The Man on the Bridge

by Stephen Benatar

  “No, Johnny—you listen. It isn’t as drastic as it sounds. On the nineteenth of April I shall be twenty-one. That’s exactly four weeks from now. And after that there’s not a thing which can prevent my grandfather’s money from getting through to me. Nothing.”

  I looked down at the table. Then I looked back up.

  “I have to admit it—you certainly time things well!”

  “Yes, don’t I?”

  “But…”

  “But what, sweetie?”

  “Are you sure you’ve really thought about it—all the unpleasantness there’ll be? And are you sure you really think I’m worth it?”

  “It’ll be utterly miserable—I know that! But yes, Johnny, I really do think you’re worth it.” She spoke with decisiveness and humour.

  “My goodness. You’re suddenly quite a girl!”

  “Suddenly?”

  Then she laughed and said, “No, don’t change that! Maybe it’s because you’re quite a guy—and I knew I’d finally found something worth fighting for.”

  I liked the idea of my being quite a guy.

  “Johnny? Shall I tell you when I fell in love with you?”

  “The moment you saw me?” (You heard a skylark sing.)

  “No. Though I think I was more interested in you than you were in me. And I did admire the way you stood up to Cousin Sarah and I thought you tremendously attractive. But it was actually some time afterwards.”

  “That first evening I came to the Savoy?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, yes, perhaps a little … when I saw you drive away and I knew I shouldn’t be seeing you again for such ages—I would have given a lot just then not to be going on the Grand Tour. But when it really happened you weren’t even there. It was your letter which did it: the description of your mother and great-aunt and the time you had together over Christmas. And I don’t know what it was—there was something in the way you wrote about them—and I thought I love that man, I love that man so much it hurts, I shall love him till the day I die. And from that moment I began to have an insane fear you might be knocked down in a traffic accident, struck by lightning, anything. I so much couldn’t imagine what the world would be like without you that I grew quite superstitious and kept believing the Fates might force me to find out.” Involuntarily, she trembled. Then she smiled, as if apologizing for her foolishness.

  I smiled, too—but a little uncertainly. I was almost shocked by her intensity. That anyone should feel this way about me … could feel this way about me … I was moved, naturally, yet at the same time found it disturbing. I recollected telling Mrs Cambourne I had never been in love, never experienced any depth of emotion remotely like the one Elizabeth had just described. Now, of course—if I was so soon to marry—it was unlikely that I ever would: the one glaring omission in my life which I knew I should regret more deeply than any other. I said confusedly:

  “When had you in mind for our ‘elopement’?” It needed the inverted commas.

  “Darling, did I embarrass you just then?”

  “Not in the slightest. Why?”

  She continued to gaze at me searchingly. But then she answered my previous question. “Next Tuesday. The day before my parents leave.”

  “No chance of getting them to change their mind?”

  “None whatsoever. Don’t think I won’t be trying, but my father’s even more stubborn than I am.”

  “Next Tuesday?”

  “Gretna Green.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth! How corny!”

  “And, besides that, how unnecessary! By the time we’ve been up there three weeks—the three weeks are obligatory—I’ll be nearly twenty-one. But at least it will give us a point to aim for; and once we’re registered we’ll feel completely safe. And in any case,” she said, “I’d love to see some more of Scotland.”

  I answered absent-mindedly—and as bitterly as though it were a matter for real resentment, “Ridiculous you can die for your country at eighteen but not get married in it till you’re twenty-one! Not unless you’ve got the consent of your parents—and we both know how we feel at the moment about parents!”

  Apparently, though, she was somewhat disinclined to join me at the pillory. She merely said: “I suppose it’ll change one of these days.”

  “Big deal.”

  “Yes—think how easy it could all have been! We’d have taken out a special licence and then been flying off on honeymoon by Wednesday. Sailing round the Caribbean, or something.”

  I had a fleeting vision of the Greek islands—of stretching out naked on the deck of the yacht ‘Sarah’.

