The Broken Bridge

by Philip Pullman

  “No difference to what?”

  “To what I feel. I hate him.”

  “Well, that’s honest.”

  “I’d hate him if he was invading this place or not, brother or not, whoever he was. There’s people you just instinctively hate, whoever they are, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She looked at Wendy defiantly, almost as if she was expecting her to do just that, to do something about Ginny’s hating him. But Wendy just walked slowly along, her eyes half-closed against the sun.

  “What did your dad tell you?” she said.

  “Bloody liar he is too,” Ginny said. “See, I can’t trust anyone anymore. He told me after all these years, all this time, he told me on Sunday that he wasn’t married to my mother after all. He was married to Robert’s mum.”

  “That’s right. They never divorced, you see. Never even legally separated. Did he not tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you anything about your mother?”

  “Nothing new, except that he wasn’t married to her. I’m beginning to wonder if she was true anyway, whether he just made her up. He’s always told me she was an art student, see….And that’s very important to me, because I want to be a painter too—that’s the most important thing in my life.”

  “The most important thing?”

  “Yeah. Absolutely the only thing. Because I think I’m like her, see, my mother, I’m kind of doing it for her, doing the things she couldn’t do. I’m going to grow up and live and be a painter in the way she couldn’t. And if it turns out that…This is going to sound really snobbish, really horrible, right, but…if it turns out that she wasn’t an artist at all but a shop assistant or something, then I’m going to feel really cheated. Because her being an artist, that’s something proud, something to live up to. That’s something to inherit. Especially now…Especially now he’s come. Robert. Now he’s the…the sort of real one. I’ve got nothing, except her. So…That’s why it’s important.”

  They walked on slowly. Insects were chirping in the grass at the foot of the wall; the sun beat up at them from the bronze-colored sea beyond the dunes.

  “I told him he had to tell you,” said Wendy. “It wasn’t fair. But he feels terrible about the whole business. Robert’s sixteen; he could have stayed in care for a couple of years, till he finishes at school, but your dad felt it was right to do this—”

  “Did anyone ask Robert what he wanted?” Ginny asked.

  “Yes. I did. Naturally. He wasn’t in a state to make that sort of decision. He was very close to his mum.”

  “There aren’t any more, are there? No more brothers or sisters hidden away? No, I suppose not. How can I get on with him? What can I do?”

  “Just be yourself. You don’t have to put on an act.”

  “To be myself, I have to put on an act,” Ginny said bitterly.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know who I am.”

  “I thought you said you were an artist. Just be that.”

  They walked on for a minute or two.

  “Wendy,” Ginny said, “suppose someone’s adopted, right, and they don’t know they are, or they think they are and no one’ll tell them…Can they find out?”

  “That’s not the usual question I get,” Wendy said, stopping to lean over a gate. “The usual one is: I know I’m adopted, and can I find my mother?”

  “And can they?”

  “When they’re eighteen, yes. But as for your problem—why d’you think you’re adopted?”

  “Well…The thing is, after this…I mean, now I’m finding out a load of things I never knew, and it’s got me thinking. There’s things I can’t sort out in my mind, things I remember from way way back, and I ask Dad about them and he doesn’t know. Or just pretends. Like there was this trailer, I was staying in it, near some woods, and it was raining and raining, and I wasn’t with Dad….I used to think I remembered him there, but now I know I didn’t. There was me and this other little girl, and there was a woman in charge of us. She had red hair and she smoked all the time. And she drank gin. I know that because the other night, in the restaurant, I smelled the smell of gin and it all came back….Dad never has gin in the house, he doesn’t like it, so I hadn’t smelled it for a long time. But it brought it all back. And that’s not the only thing….”

  She told Wendy about the time she’d stayed with her grandparents, that unhappy, inexplicable few days in the middle of nothing.

  “So where was Dad? There’s a whole stack of memories without him, and they’re all kind of scattered, and then he starts coming into them and they’re all joined up and I know where I am, then: it’s kind of connected to me. But all those early ones he’s not in.”

  She looked carefully at Wendy and saw she was listening. Ginny went on:

  “Because I heard something about Dad the other day that I could never ask him. Someone said they’d heard he’d been in prison, only they didn’t know what for. And…”

  She shrugged.

  Wendy said, “If that’s true, then it would explain why you can’t remember him early on. But that doesn’t mean you’re adopted as well. You ought to ask him.”

  “I can’t. But say I was adopted: how could I find out for certain?”

  Wendy looked doubtful. “There’s the adoption register: you could write and ask if your name’s on that. Or you could write and ask for your birth certificate. But they both take time and cost money. And if you’d been born abroad, there might not be a birth certificate in your name anyway, or your real name might be different….I’m not sure what you’d learn from the adoption register, either; I’ve never had to answer this question before.”

  “Can you tell me the address?”

  “Not now; I don’t know it offhand. I’ll send it to you. What was your mother’s name?”

  “Baptiste. Anielle Baptiste.”

  “You might be registered under her name, that’s all.”

  “You mean Howard might not be my name?”

  “It depends how it was registered. D’you remember anything else about this trailer?”

