The Man on the Bridge

by Stephen Benatar

  It was only after I had started at Selfridge’s, in their luggage department, that I remembered this was the very place where Oliver had come to buy my pigskin suitcase, on the morning we had flown to Biarritz. They still had several others of that size in stock.

  But what the hell. I was having to get used to the idea that, almost anywhere I set foot, he had probably been there before me.

  26

  I should have written to Mrs Cambourne sooner. Of course I should. If I’d written to her from Scotland—if I’d gone straight down to see her—or if, at the very least, I had telephoned—then perhaps I could have salvaged something. In spite of whatever evidence James might have given to the contrary—the brusque departure he had witnessed, my missing clothes, maybe even something Oliver had said—I could have claimed that we had had a lover’s tiff and that I’d driven north for a few days to cool down. Yes, it might have been possible … if only I had acted promptly and had met with a vast amount of luck.

  She wouldn’t have needed to know about my relationship with Elizabeth. Not until such time as a conveniently postdated marriage might have been acceptable.

  With a vast amount of luck.

  (Though, in truth, the whole concept of ‘luck’ now seemed superfluous. More than that—it seemed repugnant.)

  But I’d been too stunned: I hadn’t been thinking. And when I finally wrote to her, early in June, it was an act of idiocy. For how did you explain the inexplicable: that matter of a ten-week gap?

  Up until then, indeed, I must have recognized the utter futility of sending any form of condolence; especially the full and frank confession which I sometimes felt tempted to make, in the hope of partial absolution. But on the particular evening I composed and posted my short message Elizabeth had gone to bed early and I was slightly drunk.

  “Dear Mrs Cambourne,” I wrote.

  “I have only just heard what happened and I can’t find words to tell you of my sorrow. Your sense of loss must be infinite. Anyone who knew Oliver must surely miss him dreadfully and I know I don’t need to tell you how great the void in my own life. He was the best friend a man could ever have, just as I am sure he was also the best son. Perhaps I could come to visit you sometime in the near future?

  “Yours very sincerely,

  “John Wilmot.”

  But three days later I received these few words in reply:

  “Mr John Wilmot.

  “Were you the best friend a man could ever have? I think a visitor from hell would be more welcome.

  “Sarah Cambourne.”

  Yet didn’t she understand? That’s exactly what I would be.

  Her letter was brutal … although neither surprising nor unreasonable. But I remembered our time of closeness during Oliver’s depression on Boxing Day. We had been similarly close on many other occasions—in fact, a great deal closer than, over that same period, I had been with my own mother—but as members of a trio, not a duo. I particularly recalled a Sunday when the three of us had driven to Forest Green to have lunch at a small hotel, and how we’d afterwards sat in the lounge to drink our coffee. A small, genially fussy old gentleman had played a recording of the Queen’s Christmas broadcast, which his son-in-law had taped for him and which by now he probably knew word for word. He had begun by playing it quite softly, to another old gentleman sitting in the same corner, but when it seemed that the remaining seven or eight of us were also listening, he had given several tentative though hopeful nods—and had obligingly turned up the volume; had obviously mistaken the silence of surprise for the silence of respect.

  At least, on the part of some of us. With others, evidently, it had been the silence of respect.

  For when, following the speech, the National Anthem had been put on, a retired army officer had at once sprang to his feet and stood stiffly to attention. His wife followed suit and so did the two old gentlemen. Hesitantly, sheepishly, the rest of us joined in. But the anthem seemed to last forever and there was something so absurd in the spectacle of all of us caught there in this unnatural attitude—self-consciously reverential—that Oliver and I were sufficiently ill-advised as to look at one another.

  Oliver instantly transferred his attention to the floor; I reached for my handkerchief; but still I saw his shoulders shake and I couldn’t suppress a muffled sob.

  His mother, standing between us, stared straight ahead, admirably solemn and aloof—until, almost at the end, when that magnificent composure started to crack and, after a brief but hopeless struggle, she too succumbed.