  “I see you’ve done your homework,” I said.

  “But, anyhow, we Yankees aren’t quite as ignorant as you and Oliver would seem to think. Even in Massachusetts we’ve heard of Gretna Green.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “And in addition you’ll never believe how organized I am. Nothing left to chance! I already have a list of train times and the stations where we’ll need to change—all that kind of stuff. And I’ll get the tickets tomorrow, make the reservations—reservations for both the train and the boarding house. You, sweetheart, won’t have to worry about a thing!”

  It sounded comfortable. I felt tired. I expressed my gratitude.

  “Though about those tickets…”

  “Yes, Johnny?”

  When I faltered, she proved herself a mind-reader.

  “Oh, but wouldn’t it be lovely to drive up to Scotland! Next month we’ll get ourselves a car. After the money comes through.”

  I said: “Actually, I’ve had one these past three months. Since Christmas. As it happens—I take my driving test tomorrow.”

  She stopped in the act of picking up her cup. “I had no idea you were learning to drive! I didn’t even know you had a car.”

  “Oliver gave it to me.”

  Her eyes widened. I didn’t care. Let them widen. Let the whole thing swing whichever way it chose.

  But all she said was—slowly and after a pause—“Isn’t he just the most wonderful person around! What make is it?”

  I told her. She seemed excited. She knew about Jaguar XK 150s. For several minutes we talked only of cars.

  Afterwards she said:

  “By the way, how is Oliver?”

  “Well, since Friday he’s been wrestling with what your Cousin Sarah refers to—along with countless others, I suppose—as the dark night of the soul. I have to say, it is a bit tiresome, but at least when I left this morning he was beginning to show signs of improvement.”

  I knew I’d made a faux pas. She did nothing, however, to suggest she might have noticed.

  But again—either way—I didn’t much care.

  21

  I passed my test. It didn’t elate me particularly—I’d never supposed I’d fail—but at least it provided me with half an hour of complete escape while I thought of nothing but my driving. When I returned to the Embankment Oliver gave me a bear hug. His depression was over. In some ways—how selfishly!—I almost wished it wasn’t. “We must paint the town,” he said.

  I’d envisaged an evening spent at home; I hadn’t yet settled on how best to break the news. But on the other hand, I thought, it might be easier to do it some place where there would be bustle and bright lights.

  “I’ve bought us both a small present,” he added, “to commemorate your success. Come into my parlour … said the spider to the fly!”

  “And supposing I hadn’t been successful?” My state of mind turned me contrary. Why did he have to make me all these gifts? What would I have to do—return them? (I couldn’t return the car; definitely not the car.)

  “Then there’d probably have been more need of it,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, you remember that hour or so we passed in Hamley’s…?” Oliver held open the door of his studio.

  I stopped and stared and forced a laugh. “You’re crazy!”

  Laid out on the floor was an extensive network
of railway lines, bridges, stations. There were two electric engines and each one drew six coaches.

  “Now don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy yourself that morning,” said Oliver. “Remember how we decided we’d suffered deprived childhoods and I said we’d have to do everything in our power to correct this?”

  “But I didn’t think you meant it.”

  “I didn’t entirely. But then—hunting around for something to get you—us,” he amended, “it all came back to me. You can buy hills and houses and lakes and churches and … oh, I don’t know … masses of other things … and build up quite a little community, once you really get started. Look, my love: these are the controls.”

  “Well, I would never have guessed that,” I said sarcastically.

  But I ran the two trains round the circuit a couple of times and shunted them back and forth a bit. I couldn’t show much enthusiasm.

  “Again,” he said, “I’m so sorry it wasn’t all wrapped up in pretty paper, with ribbons and bows and tinsel; but one of these days, maybe…” He saw I had tears running down my face (of course!) and he must have supposed it was like when he’d given me the car. He tried to wipe them away with his thumbs but there were too many for that. Once more he had to use his handkerchief. “Come on. I know what you need,” he told me. “I’m such a thoughtless bastard: it suddenly occurs to me you haven’t had anything to revive you since your big ordeal.”

