The Broken Bridge

by Philip Pullman

  “Well…Anyway.

  “So somewhere in the middle of all that they broke my confidence in myself, Ginny, and they never showed me how to repair it. Never thought to. They stamped me with fear so deep, so early on, I couldn’t get rid of it.”

  He stopped for a moment to pull out a handkerchief and wipe his eyes. Ginny wanted to touch him, to say something, but she felt helpless.

  Then something absurd happened. The car windows were open, because of the heat, and at the same moment both Ginny and her father became aware of someone watching them, a presence. There was a face looking over the gate— a huge, solemn cow’s face.

  They laughed as the tension went, and hearing them the cow lumbered away nervously. Dad got out of the car and went to lean on the gate. Ginny joined him and presently the cow, curious again, came up slowly to gaze at them.

  “I thought they put them inside at night,” Ginny said.

  “It’s having a strange night, like us. Ginny…”

  He was looking away from her, and his voice was quiet in the wide night.

  “I’m glad you went to Chester,” he said. “It’s made me tell you all this. You’re like your mother.”

  “How?”

  “You make your mind up and then you act. It’s what I should do. Should have done. I will…Thank you, Ginny love. I’m telling you all this because you deserve to know it, and to explain it to myself, I suppose…So you can see why I married Janet. There’s no reason otherwise; I didn’t love her….But her parents—Uncle Arthur and Auntie Kitty, as I had to call them—and mine, they had the whole thing worked out years in advance: I’d marry Janet, take over the firm, supply them with grandchildren. Oh, they didn’t say it aloud, but it was there in everything they said and everything they did.

  “And I didn’t dare go against it, you see. It sounds incredible, I know, a grown man obeying his parents like a puppet, even against his own judgment. But that fear built into me over years, it was impossible to resist, it was like defying gravity. Janet herself…I never knew what she thought. A smug, prim, narrow girl she was. A hard little nature, closed and greedy and…I could see it, and still I went through with the marriage. What a dream I was living in! A grown man, and the only thing I longed for was my mother’s approval. I thought I didn’t, but I did. I thought I’d grown beyond it, but I hadn’t.

  “So we got married, and then I met your mother. Anielle Baptiste. She was studying art. Came from a wealthy family, apparently. There’d been some kind of political trouble in the time of Papa Doc Duvalier; Anielle’s father and mother had been exiled: they were living in Canada, I think….I don’t know. She…I thought she was American at first, but she was intensely Haitian. An artist. My family thought art was something for women, or lefties, or homosexuals. Oh, and liars. They couldn’t see what there was in it, so they thought people who said they could see something in it were lying. I suppose I’d thought that too, until I met Anielle. I knew she wasn’t a liar. She was too honest for that. Too honest for me.

  “I’d never met, never imagined there could be, anyone like her.

  “And if I’d had the strength, if I hadn’t had my confidence broken some long long time before, I’d have thrown Janet over and lived with Anielle. Maybe persuaded her to marry me. But I didn’t. It was such a tangle: Janet was pregnant, Anielle was pregnant…and I didn’t dare tell anyone about it until it was all too late. And then I told Janet. You can imagine the reaction.”

  “They told us,” Ginny said. “They said it knocked them sideways. It shattered everything.”

  He nodded.

  “Anielle was a Catholic, and there was no question of abortion, thank God. She disappeared and went into a Catholic nursing home to have you, and then…She just left. You see, my not leaving Janet, that was a betrayal she couldn’t forgive. I don’t forgive myself for it. If I’d lived with Anielle she might not have gone, might have stayed to be a mother….I don’t know. There was the painting as well. She lived for that. Being a mother was something that happened to her; being a painter was something she was born to. She…she wasn’t rejecting you, love. Don’t blame her for leaving you.

  “But she was so contemptuous of me that she didn’t tell the nuns—the nuns who ran the nursing home—she didn’t tell them my name. She just vanished. I didn’t know where she’d gone, I didn’t know if you’d been born safely, didn’t know anything.

