The Broken Bridge

by Philip Pullman

  And since Rhiannon was going shopping with her mother that afternoon, there wouldn’t be time then, either. So Ginny came away frustrated and spent the afternoon drawing the neighbor’s cat, which liked to sleep on their garden wall; and then she went to the Yacht Club and did her job and got more and more tense, waiting to hear what Dad would tell her.

  He was in the garden when she came home, lying in the hammock with a can of lager, playing an old Paul Simon tape on his Walkman. Ginny could hear it: he had it far too loud.

  He saw her coming and took it off. She sat down in the deck chair, facing him.

  “Dad? Did Wendy Stevens phone you?”

  “Yup. She told me you’d spoken.”

  He must have had a few lagers already, because he was speaking very carefully and more slowly than usual.

  “She said you’d tell me what it was about,” she said.

  “Yes. She’s right. I didn’t like her at first, but I think she’s okay, probably. It’s very difficult.”

  She didn’t know what he meant by that, because he said it in the same tone as the rest; he might have meant that it was difficult for her or difficult for him. She waited.

  “Ginny, love, she said you were worried they were going to take you away or something. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. ’Cause no one said what it was about. I thought they could do that if they wanted to….’Cause they do that, don’t they? They take black kids away from white families?”

  “Well, they can’t. No way. There’s no question of that. This is something else entirely. Ginny…you’ve got a brother.”

  A brother?

  Silence. She had no idea, absolutely not the slightest notion, of what to say next. He was watching her with careful eyes.

  “He’s not a child of Maman,” he said after a few moments. “He’s your half-brother. I met…his mother before I met Maman, you see. Now what’s happened, what this is all about, is that his mother has been ill, very ill. She’s been looking after him on her own. Like me and you. But she’s got cancer, and she’s going to die any day. I didn’t expect…I didn’t…Anyway. She’s in hospital. She might die tonight, next week, next month, who knows. Robert—that’s the boy—he’s in care for the moment, but he’s going to need a home. So the only place for him is here, you see. That’s why Wendy Stevens came the other…whenever it was…last week. I didn’t tell you then because his mother was going to have an operation. It might have been all right, and then everything would’ve gone back to normal, and nothing…no one would’ve…I don’t know. But unfortunately it wasn’t good news. She’s very ill. And…obviously the poor kid, the boy, Robert, he’s got to come here.”

  He tilted the can of lager back. It was nearly empty. Ginny looked down at her hands, her dark-brown hands, twisted in her lap.

  “Is he black?” she asked. “Was she black?”

  “No.”

  Perhaps it wasn’t a good question. Too bad: too late.

  “When’s he coming?”

  “In a week or so. There’ll be a funeral. Well, good God…I mean, there could be a miracle; that’s what God’s supposed to do; she could get better. But I don’t suppose she will. So after…Whenever she dies. Sometime…soon.”

  A brother, she thought. A white brother. This was the strangest news she’d ever had. Not even Rhiannon’s sister was such strange news as this. Rhiannon would understand part of it but not the rest; only Andy would understand the rest. Because she’d be more isolated now. White brother, white father, black sister. Talk about a sore thumb!

  “How old is he?” she said.

  “He’s a bit older than you.”

  “A bit? How much?”

  “I can’t remember. A few months.”

  “Is he the little boy that got scratched by the cat?”

  “Scratched by the cat…I don’t know, love; you must be thinking of someone else. You’ve never seen him, I do know that.”

  “Did you…When did you…I mean, when you married Maman, did you…”

  “As soon as I met Maman, I forgot everyone else. She was the only one. Ginny, I’ve been stupid not telling you before. I’m sorry to do this to you. I’m not very good at…I’ll never love anyone more than you, chick. I…What I’m trying to say is…things are going to change. I can’t let the boy grow up in some home somewhere. I’m responsible. You’re not responsible, but you’re going to have to…share the burden. It’s not going to be easy. I’m just apologizing. Not your responsibility, but you’re stuck with it. It’s not fair to you.”

