else in the kitchen, sitting at the table calmly slicing some carrots into matchstick-sized pieces with quick, accurate taps of a knife.

  “Andy!” she said, delighted. “What’re you doing here? Have you left the Castle?”

  “I got the sack,” he said. “It’s all right, it’s quite fair. I was next on the list. Pass me that dish.”

  “What list?” Ginny sat down to fill the salt and pepper mills.

  “Carlos, the chef, right, he fires people in strict rotation—first in, first out. Every so often one of his rackets gets busted, and he has to have someone to blame. Someone to take the rap. Duw annwyl, you should have seen us last night. We were all in there and he was making Glühwein—”

  “Glühwein in the summer?” said Angie, listening.

  “What’s Glühwein?” said Ginny.

  “Oh, you know, mulled wine. You heat it up with spices and stuff and drink it with your après-ski kit. I know it’s the wrong drink for the summer, but Carlos is insane, man, he’s deranged. He sent me up to the bar for some port, to stiffen it a bit, he says. He had to send to the bar because the boss has put a new lock on the cellar and Carlos hasn’t found the key yet, but he will. Anyway, Barry in the bar’s drunk, see, so he gives me a bottle of brandy instead. ‘Brandy for my friend Carlos,’ he says, ‘give him brandy.’ ‘Duw,’ says Carlos, ‘look at this, lads, Welsh port—this’ll warm your cockles up.’ There’s us all sweating like pigs in there already. He pours it all in—beautiful stuff it was, Rémy Martin or something—and then he takes this poker thing he’s been heating in the gas flame. It’s red hot, and he bungs it in, and whoosh! The whole lot goes up. The flames hit the ceiling, Carlos’s eyebrows are burnt off, all the waiters are squealing with terror, and then the boss walks in.

  “ ‘What’s going on? Good God! Good God! What’s happened?’ he says, and Carlos points the poker at me.

  “ ‘This casual staff,’ he says, ‘entertainment is all they care about. Swallowing the knives is bad enough, but I will not have fire-eating in my kitchen.’

  “ ‘Out!’ says the boss. ‘Out! Out!’ ”

  “I don’t know how that place is still standing,” said Angle.

  “So that was it, see,” Andy went on. “Still, it was a good laugh. Carlos gave me a whole side of smoked salmon to take away. I had to stuff it down me leg to get it past the porter. Me and Dafydd, we’re living on smoked salmon and baked beans now, in the trailer. We’re taking it down the beach on Wednesday. You ought to come and pay a visit.”

  “I will,” said Ginny.

  The last of the sunlight through the open door soaked the whole kitchen in gold, and everything was wonderful. Andy was there, and everything was great.

  —

  Next morning, in the Dragon, she looked more closely at Mr. Calvert’s pictures. He was a science fiction fan, and these were science fiction pictures—women in brass corsets fighting huge green lizards, or sunsets on Jupiter with smudgy purple shadows going the wrong way. The colors were so violent and applied so clumsily that Ginny felt uncomfortable looking at them. What was more, she knew from her own efforts that while drawing human beings wasn’t easy, if you looked carefully enough and tried hard, you could usually see how bodies fit together. To look at Mr. Calvert’s paintings, though, you’d have thought it was impossible. They had titles like Interstellar Alchemy or Dragon Dawn, and Ginny wouldn’t have given 10p for the lot; but there they were with little stickers saying forty pounds or fifty pounds. She liked Mr. Calvert, so she had to pretend to be impressed.

  She had something else on her mind, though, and she didn’t want to tell Rhiannon about it. As soon as she finished, which was at twelve o’clock, she slipped away and went down the hill to the station. She was just in time to catch the midday train to Porthafon.

  It got there at a quarter to one. The station was next to the harbor, which at one time had been a working place, full of ships taking on cargoes of slate, but now was cluttered with expensive yachts belonging to tourists. Ginny wandered around and sat on a bollard eating some chips and an apple, then she set off to look for Jubilee Terrace.

  She didn’t know what she was going to say to Rhiannon’s sister. She didn’t really know whether she was going to call on her at all; she felt nervous, and her heart was beating as if she had stage fright. When she found the house, in a little slaty terrace above the town, she walked past it and down to the end of the terrace before telling herself not to be so weak.

  She turned back and rang the doorbell. The narrow garden was neatly kept, with bright geraniums edging the path, and unlike its neighbors, this house had no net curtains, so Ginny could see how tidy and clean the front room was.

  When the door opened, the woman who stood there blinked in the sunlight, shading her eyes, and took a little step backward in surprise.

  “Mrs. Meredith?” said Ginny. “Rhiannon’s sister?”

  Helen Meredith blew out her cheeks and ran a hand through her dark hair. She knew who Ginny was; she was utterly taken aback.

