Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

“I thought so,” said Abbey Hanley, and there was regret but no self-pity. “I guess my leaving your dad,” she explained, “was really my best mistake.”

  * * *

  —

  After that, they did have tea, they couldn’t refuse, and Abbey had more coffee, and told them some of her history; she worked at one of the banks.

  “It’s all as boring as bat shit,” she said, and Clay, he felt the pang.

  He said, “That’s what two of my brothers say—they say it about Matthew’s movies.”

  Her smokiness slightly widened.

  “How many brothers do you have?”

  “There are five of us,” he said to her, “and five animals, including Achilles.”

  “Achilles?”

  “The mule.”

  “The mule?”

  He was actually starting to relax now, and Carey answered bluntly. “You’ve never seen a family like this,” and maybe Abbey could have been hurt by such things—by a life she’d never live—and maybe it could have gone wrong then, and so none of them tried their luck. They didn’t talk about Penny or Michael, and it was Abbey who put her cup down.

  With genuine affection, she said, “Look at you two kids.”

  She shook her head and laughed, at herself:

  You remind me of me and him.

  She thought it—he could tell—but didn’t say it.

  She said, “I think I know why you came here, Clay.”

  She left and came back with The Quarryman.

  It was pale and bronze, and the spine was cracked, but the age of it only enhanced it. At the window it was growing darker; she turned the light on in the kitchen, and took a knife from the wall by the kettle.

  Very gently, at the table, she made an incision, inside—precisely against the spine—to extract the very first page: the one with the author’s biography. Then she closed it, and gave it to Clay.

  As to the page itself—she showed them. She said, “I’ll keep this one if you don’t mind,” and “Love and love and love, huh?” but she was wistful rather than flippant. “I think I always knew, you know—it was never mine to have.”

  When they left, she saw them out, and they stood together, out by the lifts. Clay approached to shake her hand, but she refused, and said, “Here, just give me a hug.”

  It was strange how it felt to be held by her.

  She was softer than she looked, and warm.

  He could never explain how grateful he was, for the book and the flesh of her arms. He knew he would never see her again, that this was all there was. In the very last crack, before the lift went down, she smiled through the closing doors.

  He would never see Abbey again:

  Clay, of course, was wrong.

  Once, in the tide—

  Oh, fuck it—

  See, at Carey Novac’s funeral, when we’d sat at the back of the church, he was wrong to think no one saw him—for between the genuine mourners, and the racing people and identities, a woman had also been there. She had sweet-smoke eyes and beautiful clothes, and a bob to knock your socks off.

  Dear Clay—

  I’m sorry for so many reasons.

  I should have written to you much earlier.

  I’m sorry for what happened to Carey.

  One minute I was telling her to stop being such a smart mouth, and the next she was telling me his dog’s name…and next minute (even though more than a year had passed) there were all those people in the church. I was standing in the crowd in the doorway, and saw you at the back with your brothers.

  For a moment I nearly came to you. I regret now that I didn’t.

  When I met you both, I should have told you—that you reminded me of Michael and me. I could see by the way you were near each other, you were only an arm’s length away. You would save each other from me, or from anything else that might harm her. You looked so devastated in that church. I hope you’re doing okay.

  I won’t ask where your mother was, or your father, because I know what we keep to ourselves, especially withheld from our parents.

  Don’t feel like you need to reply.

  I won’t tell you to live how she’d want you to, but maybe to live how you have to.

  But you do, I think, have to live.

  I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn here, so please forgive me if I have.

  Sincerely,

  Abbey Hanley

  It came a few days after Bernborough, when he’d stood on the track till sunrise. The letter was hand-delivered. No stamp and no address. Just Clay Dunbar and left in the letterbox.

  * * *

  —

  A week later, he walked through the racing quarter, and the city, until he reached her. He refused to use the buzzer. He waited for another resident; he slipped through the entrance behind him, and took the lift to the eighteenth floor.

  He balked when he reached her door, and took several minutes to knock, and even then he’d done it benignly. He was shocked when she came to open it.

  Like before she was kind and immaculate, but quickly overrun with concern. Her hair, and this light, they were lethal.

  “Clay?” she said, and stepped closer. She was beautiful even when sad. “God, Clay, you look so thin.”

  It took all of his will not to hug her again, to be held in the warmth of her doorway—but he didn’t, he couldn’t allow himself. He could talk to her and that was all.

  “I’ll do what you said in your letter,” he said. “I’ll live the way I have to—I’ll go out and finish the bridge.”

  His voice was as dry as the riverbed, and Abbey had done things well. She didn’t ask what he meant by the bridge, or for anything else he might tell her.

