The Broken Bridge

by Philip Pullman

  In front of her the wide field spread out to the estuary, and beyond it the water, high now the tide was in, gleamed like steel. A cluster of little lights marked the Yacht Club and the railway station, the only sign of human life; and beyond everything else lay the great round hills, dark against the dark sky, immeasurably ancient.

  Gradually, as she stood with her right hand on the corner of the tiny church, the shame and the anger cooled down. In the presence of those vast hills, it seemed petty. Maybe the old monks had felt the same about their sorrows, gazing up at that skyline. This church was a thousand years old; such a long time….At some time in those thousand years, Ginny thought, someone else must have stood in the same spot, hand on the wall, and looked up at the hills and felt better for it.

  At her left hand there was a slate-covered tomb the size and height of a table, a big dark box half covered in sand. The light grains against the black surface reminded her of something. She brushed the top clear and, taking a handful of sand, let it trickle through her fingers onto the slate. After a little practice she found she could draw a strong clear line.

  She was thinking of what Stuart had told her about the vevers, those magic figures the voodoo priest would trace in flour on the ground to evoke the loa, the gods. Carefully she drew the outline of a heart, pierced by a sword, with lacy fronds and tendrils extending from the top and bottom. In the ghostly starlight she could see it clearly. It was the vever of Erzulie, the tragic goddess of love, whose visitations were brief and ended in weeping, but who brought beauty with her, and grace, and laughter—tragic things, because they lasted so short a time and then died.

  When it was nearly finished she stood back and looked at it. The handle of the sword was too large; she brushed it away and corrected it. She did the same for one of the tendrils at the foot, which didn’t balance the one on the other side. Then it was done.

  She straightened her back stiffly, conscious that she’d made a decision of some kind. She felt very tired and oddly happy, and her mind was filled with a tangle of thoughts: I can see in the dark. I can’t see so well in the daylight, can’t see the obvious things like Andy being gay, but that doesn’t matter because I can see in the dark. I can understand mysteries. Like the broken bridge. I know the truth of that, because I’m the baby, I’m the father, I’m the thief. And I understand the old monks who built this church, and Erzulie, I understand her, and the hills too, I can hear what they’re saying to me. And African-ness. I’m beginning to understand being black. And my mother. Something happened when I was born, I know it did. I’m going to find out. I’m going to find her paintings….They’re not going to hide things from me. They’re so stupid! They hide them in the dark! If they hid them in the light I’d never see them, but the dark is where I live, like Maman. I’m an artist, I’m a sorceress, I’m at home there….So whatever it is you concealed, Dad, you made a mistake. I’m going to find it. And then I’ll paint the truth….

  She found herself wandering through the field, her feet wet in the dew, her head ringing.

  There was a figure sitting on the gate by the parking lot.

  “Robert?” she said.

  He got down on the other side.

  “Thought I’d better wait for you,” he said.

  “No need. But thanks.”

  She climbed the gate, and they began to walk up the lane. She was immensely tired. For the first time she thought what it all must mean to him: His mother had died only a week ago, and this stranger, his unknown sister, takes him to a barbecue and involves him in her own little emotional dramas. She wanted to apologize, but it was more comfortable being silent; at least they weren’t hostile anymore.

  Almost the last thing she realized that night came to her as she was getting into bed. Holding Andy in her arms, the voice, her anger, his sadness…He was sad for her, because he’d seen her mistake and known he could do nothing about it. She felt very fond of him, fond of Dafydd. It wasn’t their fault, after all. That things could be like that…How strange. How strange. It was like losing a twenty-pound note but then seeing a new color.

  Her very last thought concerned Joe Chicago, as she realized the meaning of his connection with Andy. Things were fitting into place. Maman, the broken bridge…It was beginning to make sense. But there was a lot more to find out yet. She went to sleep almost at once.

  GINNY WASN’T SURE what she was going to say to Rhiannon, so it was a good thing the next day was Sunday, when she didn’t go to the Dragon. Instead, after lunch (difficult, with Dad trying to be cheerful and fatherly and Robert being grim and silent), she went off on her own and caught the train to Porthafon.

