by Peter May
Time passed both slowly and quickly. Every time I checked my watch it seemed only five minutes later. And then suddenly it was fifteen minutes to midnight. I wondered if, at the last, I had somehow dozed off without realising it. But now my heart was hammering away, beating right up into my throat, nearly choking me. It was time to go.
I slipped out from between the sheets, fully dressed, and pulled on my shoes. They had thick rubber soles that I hoped would give me some grip. I tied my laces with trembling fingers and jiggled Peter by the shoulder. To my irritation it took him some time to wake up. When finally he had shaken himself free of sleep and some undeservedly happy dream, the memory of what we were to be about that night returned to him, and his eyes shone with anticipation. “Time to go?” he whispered loudly.
I put my finger to my lips and glared at him.
It wasn’t until we reached the door of the dormitory that I realized just how many others were awake, too. Voices whispered in the dark.
“Good luck, Johnny.”
“Show the fucker what the Dean boys are made of.”
I felt like saying, “You fucking show him!”
Catherine was waiting for us at the foot of the cellar stairs. She had a torch with her, and shone it in our faces as we came down. It almost blinded me.
“For God’s sake put that away!” I raised my hand to shade my eyes. And then, when the light went out, plunging us into darkness again, almost fell. “Jesus!”
“You’re late!” she whispered. “It’s scary as hell down here. Something keeps making strange clunking noises. And there are things scurrying about the floor. I’m sure it’s rats.”
I slid back the bolt to release the door, and felt the cold night air rush in as I opened it. There was a real smell of winter on its leading edge, and I could see stars, like pinholes in the black sheet that was the sky, revealing an imagined light that lay behind it. A light that was reflected in the frost that glistened all across the black of the tarmac. Heaven perfectly mirrored on earth. Or hell perfectly reflected above.
By the time we got down into the village we could hear a clock somewhere striking midnight. It pealed through the cold, clear night air, like a bell ringing for the dead, sonorous and deep and filled with a dreadful prescience. The hike up Bell’s Brae in the dark, past the silent mews houses, was slow and treacherous. Snow had fallen, then melted where the sun had touched it, then frozen. By the time we reached Kirkbrae House at the top of the hill we were, all three of us, sweating from the effort. They had told us at school that the turreted and step-gabled Kirkbrae House, half of which disappeared down below the bridge, had been a tavern in the seventeenth century. I’d have given anything right then for a glass of the fine fizzing ale they had drunk back in those days. Something to stop my tongue from sticking to the roof of my mouth, and restore the courage I felt deserting me as the bridge approached.
The Kelly boys were waiting for us where the first arch of the bridge began, huddled in the shadow of Kirkbrae House. The town was deserted and as silent as Dean Cemetery. There wasn’t a car on the road, or a light in any of the windows of the stone terraces that marched up Queensferry Street towards the west-end. But the moon reflected off every snow-covered surface of the village below. Only the black waters of the river itself were completely lost in darkness.
“You’re late!” Patrick Kelly hissed from the shadows. “We’ve been waiting here for ages. And it’s fucking freezing!”
I could hear him stamping and clapping his gloved hands together, trying to keep warm, and I wished I had gloves, too.
“Well, we’re here now,” I said. “And we might as well get started. Me first.” I moved towards the parapet, but felt Patrick’s big open hand pushing into my chest.
“No. Me first. I’ve been hanging around here long enough. Who’s going to time it?”
“I am.” Catherine stepped forward into the pale yellow glow of an electric street lamp and opened her hand to reveal an engraved silver stopwatch with a pink ribbon attached to it.
One of the other Kelly boys grabbed her wrist to get a better look, and you could hear the envy in his voice. “Where’d you steal that?”
Catherine pulled her wrist free and closed protective fingers around it again. “I didn’t steal it. My dad gave me it.”
Patrick said, “Okay, Danny, you check she disnae cheat.” And he reached up to grasp the wrought-iron spikes that ran along the curve of the parapet, to pull himself up and over, feet sliding and scraping on the ice, till he had lowered himself down to the ledge below.
