The Bridge

by Iain Banks

  'Mock? Mocca?' I found myself whispering, gazing up at the bulbous stone eyes. The giant offered no help. Names too became worn away, however slowly; at first altered, then reduced, then forgotten.

  On the beach before the city, some way from the statue's stony gaze, I found a man. He was small and lame and hunched over, and he stood up to his knees in the shallow surf, the waves washing round the dark rags he wore, and he beat at the surface of the water with a heavy lash of chains, cursing all the while.

  His head was bowed under the weight of his deformed back; long, filthy hair hung down in tight tangles to the chopping waves, and sometimes, like a sudden grey-white hair erupting from the centre of this dark mass, a long strand of spittle would drop towards the waves, and float away.

  All the time his right arm rose and fell, whipping at the sea with his flail, a short heavy thing with a shining wooden handle and a dozen glistening, rusting lengths of iron chain. The waters around him frothed and bubbled under this steady and unceasing attack, and clouded with the grains of sand disturbed from the slope beneath.

  The hunched man stopped his flogging for a moment, shifted - crablike - a step to one side, wiped his mouth with one cuff, then resumed, muttering all the time as the heavy chains rose, fell, splashed. I stood on the shore behind him, watching, for a long time. He stopped again, wiped his face once more, then took another step to the side. The wind blew his ragged clothes, briefly lifted his oily, tangled hair. My own loose garment flapped in the same gust, and he may have heard the noise over the falling surf, for he did not immediately resume his labours. His head moved slightly, as though to catch some faint sound. He seemed to try to straighten his twisted back, but then gave up. He turned slowly round in a succession of tiny shuffling steps - as though his feet were hobbled on a short chain - until he faced me. He brought his head up, slowly, until he could look at me, then stood, the waves still breaking around his knees, the flail dangling in the water from one gnarled hand.

  His face was almost hidden by the tangled mass of hair piled around his head and falling like another uneven flail towards the sea. His expression was unreadable. I waited for him to speak, but he stood, silent, patient, until finally I said, 'Excuse me. Please carry on.'

  He said nothing for a while, gave no sign of having heard, as if there was some medium slower than air between us, then replied in a voice of surprising gentleness. 'It's my job, you know. I am employed to do this.'

  I nodded. 'Oh. I see.' I waited for some further explanation.

  He seemed to hear my words, again, long after I had spoken them. After a while he gave a lop-sided shrug. 'You see, once, a great emperor . . .' Then his voice died away, and he was silent for a few moments. I waited. He shook his head after a while, and shuffled round to face the curved blue horizon. I shouted, but he gave no sign of having heard.

  He started to beat the waves again, muttering and cursing, quietly and monotonously.

  I watched him whip at the sea for a little longer, then I turned and walked away. An iron bracelet, like the remains of some snapped manacle - I had not noticed it before - made a faint, rhythmic clinking noise on my wrist as I walked back to the ruins.

  Did I really dream that? The ruined city by the sea, the man with the chain whip? I am confused for a moment; did I lie down last night and try to dream up something to tell the doctor?

  In the darkness of my large, warmed bed, I feel a sort of relief. I laugh quietly, inordinately pleased with myself for having finally had a dream I can tell the good doctor with a clear conscience. I get up and pull on a dressing-gown. The apartment is cold, the grey dawn glows softly through the tall windows; a tiny, slowly pulsing light shines far out to sea, beneath a long low bank of dark cloud, as though the cloud is land, and the slowly flashing buoy a harbour's signal.

  A bell sounds somewhere, far away, followed by the quieter chimes which announce the hour as five o'clock. A train whistle blows in the distance beneath, and a hardly heard, partly felt rumble witnesses the passing of a heavy-goods.

  In the sitting room, I watch the grey, unmoving picture of the man in the hospital bed. The small bronze sculptures of the bridge workers, placed variously about the room, reflect the palely shining monochrome light from their rough surfaces. Suddenly a woman, a nurse, comes silently onto the screen and goes to the man's bed. I cannot see her face. She seems to be taking the fellow's temperature.