  “And so when I finally found the children’s home where they were looking after you and turned up claiming to be the father of this child…Well, six months had gone past. Why should they hand over a baby girl to a total stranger? Naturally they wouldn’t, not until they’d made all kinds of checks. But I thought that if Janet…I thought that if she agreed to adopt you, if there was a home for you to go to, they’d be more likely to release you into my care. So that was when I told her about it.

  “Ha. Fat chance. All that came of it was hysterics. I’d been unfaithful to her, I’d got a mistress, a black mistress, that was it, got a pickaninny child—that’s the way she talked. She went straight round to her parents, and he, Uncle Arthur—I still called him that—he came to my parents as if it was something to do with them, as if I’d been a naughty boy and it was up to them to punish me for it…Or as if he’d bought me, one son-in-law, and I was faulty, and he was coming back to complain…

  “Yes, when I look at it now, Ginny, it seems incredible, it seems impossible that grown people should behave like that, like Janet and Arthur and Kitty and my parents, and me, too, that we should all be acting like—what? Puppets? Not people, that’s for sure. I was actually summoned, actually told to come and explain, come and apologize, they meant, come and grovel for forgiveness.

  “But I couldn’t stick that. I wouldn’t behave like that. I told them all that you were my child, that I was going to look after you, and damn the rest of them. Janet could divorce me as soon as she liked; I’d pay her whatever maintenance she wanted to look after Robert. I…I didn’t want him, any more than she wanted you. Then I walked out. I felt free. For the first time in my life, I felt free. Can you imagine that?

  “So…I kept on struggling to get the social services to let me have you. All kinds of obstacles, all kinds of tests and questions and queries. Since it was a Catholic society looking after you by that stage, and since I wasn’t living with my wife, that didn’t make it any easier.

  “In the end they agreed—the social services and the Catholic society between them and the courts and the priest and the bishop and the Pope for all I know—they agreed to let me have restricted access. I could have you for the occasional weekend, but no more. You were growing up, my little one, you were two and then you were three, and going from one foster parent to another and back to the home again….And then suddenly it stopped. I went to collect you one weekend and you were gone. You were with someone else, they said. A permanent placement.

  “I’ve forgotten all the details, but it turned out that the difficulties I’d been having about getting you permanently were due to someone reporting me to the social services for…oh, cruelty, baby battering—that was the phrase then. The social services were in a cleft stick. They could see you were all right, but on the other hand they couldn’t ignore rumors like that in case they turned out to be true. So they wouldn’t let me have you. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to get the name of whoever it was who’d been telling these lies, but of course they wouldn’t pass on a thing like that.

  “So there I was. Someone had stolen you. And once I’d calmed down and thought about it, I knew who it was at once.”

  “Granddad? Grandma?” Ginny could hardly whisper. “Was it them?”

  “It was her.”

  “And was that why I was staying with them?”

  “That’s right. What they thought they were doing, God only knows. They’d lied about me and then persuaded the fools in charge to let them look after you. After I’d walked out, after Arthur and Kitty had deserted them, they had nothing left, I suppose. Des
perate. Well, I went mad. Thinking of the way I’d grown up…you going through all that…I couldn’t bear to think of it. So I went straight there and took you away.”

  “Joe Chicago said…he said you were in prison. You kidnapped me and went to prison.”

  “Oh, you’ve seen Joe? That’s right, that’s what happened. I kidnapped you. We traveled all over the country under different names. Six months, going from place to place. You probably don’t remember any of it. Cheap rooms, flats, landladies, up and down the country…It couldn’t last. And when I finally ran out of money and couldn’t hide anymore…Do you remember that cold morning in Norwich? Autumn morning, full of mist? No, probably not. The police station, the curious policewoman, the social worker who snatched you away and insisted on examining you there and then to see if you were being abused.