  Ginny closed her eyes, trying to catch the flickering memories as they darted through her mind like little fish in a rock pool.

  “The woman was Catholic. There was a crucifix on the wall, I remember that. She was called…Maeve? I don’t know how you’d spell it. And the other little girl was called Dawn. Oh, yeah, and someone had been murdered in the woods.”

  She opened her eyes to see Wendy looking at her sharply.

  “I just remember someone telling me,” Ginny explained. “These woods by the trailer, all dripping wet and cold, someone had been killed there. We were dead scared…I think. I think that was it. That’s all I remember.”

  “You must have been very young.”

  “Well, that’s the point: too young to remember. Anyway.” She shrugged.

  “I’d better be getting back,” Wendy said. “I’ll send you that address.”

  “Can I ask you something? Something personal?”

  Wendy looked surprised, but nodded.

  “Why do you wear a suit?” Ginny asked. “It must be ever so hot. And you’d look much nicer without it. More natural.”

  “If you don’t wear a suit these days, people think you’re not working hard,” Wendy said. “They want value for money.”

  “I’m never going to wear a suit.”

  “You get used to it. You get used to anything. Even having a brother.”

  Ginny made a face. “Yeah, well,” she said.

  They walked slowly back to the house.

  ONE DAY Ginny and Dad got in the car and just drove away for miles and miles, and then Dad drove the car onto a ship and when he drove it off they were in another country, where even the chocolate tasted different.

  And they drove on and on until it was nearly night, and there was no house to sleep in, no bed to lie on, no food to eat. Ginny thought they’d have to sleep in th
e wilds.

  Then Dad stopped and opened the back of the car and took out a tent, and there were big soft bags to sleep in, and a little stove that he cooked some sausages and beans on. Everything they needed, and it was all so neat! She’d never dreamed anyone could be so clever.

  That was their first vacation, and every year they went off like that, heading for anywhere else. They’d drive off the ferry, and he’d say, “Left or right?” and she’d choose, on the spur of the moment, and whenever they came to a crossroads she’d decide which way to go. They never knew where they’d end up. One year they went as far north as they could get, along the coast of Norway and into the Arctic Circle, where the sun never set. They sat out in the open at midnight, playing cards, eating strange meals: fried fish and chocolate sauce, cherry pie and chutney, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  They went everywhere. One day in Milan he took her to a fashionable shop and bought her the most beautiful dress in the world, and that evening they went to the opera. In his tuxedo and his black bow tie he looked like a king, and she felt like not his daughter but his queen; and the audience clapped and cheered, not for the singers or the orchestra but for Ginny’s dress, and for her handsome father, and for the elegant, mysterious way they looked together, stars, a king and a queen, beyond the reach of envy or despair.

  DURING THE next couple of days Ginny and Robert spoke about five times. Their longest conversation took place on Friday, late in the afternoon. Dad had taken some time off to be at home for a while, and after lunch he and Robert had gone down to the harbor to look at boats; and now he’d gone into town for some shopping, leaving Ginny and Robert alone together for the first time.

  Robert was in the hammock, and Ginny, seeing him from the kitchen, didn’t know whether to ignore him and go to her room or make the effort and talk. She didn’t want to stay indoors, she wanted to go into the garden; and whether it was that or the feeling that she ought to be nice to Robert, in the end she went out, sat in the shade of the tree, and said, “Hi.”

  He’d been pretending to be asleep. He opened his eyes, frowning.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Did you see any good boats?”

  “Dunno. I dunno anything about boats.”

  “Dad thought maybe we could all learn to sail.”

  He sniffed.

  “Robert…Did you know about Dad and me before this happened?”

  “I knew about him. Obviously. She might have mentioned you, I don’t know.”

  “What did she tell you about him?”

  “She told me who he was, that’s all.”

  “Did she say why they weren’t living together?”

  “I never asked.”

  He seemed to be on the verge of adding something, and she waited, but nothing came. She thought that if she told him that Dad had never mentioned him, it might sound as if he didn’t care. It was so difficult to find anything to say.

  Finally she said, “Did you ever visit his parents? Granddad and Grandma?”

  “We didn’t have anything to do with them.”

  “What, nothing? Why?”

  “Because my mum—my mother didn’t get on with them. I dunno. She never said.”

  His voice was cold with scorn, and it kept breaking; she could tell he was self-conscious about it. She tried again.

  “Did you actually live in Liverpool?”

  “No. Outside.”

  “I’ve only been there a couple of times….”

  Silence.

  “Did your mum have any other relations?” she said.

  He swung himself out of the hammock and faced her furiously.

  “Can’t you bloody well shut up about her? Leave her alone! Just bloody shut up!”

  His pale face was blotched with anger. He was quivering all over. Before she could even think what to say, before she could even feel shocked, he was gone, slamming the kitchen door after him.

  She looked down at her fingers, twined in her lap. Maybe she had asked too many questions about his mother, but there wasn’t much else to talk about. Narrow self-righteous prim stuck-up superior constipated pig, she thought. Okay, if he doesn’t want to talk, that’s fine; suits me.