  He’d opened his mouth to speak again, but then wavered, and welled in the eyes. In fury, he wiped the tears away—and Abbey Hanley took a risk, and a gamble; she bet double and to hell with the worry, or her place in this whole mess, or what was right. She did what she’d done once before:

  She kissed a pair of her fingers, but placed them across, on his cheek.

  He wanted to tell her about Penny then, and Michael, and all that had happened to all of us—and all that had happened to him. Yes, he wanted to tell her everything, but this time he just shook her hand; then caught the lift and ran.

  And so, once again, it was.

  After he’d met Abbey Hanley with Carey, and she’d torn the first page of The Quarryman out, they could never know what it would mean. At first it was one more yardstick; the start of another beginning, as months flowed in and by them.

  In spring, they both came back:

  Matador and Queen of Hearts.

  In summer, the ache of waiting, given Carey had been forewarned:

  She would have to cut the dead wood out, and Clay would make her commit. Clay would make a plan.

  * * *

  —

  In between, as you might guess, the one constant—the thing they loved most—was the book of Michelangelo, whom she lovingly called the sculptor, or the artist, or his favorite: the fourth Buonarroti.

  They lay down at The Surrounds.

  They read there, chapter for chapter.

  They brought flashlights, and batteries for backup.

  To protect the fading mattress, she brought a giant sheet of plastic, and when they left they made the bed with it, they tucked the whole thing in. Walking home, she’d link her arm through. Their hips would touch between them.

  * * *

  —

  By November, history was repeated.

  Queen of Hearts was just too good.

  Matador tried his heart out, when they’d raced twice more and he’d faded. But there was one chance still to come; a final Group One was to be run in the city, early December, and Ennis McAndrew was building
him. He’d said he’d faded because he still wasn’t ready; this was the one he wanted. It had a strange name—not a plate or guineas, a cup or a stakes—but a race called the Saint Anne’s Parade. It would be Matador’s last ever run. Race Five at Royal Hennessey. December 11.

  * * *

  —

  On the day, they did what she liked to do.

  They put a dollar on Matador in the fifth.

  She asked an arse-scratcher to put the money on.

  He did it but told them, laughingly: “You know he’s got bloody no hope, don’tcha? He’s up against Queen of Hearts.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s never going to win.”

  “They said that about Kingston Town.”

  “Matador’s no Kingston Town.”

  But now she beat him up a bit. “What am I even talkin’ to you for? How many wins have you had lately?”

  He laughed again. “Not many.” He ran a hand down his cheekfuls of whiskers.

  “That’s what I thought. You’re not even sharp enough to lie about it. But, hey”—she grinned—“thanks for putting the bet on, okay?”

  “Sure,” and when they went their separate ways, he called out to them one more time. “Hey, I think you might have convinced me!”

  * * *

  —

  The crowd that afternoon was the biggest they’d ever seen, for Queen of Hearts was also leaving, for a stint running overseas.

  There was almost no room in the grandstand, but they found two seats, and watched Petey Simms, doing laps with the horse in the mounting yard. McAndrew, of course, looked pissed off. But that meant business as usual.

  Before the jump, she held his hand.

  He looked outwards, he said, “Good luck.”

  She gave him a squeeze, then released it—for when the horses left the barriers that day, the crowd was on its feet; people screamed, and something changed.

  The horses hit the turn, it was wrong.

  When Queen of Hearts surged forward, Matador, black and gold, went stride for stride, beside her—which was really saying something, because her strides were so much bigger. When she accelerated, he somehow went with her.

  The grandstand shade became desperate.

  They called raucously, near-terror, for the Queen—for it couldn’t be, it couldn’t.

  But it was.

  When they hit the line, it came down to their bobbing heads.

  It looked like Matador got it, and it sounded that way, too—for a hush blew over the crowd.

  She looked at him.

  She held him, single-handed.

  Her freckles nearly exploded.

  He won.

  She thought it but didn’t speak, and it was lucky she didn’t, too, because it was the greatest run they’d ever seen, or been part of in the stands, and there was a poetry, they knew, to the thought of it.

  So close, so close, then gone.

  The photo somehow proved it:

  Queen of Hearts won by her nostrils.

  * * *

  —

  “Her nostrils, her fucking nostrils!” called Petey afterwards, in the confines of the stalls—but this time McAndrew was smiling.

  When he saw Carey so hurt and dejected, he came over and took a look at her. Almost an examination. She thought he might check her feet.

  “And what the hell happened to you? The horse is still alive, isn’t he?”

  “He should have won.”

  “Should’ve nothing—it was something we’ve never seen, a run like that,” and now he made her look at him, in the hard blue eyes of a scarecrow. “That, and you’ll get that Group One for him one day, okay?”

  The beginnings of a kind of happiness.

  “Okay, Mr. McAndrew.”

