The Broken Bridge

by Philip Pullman

  Where the loa lived. Where Baron Samedi had come from. They were real; you had to respect them, even when they were wrong about things. All of that was dark and confusing, but it was part of what she was. Maybe art itself was a kind of voodoo, possessing you, giving you supernatural power, letting you see in the dark.

  With the sun on her back, she waded into the chilly water, wriggling her toes down into the sand, sensing the presence of little curious nibbling things deep out of sight. She wandered slowly along, knee-deep, thinking about the broken bridge, and about why she’d been so affected by the story.

  Because it was about her. She was the baby, the warm fur-lined jacket was her mother, and Joe Chicago…Joe Chicago wasn’t death; he was art.

  She stood still. Now the story made perfect sense. It was art that had taken her mother away, because art had no conscience; it demanded, it was cruel, it took what it wanted brutally and paid no heed to the consequences. Or (as Rhiannon would say) it wasn’t kind, it was sexy.

  Ginny wandered a little farther, the mild water stirring around her legs, and reached down to cool her hands, lifting it and letting it trail down in glittering drops. Kind or sexy—was this a division that split the world in two? Was Rhiannon right? Did everything have to be either kind and ineffective or sexy and heartless?

  And as for her, she’d protested to Rhiannon that it must somehow be possible to be both. Well, how did she rate? She remembered trying to comfort Helen in the little spare room at Jubilee Terrace and moving her leg to improve the balance of the composition: nothing very kind there. She remembered Robert’s words in that terrible quarrel—bitter hurting words, but they were true. Part of her was cold and arrogant; part of her was indifferent to those who were untalented.

  Arrogant, indifferent…But sexy, as in sex? She thought of her one attempt to become a lover, and grimaced.

  How unlikable she was.

  But at least, she found herself arguing feebly, there was no envy in her. When she saw talent or genius she didn’t resent its not being hers; she rejoiced in it wherever it was. It was the most important thing in the world….

  She heard her mother again: Painting isn’t the most important thing, but it’ll have to do till we find out what is. She’d meant for us. For people like us. For artists. She’d acknowledged that connection, if nothing else.

  Ginny turned around and walked slowly back the other way, the sun now full on her face and breast and arms. She wasn’t alone on the beach anymore; there was someone at the far end, coming toward her. A boy. Robert. She waved, and he waved back.

  Well, even if she was an artist, she could still be a sister, do whatever sisters did. She wondered whether to tell Robert about what Dad had said in the car, in the dark and silence of the night, but she swiftly decided not to. That was a secret. It was acknowledgment of the closeness they’d had, she and Dad, and she’d respect it. Besides, there was no need for Robert to hear anything that reflected badly on his mother, who might have been narrow and prim and greedy like Kitty but who had just painfully died, after all.

  Or was concealing it from Robert no better than Dad’s concealing things from her for so long? It was hard to say. She hoped she could get it right.

  She bent to pick up her shoes as his shadow fell across them.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hello,” said Glyn Williams.

  She looked up, blinking in astonishment. Yes, it was Glyn, not Robert at all, and for a moment she didn’t know what to say.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “I thought you were someone else. Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  He shrugged, smiling, and half turned away, and she fell in with his unspoken invitation and walked along beside him to the mouth of the estuary.

  “You’re up early,” she said.

  “I help out with the horses,” he said. There was a riding stable in the village, where tourists paid to sit in hard hats and be slowly led up into the hills and down again by girls in jodhpurs.

  “I can’t see you doing that, somehow,” she said.

  “I don’t do the pony-trekking stuff. I go there first thing before the tourists come. I’m in the shop most of the day anyway. I do it so I can get free rides.”

  “D’you ride, then? I didn’t know….”

  “Yeah. What about you?”

  “I’ve never tried.”

  “You ought to come. I’ll take you out. You won’t have to go in a line with a lot of little kids.”

  She looked at him. Was this a date? Was someone asking her to go out with him? She was suddenly conscious of her bare legs, her thin T-shirt with nothing under it; and of his dark-red curly hair, his half-innocent, half-sardonic smile, like Andy’s but more complicated, stronger, more subtle. And she was conscious of her unlikableness. She felt so shy that she could hardly breathe.

  “Well, why not?” he said. “I’ll teach you to ride.”

  “No reason. Thanks. Yeah. I’d like that.”

  They walked on slowly.