  The three of us sat down some twenty seconds later dabbing at our eyes and feeling like naughty ten-year-olds. Under such conditions it was hard to take part with any sincerity in the grateful murmurings that ensued.

  “You wicked reprehensible pair!” she said, as we drove away. “Shall we ever dare show our faces there again?”

  And now, unforeseeably, it was our giggling together that I chiefly remembered as I stared down disconsolate at the curt note in my hand. I had saved it until I’d found a good time to read it: away from Elizabeth, the driving rain, the hurrying pedestrians: and until, also, I had managed to summon up the courage.

  “Not bad news, I trust?”

  It was Mr Chauncey the under-buyer: a kindly if somewhat colourless man, fifty-odd with small children.

  “What?”

  “I was wondering if you felt ill? Are you going to be all right?”

  “No. Yes. I’m sorry?” I scarcely knew what I was saying. “Oh … ill? Yes! I’m not sure.”

  “Then why don’t you take your coffee break a bit early? You don’t have to hurry back. It’s not busy, we can manage.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  It struck me for the first time, standing on, of all places, the down-escalator in Selfridge’s and thinking about being ill, that not so long ago in this world there had lived a man who had once cleaned up my vomit … and still gone on loving me.

  Elizabeth had read my book. “I mean to read it again, Johnny. It was good—and very funny in places. Oliver thought it was outstanding, didn’t he? And maybe he’s the one who knew. But … well, I want to be as truthful as I can. I just feel you could do better.”

  I nodded, in unconcerned agreement. “It gave me some valuable practice—that’s really all.”

  She relaxed, perceptibly.

  “But, darling, you seemed so pleased with it. And Oliver did too,” she repeated—more anxiously again.

  “No, Oliver hadn’t read it when he spoke as he did to your father. And when he did read it … well, he didn’t like it, either.”

  In one way I could talk about it easily: the book was dead for me, had been since March; it was she who’d brought it up again. In every other way it was an ordeal. Why hadn’t I been able to let him know that I agreed with his verdict? In my heart I must have appreciated its soundness, nearly as soon as I had heard it. (Oh God—and why hadn’t I accepted that offer of working with him on a new synopsis?) Now the only thing to prevent me from throwing the typescript in the dustbin was the knowledge that he had handled it, had looked with care at every page, and by doing so had made of it a relic.

  “Honey, I never knew anyone take criticism in such good part.”

  I shrugged. “That isn’t what Oliver would have said.” But I wanted to forget the novel. “Elizabeth, tell me something. Do you think it’s possible that, somehow, your parents didn’t hear about what happened to him?”

  She hesitated.

  “That’s funny, I really don’t know. Why?”

  “I’m puzzled, that’s all. They certainly didn’t mention it in Edinburgh. But, on the other hand, they didn’t think of asking him to use his influence, either.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, speaking rather slowly, “they didn’t realize that his influence would be so strong.”

  “And something else. Do you suppose Oliver’s mother knows about us?”

  “Heavens. That’s anybody’s guess.” She smiled. “But in any case—why do
n’t you write to tell her?”

  27

  One lunch hour, when Elizabeth was at the dentist’s and I had said I’d eat in the canteen, I took a taxi to Gerald Road in SW1. It had been on my mind to do so for weeks—yet I now felt I was acting almost on impulse. And I didn’t really know why I was going. In the taxi I experienced a dryness in my mouth which had little to do with the heat of the day—and, in fact, I leant forward at one point, about to tell the driver to turn back.

  The dryness lasted until I was actually inside the police station and talking to the sergeant on the desk.

  “Yes, sir?”

  He had a neat, bristling moustache and thinning grey hair. Before he’d spoken I had thought he had a formidable expression. I’d been waiting well over a minute for him to finish off the paperwork currently engaging him; and I had dreaded that at any instant the swing doors might be pushed open and I would find some harassed, bad-tempered or—possibly worse—patently inquisitive individual then standing right behind me. Perhaps more than merely one. Even the forming of a small queue.