  But I was still being bolshie—perhaps this seemed to me a good means of defence? “I don’t want anything … and it wasn’t an ordeal! In fact, it was by far the best part of the day.” I remembered my saying that the best part of another day had been when the two of us were sitting in the library studying Canaletto.

  He made me sit down by the fire while he went into the kitchen. (Mondays were James’s day off.) Soon afterwards he brought me a tall glass filled with a frothy yellow liquid. “Orange juice, eggs and honey and a drop or two of brandy. Prepared with my own fair hands! Oranges freshly squeezed, too—and need I say, at quite appalling effort?”

  I answered: “If you’d told me the eggs were freshly laid at quite appalling effort, now that might have been something to boast about.” This retort had also started out as bolshie but somehow it ended up on a reluctant smile. Handing me the glass he bent over to kiss my forehead. “Now, that’s more like it,” he approved.

  We didn’t exactly paint the town. We drove into Sussex. It was the first time I’d driven without L-plates and it was a perfect spring evening, with clumps of primroses under the hedgerows. But it was not the experience I’d once been looking forward to; and even my driving was erratic—had I made the same mistakes an hour earlier I should probably have failed.

  Dinner at a pub. Only a few days ago I’d surely have found it delicious but tonight my appetite was poor. “Oh, my darling,” he said. “You must be in love.”

  “Ha!”

  “What time on Wednesday do the Sheldons depart? No association of ideas, naturally.”

  “They leave Heathrow at ten.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Going to see them off?”

  This, I realized, was the time to speak. Now. If I didn’t say anything now, it would be harder later on.

  “I don’t know. You?”

  “I hadn’t any plans to. But if you like we could go together. I don’t begrudge giving up a morning’s work in so excellent a cause.”

  I sipped some coffee. Oliver put his hand on my knee and gave a sympathetic squeeze.

  But I couldn’t tell him. Not yet. For one thing—with the revelation made, how could I face the thought of our journey home?

  “If we go now,” he said, “we could still catch the last performance of something. Or are you weary?”

  “Yes, a bit.”

  “It’s hardly surprising. You didn’t sleep a wink last night. Shall I drive back?”

  When we returned to the flat he suggested I have a drink and go to bed. I didn’t want to go to bed. I wandered listlessly. I felt a ridiculous urge just to touch things. He put on some records: twice he played the Tchaikovsky ‘Pathétique’, aware of my fondness for it—I liked it nearly as much as the Rachmaninoff, which had recently been scratched and was now unplayable. I sat opposite him in my usual place wondering if this would be the last occasion I’d do so. It struck me with great force how little security, true security, life ever offered you. These past few days, perhaps for the first time since the eve of my initial departure for boarding school, I’d been feeling nervous and unsafe; like a man leaving home in wartime for the unknown terrors of the front—a man who knew he hadn’t made an especially good son, husband, father, but now saw clearly how he would behave if he could only have a second chance.

  Yet for millions and millions there had never come that second chance.

  At last I went to bed. After all, it wasn’t imperative to break the news that evening. The following morning would do as well; in fact, rather better; I wasn’t meeting Elizabeth till after lunch. (Before I’d got home I had telephoned her briefly with the result of the test.) In the morning I would write a letter to my mother and I would tell Oliver. The thought occurred to me for the first time: why not write a letter to Oliver, too?

  I pushed it aside, as unworthy.