  At the corner of Jubilee Terrace she almost turned back, because outside Rhiannon’s sister’s house there was a man washing a car—obviously Helen’s husband. Washing cars was discouraged if not actually forbidden because of the water shortage, so getting it clean was clearly very important to him. He was a neat, trim little man with hairy arms and the famous neat mustache, and he looked at her with open curiosity as she went past him and rang the doorbell.

  Helen answered it seconds before her husband got there, chamois cloth dripping in his hand.

  “Ginny…Come in.”

  A quick, hostile glance at him, and she closed the door behind them, shutting him out.

  “Come on through. I’m in the garden,” she said.

  Ginny had forgotten how definite she was, how clear and decisive and un-Rhiannon-like. They sat down on the little patch of grass, with children playing on a swing next door and a man on the opposite side of the fence dozing under a newspaper. It felt very open compared to her back garden; she imagined everyone would be listening.

  “I’ve heard about your brother,” Helen said.

  “From Rhiannon? Or from Dad?”

  Helen hesitated. “Both,” she said.

  “Do you see Dad a lot, then?”

  “Well…quite often.”

  She looked frankly at Ginny, as if inviting her to ask more. But Ginny didn’t want to, yet.

  “So. What’s this brother like?” Helen said.

  “Difficult. I have to keep telling myself he’s my brother, or I wouldn’t believe it. Half-brother. And that his mum only died last week. It’s no wonder he’s unhappy. And what he thinks of us, God knows. I try and ask about his mother….Actually I don’t anymore, ’cause he got angry, but I was just so curious, I wanted to know. And Dad won’t tell me….”

  “Why won’t he?”

  “He just clams up. He won’t say anything except stupid vague answers that don’t mean anything. I want to know about my mother, for instance. I thought they were married, but they weren’t; he was married to Robert’s mother. Did you know that?”

  Helen nodded, looking careful.

  “What else has he told you, then?”

  Helen blew out her cheeks and ran a hand through her hair. “It’s not easy….”

  Ginny felt a flash of anger. “What d’you mean, it’s not easy? What d’you think it’s like for me? There’s everyone knowing more about me than I do myself—what d’you think that’s like?”

  Helen looked down. Ginny pressed on recklessly:

  “Are you having an affair with Dad?”

  “What? Ginny, I can’t answer—”

  “Is that what it is? You can tell me, for God’s sake! I don’t mind or anything! I mean, are you?”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “Yes,” said Ginny, staring at her flatly.

  “And? What did he say?”

  “He said no, of course not, what a stupid idea.”

  “Well, then…”

  “But he’s a liar, isn’t he? He lied about my mother. He might be lying about this. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  Helen’s eyes were closed. Ginny was hating herself for this, but now she’d started, she couldn’t stop.

  “Ginny,” said Helen, “I like your father very much, but I can’t answer questions like that. Let me talk to him—”

&n
bsp; She stopped, and Ginny looked around. Benny was watching from the kitchen doorway.

  “All right?” he said, as if Ginny had been starting a fight.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Helen coldly.

  “Who’s this, then?” he said, smiling at Ginny.

  “Ginny. She’s a friend of Rhiannon’s.”

  “I better go,” said Ginny, thinking that they’d never be able to talk with him there.

  “No, don’t. Wait a minute, I’ll come with you,” said Helen, getting up.

  Ginny pushed past Benny in the kitchen doorway, not looking at him, smelling his pungent aftershave.

  “Let’s go down to the Locker,” said Helen. “Have a coffee and a doughnut or something.”

  Davy Jones’s Locker was a café on the harborfront, all hung about with lobster pots and fishing nets and glass floats, and someone had painted mermaids and pirate wrecks on the walls. The owner was a big careless cheerful man with one leg, who sometimes wore a pirate-style striped jersey and stumped about on a wooden peg like Long John Silver. The whole thing was tacky, but Ginny liked the wooden booths and the smell of fresh coffee, which came in chunky earthenware mugs that didn’t balance properly on the saucers.