  “Anyway, the arrangement my parents had had, that was a court order, and by taking you I’d violated it, you see. Contempt of court. More than that; I’d knocked the old fool down. Him. When I saw them I was shocked. Shrunk, they’d physically shrunk; they were huddled in this little narrow house where I’d spent my little frightened childhood; they were frightened themselves now….But he tried to bluster, tried to threaten me, and I lost my head and hit him. I should have done it years before. Still, it didn’t sound good in court. They gave me six months, which my solicitor said was a bit steep. Lot of help he was. I was out after four, then I started the whole business again, only legally this time. I was determined. You were everything, you were my life. I wasn’t going to give up.

  “And eventually, at long last, eventually it came to the High Court and there was a sympathetic judge—what a miracle! He decided it once and for all. You were my child, I was your father, no question, I had custody, that was it. After four years, all finished in about four minutes.

  “So we…started living, I suppose. Struggled. But at least we were together. Ginny…Tell me the truth now: was there ever a moment when you thought I didn’t love you?”

  She couldn’t speak. She could only shake her head.

  “And when you were with them, when you were little…They didn’t mistreat you, did they? They didn’t frighten you?”

  “No,” she said, swallowing hard. “They didn’t mistreat me.”

  “I didn’t think they would in just a few days. It would still be new for them; they wouldn’t have time….And she could be kind, she could be generous sometimes. There was something to love there, under the madness….

  “So time went by.

  “I never told you the truth, because I was afraid to, you see. Ashamed. Everything I did before I decided to be your father, be responsible for you, I was ashamed of. I didn’t want you to know about Janet or about any of it. So I invented a story and told you as much of the truth as fitted it. I told you that Maman had died because I thought it would be easier for you than thinking you had a mother who abandoned you. And now you tell me you’ve found her….It was bound to happen, I suppose. How was she? How did you find her?”

  “I saw this advertisement in an art magazine,” Ginny said, brushing her eyes with the back of her hand. “She was having an exhibition in a gallery in Liverpool. I rang them up, and the owner said I could come to the private view last night. And I saw her and I…I showed her the photograph. It was stupid of me, really. It wasn’t the time. She knew it was her picture, but she wouldn’t admit it, she wouldn’t admit who I was.”

  “Did that upset you?”

  “I thought it did. It’s funny, I really thought it did, until I stopped wandering about feeling sorry for myself and realized what I did feel. And what I felt was: So what? It doesn’t matter. I’ve never had her, so I can’t miss her, really. Her pictures are wonderful; that’s the important thing. I don’t have to be her daughter to see those, though.”

  “Did she look well?”

  “Oh, yes. She looked…very strong and independent.”

  “Yes. She was that. I’m glad she’s doing well. And I’m glad she’s seen you too, even if she didn’t want to. She’ll be proud of you.”

  Ginny doubted that. Dad went on:

  “And anyway, that’s how it would have stayed. But then Janet got ill and Robert was going to need somewhere to go….He could have gone to his grandmother, Kitty, in Spain. But she didn’t want him; she made that perfectly clear. She was a detestable woman. My mother was mad, perhaps, but Kitty was just cold, hard, greedy…both of them much stronger than their husbands. Arthur and my father, they were the real marriage. That was the real bond. The wives weren’t nearly so close.”

  “That’s what Robert said,” Ginny told him.

  “He’s right. He sees a lot, Robert….What was I talking about?”

  “About Robert,” Ginny said. “Needing somewhere to go.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, he wasn’t wanted with Kitty, and as for my parents, that was out of the question. The only option was to live in some residential home up in Liverpool while he did his A Levels. When Wendy Stevens came that day and told me about it, I knew I’d have to offer to have him here. I was responsible for him. So that’s when it all began to unravel. I should have told you everything straight away. I should have told you everything from the beginning. Stupid of me. But I was afraid, you see. That’s at the heart of it.”

  They stood for a while in silence. Not a single car had gone past; they had the night to themselves. The cow had wandered away, and far away over the flat fields Ginny could hear an owl cry.