  There is no sound other than a distant hiss. The nurse walks round the bed, over the shiny floor, to check the machines. She disappears again, going beneath the camera, then returns holding a small metal tray. She takes a syringe from it, draws some fluid from a little bottle, holds the needle up, then swabs the pale man's arm and injects him. I suck air through my teeth; I have never (I am sure) liked injections.

  The picture is too grainy for me to see the needle actually piercing the man's skin, but in my imagination I see the slant-edged tip of the needle's tube, and the pale, soft, yielding skin ... I wince with sympathetic pain and turn the set off.

  I lift the cushion off the telephone. The beeping noise is still there; maybe a little faster than it was before. I replace the receiver on the cradle. The machine rings immediately. I pick it up, but instead of the pulsing monotone:

  'Ah, Orr; got you at last. That is you, isn't it?'

  'Yes, Brooke, it's me.'

  'Where have you been?' His voice is slurred.

  'Asleep.'

  'Out where? Sorry, this noise -' I can hear babbling voices in the background.

  'I wasn't anywhere. I was asleep. Or rather I was -'

  'Asleep?' Brooke says loudly. 'That won't do, Orr. That just won't do at all, I'm sorry. We're at Dissy Pitton's - the bar. Come over at once; we've saved you a bottle.'

  'Brooke, it's the middle of the night.'

  'Good grief, is it? Just as well I called.'

  'The dawn is just coming up.'

  'Is it?' Brooke's astonished voice goes away from the phone. I hear him shout something, then there is loud, ragged cheering. 'Hurry up then, Orr. Get a milk train or something. We'll expect you.'

  'Brooke -' I begin, but then I hear Brooke talking away from the telephone again, and some distant shouting.

  'Oh,' he says. 'Yes. And bring a hat; you've got to bring a -' More shouting in the background. 'Oh; it has to be a wide-brimmed hat. Have you got a wide-brimmed hat?'

  'I -' I am interrupted by further shouting.

  Brooke yells, 'Yes, it has to be wide-brimmed! If you haven't got a wide-brimmed hat, don't bring one that isn't. Have you got one?'

  'I think so,' I say, suspecting that to say so is to commit myself to going.

  'Right,' Brooke says. 'See you soon. Don't forget the hat.'

  He rings off. I put the phone down, lift it again and hear the regular beeping noise once more. I look out at the slowly flashing light under the cloud bank, shrug, and head for my dressing room.

  Dissy Pitton's bar lies, spread over several eccentrically arranged floors, in an unfashionable area only a few decks above train level. Directly beneath the lowest of the bars there is a rope works, where ropes and cables are wound in a series of long and narrow sheds. Accordingly, Dissy Pitton's is a place of ropes and cables, where the tables and chairs are suspended from the ceilings rather than supported by the floors. In Dissy Pitton's, as Brooke once observed in one of his rare bouts of humour, even the furniture is legless.

  The doorman is asleep on his feet, leaning back against the wall of the building, arms folded and head down, peaked cap shading his eyes from the flashing neon sign over the door. He is snoring. I let myself in and climb through two dark, deserted floors to where noise and light indicate the party continues.

  'Orr! The very man!' Brooke comes unsteadily through the crowd of people and the swaying maze of suspended tables, chairs, couches and screens. He steps over a snoring body on the way.

  Drunks in Dissy Pitton's seldom remain under the table for long. Usually they end up sprawled on the floor in
some distant part of the bar, having been tempted by the seemingly endless plane of teak floor into crawling off on all fours, driven by some deeply ingrained instinct of infantile inquisitiveness, or perhpas the desire to impersonate a slug.

  'Good of you to come, Orr,' Brooke says, taking my arm. He looks at the wide-brimmed hat I am clutching. 'Nice hat.' He leads me towards a distant table.

  'Yes,' I say, handing it to him. 'Who wanted it? What's it for?'

  'What?' He stops; he turns the hat over in his hands. He looks, mystified, inside the crown, as though for a clue.

  'You asked for a wide-brimmed hat, remember?' I tell him. 'You asked me to bring one, earlier.'

  'Hmm,' Brooke says, and leads me to a table with four or five people clustered around it. I recognise Baker and Fowler, two of Brooke's fellow engineers. They are in the process of trying to stand up. Brooke still looks puzzled. He is looking closely at the hat.

