The Toll Bridge

by Aidan Chambers

  And being no different my mortal self, I’d unlatched the window before I’d thought about it, and was reaching a hand through to touch Adam’s face, as if by laying on my hand I would bring him back to consciousness and know he was really there, unquestionably alive.

  He groaned at my touch, which was reassuring.

  ‘Adam,’ I cried, ‘Adam – what’s happened? Adam? Adam! Are you OK? Are you all right?’

  He groaned again, stirred, turning his face away.

  A new imperative possessed me at once. To get him inside, out of the cold.

  ‘Wait! Don’t move! I’m coming.’

  Blood on my hand. And then standing at his feet on the side deck, holding the lamp over him. How difficult to lift him from that awkward space and down into the cabin. Help from the house? No lights. No noise. What time? Two thirty by my wristwatch. Could it be over already, an all-night glug like that? But anyway, there and back – He needed help now. Freezing. Blood.

  He stirred again, trying to struggle to his feet, all his athletic animal ease gone. Awkward stiff angles, yet floppy, a puppet with its strings cut. He wouldn’t make it. Might tumble overboard. He slumped to the deck again. I scrambled across the cabin roof to the side deck at his head, stood the lamp on the roof so as to free both my hands, and, taking him by the shoulders, lifted him into a sitting position, his head lolling against my shoulder, his cheek pressing against my cheek, the oily wetness of cold blood lubricating our skins.

  2

  Why am I doing this? I asked myself again and again. Only because I knew him? What if he were a stranger, would I have left him to it? Who could, except some kind of psycho? Another of those human instincts? The law of the irrational. I hate doing something I haven’t thought out and decided for myself I want to do. But how often is it truly by thought that we come to do things? I remembered the moment of déjà-vu when Adam first came to me. The assurance of the inevitable.

  Whatever, there I was stuck with him. Again. There were also moments in the next ten minutes, which is what it took to manhandle him into the cabin and onto a bunk, and retrieve the lamp so that I could see what to do next, that I felt like a one-man Laurel and Hardy (a Laurelandhardy) in the scene where they try to deliver a piano up a long flight of steps. And remembering that saved me from losing heart or even my temper; only it also reduced me to laughter at the thought of how bizarre was my present predicament – another fine mess you’ve gotten us into – that I had to sit for a while till I recovered myself. I think I was near hysterical from exhaustion after the last forty-eight hours.

  When I finally got Adam inside and could give him a close inspection I saw just how bad he was. His skin was putty-coloured and clammy, as if he were sweating chilled water. His breathing was shallow and quick. I tried his pulse, because people always seemed to do that when dealing with sickness; it seemed weak and fast, not a steady confident throb but more like a racing echo of a pulse. The gash in his forehead was neither long nor deep but blood oozed from it in alarming quantity quite out of proportion to its size, and was smudged all over his face so that he looked as if he’d been badly battered. Of course he was covered in muck. And he smelt awful. He’d vomited onto his clothes which were smeared with a rancid porridge of mud and blood and sweat and puke that filled the air in the confined space of the cabin with such a sour stench that I gagged and had to retreat outside till I could catch my breath and prepare myself for the onslaught again.

  This was one of the times when I wondered why I was doing what I was doing. And this time, I then thought, I’m not going to be defeated, it’s only a putrid pong, after all, not a case of chemical warfare.

  Back inside, I watched him closely for a few minutes, trying to assess the state he was in. He seemed to be drifting somewhere between unconscious and semi-conscious – groaning, moving a little but erratically, and not much aware of what was happening, as far as I could tell. When he wasn’t trying to move, his body was a floppy dead weight. I said his name into his ear two or three times but got no reaction.

  I guessed that somehow or other he’d taken a bang on the head and was suffering from concussion, not that I knew what concussion actually meant, only that anybody suffering from it had to rest and take it easy for a while. I knew from times when I’d banged my own head that it could make me feel sick, so I supposed a very bad knock might actually make you vomit. Also, Adam had been drinking the multicult punch pretty freely so that wouldn’t have helped matters either. Maybe he was suffering from a hangover as much as from anything else. But what if he was really ill from something I didn’t know about, like a heart attack or . . . or what? That was the problem. If I didn’t know about it, I wouldn’t recognize it! I suddenly felt utterly ignorant about everything to do with the body. Why didn’t I know more, why hadn’t anybody told me?

