And then the telephone. White and splintering like a flash of lightning—you are involved in this sad story, aren’t you?
Yes, but we did nothing! We came across it by pure chance.
No use now it’s got so far. We’re involved and must stand up and testify against the poor wretch who will be dragged out and punished.
That’s where the gnawing anxiety lies.
A thousand ways.
Thinking: no, it won’t come. Many days have passed now. Ten long days have passed now—and everything is as silent as it could be. There was nobody watching from behind the tree, nothing has appeared in the papers.
It’s no use. There was an eye behind the tree. Eye or no eye we are involved all the same. It’s almost as though we are guilty, that’s how it feels.
Many ways: a reticent, kind father who stops you in passing in order to make it more casual and less frightening.
Is that you, Torvil?
Yes?
Would you mind coming in to your mother and me for a moment?
What’s it about?
We’d like to poke around and ask you a few questions. Shan’t keep you long.
Many, many ways.
The bright kitchen:
But Aud?
Yes, what is it?
How you jumped! It looks as if you’ve been waiting for it.
I asked you what—?
Now I understand much better why you go about like this.
Oh?
The police have phoned.
Oh?
What in the world have you got involved in, Aud?
They kept apart, far too tense to mention the matter to each other. It was difficult to meet and sit together. Impossible to consult each other. Nothing to consult each other about. Wait. Only wait. And look as if nothing was the matter when they were forced to meet.
At times they thought: Why don’t you come, then it’ll be over and done with? Better that than to be worn down by this endless torment.
No, no, don’t ever come!
Send me a letter in the post, if you know about us—so that we can answer you, so that you can find out the truth about us. It’s not the way you probably think it is.
The days passed. They sat with their books, in their separate rooms. They had to avoid each other. Their parents must have noticed, for they asked very calmly whether they had quarrelled.
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘We certainly hope you haven’t quarrelled.’
‘We’re working.’
‘Yes, that’s so. But still—you ought not to quarrel. You ought ...’
Yes, Mother.
Yes, Father.
Yes, Mother and Father.
Yes, Father and Mother.
They continued to work as before.
To be licked by a dog—what did that mean?
We’re involved.
The thing without a name beneath the pile of twigs cannot be found, only boundary stones with their pale undersides uppermost, as evidence that all is not as it should be.
Look at the stones. They’re turned upside-down.
Everything is peaceful. The air is filled with hidden impatience and hidden shock. The late summer darkness and the silently flowing river, and what you do not know. And what you believe.
The air full of messages and demands ready to attack you, to require heartless testimony about—as it seems—inhuman things.
No use sending out messages in your turn, out into the yielding emptiness at night. But one does so many things uselessly. It is silent indoors, and a car is muttering far away. The bedroom walls have disappeared in the darkness. You can imagine that they do not exist, and wish you could go far, unhindered. Not much use sending out messages, but you don’t think like that. You send them again and again.
I’m sending you this message, if you are alive: Don’t be afraid of us! I’m a girl you may have met already.
11
The Message
Torvil was crossing the yard on his way to the main road. It was now over a fortnight since it had happened, and everything was just as before. No sign.
It was the same calm, late summer weather—and it was early in the day: the traffic on the road had scarcely started up as yet. Torvil was about to cross the bridge to the store.
He had not quite reached the road when he was halted by something white coming towards him, thrown at him from the roadway. He saw it flying through the air—and at the same moment caught a glimpse of the back of a cyclist, a girl, who turned the comer and vanished among the cars at the same instant. The two things confused him, but he realized that there was some connection between them.
The white object plopped on to the ground and rolled a little way towards him. It had obviously been aimed at him, so he went over and picked it up. A small, smooth pebble wrapped up in white paper.
Torvil suddenly felt apprehensive.
This was it.
At last the tension would be dissolved, one way or another. He was so keyed up with the expectation of a message that it was easy to guess what this paper might be.
He looked for the cyclist, but the girl had disappeared long ago on the busy road. He had not noticed anything that might help him to recognize her again. A glimpse of a back and hair waving in the wind.
Torvil decided to forget his visit to the shop, put the hand that was holding the stone into his pocket and walked calmly back to the garden. He sat down behind the currant bushes.
Involved, and seriously now, that was certain.
There was nothing written on the outside. He untied the string and smoothed out the paper. There were a few words written in pencil: Tonight. Will you come to the stone where you were last time.
Clear enough. No more words were necessary.
So the eye had been there behind the tree.
He had been recognized.
It didn’t matter how it had happened—it was certainly no problem to hide there in the bushes and the darkening twilight.
So he was sharing something, not just in the play of his own thoughts, but in relation to the mysterious stranger. In relation to what he could be forced into.
Rapid, contradictory thoughts. How should we behave? It will be difficult to be us.
Who has sent this message? Everything that happens later depends on that.