  But I seemed to have chosen a good moment.

  “I want to ask about something that happened last March. The twenty-fourth of March. That night a body was…” Yet even with the opportunity for rehearsal it wasn’t easy to get the words out. “…taken from the river,” I said.

  Then I began practically to gabble.

  “The name was Cambourne. I’m not sure which bridge he actually fell from, but I’ve assumed … I think it was probably Chelsea Bridge and that’s why I’ve come here, this being the nearest station…”

  Yet at least the dryness was gone.

  “And what exactly, sir, is your particular interest in this affair?”

  “I was a friend of his.”

  “I see. Well, yes, as it happens, it was Chelsea Bridge. And yes, as it happens too, I was on duty. I remember it.”

  This was what I’d been hoping for—both hoping for and fearing.

  “You mean … Was the body brought in here, then?”

  He seemed surprised. “No, sir. It was taken to a mortuary.”

  “But you said you remember…?”

  “There was a witness to the incident. An oldish chap—though he came rushing through that door like a four-minute miler! And I was the one who telephoned the Yard.”

  “Why the Yard?”

  “Well, that’s the way it works. We notify them and they get in touch with the river police—whichever boat is nearest. I mean, nearest the scene of the accident.”

  He was being patient with me. I appreciated that. And I also appreciated that word he’d just used. ‘Accident’.

  “If you’ll wait here a moment I’ll go and look out our copy of the file.”

  Although he wasn’t gone for long, I began to worry again about newcomers.

  “Naturally, sir, you understand that all police reports are confidential … yet so long as your inquiry isn’t too specialized there shouldn’t be much problem.”

  He had already started looking through the sheet he held.

  “Well, then. Cambourne. Oliver Thornton. Admitted to mortuary 11.15 p.m. Driving licence in pocket. Formal identification made by a Mr James Furness, manservant. Autopsy carried out by Dr Mangrove. Corpse had been in the water some thirty minutes, sir—I’m paraphrasing—high alcohol content discovered in blood stream…” The sergeant paused, scanning the entry for salient details. “What kind of thing were you wanting to find out, specifically?”

  “That old chap you mentioned. The witness. Would it be possible to have his name?”

  “Why would you want that, sir?”

  “Well, if he was the only one who saw … what happened…” I suddenly felt the full absurdity of what I was asking. “But that’s the whole point,” I urged. “Did he actually see Mr Cambourne jump or did he—?”

  “Yes, he said he saw him jump.”

  “Yes, but I was wondering whether…”

  “Wondering what, sir?”

  “Whether he might only have imagined it. After all, at half-past-ten or whatever the exact time was, it can be very dark. And there’s a lot of distance between each of those lamps on Chelsea Bridge. So I was wondering if he might merely have seen some movement—for instance, it’s possible that Oliver might have been leaning out too far over the parapet—and then only assumed he saw…”

  “You’re asking, in fact, whether the gentleman’s fall could have been unintentional?”

  “Yes,” I answered—eagerly. Something in the way he’d said it seemed to offer hope.

  “No, sir.” He shook his head. “Not a chance. You could leave the evidence of the witness out of it altogether. I’m afraid there’d still be something else.”

  But I too shook my head—and far more vehemently. “Yet don’t you see? Even if there was a note he could still have changed his mind. Between the time he wrote it and the time he was out there standing on the bridge…”

  I stopped. Again and again and again: splitting hairs! What possible difference could it make? Oliver was dead.

  And if he’d drunk glass after glass of whisky when I hadn’t been there to stop him—because I hadn’t been there to stop him—then I had killed him just as surely as if I had shot him in the back.