  'Brooke,' I say, trying not to sound exasperated. 'You asked me to bring the damn thing, not half an hour ago. You can't have forgotten.'

  'You sure that was this evening?' Brooke says sceptically.

  'Brooke, you rang! You invited me over here, you -'

  'Oh look,' Brooke says, belching and reaching for a bottle. 'Have some wine and we'll think about it.' He shoves a glass into my hands. 'You've got some catching up to do.'

  'I fear your lead is unassailable.'

  'You're not upset, are you, Orr? Brooke says, pouring wine into my glass.

  'Merely sober. The symptoms are similar.'

  'You are upset.'

  'No, I'm not.'

  'Why are you upset?'

  Why do I form the impression that Brooke is not really listening to me? This happens, sometimes. I talk to people, but a sort of emptiness seems to come over them, as though the face really is a mask, with the real person somewhere behind it, normally pressed up against the inside like a child with their nose against a sweet-shop window, but - when I am talking to them, trying to make some difficult or unacceptable point - lifting that internal self away from the mask and turning somewhere inside themselves, performing the mental equivalent of taking their shoes off and putting their feet up, having a cup of coffee and resting for a while, returning later only when they're good and ready, to nod inappropriately and make some wholly irrelevant remark redolent of stale thoughts. Perhaps it's me, I think. Perhaps only I have this effect on people; maybe nobody else does.

  Well, this is paranoid thinking, I suppose, and I don't doubt the effect is one of those which, once one has the courage to broach the subject with other people, will prove to be extremely common, if not nearly universal ('Oh yes, I've felt that; that happens to me! I thought it was only me.')

  Meanwhile, engineers Baker and Fowler have both succeeded in standing and pulling on their coats. Brooke is talking earnestly to engineer Fowler, who looks perplexed. Then enlightenment spreads across his face. He says something which Brooke nods at before coming back to me. 'Bouch,' he tells me, then picks up his own coat from the back of a couch.

  'What?' I say.

  'Tommy Bouch,' Brooke says, putting his coat on. 'He wanted the hat.'

  'What for?'

  'Don't know, Orr,' Brooke admits.

  'Well, where is he?' I ask, looking round the bar.

  'Went outside a while ago,' Brooke tells me. He buttons his coat. Fowler and Baker stand behind him, swaying uncertainly.

  'Are you three going?' I ask, rather unnecessarily.

  'Have to,' Brooke says, then takes my arm, leans closer. 'Urgent appointment at Mrs Hanover's,' he whispers loudly.

  'Mrs -' I begin. Mrs Hanover's is a licensed brothel. I know that Brooke and his cronies visit it occasionally, and I suspect it is frequented mostly by engineers (a host of unsubtle allusions suggest themselves). I have been invited before, but made it clear I have no interest in attending. This reticence arises from vanity, not moral scruples, I have assured Brooke, but I suspect he still thinks I am - beneath my talk of sex, politics and religion - a prude.

  'Don't suppose you want to come along, do you?' Brooke says.

  'Thank you, no,' I say.

  'Hmm, didn't think so,' Brooke nods. He takes my arm again, puts his mouth near to my ear. 'Thing is, Orr, it's a bit awkward . . .'

  'What?' I watch engineer Fowler talking to a young man with long hair who is sitting in the shadows behind him. Another young man is slumped over the table behind him.

  'It's Arrol's daughter,' Brooke says, glancing back over his shoulder.

  'Who?'

  'Chief Engineer Arrol's daughter,' Brooke whispers. 'She's sort of attached herself to us, you see, and that brother of hers has gone and fallen asleep, so if we leave now there won't be anybody to ... Look, you wouldn't mind sort of. . . talking to her, would you?'

  'Brooke,' I say coldly, 'first of all you call me at five o'clock in the morning, then -' I get no further.

  Baker, supported by an anxious-looking Fowler, stumbles into Brooke, and says, 'Think we'd better go now, Brooke; not feeling awfully . . .' Engineer Baker stops, seems to belch. His cheeks bulge; he swallows, then grimaces and nods in the direction of the steps to the lower floor.