  What I knew for sure was that I couldn’t leave him lying there in that filthy condition. Somehow I had to clean him up and make him more comfortable. But how? There was no water on board so it would have to be river water. Somewhere, though, there ought to be a First Aid kit; at least that might provide a bandage and some sort of antiseptic for his wound.

  Finding a First Aid box in a locker by the cabin door raised my spirits no end. And in a locker by the transom was a plastic bucket. So I opened the First Aid kit and put it on the table in the cabin, and then half-filled the bucket.

  At which point, ready to start, it suddenly came over me in a wave of weakening fastidiousness that I’d never cleaned up anybody before. I didn’t at all relish the idea of messing with another person’s gunged-up body.

  I stared at Adam, seeing him in a different light. Not as ‘Adam’, but as a physical being made up of legs and feet and arms and various parts – fingers, toes – and organs with holes in them, and private nooks and crannies I’d never even seen before, let alone handled and washed and dried and closely inspected.

  I began to shake and for a moment wondered if after all the best thing wouldn’t be to fetch help. If there was no one in a fit state at the house, then I could run to the phone box in the village and call an ambulance. How long would that take? Half an hour? An hour? Would he be safe alone for that long? What if he came to enough to get up, and then stumbled into the river? And if I called an ambulance, think of the fuss there’d be afterwards. The hospital would want to know how he got into such a mess. The police. Bob Norris. Questions about the party. Trouble for Tess. Mayhem for me. I was supposed to be in charge. They’d hold me responsible, dammit! Maybe if I cleaned him up and brought him round, I could find out what had happened and if he really was in a bad way I could do something about getting him to hospital then.

  Nothing else for it, whether I liked it or not, but to swallow my revulsion and clean him up and tend his wound as best I could. So where to start? With his face and head and the wound? Staunch the flow of blood? The First Aid kit included a packet of cotton wool. With a wad dipped in water I dabbed at the outer edges of his face, gingerly at first but with growing what-the-hell, I’ll-never-finish-it-like-this confidence, wiping away the blood and muck. The First Aid kit also included a small bottle of antiseptic. I used some of that on a wad of cotton wool to clean round the edge of the cut, which really was quite small in fact. Then, with wincing delicacy, as if it might hurt me too, gently sponged the wound itself, at which Adam did stir and groan and flinch and try to push my hand away so at least I knew he was feeling something.

  The antiseptic had the added advantage of scenting the air with something that smelt clean and healthy. But by then I’d grown used to the stink and was feeling quite proud of myself. I’d have fainted just at the thought of doing this only a few days before.

  What next? Bind the wound. I readied the bandage, made a pad of cotton wool which I placed over the cut, then wrapped the bandage round his head a few times till there seemed to be enough to keep the dressing in place. To do that I had to keep lifting Adam’s head. How heavy an unconscious head is, like a leaden stone! Alas, p
oor Yorick! Heads I win, tails you lose. With his head tucked underneath his arm he walked the bloody tower. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm.

  What stupid things come into your mind at such times. Yet not stupid, if you think about it. Pertinent and true in odd unthought ways. Is anything that comes into your mind ever arbitrary, ever meaningless?

  That done, I was going to clean up his hands but realized he’d only mucky them again every time he touched his clothes, and besides, they would carry the muck to his face. Take off at least his outer clothing.

  I sat him up and managed by a combination of rolling it up from the waist and easing it over his head to slip his putrid pullover off. My pullover, in fact – the best blue one he took with him when he first disappeared and he’d used ever since so that now it was stretched and sloppy which at least made it easier to get off. Next his boots. Then his pungent jeans. Leaving him in grubby white T-shirt and none too attractive blue Y-fronts. My T-shirt, my Y-fronts.