I had crossed the bridge on many occasions, but it was the first time I had really examined the parapet. I learned later that they had raised it about fifty years before to stop people throwing themselves off. What is it about bridges that lures folk to kill themselves by jumping off them? Whatever it is, the only thing that concerned me then was not falling off.
The bridge was carried on four arches from Kirkbrae House at the south end to the towering Gothic presence of the Holy Trinity Church at the other. It was one hundred and six feet above the river at its highest point, and maybe one hundred and fifty yards across. The ledge was wide enough to walk on. Just. If you didn’t look down, or think too much about it. The problem came when it circumvented each of the vertical supports for the three columns. These were angled, and took you away from the safety of the parapet, where it was always possible to grab on to one of the spikes.
I felt my stomach flip over. It was madness. What in God’s name was I doing here? I could hardly breathe.
I could see from Patrick’s face that he was scared, too. But he was doing his best to hide it. “Okay, start the watch,” he called, and we all leaned over as Catherine depressed the starter button, and Patrick Kelly set off across the bridge.
I was amazed at how quickly he moved, spreading himself wide, facing the parapet and moving sideways along the ledge, leaning in to let his hands guide him. He embraced each arch support, almost lying across the top of it, as he shuffled his feet around the ledge. Danny stayed at the Kirkbrae end, watching the stopwatch with Catherine, and me and Peter and Patrick’s other brother, Tam, followed him from the safety of the pavement.
I could hear Patrick’s breathing, laboured, from fear and effort. His breath exploded around him in the moonlight. I could just see the top of his head, and the concentration in his eyes. Peter hung on to my arm, absolutely focused on Patrick’s progress. Even though this was the boy who was threatening to give away the secret of his Elvis tattoo, Peter genuinely feared for his safety. Such was his empathy. Tam called out constant encouragement to his brother, and when finally Patrick reached the church and hauled himself back on to the road side with trembling arms, he let out loud whoops of triumphant joy.
Catherine and Danny came running across to join us.
“Well?” Patrick said, his face positively glowing now with jubilation.
“Two minutes, twenty-three seconds,” Danny said. “Straight up, Paddy.”
Patrick turned his jubilation on me. “Your turn.”
I glanced at Catherine and could see apprehension burning in her dark eyes. “How’s the ice on that side?” I said to Patrick.
He grinned. “Slippy as fuck.”
I felt my heart sinking into my boots. Two minutes, twenty-three seconds seemed very fast. And I knew that if I couldn’t beat that time, then I would have to do it again. And Patrick’s whole demeanour oozed confidence. He didn’t believe for one moment that I would be faster than him. And, to be honest, neither did I. But there was no point in dwelling on it, to be defeated by my own fear.
I climbed up on to the parapet, and holding on to the top spikes, slid my feet down the other side of it until they reached the ledge. The iron of the spikes was icy cold, biting into already frozen hands. But I held on to them, testing the frosted snow beneath my feet. To my surprise, my rubber soles provided an amazing amount of grip. And I finally let go to find myself balanced on the curve of the ledge, with alm
ost four hundred feet of it stretching ahead of me. If I crossed it using the same technique as Patrick, then whether or not I bettered his time was in the lap of the gods. But if I used my outstretched arms for balance and walked straight, as along a line of kerbstones, I was sure I could do it faster. As long as I didn’t slip. Only when I reached the arch supports would I have to resort to Patrick’s method of getting around them.
I drew a deep breath, resisting the temptation to look down, and called out, “All right, start the watch.” And I set off with my eyes firmly fixed on Kirkbrae House at the other end. I could feel the frozen snow creaking beneath my feet, my left arm raised higher than my right to avoid touching the parapet. The slightest miscalculation, even the smallest nudge of the parapet wall, would likely send me spinning off into space.