  “Come in,” she said, standing aside in the narrow hall. “She…You must be Ginny. Is that right? God, I’m sorry to be so…It’s just a surprise, that’s all. She must have told you.”

  “Well, she’s my friend,” said Ginny.

  She stepped inside, and Helen Meredith shut the door. There was a pause, and they both spoke at once, and Ginny said, “Sorry. You go first.”

  “I was going to say would you like some coffee or something?”

  “Oh, thanks. Yeah, I would….”

  She followed the woman into the little kitchen and sat on a stool while Helen filled a kettle and got out some mugs. Everything was so clean that it looked new. Ginny used to think that other people had newer things than she and Dad did, newer carpets, newer curtains and furniture; it took her some time to realize that it was just that she and Dad didn’t
clean things as often as everyone else. But then they both had better things to do, as he said when she pointed it out.

  “I told her not to say anything,” said Helen Meredith. “I’m embarrassed now.”

  She sat down on the other side of the little breakfast bar, and Ginny could see that she was blushing deep pink. She didn’t look away or try to hide it, either.

  “What did she tell you?” she said.

  “She said you’d met my dad, and you wanted to know about me, whether I was adopted.”

  Helen Meredith nodded. “Just being nosy,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Didn’t you ask Dad?”

  “No. I don’t know why. And…I thought it was time I got in touch with Rhiannon….That seemed to be a way. I don’t know….”

  The kettle boiled, and she got up to make the coffee.

  “Oh, by the way, don’t call me Mrs. Meredith. I’m Helen,” she said, with her back to Ginny.

  “Oh. Right.”

  She was quite different from Rhiannon, Ginny thought: clearer and more vivid; stronger, perhaps.

  Quickly, while Helen’s back was still turned, Ginny said, “Rhiannon said you asked if my father had been in prison.”

  “Oh, God,” said Helen.

  She brought the mugs over. Her face was screwed up with embarrassment, and deep red. Ginny had never seen a grownup look so ashamed.

  “I didn’t want her to,” she said. “I knew I shouldn’t, soon as I said it. Stupid of me. You haven’t asked him, have you?”

  “What?” Ginny said. “Course not! He doesn’t know I’m here; he doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Good. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have listened….”

  “Listened? Who to?”

  “Someone…my husband knows. He said that as far as he knew, your dad had…been in prison. That’s all. It’s probably a mistake.”

  “But…what was he supposed to’ve done, to get sent to prison?”

  “I don’t know,” said Helen, looking really unhappy. “It’s probably…like I said, it’s probably a mistake.”

  Ginny sat watching her for a few moments. Helen was toying with a teaspoon, pushing it slowly around like the hand of a clock, not touching her coffee.

  “Well, if you know Dad,” Ginny said finally, “couldn’t you ask him?”

  “I couldn’t. Not yet. I don’t know him well enough. Maybe I wouldn’t anyway. It’s just…No.”

  “Does your husband know?”

  “Benny? He’s never here. He wouldn’t know.” She sipped her coffee. “Tell me about your mam,” she said.

  Ginny liked the Welsh mam better than the English mum; it was almost maman.

  “She came from Haiti,” she said. “She was an art student, and she met Dad and they fell in love and got married, and I was born, and then she got hepatitis and died. That’s all, really. She was called Anielle. Anielle Baptiste, that was her maiden name.”

  “So you never really knew her?”

  “No. I’ve got a picture of her.”

  “Where did you say she came from?”

  “Haiti. Where the zombies come from. Zombies and voodoo. She spoke French and Creole. But I don’t know any Creole; there was no one to teach me.”

  “You’ve never been there? Never seen her family?”

  “My family too,” Ginny said. “No, I never have. I don’t think Dad would have anything in common with them, really.”

  “They’d have you in common,” said Helen.

  “Yeah, well…Anyway, I get the feeling Dad never got on with them. They just…I don’t know anything about them, to tell the truth.”

  She wished she did. But whenever she’d asked Dad, he’d told her they were a wealthy family from Port-au-Prince, the capital, but that was all he knew.

  “We don’t talk about her much,” said Ginny. “It’s just me and Dad, really.”

  They sat quietly for a while. It was easier now, much easier than Ginny had thought. Helen told her a little about her own background, how she had quarreled with her father over some boy and how it had got out of control, so that they’d all said more than they’d meant, and how difficult it was to make the first move back. Ginny came away thinking how nice Helen was, how lucky Rhiannon was to have such a sister. Families were strange, to quarrel so bitterly.

  GINNY SPENT Sunday waiting impatiently for Dad to go out so that she could call Rhiannon and tell her about her visit to Helen. He spent the morning slumped on the sofa reading the paper, as usual, but finally in the afternoon he decided to go and look at a boat he was thinking of buying, and she rushed to the phone at once.

  “Rhiannon—guess what? I’ve been to see your sister!”

  “What? When?”