  He stopped. His eyes were shut. Ginny felt all kinds of emotions—bewilderment, anger, jealousy, incredulity, excitement, apprehension, even glee—turning over and over inside her like clothes in the tumble dryer. She watched them, but she wasn’t connected to them. Perhaps they were feelings she thought she ought to be experiencing rather than those she was; it was too puzzling to tell.

  “Robert,” she said.

  “That’s right. His mother’s choice of name.”

  “What was she called?”

  “Janet.”

  “Have you…What does he…Have you ever seen him?”

  “Never. He’ll be as new to me as he is to you. But I’m going to go up to Liverpool first, see him, maybe see Janet. Sort things out.”

  “Where’s he going to sleep?”

  There were only two bedrooms. It was a small house, but it had never felt small till now.

  He sighed. “There’s a lot of adjustments to be made. I don’t know. Probably the office. I’ll move all that stuff into my room. We’ll manage.”

  The office, Ginny realized for the first time, was actually another bedroom. So it was really a three-bedroom house after all.

  “Will he go to the school?”

  “Yup. I suppose so. Well, yes, he will. I’ll have to see the head—what’s his name—Bill Evans.”

  “He’ll have to learn Welsh.”

  “You’ll have to help him.”

  Ginny said nothing. There was a long silence. He reached down from the hammock and squeezed her hand, and she nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said finally. “Right. Wow.”

  THE best time ever in her life was a bright sunny morning with the wind chasing fat white clouds through the blue sky, and there was a lady pinning out sheets on the line, and they billowed like the clouds, big fresh-smelling moist clouds that swelled and flapped and swung up high. The lady was singing, and the song thrilled through the clouds and the sheets and filled the immense beaming sky, and Ginny felt that she was so light that she, too, could swing up and be blown along in the wild blue splendor; and then there was Dad, and it came true, she was flying, up she went onto his shoulders, over the sheets, up with the wind in the song and the clouds and the endless dazzling sky, and she beat on his head for joy in a world of snowy-white sheets and billowing clouds and the immortal wide intensity of blue.

  THE FIRST THING Ginny wanted to do was tell Rhiannon. They spent the morning talking closely together by the coffee machine; behind its steamy fragrant shelter they felt that secrets were safe. More than one customer had to cough loudly and tap on the counter to be noticed that morning.

  In the afternoon they took their bikes and rode up the Gwynant valley. The river that entered the sea so widely and placidly in the Yacht Club estuary had a quite different character in the hills: it was narrow, sparkling bright, and icy cold, splashing and tumbling over ancient gray granite and falling in cascades through mossy oakwoods. Ginny and Rhiannon toiled up the twisting road with the sun beating off the rocks beside them until they reached a narrow bridge over the river, where there was a slow-swirling pool to swim in.

  Cold as the water was, they plunged in at once. It didn’t take long, in that icy brightness, to cool down; after five minutes they climbed out and lay dripping on the hot lichen-patterned rock. A great sloping shelf of it had split hundreds of years before into clumsy rectangular blocks as big as cars, and smaller blocks lay tumbled and confused in the river
itself. The water rushed smoothly between them and splashed into whiteness below. You could get to the other side of the river in three jumps, or steps, if your legs were long enough.

  They lay there saying nothing, feeling the cold on their skins gradually melt into heat and listening to the endless splash of the water and the scraping of the insects in the grass.

  “So,” Rhiannon said eventually. “Robert, eh?”

  “Yeah. What’m I going to do?”

  “I’m giving it the best of my attention,” said Rhiannon lazily. “I shall come to a conclusion shortly. Be patient.”

  “You discover a sister, and I discover a brother. Isn’t it crazy? At least your sister’s all right.”

  “I can’t say much for her husband, though.”

  “What? You’ve met him?”

  “Aha. I went there last night. Didn’t I tell you?”