I reached the first arch support and flung my arms around it, sliding my feet sideways along the ledge, as I had seen Patrick do. Then steadied myself at the far side of it for the next length. I was filled with a strange sense of elation, feeling as if I could almost break into a run. Of course, that would have been impossible, but confidence surged through me now and I increased my speed, one careful foot in front of the other. From the far side of the parapet I could hear Tam’s voice. “Jesus, Paddy, he’s fast!”
And Peter. “Go, Johnny, go!”
By the time I reached Kirkbrae House, and pulled myself over the parapet to safety, I knew I’d done it faster. Patrick knew it too, and I could already see his apprehension growing as we waited for Catherine and Danny to run across the bridge to join us.
Danny’s face was a mask of trepidation. Catherine’s split by a triumphant smile.
“Two minutes, five seconds,” Danny said, his voice barely a whisper.
I didn’t care any more. I’d won the dare. And if Patrick Kelly was a boy of his word, then Peter’s secret was safe, at least for a while. “Let’s call it quits.”
Patrick’s mouth tightened into a bleak line. He shook his head. “No fucking way. Whoever was slower had to do it again. That was the deal.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
I saw the jut of the older boy’s jaw. “It does to me.” And he grabbed the spikes and pulled himself back on to the parapet.
Tam said, “Come on, Paddy, let’s just go home.”
Patrick dropped down on to the ledge. “Just start the fucking watch, will you?”
Danny looked at me as if there might be something I could do about it. I shrugged. I’d done my best. Catherine started the watch. “Go!” she shouted, and Patrick set off, adopting my technique this time. But even from the start I could see that it wasn’t going to work for him. His shoes didn’t appear to be providing the same grip as mine. He stopped several times during the span of the first arch, fighting to regain his balance. Tam and Peter and I ran along beside him, jumping up every few feet to get a clearer view.
I could see the sweat beading across his forehead, catching the light of the moon, his freckles a dark splatter across the whiteness of his face. The fear in his eyes was clear, but displaced by his own desperate need for self-esteem. To prove himself not only to us, but to himself. I heard him gasp as he lost his footing, saw his hand grasping at fresh air, and thought for one awful moment that he was gone. But his hand found the curve of the parapet, and he steadied himself.
We were about halfway across when I heard Danny’s voice shouting from the Kirkbrae end. “Police!” And almost at the same time I heard the sound of a car’s engine approaching from the direction of Randolph Place. He and Catherine ducked into the shadow of Kirkbrae House, but we were totally exposed out there on the bridge, me and Peter and Tam, with nowhere to hide.
“Down!” I shouted, and crouched against the wall, pulling Peter down with me. Tam dropped to his hunkers beside us. We could only hope that somehow the black patrol car would pass by without seeing us. For a moment we seemed caught in its headlights, before it appeared to accelerate past. I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me. And then there was a squeal of brakes, and the sound of tyres skidding on frosted tarmac. “Shit!”
“Run for it!” Tam shouted.
I could hear the whine of a car’s motor turning in reverse and didn’t need a second telling. I was on my feet in an instant and sprinting hard for Kirkbrae House and the escape route of Bell’s Brae. We hadn’t covered ten yards when I realized that Peter wasn’t with us. I heard Danny shouting from the far side. “What the fuck’s he doing?” And Tam grabbed my arm.
We turned to see Peter crouched up on the parapet, hanging on to a spike with one hand, his other stretched out towards the panicked figure of Patrick Kelly, almost as if he had pushed him. Kelly’s arms were windmilling in a desperate attempt to retain his balance.
But it was already a lost cause. And without a sound he toppled into darkness. It was the silence of that moment that lives with me still. The boy never called out. Never cried, never screamed. Just fell soundlessly into the shadow of the bridge. Every fibre of me wanted to believe that somehow he would survive the fall. But I knew, beyond question, that he wouldn’t.
“Fuck!” I could feel Tam’s breath on my face. “He fucking pushed him!”
“No!” I knew how it looked. But I knew, too, that there was no way that Peter had done that.