  Covered with the only blanket, that was the best I could do. After which, the confined space looking a mess, my conditioned reflexes took over and I tidied up. The bundle of clothing chucked into a corner of the cockpit. The bucket emptied and stowed away. The First Aid box ready on the table in case of need. The wads of soiled cotton wool stuffed into the empty waste bin under the galley stove. I’d clean up properly when daylight came.

  What now? Nothing, except watch and wait.

  Very soon Adam seemed no longer to be drifting between unconscious and semi-conscious but to be sleeping. He was more ‘there’ and also, strangely, more relaxed. Before, he’d been floppy but somehow struggling inside himself; now he wasn’t floppy any more but together and at ease. His breathing was better, his skin less waxy, less pale and clammy. I tried his pulse: the beat was stronger and steady. I don’t think I’d realized before that relaxation is a form of action, of being; that when you’re relaxing you’re doing something just as much as when you’re walking or eating or reading or running the marathon. It’s a particular use of energy.

  3

  Adam was also pleasantly warm under the blanket, which is more than I could say for myself. The exertion of getting him into the cabin and tending him had kept me warm – in fact I’d been so busy that I hadn’t been aware of the cold. Now that he was settled and all I had to do was sit there and keep watch, I quickly cooled till I was shivering and had time to notice how I felt. Which was bone weary and miserable. The muscles in my arms and legs didn’t just feel weak, to say which implies they still had some strength, but were in an anti-energy crisis. I was sure that if I stood up my legs would flobble under me like a couple of sausage balloons losing air. And if there’d been anything to drink, which I dearly craved, I couldn’t have picked up the glass because my arms would have lolloped around as they do when you’ve lain on them too long.

  Sleep was also something I longed for but couldn’t achieve. Sitting up, I’d nod off and startle awake again at once. Lying down, the bitter cold seemed worse and woke me up. And so sitting up and lying down by turns a dreary hour passed.

  I didn’t get far, wondering what to do next, either. The only thought that occupied my mind with any tenacity was a dreary sequence of variations on the theme of unfairness. Which went something like this:

  How in hell has all this happened to me? Just because I’ve been fool enough to give houseroom to a down-and-out would-be squatter, a half-drowned burglar with a big cock and the smile of a dog on heat? Just because of an accident, a quirk, a happenstance – unplanned, unintended, unwanted, unwilled, unprovoked (after all, I’d only been minding my own business stuck out in the middle of nowhere), uninvited, unannounced, undeserved, unforeseen, unforetold, unforgivable, unimagined, unfair.

  Unfair, that’s what it is, unfair, unfair, unfair.

  Et cetera. On and on.

  Unfair is such a playground word. The kids’ game complaint. The blub of the impotent. The rail of the naïve against the wily. The howl of the baby-innocent against the street-wise. The battle cry of those who desire that no one in the world shall be better off than they are themselves. The pule of the weak benighted temporary deluded mistaken human race against the unthinkable unplumbed unmoved eternal infinity of the vast unregarding forever. What fools these mortals be.

  I sat there, lay there, huddled against the frosted night, and whinged. I’d come to this place, this wilderness, to escape imposition, to strip myself down in order to gain control of myself and build myself up in my own image, and what had happened? Taken over and buggered up, sod it!

  Oh, lusty satisfaction of the sexual curse!

  Curse of the inarticulate.

  Sentence of Cain on the able.

  Rape of the word.

  The body’s stiff big finger erected against the mind.

  4

  The Gaz lamp stuttered; fuel running out and no spare can. I took a close look at Adam before the light died. Sound asleep, lying on his back, one bare arm curled loosely round his head, a patch of dried blood staining the bandage that circled his brow. The failing light softened the features of his face, deepened the blackness of his dishevelled hair, lent the patina of stone to the folds of grey blanket that cloaked his body like a shroud – disturbing image of a sculpted memorial to a fallen soldier. Not one of those hero-lies, no no, but a boy cut down before the truth of life had woken him from the sleep of innocence.

  Soon the cabin would be as dark as the grave. Already it was cold enough for a tomb and I cold enough to be a ghost. Certainly, I felt like one, standing over Adam, as if waiting to welcome him to the afterlife, a prince of death beside a sleeping beauty.