  'Got to go, Orr,' Brooke says hurriedly, grabbing one of Baker's arms while Fowler grasps the other. 'See you later. Thanks for looking after the girl. Have to make your own introductions, sorry.' The three of them barge past me; Brooke shoves the wide-brimmed hat back into my hands. Fowler drags Baker off towards the stairs, with Brooke in tow via Baker's other arm. 'I'll tell Tommy Bouch about the hat if I see him,' Brooke shouts.

  They stagger together through the crowds, towards the stairs. As I turn, my attention is caught by the young man I saw Fowler talking to earlier; he is looking up, from rather baggy eyes, smiling at me.

  Wrong. Not a young man; a young woman. She is wearing a dark, rather well-cut suit with wide trousers, a brocade waistcoat with a rather ostentatious gold chain across it, and a white cotton shirt. Her shirt collar is open, a black bow-tie hanging undone from it. Black shoes. Her hair is dark, shoulder length. She is sitting sideways on a seat, one leg drawn up under her. One dark hooked eyebrow hoists; I follow her gaze to where the tripod of engineers who have just left the table are attempting to navigate their way through the press of bodies at the head of the stairs. 'Think they'll make it?' She says. She tips her head to one side, one clenched fist supporting the back of her head.

  'I think I'd want very good odds,' I reply. She nods thoughtfully and takes a drink from a long glass.

  'Yes, me too,' she says. 'I'm sorry; I don't know your name.'

  'My name is John Orr.'

  'Abberlaine Arrol.'

  'How do you do,' I say.

  Abberlaine Arrol smiles, amused. 'I do as I like, Mr Orr. And yourself?'

  One irrelevant reply deserves another; 'You must be Chief Engineer Arrol's daughter,' I say, putting the wide-brimmed hat on the end of the couch (where, with any luck at all, somebody else will pick it up).

  'That's right,' she says. 'Are you an engineer, Mr Orr?' She waves one long, unringed hand at a seat beside her. I take off my coat, sit down.

  'No, I'm a patient, under Dr Joyce.'

  'Ahh,' she says, nodding slowly. She looks at me with a directness I've found unusual on the bridge, as though I am some complicated mechanism in which one small part has come adrift. Her face is young, but soft-looking in the way of an older woman's, though unlined; she is small-eyed, with the hoses obvious under the smooth skin at brow and cheek. Her mouth is quite broad, and smiling, but I find my gaze drawn to small crinkles of skin under her grey eyes, small folds, which give her a knowing, ironic look.

  'What do they think might be wrong with you, Mr Orr?' Her eyes glance towards my wrist, but my medical name band is hidden by my cuff.

  'Amnesia.'

  'Ah really; from when?' She wastes no time between sentences.

  'About eight months ago. I was . . . netted by some fishermen.'

  'Oh, I th
ink I read about it. They fished you out of the sea.'

  'So I'm told. That's one of the many things I've forgotten.'

  'Haven't they found out who you are yet?'

  'No; no one has claimed me, at any rate. I don't match the description of any missing person.'

  'Hmm, it must be strange.' A finger goes to her lips. 'I imagined it might be quite interesting and . . .' a shrug, 'romantic to have lost one's memory, but perhaps it's just frustrating?' She has rather fine, very dark eyebrows.

  'Mostly frustrating, but also interesting, as is the treatment. My doctor believes in dream therapy.'

  'And do you?'

  'Not yet.'

  'You will if it works.' She nods.

  'Probably.'

  'But,' she raises one finger. 'What if you have to believe in it before it can work?'

  'I'm not sure that would accord with the good doctor's scientific principles.'

  'But if it works, who cares?'

  'Ah, but if one has belief without reason in the process, one may end up having belief without reason in the result.'

  This makes her pause, but only for a moment.

  'So you might think you're cured, when you're not,' she says. 'But there'd be a definite result; you'd either have your memory back or not.'

  'Ah, but I might not; I might make it up.'

  'Make up your own past life?' Sceptically.

  'Some people do it all the time.' I think I am teasing, but even as I speak the words, I wonder.