It’s obvious what Aud wants to do, he thought. She’ll give her fanatical support, now as before.
With secret joy he thought: And I shall share it with her.
But we may find a completely different situation.
At least the consuming exhaustion of this waiting will be over.
‘Is Aud in?’
A question in the happy kitchen.
‘I expect she’s poring over her books. She usually is, these days. It would be a good idea if you distracted her a bit.’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, I was thinking of doing that. We’ve been working a lot on our own recently. Maybe we’ll go for a long walk this evening and get some air.’
‘That’s really good news, Torvil.’
He went in to Aud.
He paused in the doorway. He had not noticed it before, but Aud’s face had become quite pinched. There was fear in her eyes at sight of him.
‘What is it, Torvil?’
‘It’s come, what we’ve been waiting for so long,’ he said, and handed her the crumpled piece of paper.
Quickly read. Afterwards she stood holding it in her hands, as if afraid of it.
‘Well, so you were right, Torvil. There really was someone there watching us.’
‘Or hearing us, to begin with.’
She did not reply.
‘I don’t mean I blame you for that,’ he added. ‘I don’t blame you for any of it.’
‘No, I don’t see why you should, either,’ she said frankly. ‘No, ashamed of myself?’ she added.
She did not seem to be listening to what he said; she simply stood helplessly with the letter in her hand. She gave it back to T
orvil. ‘Are you going there?’ she asked.
He stared. ‘Going there?’
There was the chink to slip through, perhaps? He needn’t go. It hadn’t occurred to him. But what was the matter with Aud?
‘Does this make it any different?’ he asked in astonishment.
‘Different from what?’
‘Don’t you think you need go?’
Aud was trembling and unrecognizable after all this waiting.
‘Now it’s really come I’m afraid. It’s quite different when you have it in your hand. We have no idea who has written to us, who wants to get hold of us. It’s not at all certain it’s the person we have in mind. It may be someone who wants our help to get at her.’
Silence.
‘No, we don’t know, but still—’ said Torvil.
‘What had you thought of doing, then?’
‘It hadn’t occurred to me to do anything else but go. And I don’t think you really mean what you say. You’re saying it because it gave you a shock, but I think you intend to go to this meeting.’
‘I don’t think she’ll be the person we’ll meet, and then ...’
‘What do you know about it, Aud? Even if, as you say, it isn’t her.’
‘I don’t think she could have managed to get there as soon as we did, and moved the stones and everything. Someone was with her.’
‘I didn’t know things were any different,’ said Torvil, disappointed in some way.
Aud, who had flashed like lightning that evening, so that all he had wanted to do was follow her without question. Now it looked as though she would rather shut herself away from it.
‘Aud?’
She sat staring in front of her.
‘Do you hear, Aud?’
‘I’m not going to meet any man there, do you hear! I couldn’t face it!’
‘It was a girl who threw the letter to me. But as far as that goes—do try to calm down, Aud.’
He felt a lump of affection for her deep inside. She couldn’t refuse to go; she wouldn’t either. She must be as she was that evening, he thought, ready to go through fire and water. That’s what she must be like, if they were to be of any help. She musn’t stand like that, trembling.
‘You’d better go, Aud.’
‘Why do you say that? Do you think I won’t go? I’ve never said I won’t go.’
Now you’re being—he was about to say, but then she moved close to him, so instead he said quietly, ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, not without reason.
‘It’s a comfort to have you, at any rate,’ she said, and was so close to him that he was aware of her whole body.
‘Of course,’ he said.
He would put his arms round her now while stars seemed to be dancing, he had to say something, the right thing—for this was surely the moment—but no, he was back again on a blocked path, she was no longer recognizable. It was over for the time being.
‘Aud?’
‘Not now, Torvil.’
He released her.
‘It seems to be so easy for you all the time,’ she said.
‘Easy for me?’
‘Yes, it seems so. Just to be able to go straight ahead. Always straight ahead for you.’
Torvil said passionately, ‘And what about you?’
Aud replied in anger, ‘You’re forgetting what you have in your hand.’
‘I don’t think so.’
She was regretting it already and said, ‘Don’t be angry, then, Torvil.’
He bit his reply back and said nothing. She had sought him out, she couldn’t deny it.
‘Will you or won’t you?’ he asked in an unnecessarily rough tone, to give himself courage. ‘Will you come to the stone this evening?’
‘I shan’t answer you if you speak like that. Why do we have to quarrel and spoil it like this?’
That put a stop to all desire to quarrel. It, said Aud. At once what was going to happen at the stone took shape: embarrassing, but not just frightening. Now there was something alluring about it too.
‘We’re not going to quarrel,’ he said. ‘Anyway, it’s up to you, you know.’
‘Up to me? I don’t know about that.’