  “Actually,” Ginny said, “there was something else that started it for me. Rhiannon’s sister, Helen, she’d heard from someone that you’d been in prison. When I heard that, I thought no, it’s impossible. But it made me start wondering….I went to see Joe Chicago tonight, before I rang home. I…I pinched his jacket, you see. I thought he’d stolen it, and I wanted to…give it back in some way. But I realized he hadn’t stolen it after all, so I went to see him. He was looking after his mother. He told me why you were in prison. I suppose I could have asked him a long time ago if I’d dared. I just thought he was so dangerous.”

  Dad didn’t speak for a while. Then he said, “Yeah…Helen. I had no idea she was Rhiannon’s sister. Well, it’s a small place. And poor old Joe. I see him sometimes in town and give him a few quid. He’s harmless. But looking like that, he hasn’t got much in his favor. Ginny…I’m sorry.”

  She was a little surprised. “What for?”

  “For not telling you.” He paused. “For all this.”

  She thought of the years when there’d just been the two of them, when she’d been the queen of the world and he’d been the king; she thought of the breakfast ladies; she thought of that little boy her father had been; she thought of the desolation of his parents, knowing themselves abandoned and hated, and knowing why; she thought of Robert and his cold, hard, dying mother; she thought of Dad in jail for her sake, and her not knowing anything about it; she thought of Joe Chicago’s mother. A sense of the vast loneliness and sadness of being human brushed past her. The world was huge, after all. She’d been very lucky.

  Then without knowing how it happened, she was crying on his shoulder, sobbing for all of them, and his arms were round her as they’d always been.

  After a while Ginny sighed a shaky sigh and they stood apart.

  “You know,” she said, confessing, “I thought I was so hard done by…and I wasn’t at all. Robert’s much worse off than me. So were you. I just didn’t realize. But once I felt things were shaky underneath…well, I couldn’t trust anything. There were all sorts of other people who knew things about me that I didn’t, and I had to find out, Dad. I had to. And now I see….”

  They got back in the car. Ginny found herself yawning. The lights of a truck lit up the interior from behind them, and the heavy vehicle roared steadily past on its way to the south, laden with Mr. Alston’s garden furniture to pay for more bricks for his beach house, perhaps, or with cases of wine for the Yacht Club.

  “You know,” she said, “I never even as
ked if they did the ton.”

  “The what?”

  “In the Yacht Club. A hundred dinners. They probably did, though. I think they need another waiter. D’you think Robert would like a job?”

  “You better ask him,” he said, starting the engine. “Let’s go home.”

  GINNY WOKE UP long before six. She knew it was early before she looked at the clock; the sun was already shining in through the gap in the curtains, but the air was cool and fresh, fresher than it had seemed for days.

  And because it was so long since she’d been on the beach, Ginny found herself longing for the edge of the water once more, the shore of her kingdom. She got up quickly, washed her face and cleaned her teeth, and put on shorts and T-shirt and sneakers. The house was still, the others both asleep. She left through the kitchen and ran down the lane.

  In the pearly light, her kingdom looked like one of those dreamy beaches painted by Salvador Dalí: tiny bizarre details in an infinite limpidity. The ribs of the old fishing boat sticking up out of the mud in the estuary, the station cat curled up asleep on a beer barrel outside the Yacht Club kitchen, a washing line strung between the rafters of Mr. Alston’s house, with Dafydd’s or Andy’s dingy shirts and socks hanging in the open loft—she saw them all bathed in the same benevolent clarity. There was no one about, no one awake, and hers were the first footprints on the beach.

  She took off her shoes and left them at the edge of the soft sand before going down to the water. The tide was nearly out, and the air was so still that there was nothing to stir the sea into waves. It was smooth and glassy as far as Ginny could see; in her imagination she saw this surreal calm extending out past the southern coast of Ireland and on into the ocean, south and west for thousands of miles, through the Sargasso Sea and over the lost continent of Atlantis, where sea serpents coiled among the ruined temples, until it touched the shores of Haiti.