  Half the night, though, I lay there composing letters. When I wasn’t doing that I was several times being tempted just to wake Oliver and make a clean breast of it. Please get me out of this! Make everything all right! Once, I turned over and actually reached out my hand. But even as I did so the thought of all those thousands of dollars stopped me; together with a nightmare vision of growing older and more pathetic: a figure of fun clinging tenaciously to youth, keeping up pretences, shying from the prospect of imprisonment—yet, all the same, often discerning distaste or puzzlement in the looks of others. And what about the fathering of children? At the moment it wasn’t important to me but I could well imagine that someday it might be. And the thing was … I wasn’t even homosexual! Well, yes, to some degree, obviously, but certainly not completely so. Indeed, I didn’t know what I was. Nor what I ought to be doing about it. Doing about that, or—as it almost seemed to me now—about anything.

  Then at around four o’clock I drifted into a deep sleep and when I awoke the worst of my doubts had gone. Or, at any rate, diminished. I made myself think about Elizabeth—about her niceness and her intelligence and her standing in the world—and the more I concentrated on those things the more strength did I derive from them. I saw again the disparity between the status of a husband and that of a kept boyfriend.

  It was going to be easier than I’d thought.

  Nevertheless when it came to writing my letters, which some hours earlier I had thought I had word-perfect, the phrases wouldn’t return to me. Or when they did they seemed either too contrived or too emotional. I sat and stared at the intricate carving on Oliver’s desk and at two heavy paperweights on top of it—ugly bronze Buddhas which had belonged to one of his grandmothers, who must have thought them interesting—and I made one false start after another. Then I had the idea of seeing to my mother’s letter first. I didn’t care so much about that. The words began to flow.

  While I was writing, James came in, bringing me a cup of coffee.

  “James, is Mr Cambourne in the studio?”

  “Yes, sir. And he asked me to say he’ll be having lunch at home; his appointment has been cancelled. Will you be eating in today?”

  I hesitated. I had intended to be but I didn’t feel that I could face it now. Much though, simultaneously, I was very much drawn to having lunch with Oliver.

  “No thanks. And thank you for the coffee, James. That’s nice of you.”

  “Not at all, sir.” Was there the slightest hint of surprise in his tone—at what, I supposed, might have seemed like uncustomary warmth? “Is there anything else you’ll be wanting? Before I go to the shops?”

  “No, thank you, James.”

  A moment la
ter he was back. With an inquiry totally unprecedented.

  “Nothing you’d like me to get you while I’m out, sir?”

  It seemed a real shame I had to decline such an offer. Perhaps I had misjudged him all along.

  But if so it was now a little late to be discovering it.

  “My dearest Oliver,” I wrote when the door had closed for the second time (I would finish off my mother’s letter afterwards), “I’m sorry I haven’t been quite my usual self recently. The reason is, there was something I had to tell you, which I kept putting off. Now I’ve funked it altogether and am writing you instead.

  “I’m going to marry Elizabeth. (Though absolutely not with her parents’ consent!) We are running off this afternoon—heading for Scotland! I realize you’ll have read this by the time we leave, but I realize equally that you would never try to stop us.

  “Oliver, I just don’t know how to thank you for everything you’ve done. My own—my own, my very dear—Pygmalion. These past five months have been, without reservation, the happiest I’ve ever spent. And that’s because of you and not Elizabeth. You’ve been wonderful—right from the beginning—and will always occupy a very special place in my heart. You’ve given me so much. I shall always be so grateful.

  “Obviously, this is far from being a letter of goodbye. I’d have liked you for best man if circumstances had been different. I shall most certainly be asking you to be a godfather. I shall forever need your friendship. You’ve been the best friend that anyone—anywhere—could ever possibly have had. I was aware of that almost from the start and it was something which I treasured deeply.

  “Yes, hardly a day went by when I wasn’t aware of your friendship and when I didn’t feel intensely privileged to have it.

  “I shall always feel intensely privileged. Simply to have been permitted to get to know you.

  “To share your bed. To share your life.

  “Perhaps you’ll think of me, too, with something of the same affection? (And Elizabeth as well, of course—she’s very fond of you.) Please do. Please do! And forgive me for everything. Do you remember … to err is human, to forgive, divine? You said you’d always do your very best to bear it in mind!