  “Have some carrot cake,” said Helen. “Help you see in the dark.”

  Ginny decided that she liked her a lot.

  “I’m sorry I said that about Dad,” she said. “I didn’t really ask him at all. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. But I’m just so confused, what with Robert and all, I don’t know anything. And last night…There was this boy, right….”

  She told Helen about Andy, about how she’d felt, about what had happened. Helen listened with all Rhiannon’s intense interest but with a lot more sympathy.

  “It’s funny, though,” Ginny said. “I don’t feel cross or anything. It’s just embarrassing, really. The real thing about it is Joe Chicago, how it links up with him. You know the story of the broken bridge?”

  “No. What’s that?”

  “You don’t? I thought that was just one more of the things everyone knew but me. A long time ago there was a man with his daughter, a baby, driving up Gwynant way, and it was a winter night, and the car crashed into the bridge. They weren’t hurt or anything. The man had a warm kind of fur-lined leather jacket, and he wrapped me up in it and went for help. But while he was gone someone stole the jacket and the baby died, just froze to death. And I reckon that the person who did it was Joe Chicago, and that’s the same jacket, the one he wears. Now, if he knew my dad was in prison, okay, then Dad’s connected with that story in the same way. So I really need to find out all I can.”

  “Why did you say me?”

  “Me?”

  “You said he wrapped me up in it. Instead of the baby.”

  “I didn’t, did I? Did I really?”

  Helen nodded and sipped her coffee. “It’s a Freudian slip,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “It means it’s what you really think. Your unconscious mind speaking for you.”

  “But I don’t think…It wouldn’t make sense anyway, ’cause I’m not dead, am I?”

  “No. Probably just a slip of the tongue.”

  Ginny slid further into the corner of the booth, pulled her feet up on the wooden seat, and hugged her knees, staring unseeingly at the fishing net spread out on the opposite wall.

  “Rhiannon said that Joe Chicago knows your husband,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Helen after a second or two.

  “Do you know him?”

  “He’s been to the house a few times.”

  “He’s involved with that boy I told you about. Andy. I think he’s blackmailing him or something. And I think I know why now, after last night. D’you think he really knows my dad?”

  “I don’t know…I don’t know. The thing is that Benny’s so bloody jealous of everything, everyone, and he knows I’ve seen your dad once or twice….He might have made that up. To try and put me off, see. I never heard it from Joe himself, only from Benny.”

  “So it might not be true?”

  “Or it might.”

  They were silent. Helen pushed the plate of cake toward Ginny, who shook her head.

  “I can already see in the dark,” she said.

  They sat there a little while longer and then went out to the harbor and sat looking at the cottages, the old slate warehouse that was now an Industrial Heritage Museum, the amusement arcade. It was another hot day. Helen was fanning herself with her straw hat.

  “Helen, does he ever talk about my mother?” Ginny asked. “Because I want to find her paintings, you see. I can’t understand why he didn’t keep them.”

  “Well…I couldn’t say, really. Listen, now. This is going to sound stupid, but did you ever think that maybe your mam was still alive?”

  Ginny blinked with astonishment. How ridiculous!

  “Of course she’s not,” she said scornfully. “I’d know if she was alive, wouldn’t I?”

  “How, though?”

  “I’d have heard of her. She’d be a famous painter. Anyway, I know she’s not alive. She’d never have left me if she was. It’s out of the question.”

  She was a little angry that Helen could even consider it possible. They sat in silence for a while, and Ginny began to wonder why she’d come, what this woman had to do with her, why she’d wasted her time. Well, she’d leave in a minute, as soon as she found a way of saying good-bye.

  But Helen said, “Why are you so interested in Joe Chicago?”

  “I told you. Because of the broken bridge.”

  “Suppose you found out it was him: what would you do?”

  “What would I do? Well, I’d be able to make him leave Andy alone, for a start. And…make him tell me about Dad.”

  Before she said the words the idea hadn’t existed, but now that it did, she knew it was absolutely right. She felt a little thrill of certainty.

  “Does he come to your house often?” she said.

