The Bridge

by Stuart Prebble

  “And are you willing to tell me where you think you know her from?”

  The woman said she had to go and slung her bag over her shoulder. “If you want to know that, I suggest you ask your girlfriend. If she hasn’t told you, it’s probably because she doesn’t want you to know. Know what I mean?”

  Michael did know what she meant, but could see that he was unlikely to make any further progress.

  “OK, sure. Sorry to have disturbed you.” She seemed surprised when he put out his hand. “My name is Michael. Can I ask yours?”

  She appeared to be in some doubt and hesitated. Then she shook his hand and replied, “Joanna. Joanna Potts, but if you want my advice you won’t go telling her you’ve met me,” and she turned and walked out into the street.

  SIX

  Michael’s usual routine on a day when he didn’t need the car to visit Rose was to take the overground train from Waterloo to Kingston, drop into the local shops to buy food and whatever provisions he needed, and then walk across the bridge towards the apartment. On his way home that evening the sun was still shining, and the Thames was a buzz of activity. Diesel-driven passenger ferries masquerading as Mississippi steamers transported tourists backwards and forwards from Richmond to Hampton Court, stopping to load and unload on the Kingston side of the water. One- and two-man canoes dodged between fast sculling boats, which darted at what seemed to be alarming speed up one side of the river and down the other.

  Michael stopped in the center of the bridge, put down his carrier bag of shopping on the side of the pavement, and leaned against the parapet. On the right-hand-side bank he could see one of the ferries loading up with passengers, and beneath him a boat rowed by four strong-looking men about his own age sped like an arrow through the water. He looked again at the passengers embarking on the ferry and noticed, as he had before, that parents or grandparents were holding on tightly to the hands of small children. He watched as one child, aged about six or seven, pulled himself free from his mother’s grasp and set off at a run along the river’s edge. She called after him in a pitch of hysteria, which in normal circumstances would have seemed far out of proportion. There was a collective sigh of relief among the people surrounding them when she regained hold of the little boy’s hand, but Michael was less happy to witness her administering a sharp slap on his leg, which seemed to echo around the concrete arches. His scream temporarily drowned out all other sounds.

  When Michael reached the apartment ten minutes later, he was about to put the key in the lock when his next-door neighbor came out into the shared hallway.

  “Hello, Michael. I was hoping to see you.” Unlike his grandmother, Elsie had chosen to fight the ravages of time through the use of hair color and heavy makeup. He knew from Rose that she had been what his grandmother described as a “girl about town” in her youth, and Michael felt just a hint of discomfort to see the twinkle in her eye when she spoke to him. Nonetheless, she had been a good friend to Rose, and he was always glad to pass the time of day with her.

  “I do hope your grandma is keeping well, Michael,” she said. “Will you be sure to tell her I was asking after her?” Michael assured her that he would and that her good wishes would be returned. “I just wondered if you or Rose have such a thing as a large white envelope I could borrow? I’ve just found an old photograph I want to send to my son, and ideally I want one of those stiff ones. If not, maybe I could use an ordinary one and put a bit of cardboard inside?”

  Michael said that he didn’t think he had anything like that himself but that there might be a large envelope among Rose’s papers. He offered to go in to have a look, and he would knock on Elsie’s door in a few minutes if he could find anything.

  He let himself inside and went immediately to the dark wooden bureau in the corner of Rose’s bedroom where she kept her papers and stationery. It still felt a bit odd to come into Rose’s room when she wasn’t there, and he reminded himself that he should open the windows from time to time to keep the room aired. Writing paper and envelopes were usually stored in the drawers below the pull-down flap, and he rummaged through several pads of pale-blue Basildon Bond. In among the papers was a selection of greetings cards which had obviously caught Rose’s eye and been kept for when appropriate occasions came along. There were several books of postage stamps, and he also found a number of brown envelopes which contained formal documents and certificates. Most were duplicates, because the originals had been destroyed in a fire caused by a faulty electric heater in the house where they had lived when Michael was a baby. He had no memory of the event, but the story had been used throughout his childhood as a vivid warning about the danger of carelessness.

  Continuing to rummage among the papers, Michael came across a blue cardboard file on which was written the word “Michael” in his grandma’s hand. He opened it and began sorting through a batch of his own GCSE and A-level certificates, which were tucked in alongside a pile of his end-of-term reports from junior school. The discovery replayed for him a memory of bringing them home in a sealed brown envelope and of being required to sit next to his grandmother on the sofa while she read them from beginning to end. He pictured Rose remaining very still with her specs perched on the end of her nose and tilting the angle so that the neatly typed pages caught the best light. She would give away little other than a mumble of disapproval or otherwise, until she got to the last comment, and then she folded the paper, returned it to the envelope, and cooked his favorite meal of fish cakes, chips, and peas.

  “It’s marvelous to see you learning so many different and wonderful things,” she said to him as they ate together one evening after his report had been read and stored safely away. “The only worthwhile thing I ever learned at school was from one particular teacher who told me something which has always stayed with me.”

  “And what was that, Grandma?” said Michael.