‘It’s up to a girl to do this job, it seems to me.’
‘You mustn’t say that. When we have no idea what we’re going to do.’
‘But you had an idea, quick as a flash. As long as you meet her, then ...’
‘Yes, that’s the point. It must be her.’
‘It’ll have to be whoever turns up. Otherwise there’ll never be an end to it.’
She did not answer.
‘Your cheeks have grown thinner, Aud.’
She responded to the affection in his voice. ‘Don’t let it worry you,’ she said kindly.
12
Outside the Nursery
‘We’ll go for a walk this evening,’ they had said, and given themselves plenty of time.
Nobody at home had any objection to this. At home they were used to their going everywhere together, and counted on their continuing to do so.
Occasionally their schoolmates said so heedlessly to their faces. All they could do was shrug their shoulders. Such accusations never stuck; the shrug made them fall to earth, powerless. They were not repeated. The two of them went their way, indifferent to them all.
Was it the same now? Indifferent—was he indifferent?
Oh no. Less and less indifferent as time went by. But mainly irresolute.
What you want most you push away from you.
You want more than you care to admit.
That evening, as they walked towards the wood grown suddenly mysterious and full of problems, Torvil remarked:
‘Escaped from the nursery.’
‘How true! Well, let them keep their peace of mind in the nursery,’ said Aud, ‘as long as it’s up to us.’
‘Yes, they mustn’t find out about this.’
The block of stone appeared between the trees. They were both wondering whether they were the first to arrive. The writer of the letter had forgotten to fix a definite time for their meeting, so they had left it to chance. There was a hint of twilight. It was getting dark earlier now. The scent of autumn was stronger than it had been a fortnight ago.
There was nobody there.
They looked suspiciously at the nearest tree, but no one came out from behind it.
T don’t think anyone will come until it’s dark,’ said Torvil.
That would perhaps be best. But I don’t really believe it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I still think she herself will come to meet us. And I think she’ll want to see what we look like. In spite of everything, surely it’s best to see who you’re talking to on an occasion like this.’
‘To begin with it might be safer to talk in pitch darkness, said Torvil. ‘But then it may not be the person you’re expecting.’
‘I’m not going to look at a man, remember!’
‘Hush, don’t raise your voice.’
They stood leaning against a tree, waiting. It was quiet. The roar of cars from the road did not penetrate through to the wood. Somewhere close by the deep current flowed past, silent as always.
‘Aud ...’
He plucked at her coat with his fingers. He could not stop himself.
She did not answer.
Immediately afterwards she jumped, flushing slightly: someone was approaching through the trees.
A girl.
Torvil said hurriedly, ‘That must be her.’
‘Bound to be.’
For some reason it was clearly the right person approaching.
‘I was so certain, Torvil, that she’d come herself. Now you must do all you can.’
‘Me? It’s up to you.’
‘No!’ she said, and clutched his hand for a second, then dropped it again. It was an irresolute, random gesture, ending up like a grip of iron when it took hold.
At this moment Torvil felt as if supported by something, uplifted by something. He thought that this must come from Aud standing close to him in her familiar coat; that it must come from the deep perplexity she was in, from the way she had clutched on to him, from the knowledge that they were about to experience something extraordinary, face something frightening and inexpressible. Aud, who was a girl, ought to face this and do something about it. But what in the world might that be?
Aud’s touch uplifted him. He would experience this with all his might—as Aud was experiencing it. He could see from her face what she was thinking. They knew they would be changed by this. The new is beginning now.
13
The First Meeting
A girl much like Aud was coming towards the meeting-place. She walked uncertainly through the trees and bushes. Sometimes the foliage hid her—but then she was forced to walk towards them unconcealed and defenceless once more.
The way she walked ... you had to watch.
That’s how you have to walk ...
Everything about her showed that she was normally a different person. This was not her natural walk—she was built to walk with a light, elegant step. The whole of her was like this. Everything about her told them that she was normally a different person.
Aud stood waiting with burning cheeks.
Torvil felt he had to watch the approaching stranger and Aud alternately; Aud, standing with burning cheeks.
They could not say a word.
She came closer with her leaden walk. Soon she would be so close that they would have to greet her. What is this approaching?
Aud had to stand and receive her. There was no alternative. Torvil stood close beside her; then, in case he was being childish, he stirred in order to move away, but Aud said quickly, ‘No, Torvil.’
He stayed where he was.
‘Have you seen her before?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Never.’
The stranger was right in front of them. Torvil’s tongue was loosened and he whispered, ‘Is she older than us?’
‘I don’t think so. But she’s had to go through all—’
‘I meant, she’s not older than us,’ he whispered at the last moment
‘Hush.’
She had arrived. Her cheeks were flushed too. The fleeting blushes on the faces of the two girls made Torvil feel even more tense.
The Bridges Page 5