  Ginny propped herself up on her elbows. Rhiannon was smirking, but Ginny didn’t mind; it relieved her of the guilt of having stolen the first visit.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “Oh, I told Mam I was going out with Peter, and she thought great, cause she likes Peter. But I just went on the train and rang the doorbell, and that was it. Her husband was there. He’s a creep. My brother-in-law. Ach y fi. He was wearing a business suit and business shoes, and he had a neat little black business mustache. Duw, you’d think he was a young executive, and all he does is sell thermal windows. Wow, what a prune. I don’t know why she married him, I really don’t.”

  Ginny tried to imagine the warm, vivid person she’d met the other day in love with a neat little man with a black mustache.

  “So what did you talk about?” she said.

  “Well, it was so strange, you can imagine: this grownup woman looking like me and—d’you think she looks like me? Do I look like her?”

  “Yeah…She’s not as droopy as you.”

  “What d’you mean? I’m not droopy.”

  “Bendy, then.”

  “Bendy,” repeated Rhiannon with utter contempt. “Graceful, that’s what you’re trying to say. So she’s not as graceful as me. Well, fair enough.”

  “But what did you say?”

  “I was coming to that. It was, oh, how’s Mam and Dad, do they ever talk about me? She said that a couple of times. I couldn’t say no, could I? So I said yeah, they did sometimes. I told her about the Dragon. They didn’t have that when she left; see, Dad was an engineer on the airfield.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, he was. She said she couldn’t imagine him running a café, and I said he doesn’t, Mam and I do. And she wanted to know about me, you know, all school and dull stuff like that. And bloody Benny sitting there listening, suspicious, checking me out. I mentioned you, right, I said you’d told me you’d seen her, and her face went red all at once. She shook her head, just a tiny bit, so he couldn’t see, and she went—”

  Rhiannon mouthed No and looked frightened. She was a good actress; Ginny could see it exactly.

  “Because of him?” she said.

  “Yeah. She didn’t want him to know. She does fancy your dad; I could tell. And later on, when I had to go, she came down into town with me, and then she could talk more easily. Benny’s so jealous, he’s jealous of everything. He knows that Helen knows your dad, but he thinks it’s only because your dad was setting up some computer thing in the office she works in, this architect’s place. That’s all. If he thought there was anything else, I don’t know what he’d do. I think she’s seen your dad since, maybe they had lunch together, something like that, went for a drink or something. But I tell you—you know the thing about your dad being in prison? You know where that came from?”

  “What? Where?”

  “Benny told her, ’cause obviously he was jealous, he wanted to put her off But he heard it from that Joe Chicago you told me about!”

  Ginny blinked. “Get off,” she said. “How would Benny know Joe Chicago? He comes from Aberystwyth. That’s miles away.”

  “Ah, that’s it; he doesn’t. He lives in Porthafon, Helen said. And he knows Benny because…I can’t remember. He just does. But he was the one it came from.”

  “Stupid!” said Ginny, rolling over on her back. “That’s impossible. Joe Chicago has nothing to do with my dad.”

  “Well, Helen said Joe had been in jail, see, and he knew your dad because that was where they met.”

  Ginny scoffed. She’d never heard anything so hopeless in her life. High up in the profound blue above her, an aircraft like a little silver speck was leaving a condensation trail of pure white. The aircraft was too far away to hear, but up there somewhere was a lark, trilling and caroling like an angel. She could see the airplane but not hear it, hear the lark but not see it, and the two things came together in her mind, a plane that sang like a bird. Sleepy, warm, and moved to an incomprehensible happiness by the blue and the white and the singing, she dismissed the fantastic nonsense about jail and gangsters and window salesmen and gave herself up to the sun.

  Rhiannon was saying something. Ginny murmured, “What?”

  “I said it looked as if it was stuck on. His mustache. Part of a kit, probably. The young executive kit. He probably washes it overnight and leaves it on the edge of the bath. I bet he’s got a pretend car phone too; they always have. He probably pretends to be speaking into it while he’s waiting at traffic lights. What d’you reckon it’s like, kissing a mustache?”

  Ginny came a little more awake now. In all her life, she was certain, the only male kiss she’d ever received had been from her father. Here was that question again, awake in the darkness: Who would kiss her if she was a different color? But she had to answer.