  “That when someone else is behaving badly, to try your very best to see the world from their point of view. If you can do that, you’ll usually find that what they’re saying or doing makes sense to them, even if it doesn’t to you. It’s a piece of advice I’ve always tried to live by, and you would do very well to do the same.” His grandma’s smile was full of warmth and love, and he knew that he would always do his best to make her happy and proud if he could. That was then, and that was now, too.

  Michael was just about to give up the search for something which would meet Elsie’s needs when he came across a small bundle of white stiffened envelopes. He was glad to be able to help her after all, and his neighbor seemed delighted when he delivered one of them next door. He returned to settle in for the evening and opened a bottle of beer.

  Michael still felt a nagging disquiet about the encounter earlier in the day with the blonde woman in the Ploughman’s Arms. The incident had added to a level of concern which was already bubbling away in his mind about Alison, and in particular about the account she had given of her early life. Of course it was understandable that she would be reluctant to talk about what had obviously been a very difficult time in her childhood, and perhaps it was not surprising that the circumstances which led to her being brought up in local authority care were sketchy. No one would enjoy saying much about a car crash in which her parents had been killed. However, he had now seen on several occasions that Alison tended to overreact when anything to do with her past came up, and the incidents caused him a growing sense of discomfort. He wondered what, if anything, he might do to rid himself of his anxiety, but something made him feel reluctant to embark on anything resembling an investigation. Though he had his doubts about what Alison had told him, the last thing he wanted was for his relationship with her to be undermined by suspicion or distrust.

  Michael reached across to his shoulder bag and took out his laptop. He switched it on and checked his emails, and then hesitated for a few moments more before turning to Google. He put the cursor in the search box and carefully typed in the words “couple die in car crash” and pressed the spa
ce bar. Alison had said that she had been eight years old at the time, which would put the date at around 1995 and so he entered another space and typed in “1990–2000.” He put in another space and then typed “Brighton.” Now Michael hesitated for yet a few seconds more before making up his mind and clicking on search. The system produced 450,000 results in 0.67 second, and he began to scroll through the first few screens. Immediate headlines included a broad assortment of tragedy and mayhem, but none of the first five pages he looked at suggested anything remotely similar to what he was looking for, and already the relevance of entries seemed to be getting more remote. He narrowed the search to the Brighton Argus website and once again could find a series of road accidents, but nothing which might have been the incident involving Alison’s parents.

  Michael sat back in his chair and breathed deeply, still trying to get a perspective on his feelings. At one moment he felt worried that he did not know as much as he wanted to know about a woman he was becoming more and more involved with. At the next he was impatient with himself for wasting his time on a stupid search which was never likely to yield anything helpful. “If you care enough about it,” he said aloud to himself, “just ask her, for God’s sake.”

  The thought reminded Michael that the time was approaching 6:00 PM, and he had gotten into the habit of phoning Alison as she left the office in Brighton so he could speak to her during the walk back to her apartment. He was still sorting through papers, but keeping an eye on the clock, and he waited for a few minutes after the top of the hour and dialed her number. Alison had expected his call and seemed happy to hear from him.

  “How was your day?” she asked, and he could hear the buzz of traffic in the background.

  “It was good,” he said. “I spent some time with Stephen doing a trial sound mix on a drama we are working on. He was pleased with me and said they might soon give me a formal attachment to his department so I can do some proper training. What about you?”

  “I had to spend more than an hour with this couple who wanted to book a round-the-world cruise,” said Alison, “but I didn’t seem to be able to make them understand that seaports have to be visited in the order they appear around the globe, rather than in any order you select.” By now she could see the funny side and both of them laughed.

  “And you’ll never guess who I saw in the pub at lunchtime?” said Michael. Of course she could not guess and did not want to try. “Remember that crazy woman who came up to you in the restaurant in Brighton? On the day the Madman was throwing kids off the pier? Thought she knew you…”

  “Of course I do. Horrible piece of work, I thought. Did she see you?”

  “Yes, she did. As it happens we had a little chat.”

  “You did what? Why on earth would you do that?” Once again Michael was taken aback by the sudden stridency of Alison’s response. For a moment he struggled for an explanation, before realizing that he didn’t really need one.

  “No reason. Why shouldn’t I? The poor woman is convinced she knows you. Obviously she’s off her head, or you have some strange doppelgänger walking round. If so I’d love to meet her…”

  Still Alison did not seem inclined to see any lighter side of the conversation. “Why do you say she still thinks she knows me? What did she say?”

  Michael repeated the conversation as far as he could remember it but was careful not to give any hint that he might suspect there was any truth in what the woman was saying. “Maybe she has changed her appearance so much that you don’t recognize her? She told me her name. Something like Joanna Potter or something?”

  “Look, Michael,” said Alison. “Let’s be clear. I don’t know her. I’ve never met her, and I’ve never heard that name.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Michael. “I get it. You don’t know her. Of course you don’t. I just think it’s interesting that she is so convinced that she knows you, and I’m surprised you aren’t curious. If there was someone walking around who was a spitting image of me, I’d want to know more about it. Anyway she’s obviously off her trolley, but for whatever reason she’s mistaken you for this Lizzie woman.”