  * * *

  —

  From there, Carey Novac, the girl from Gallery Road, would start her apprenticeship in earnest. She started on January 1.

  She’d be essentially working round the clock now.

  There was no time for anything, or anyone else.

  She’d be riding now, more trackwork and into barrier trials, and start begging, internally, for races. From the outset she was told by McAndrew:

  “If you pester me, you’ll never get anything.”

  She would gladly put her head down, keep her mouth shut, and do the work.

  * * *

  —

  As for Clay, he was determined.

  He knew she had to leave him.

  He could make her stay away.

  He’d already planned to start training again, as hard as he could, and Henry was ready, too. They’d sat together up on the roof one night, and Miss January was in on everything. They’d get a key for Crapper’s apartment block, and make a comeback at Bernborough Park. There’d be money, and plenty of gambling.

  “Done?” said Henry.

  “Done.”

  They shook hands and it was appropriate, really, for Henry was letting go, too—of that woman of great anatomy. For whatever reason, he decided:

  He folded her up and laid her down, on the slanted slab of roof tiles.

  * * *

  —

  The evening of December 31, Carey and Clay went down to Bernborough.

  They ran a lap of the decimated track.

  The stand gone to hell in the sunset; but a hell you’d gladly enter.

  They stood and he clenched the peg.

  He held it slowly out.

  He said, “Now I need to tell you,” and he told her all of everything, of those waters always to come. They were ten meters short of the finish line, and Carey, she listened in silence; she squeezed the peg through his hand.

  When he’d told her the story entirely, he said, “Do you see now? Do you see? I took a year and I never deserved it. A year with you. You can never, ever stay with me.” He looked at the infield, that jungleland, and thought there was no disputing it, but Carey Novac could never be beaten. No—horses could lose, but not Carey; and damn her for this, but we can love her, because this is what she did next.

  * * *

  —

  She turned his face and she held it.

  She took and she handled the peg.

  She held it up slow to her lips.

  She said, “God, Clay, you poor kid, you poor boy, you poor kid…” The grandstand lit her hair. “She was right, you know, Abbey Hanley—she said beautiful—can’t you see it?” Up close she was light but visceral, she could keep you alive with her pleading; the pain in her good-green eyes. “Can’t you see I’ll never leave you, Clay? Can’t you see I’ll never leave?”

  Clay looked like he might fall then.

  Carey wrapped him tightly.

  She just held him and hugged him and whispered to him, and he felt all her bones within her. She smiled and cried and smiled. She said, “Go to The Surrounds. Go on Saturday night.” She kissed him on the neck there, and pressed the words all down. “I’ll never leave you, ever—” and that’s how I like to remember them:

  I see her holding him, hard at Bernborough.

  They’re a boy, a girl and a peg.

  I see the track, and that fire, behind them.

  At 18 Archer Street, I was elated, but tempered by sadness.

  Clay was packing his bag.

  For a while, we stood together, out on the old back porch, and Rosy was down on the couch. She slept on the ball-less beanbag, which we’d thrown, all worn, on top of it.

  Achilles was under the clothesline.

  He chewed his way into mourning.

  * * *

  —

  We stood till the sky had paled into view, and soon the perfection of brothers, who said nothing but knew he was going.

  See, when Clay told us there was one more
thing to do, and that Tommy should get the turpentine, but no matches, we all walked silently out. We walked to The Surrounds.

  We stood with the household monuments:

  Their distance and downtroddenness.

  We walked to the mattress and stayed with him, and said nothing of the plastic sheet; no, all we did was stand, as the lighter came out of his pocket. In the other he still had the peg.

  We stood till Tommy doused it, and the flame stood straightly upwards. Clay crouched down with the lighter, and first the bed resisted, but soon came roaring on. That sound, the sound of surf.

  The field lit up.

  The five of us stood.

  Five boys and a burning mattress.

  * * *

  —

  When we went back inside, The Surrounds remained.

  There hadn’t been close to a westerly.

  He’d go alone to Central Station.

  He hugged each of us warmly, and separate.

  After Tommy he finished with me—and both of us told him to wait, at different moments—and me, I lifted the piano lid, and reached through the dress for its button. The books, I could tell, should wait.

  He held it, the button from Vienna.

  She was back in the grip of decision.

  It was worn but pristine in his palm.

  * * *

  —

  As for Tommy, it was close to ten minutes after, when the rest of us stood on the porch, and watched Clay walk away, and he did something utterly crazy:

  He trusted Rory to look after Hector.

  “Here,” he said quickly, “hold him.”

  For both Rory and Hector there was shock, and not a small amount of distrust. As they eyed each other closely, Tommy raced in through the house, and soon came running back round.

  * * *

  —