  Smiling to myself at that thought, I bent down and kissed him lightly on the cheek. But he flinched at the touch of my chilly lips, shifted his head away, caught at his breath, drew his exposed arm under the blanket, turned onto his side, and slipped into deep quiet slumber again.

  For sure, being no prince of any kind I lacked the magic touch.

  At that moment, as if on cue, the light went out with a final flare and an expiring hiss.

  5

  Sailors say the dogwatch is the worst. Four till six in the morning. Sitting in the deep before-dawn dark with only my own thoughts for company, this dogwatch was the hardest time of my time at the bridge. A time of reckoning. Of recognition. A slithery time of fractured memories bobbing up from buried passages of my life, and only intuition for guide – the ancient way of knowledge that bridges old Adam to new.

  when he woke to consciousness

  he wondered if it was really him lying there

  never one

  ever two.

  every I is a You

  every You is an I

  I think therefore I am

  I am therefore I am observed

  which one is you now?

  which one would you prefer?

  can’t I have both?

  I’ve never tried being both at once

  all one in making

  the kiss of two cones

  constant ambivalence

  happy ambiguity

  wish you were here?

  6

  The minutes flicked, the hours passed, the smudge of dawn finally arrived. Seven thirty-five. Time to make a move.

  We settled down for the night, Gill in the spare room next to me in mine. But after half an hour, when I was warm and cosy and might have drifted off, I heard Gill’s door open and the bathroom door close, followed by the pitiful sound of retching.

  I went to the bathroom door and said as softly as I could, ‘Gill, are you OK?’ No answer, just more retching. Mum poked her head out from her room, the very thing I was hoping wouldn’t happen. I waved her back inside, whispering, ‘I’ll look after her,’ and luckily she didn’t insist.

  After a few minutes Gill came out looking sheepish (why do people feel guilty when they’ve been sick?), I asked her if t
here was anything that would help, she said that it sounded silly but what she wanted more than anything was a bowl of cornflakes and warm milk, so downstairs we went to the kitchen, which was at least toasty warm from the Aga, where I sat her at the table, heated some milk, and let her make her own cornflake mix, which ended up a soggy stodge that she gobbled up as if she were starving.

  After that we sat back and looked at each other. Neither of us said anything for quite a while, the house breathed around us, the coal in the Aga shifted in its belly, the kitchen clock click-clacked.

  Now I could look at her properly, not fashed by goings-on at the bridge, and she’d had a wash and tidied herself up, I could see that she was actually rather pretty, sexy even, blonde straight hair, triangular face, wide apart large blue eyes, a straight firm slim nose, long mouth with full lips, good and attractively irregular teeth, chin a little too sharp-pointed perhaps, and a slim figure. Not good hands, though – too plump, thumbs a bit stubby – no match for her boyfriend’s.

  Out of genuine curiosity and not just for something to say, I asked her how she and Jan got together. ‘Piers,’ she said, ‘I can’t think of him as Jan, sorry!’ ‘Piers,’ I said. It always seemed such a naff name to me, Piers Plowman at one end (not Jan at all!) and Piers out-of-the-top-drawer at the other (not Jan either), but nor was he a Pierre or a Peer or a Pedro or a Pietro or a Pyotr or a Cephas or any kind of Peter, which was too stone-age man to suit him, no rock he, and no no no not a Pete or a Pet, none of those, and yet they say what’s in a name – everything, it seems to me. People should be careful with their names and the names they give their children. In fact in my opinion there ought to be a custom whereby everyone has a chance to pick the name they want for themselves when they are, say, sixteen or eighteen or whatever age we’re supposed to become adult. After all, actors change their names to fit the image they want (Marion Michael Morrison became John Wayne, ‘nuff said), writers often have pen names (George Eliot = Mary Ann Evans, George Orwell = Eric Blair), nuns and monks take different names (Sister Mary Joseph could once have been Ms Cheryl Smith, God help her) and of course women are always changing part of their name when they get married and thereby become the nominal possession of their husband and history, a slave collar that won’t be hung round my neck by anyone, let me give notice.