  It seemed clear enough that this was not going to be the best moment for Michael to pursue the questions which had been accumulating in his head, and so he turned the conversation to their plans for the weekend. It took a few more minutes before the tone of Alison’s responses began to thaw, and soon she declared that she had arrived home and would call to speak to him again at bedtime. They had just rung off when there was a knock on Michael’s door, and when he answered, he was surprised to find that it was Elsie. She was holding the envelope he had given her in one hand, and in the other she held a photograph. He assumed that she wanted to show him the picture she was planning to send to her son.

  “Hello, Michael. Good job I checked. I’d put my photo in the envelope and was about to seal it when I thought it was a bit bulky. I looked inside and found this. It looks like an old holiday snapshot. Your grandma must have put it in here to stop it from getting creased.”

  Michael took the photograph from Elsie’s outstretched hand and glanced down at it. It was a faded color picture of a group of people he did not recognize, apparently at the seaside. He thanked Elsie, told her she should keep and use the envelope anyway, and closed the door.

  Suddenly he felt famished and returned to the kitchen to search the cupboards and fridge for inspiration about what to make for his supper. He had cooked eggs in every different way he knew over the last few days and decided to ring the changes and open a can. Ten minutes later he was sprinkling Worcestershire sauce on a plate of baked beans on toast and looking round for something to read while he ate. He noticed that he had placed the old photograph on the far edge of the table and leaned across to retrieve it, popping a corner of toast and beans in his mouth. As he put the photo on the table beside his plate, a blob of hot sauce dripped from his fork and onto the picture. Cursing under his breath, he reached for a tissue from a box on the counter behind him and wiped the surface. He was irritated to see that the heat from the sauce had blurred a small area of the picture, and even now he experienced a twinge of concern about what his grandmother would say.

  He looked more closely at the photograph and felt quite sure that he had never seen it before. It had been taken on a promenade at a seaside resort, which looked as though it might be Brighton. It was of a group of four children, caught midaction, as though instructed to stop whatever they were doing to pose for the camera. He looked more closely to see if he could recognize the faces, but if they had ever been clear, they certainly were not recognizable now.

  SEVEN

  On the following weekend Alison was due to come to Kingston, but she had been troubled for some time by a leaking tap in her apartment and told Michael that she would have to wait at home on Saturday morning for the plumber. She planned to set off on the train as soon as the problem had been sorted but would be unlikely to arrive before midday. Michael had anyway been feeling uncomfortable that he had not visited Rose much at weekends recently and so said he would take the opportunity to see her in the morning. Maybe then he and Alison could meet for some lunch? He had been thinking on and off about the photograph, and before he left the apartment on Saturday morning he slipped it into an inside pocket.

  Saturday morning was the busiest time for visitors to Greenacres, and he was not able to find a place in the car park and so drove around the local streets for ten minutes trying to find a space. He was listening to the news on the radio, and once again it occurred to him that the hunt for the Madman had disappeared from the bulletins. Two of the three children thrown into the water in Brighton had survived and were back with their families; the third had not recovered from the head injuries caused when he was battered against the metal props beneath the pier. This meant that the Madman was responsible for the murder of five children, as well as the two adults who had drowned in the Thames trying to rescue them, and Michael wondered whether these terrible crimes would ever be solved
.

  Eventually he found a space in a residential street and tried to ignore the hostile glare of the woman standing in the bay window of her house as he parked directly outside. The care home was a few hundred yards away, and he felt anxious about how his grandma would be today. Since that awful occasion when he first tried to bring Alison to meet her, she seemed to have had some better days. However, he had never since that time been able to anticipate a visit without a gnawing feeling of concern that a similar scene might occur.

  Michael checked his wristwatch. Visitors were admitted to Greenacres at 10:00 AM on Saturdays, and it was just coming up to 10:15. He enjoyed the thought that Rose would not be expecting him and hoped that his visit would give her a nice surprise. He went into the main entrance and through to the foyer, glancing across to check that the waiting room was empty and that the visitors had been admitted. There seemed to be no one about, and so he pushed open the door leading to the main residential corridor and walked through. Doors of individual residents’ rooms were open as usual, and Michael glanced in at the children, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces who would no doubt have preferred to be off at the skate park rather than giving up Saturday mornings to visit ancient relatives.

  He was about halfway along the corridor, just outside number 12, when he heard the scream. Instantly Michael knew where it was coming from and felt the effect of a cold hand gripping his heart. It had exactly the same piercing resonance that he experienced up close from his grandmother those few weeks ago—the kind of scream you might hear in a horror film when the heroine is being attacked by an axman, as though life itself was in imminent danger. It was a primordial alarm call, and the human instinct was to run towards it, ready to fend off whatever was causing the terror. Today, though, a more powerful force seemed to stiffen Michael’s legs and bring him to a standstill. He was aware that members of the nursing staff were running past him in the direction of Rose’s room and saw Bernice Williams, the young doctor who had been on duty on that first day, striding from the other direction towards her door. She and two nurses had entered the room, and more seconds passed before the screams stuttered to a halt, only to be replaced by a sound of wailing and sobbing reminiscent of a mother grieving for her children.