  The sergeant looked down at the paper only briefly. He said: “No, there wasn’t any note. What there was, though, was a couple of heavy bronze things. Apparently meant for paperweights. Found in the gentleman’s overcoat pockets. I’m very sorry, sir.” He paused. “I only wish I could have said it was an accident.”

  That someone could be snuffed out like that! A leap into deep water in a weighty overcoat; then a minute or so later—or, dear God, three minutes or so later—nothing! I lay in bed that same night with a different kind of anger burning inside me: not an anger directed against Oliver any longer (how long, indeed, had that lasted?) but an anger directed against life itself. Oh, the waste! What appalling waste! All the thoughts, feelings, knowledge of a man, everything that went to make him what he was—eradicated! Gone; totally wiped out! As though they had never existed. So the world lost forever one unique record of experience; lost it and hardly noticed. What a joke! What a pointless, horrifying joke.

  And yet did nothing count? Certainly not that poor sodden body cut about by Dr Mangrove and now finally rotting down beneath the ground—or sitting perhaps on Sarah Cambourne’s mantelpiece: a jarful of what had once been skin and bone and blood and muscle and hair and chest and penis and that funny little strawberry mark on the left thigh … Did nothing count? Not even the soul?

  (Though what did one mean by ‘soul’? And what did I mean by ‘count’?)

  I remembered what he had said about reincarnation.

  If only I could have believed it.

  28

  The letter from Robertson and Keyes (Solicitors, Notaries Public and Commissioners for Oaths) had asked me to be good enough to contact their Mr Blackmore, adding that when I did so I should hear of certain matters that might be to my advantage.

  “It’s about Oliver, isn’t it?” said Elizabeth. “He must have left you something.”

  I nodded, slowly.

  She said: “That was kind of him. Are you surprised?”

  “Very.”

  Their office was in Curzon Street. I phoned and made an appointment. I had given up the job at Selfridge’s.

  “May I come too?”

  I shrugged. “If you want to.”

  We arrived early and sat in a plush waiting room with Regency chairs and old prints of Hampstead and Highgate. I leafed through the current Punch but didn’t find it either funny or absorbing. Elizabeth, on the other hand, had picked up a Country Life. “Oh, honey,” she kept saying, “just look at this one!” or, “How would you like a place like this?” She had often spoken about buying a cottage in the country. “Something old, with brick paths and wild flowers under the apple trees. And a seat in the herb garden. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”… She was almost disappointe
d when someone came to get us.

  Mr Blackmore was a young man, spruce, friendly. He had a firm handshake and wore what I took to be a public school tie.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr Wilmot. How nice you brought your wife.”

  “Thank you,” said Elizabeth. We sat down.

  “I doubt it will surprise you to learn the reason that you’re here is to do with the will of our late client, Mr Oliver Cambourne. I believe he was a close friend of yours, Mr Wilmot?”

  I answered yes. My eyes didn’t leave his face.

  He went on after an instant: “I hardly know whether my duty is, or is not, a pleasant one. You see, Mr Cambourne has bequeathed you a quite considerable legacy. But at the same time, unhappily, I have to inform you that the will is being contested.”

  “I see.”

  “On what grounds?” asked Elizabeth.

  The solicitor spoke carefully.

  “Shall we say … certain members of his family feel Mr Cambourne’s first obligation lay towards themselves, rather than towards someone he hadn’t known for very long?”

  “Members of his family,” I repeated. “Mrs Cambourne?”

  “She principally, of course.”

  “But surely Oliver would have taken good care of his mother?”

  “Oh, yes; he left her Merriot Park—in the event of her happening to survive him, that is—together with a substantial income. She’s more than adequately provided for.”

  “Then it sounds to me as though his first obligation was well and truly fulfilled.”

  “You haven’t inquired yet what Mr Cambourne left yourself.”

  I supposed I had to do so. I still looked him in the eye.

  “All right.”

  “Well, to begin with … after his mother’s death, Merriot Park will come to you.”