  “Yesterday. She’s great, honestly; she was so nice….Her husband wasn’t there; she was on her own. The thing about my dad, you know—it was just a rumor she’d heard from someone who knows her husband. Probably a mistake. But I had to go; I couldn’t help it….”

  She sensed that Rhiannon wasn’t pleased. It was as if Ginny had somehow stolen Helen for herself; or it might simply have been that her parents were nearby and she couldn’t respond with more excitement. She’d have to be tactful, Ginny thought.

  In fact, next day in the Dragon, Rhiannon was able to speak more easily, and they spent most of the morning talking intently behind the coffee machine on the counter, analyzing everything Ginny could remember about what Helen had said, what the house looked like, what she looked like, what Ginny had said to her.

  “You’ll have to go and see her,” she told Rhiannon. “She’s really friendly. You’d love her, honest.”

  It would have to wait till next weekend, they realized. Maybe they could go together. But no, thought Ginny, be tactful: let Rhiannon meet her sister on her own first. She felt extremely virtuous about that and half wished she could tell Rhiannon and be admired, but that would have spoiled it. Then she realized that too, and laughed.

  —

  On Wednesday afternoon, Ginny went down to the beach to help Andy with his mobile home, as he’d taken to calling it.

  It was hotter than ever. The parking lot was full, and there was a line of children waiting to buy ice cream from the two old ladies in the little shop. They sold postcards and cups of tea there as well. The postcards at the front of the rack were all faded, but the ladies left them like that on purpose, to keep the ones at the back nice and bright. Even the ones at the back were getting scratched and dog-eared, though, and they all had rust marks from where the salty air had corroded the rack. The old ladies looked like retired nuns. The tea they sold came not in plastic mugs but in proper cups on a tray. People didn’t always bring the cups back, and the two ladies would comb the sand dunes in the evening sunlight, chattering musically, the very souls of sweetness and melancholy.

  Ginny sat on the wall by the parking lot to watch out for Andy and Dafydd, the boy he was going to share the trailer with. She didn’t know what Dafydd would be driving; he worked in the garage on the main road, and she’d seen him drive about in dozens of different old cars at one time or another. When at last a car did arrive towing a trailer, she didn’t give it more than a glance, because she was sure Dafydd wouldn’t be driving a BMW.

  But it stopped beside her, and there was Andy in the passenger seat, grinning up at her. She jumped.

  “What’re you doing in that?” she said. “That’s not Dafydd….”

  Andy got out. “This is Stuart,” he said. “I got another driver. Always wise to have a spare.”

  Stuart was leaning across, holding out his hand to shake. Ginny was taken aback; he was about thirty years old and so handsome he was almost unreal, like a model or a film star. At once she felt shy and didn’t know what to say, but Andy was completely at ease.

  “Well, now, we’ll have to back up, driver,” he said. “Just about a couple of hundred feet, I reckon.”

  There were three cars already waiting behind them, unable to pass in the narrow road. Stua
rt put the BMW in reverse and started to move back, but the other drivers wouldn’t budge. Andy went to speak to the first driver. Ginny wondered why Stuart didn’t just go on the final hundred feet into the parking lot and turn around there, but she could see that he and Andy were playing some sort of game, and she settled back to watch it.

  Andy was having trouble with the first driver, a brick-faced man with a carful of children.

  “What d’you expect me to do? Bloody vertical takeoff?” the man was saying heatedly.

  “No, no, you could go in the field. Look,” Andy said helpfully, starting to open the gate in the stone wall beside him.

  “Why don’t you go in the field?” roared the driver. He obviously couldn’t see that Stuart could have driven straight into the parking lot. Andy scratched his head, looking doubtful.

  “Well, I dunno,” he said. “The old turning circle’s not what it was. I’ll have to consult the chauffeur. I say! Carruthers!”

  Stuart got out. “Anything wrong, sir?” he said.

  “If this gentleman’s kind enough to move back a little way,” Andy called back, “can we reverse up here and insert the mobile home through this gateway?”

  The contrast between Stuart’s gleaming BMW and uncanny good looks and the filthy battered old trailer and Andy’s scruffiness, not to mention Andy’s pretense of picking his nose innocently, was making Ginny giggle. By this time five cars were waiting to get past, and they all had to reverse about ninety feet to let the big BMW back to the gate, and when it got there it wouldn’t go in, because no matter how skillfully Stuart reversed it, the trailer was too wide. Andy ran back and forth, pretending to be helpful. At one point he leapt inside the trailer and came out with a twelve-inch ruler, with which he started measuring the width of the gateway. A cry of anger rose from the first car. People started getting out of the vehicles farther back, their arms full of towels and beach balls and picnic boxes, leaving the drivers to sort out the mess; and meanwhile Stuart was happily doing whatever Andy told him to do, as Ginny sat on the wall and watched, laughing.