  “Whenever Benny brings him, I suppose. I don’t take much notice. I’m not very close to Benny these days. I don’t know what they’ve got in common anyway. I think Benny’s afraid of him. He’s just trying to show he’s tough, going around with a thug.”

  “Helen, could you help me?”

  “Help you talk to Joe Chicago?”

  “Yeah. Could you?” She was sitting forward on the wooden bench, twisted to look Helen in the face, and Helen, her straw hat low over her eyes, was leaning back languidly in the heat, looking tired.

  “Please?” Ginny said.

  “I think you’re crazy. He’s a horrible swine, he’s hateful, you don’t want to talk to him….What makes you think he’ll tell you the truth anyway?”

  “I’ll make him,” said Ginny. “I will. Me and Baron Samedi, we’ll make him.”

  “You and who?”

  “My voodoo friend. No; no one—I don’t mean it. Just me.”

  “But what are you…?”

  “I just need to be alone with him for a few minutes, Helen. I just want to ask him. Please…When he comes to your house next time, can you let me know? I’ll get someone to bring me.”

  Helen pursed her lips. Then she shrugged.

  “Well, can’t do much harm, I suppose….Are you going to tell your dad?”

  “No! Course not.”

  “And…are you going to tell him you’ve been to see me?”

  She’d put her sunglasses on; Ginny couldn’t read her expression.

  “No,” she said. “If he’s got secrets from me, I can have secrets from him. I can’t talk to him anymore, not now Robert’s here. We’re never alone. Anyway, I don’t trust him.”

  “You should.”

  “I can’t. I’m on my own now.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Helen unconvincingly.

  “I am.”

  —

  “But how was I supposed to know?” said Rhiannon the following afternoon. “Know you didn’t know, I mean, stupid. Ev
eryone’s always known. That’s why he left home, ’cause his parents chucked him out for it. I mean, it was such an obvious thing. That’s why you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “Explain,” said Ginny coldly.

  “No one’ll think you didn’t know. They’ll think you were dancing with him just as a friend, kind of thing.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Oh bloody yeah.”

  “And what about when I ran off into the dunes? I thought they were all laughing at me.”

  “You don’t suppose anyone noticed anything by that stage, girl? I certainly didn’t. I was in the second degree of bliss,” she said with a comic smugness. “That’s a technical term.”

  “The second degree of bliss…” Ginny said scornfully, but she couldn’t help smiling. “I suppose Peter took you there, did he? And how many degrees of bliss are there?”

  “Judging by that one, I reckon about seven hundred. Still, it’s a start. Hey, someone’s waving at you.”

  They were sitting on the old wooden jetty outside the Yacht Club. Ginny looked where Rhiannon was pointing.

  “That’s Stuart,” she said, waving back.

  “Who he?”

  “A friend of Andy’s. Yes,” she said, answering the question in Rhiannon’s raised eyebrows. “And I didn’t know before, no. But he’s nice. Let’s go and say hello.”

  They stood up, bare feet on the hot planks, and took the path along by the railway bridge to the ladder that led to Stuart’s house. He was sitting on the roof, sunbathing. Rhiannon drew in her breath as she saw him.

  “What a waste,” she said quietly, climbing the ladder just behind Ginny.

  “I’ll tell him,” Ginny said.

  When she came face-to-face with Stuart again, Ginny felt herself wondering what did it mean, being gay? What did they do? Had he kissed Andy, for instance?

  “Hi,” he said. “I’ve got something for you. Hello,” he added to Rhiannon.

  “This is Rhiannon,” Ginny said. “My social secretary.”

  “I’m Stuart,” he said. “I haven’t got one of those, I’m afraid; you have to deal with me directly. How’s things?”

  “Mixed,” said Ginny, sitting down beside him on the decking of the roof. Rhiannon sat down too, and Ginny saw with pleasure that her friend, for once, was shy. Stuart was wearing the smallest possible swimming costume, and his body, as far as she could judge male bodies, could probably take you to the five hundredth degree of bliss merely by being looked at. “Did I have a brother when I saw you last? I can’t remember.”