Two uniformed police officers had jumped out of the patrol car now, and were running along the bridge towards us. I sprinted back to grab my brother and half drag him with me towards the others waiting at the south end. He was whimpering, desperate. His face wet and shining with tears. “He called for help,” he said, gulping great lungfuls of air to feed his distress. “I tried to grab him, Johnny, honest I did.”
“Hey!” the voice of one of the police officers called out in the dark. “You boys! Stop! What are you doing out here on the bridge?”
It was the signal for us to scatter. I don’t know where the Kelly boys went, but me and Peter and Catherine went pell-mell down Bell’s Brae, stumbling and sliding dangerously on the cobbles, hardly daring to look back. The darkness of the night, along with the shadows of buildings and trees, swallowed us into obscurity, and without a word spoken we climbed the hill at the other side towards the twin towers of The Dean.
I don’t know how, but everyone at The Dean seemed to know about Patrick Kelly’s fall from the bridge first thing the following morning. And then, when someone telephoned from the village to say that school had been cancelled for the day, everyone knew the worst. A boy had died falling from the bridge late the night before. None of the staff knew yet who it was. But there wasn’t a boy or girl at The Dean who didn’t.
Oddly, none of the others asked us what had happened. It was as if we were contaminated somehow, and no one wanted to catch what we had. All the inmates fell into their usual cliques, but gave Catherine, Peter and me a very wide berth.
We sat around in the dining room, the three of us, waiting for the inevitable. And it came just before midday.
A police car roared up the drive and pulled in at the foot of the steps. Two uniformed officers entered The Dean and were shown into Mr. Anderson’s office. Only about ten minutes had passed before the janitor was sent to find us. He looked at us, concerned. “What have you kids been up to?” he whispered.
Being the oldest, the others looked to me, but I just shrugged. “No idea,” I said.
He marched us along the bottom corridor to Mr. Anderson’s room, and we felt the eyes of all our peers upon us. It was as if time had stopped, standing still, like all the kids gathered in groups to watch the condemned going to meet their maker. Each and every one of them, no doubt, thanking the Lord that it wasn’t them.
Mr. Anderson was standing behind his desk, his face as ashen as his hair. The jacket of his dark suit was all buttoned up, and he had his arms folded across his chest. The two officers, helmets in hand, stood to one side, Matron on the other. The three of us lined up in front of the desk. Mr. Anderson glared at us. “I want one of you to speak for all of you.”
“All right, you, McBride.” It was the first and only time I ever heard him call me by my name. He looked at the others. “If either of you disagree with anything he says, then speak up. Your silence will be taken as agreement.” He drew a deep breath, then placed his fingertips on the desk in front of him, leaning slightly forward to let them take his weight. “You’re here because a boy died last night falling from the Dean Bridge. One Patrick Kelly. You know him?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“It seems there were some shenanigans on the bridge around midnight. Several boys and a girl involved.” He looked pointedly at Catherine. “And there are reports of two boys and a girl from The Dean being seen in the village shortly beforehand.” He pulled himself up to his full height. “I don’t suppose you would have any idea who that was?”
“No, sir.” I knew there was no way they could prove it, unless they had eyewitnesses to come forward and identify us. And if they had, then surely they would have been there in Mr. Anderson’s office to point their fingers.
So I just denied everything. No, we hadn’t left The Dean. We had been in our beds all night. No, we hadn’t heard anything about Patrick Kelly’s fall until this morning. And no, we had no clue as to what he or anyone else might have been doing on the bridge at that time of night.
Of course, they knew I was lying. Someone must have told them something. One of the Kelly boys, perhaps. Or one of their friends.
Mr. Anderson leaned forward on his knuckles now, and they glowed white, just like that first day almost a year before. “There is,” he said, glancing at the two police officers, “some doubt about whether the boy fell, or was pushed. There will be an investigation, and anyone found guilty of pushing this boy to his death will be charged with murder. Manslaughter at the very least. This is a very, very grave matter indeed. And a dreadful blight on the reputation of The Dean, if any of its children are found to be involved. Do you understand?”