  She’d been going to offer to make them some coffee. Instead she left the house and set off for the Yacht Club early, calling in at the trailer first to say hello to Dafydd. She found him sprawled on the step, reading Love and Rockets.

  “Is that the new one?” she said. “Has Hopey come back yet?”

  “No, she’s having a bad time, Hopey is. Get off! You can have it when I’ve finished. How’s your brother, then?”

  She’d told him and Andy about it all, hesitantly at first, but finding them as fascinated as Rhiannon. She’d thought boys weren’t as interested in relationships as girls were; this would teach her to be sexist, she’d thought.

  “I’ve just had a row with him,” she said, and told him about it. “I don’t know what I did wrong. I can’t just say nothing about his mother, can I? And there’s not much else I can ask him about.”

  “Well, he’s probably feeling bad,” Dafydd said. “Bound to be. Just leave him alone for a bit; he’ll be all right.”

  Looking at Dafydd’s strong oil-stained hands, his big slow kind face, she felt like kissing him. Why hadn’t he a girlfriend? There was a story that he’d gone out with Carol Barnes once upon a time and didn’t kiss her till the fourth date, and then only because she made him. Ginny couldn’t remember who’d told her that. It was probably Rhiannon, and she’d probably made it up.

  “You ought to fetch him down here,” Dafydd said. “He can go a couple of rounds with Gertie.”

  “Isn’t she finished yet?”

  “I’m going to take her out and bury her tonight, I tell you. But then she’d probably dig herself out and lie there howling. Hey, if we hid her in old man Alston’s house, they might think it was haunted.”

  “Dafydd…You know what you told me about Pont Doredig?”

  “Aye.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking….It might have been Joe Chicago who did it. Who took the jacket. Because his jacket’s fur-lined; I saw it at the pinball table.”

  “Yeah, but…Duw, there’s lots of jackets like that. Anyway, it’s just a story. It’s probably not true. He wouldn’t still have it, would he? The police would have got it off him and given it back to the bloke in the car.”

  “He might have hidden it,” she said. “I bet I’m right. And it is true, I know it.”

  She could see it in her mind’s eye as clearly as her father’s face or her mother’s photograph: the snow-covered road, the moonlight, the car, the broken parapet, the dark figure, the jacket, the baby crying on the empty seat. She found herself laying it out like a comic strip: a wide panel here to show the emptiness, the wide white desolation, with the little car at the center crumpled darkly on the bridge; and a close-up there to show the face of the killer, the thief, Joe Chicago’s face, blurred as if through the misted glass of the car window….It would be almost entirely in black and white, but with subtle grays and browns and ghost-colored shadows.

  She could do that. She could paint it. A painting laid out like a comic strip; or a tragic strip.

  The idea gave her a little thrill of pleasure. She realized that Dafydd was saying something and came back to the present.

  “What?” she said.

  “I says take no notice of your brother; leave him. He’ll be all right. I remember when Gwilym’s mum died, he hardly spoke for a year.”

  He went back to Love and Rockets.

  “See you, then,” Ginny said, and drifted off toward the Yacht Club.

  As she turned into the field that led along beside the estuary, she heard someone call her name, and turned to see Glyn Williams coming toward her. She stopped to wait for him.

  Glyn was about her own age. He lived in the village, where his parents kept the greengrocery, and although she hadn’t had much to do with him, she liked him well enou
gh. She was probably going to see more of him next year, because like her he was one of the few who’d opted to do French at A Level.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Who’s that at your house?”

  “Oh, that’s Robert. My brother. My half-brother, really.”

  “Well, well. I didn’t know. Anyway, listen…We’re going to have a barbecue tomorrow night. Eryl, Siân, all the rest, the usual thing. Bring your brother, why not?”

  “Oh, great. Well, I don’t know if he’ll come, but I will. Thanks.”

  “See you, then….”

  He gave a grin and turned away. He was a strange boy, she thought, abrupt and quirky and not bad-looking, with his dark-red curly hair and his lean, muscular body. For some reason she thought of what she’d said to Wendy Stevens, about not wanting to discover that her mother had been a shop assistant, and alone as she was, she blushed; because Glyn’s father earned his living in a shop, but he was a bard too, a Welsh poet well known in the eisteddfodau, the Welsh language conventions where poets and musicians competed for prizes, and he had two published collections to his name. He was at least as much of an artist as Ginny’s mother, in fact. Nothing was as simple as it seemed.

  —

  When she told Robert the next morning about the barbecue and made it clear he was invited too, he nodded and said, “Yeah. Okay, I don’t mind.”

  She was so surprised by his mildness that she didn’t know what to say next.

  That was at breakfast. He and Dad were going into Porthafon—to get Robert some decent clothes, Dad had told her when Robert had gone to the bathroom; he only had what was in that tatty suitcase.

  “I don’t know what she thought she was doing,” he said. “Maybe she’d been ill for longer than I thought. Are you getting on with him all right?”

  Ginny thought: Why don’t you look, and then you’d see? But she said, “Yeah, fine…Dad? You know your parents? Granddad and Grandma? Where did they live? Was that Liverpool too?”

  “Not far away. Chester, as a matter of fact.”