  She said, “Like nuzzling a carpet.”

  “You know what the Victorians said? I read it in the Daily Mail. They said kissing a man without a mustache is like eating an egg without salt!”

  That seemed so funny that Ginny burst out laughing. “Eating an egg without…Oh, Duw, that’s amazing! Eating a man without salt is like kissing an egg without a mustache!”

  Rhiannon was giggling too. “Kissing a mustache without salt is like eating a man without an egg….”

  Now they were helpless, rolling about on the bumpy rock aching with laughter. On and on it went, getting crazier and crazier, and the dark question turned around and retreated back into the dimness it lived in. Still awake, though; not asleep.

  Later on they jumped across the river and into the little grove of trees below the bridge. They were oak trees, gnarled and bent and hardly any higher than the stone wall that ran along the road above. Ginny felt that they were very ancient, these trees. Under their shade it was quiet and still, and the moss-covered rocks, flecked and dappled with sunlight, seemed like hassocks in a ruined church. She supposed that the Druids would have come to places like this to worship their gods.

  Ginny said, “Did she know who you were when she came to the door?”

  “Who, Helen? Not for a few seconds. After all, I was six or something when she left. I’m bound to look different. I’ve got bosoms, for a start. I keep trying to bring them to Peter’s attention.”

  “Doesn’t he notice?” said Ginny.

  “He’s too nice. He’s kind. The trouble with kind people is they’re not sexy. Maybe I’ll ask Helen about it. She’s bound to know the answer to life. Worldly wise, that’s what she is. Bound to be.”

  “Maybe it’s worth having a kind person, even if they’re not sexy,” Ginny said, plucking shreds of moss from the rock she was sitting on.

  “No,” said Rhiannon, sighing. “It’s funny, isn’t it. Sexy people couldn’t care less if they’re kind or not, but all the kind people’d love to be sexy. The trouble is, you’re either one or the other.”

  “I bet some people are both.”

  “Impossible. It’s tragic. Life’s a tragedy, see.”

  “Oh, right,” said Ginny.

  She threw some moss at Rhiannon and hit her on the nose.<
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  “Get off,” said Rhiannon wearily.

  “Why’s this bridge newer than the rest of the road?” said Ginny.

  “It’s the broken bridge. Pont Doredig.”

  “Pont Doredig…Le Pont Cassé. Why’s it broken?”

  “Well, it’s mended now, stupid. There was some accident here, some story about a car. I don’t know…a long time back.”

  Ginny looked up at the bridge. It was narrow, with room for only one car to cross at a time, and the stonework was newer than the old dry-stone wall that bordered the road. She tried to imagine a car crashing through and into the river, but perhaps that wasn’t what had happened….

  “What did your dad say about Robert?” said Rhiannon.

  “I told you.”

  “Tell me again. I want to work it out exactly. How old did he say he was?”

  So they went through it again, and crossed back to the rock where their towels were, and drank some of the cold pure water from the river by lying down like lions and dipping their faces into the flow; and then they gathered their things and freewheeled back down the valley, hardly having to pedal at all. They went over and over what Dad had said, but there was no more in it than there had been before, and Robert was still a mystery. Ginny knew what she felt now; she felt apprehensive. A sister living twenty miles away, a grown-up sister with a house and a job and worldly wisdom, was a piece of good fortune; but an unseen brother your own age who was going to invade your own home was a threat.

  ONCE she visited her Grandma and Granddad. The house was very quiet, and Ginny had to tiptoe across the shiny wooden floor in her slippers. If she stood on the rug and slid one foot toward the other, the rug came up in a straight ridge between them, but she mustn’t do that; the rug wasn’t made for that.

  She heard Granddad and Grandma whispering together once in the kitchen while she stood outside, and through the frosty glass door she saw Grandma hit Granddad and heard him say, “Hush, quiet, for God’s sake,” in a loud, shaky whisper, and then he turned away, holding his arm.