  “How’s your brother getting on?” he said.

  “Oh, Robert. Yeah, fine. You know his mum died recently? That’s why he’s here. It was hard at first. It probably will be for a while, but he’s okay.”

  They reached the breakwater, a stone wall with a concrete path on the top just wide enough for two people to walk abreast. She stopped to put on her shoes before jumping up to join him, and they wandered along toward the end. To their left was the glistening sand of the empty lagoon, to their right the seaweed-covered rocks at the foot of the breakwater. Ahead, across the narrow mouth where the river entered the sea, was the widest stretch of dunes on the whole coast: miles of high tumbled sand hills laced through with marram grass, and a beach where you could find a billion perfect shells. Ginny seldom went there, near as it was, because swimming across the mouth was safe only at low tide and the journey all the way round by land was miles. But now they had a boat, she remembered suddenly. It would be easy.

  “Can you sail?” she said.

  “No. Why?”

  “Well, I can’t either, but my dad bought a boat a couple of weeks ago. When I’ve learned to sail, I’ll teach you,” she said, daring. “In exchange.”

  “All right! That’s a bargain. Hey, I haven’t seen you around for a few days. You been away?”

  “Yeah. Robert and I went to Chester to see our grandparents. But I’ve been busy, you know….”

  “What, drawing?”

  “How d’you know about my drawing?”

  “Well, don’t sound so defensive. Cet animal est très méchant—”

  “Quand on l’attaque, il se défend!” she finished. “Yeah. Sorry. You weren’t even attacking me.”

  “Anyway, you’re not an il, you’re an elle.”

  “Yeah, but that wouldn’t work, ’cause it’d be méchante, and it wouldn’t rhyme.”

  “Touché,” he said. “I know about your drawing because, first, Rhiannon told me, and second, I saw your stuff in the Art Room, and third, I saw you out on the top road drawing the other evening. I was going to come and say hello, but you’d scarpered by the time I got there.”

  What a difference that might have made, she thought. What a difference this was making now. They reached the end of the breakwater, and Glyn sat down.

  “I brought you a present,” he said, and she noticed that he was carrying a paper bag.

  “What? Me? Oh…”

  Is that all you can say? she thought. Don’t be so bloody incoherent, girl. Inarticulate. Whatever. Say thank you.

  “Thanks,” she said, sitting down awkwardly beside him.

  He was taking out two kiwifruit and a clasp knife. “I saw you from the stables,” he said, “and I thought you looked hungry, so I raided the shop.” He cut the fruit in half and gave her two pieces, and they ate the delicate flesh out of the skins, wiping away the juice with the backs of their hands.

  “I love kiwifruit,” she said. “How could you see I looked hungry?”
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  “I couldn’t. It was just an excuse. You didn’t look very happy, though.”

  He was close enough for her to see the flecks of green in his eyes, and for a long confusing moment she couldn’t tell whether he was kind, or sexy, or both.

  “Well, I am,” she said. “Honest. I wasn’t, but that’s”—she gestured vaguely—“over now,” she finished.

  “You’re coming back to join the rest of us?”

  “Did it seem like that?”

  “Yeah. Rhiannon said it was your artistic temperament.”

  “There’s no such thing!”

  “Well, it can’t have been that, then,” he said, “but I won’t ask if you don’t want me to.”

  She looked at him again. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yeah. I’m interested. ’Cause I like you. And I mean, now we’ve had breakfast together, we ought to get to know each other better. Wouldn’t be proper otherwise, would it?”

  “No,” she agreed smiling. “So you want to know what I’ve been doing?”

  “Well, not now, necessarily. Not all at once. You could start this afternoon when we go riding.”

  “This afternoon already?”

  “Why not?”

  There was no reason. She shrugged, quite unable to keep that smile off her face.

  “Okay,” she said.

  This was novel. This was better than unexpected kiwifruit, even. Ginny saw something flash beyond Glyn’s shoulder and watched as the sun caught the windows of the morning train crossing the little bridge outside Stuart’s house and slowing down to stop at the station.

  He saw where she was looking. “Duw, is that the time?” he said. “I’ll have to get a move on. I’ll see you later, then. At the stables, about two o’clock, all right?”

  She nodded, feeling dopey from her smile to her sneakers, and watched him go.

  Glyn. Well. Wow.

  She sat at the end of the breakwater hugging her knees as her kingdom came to wakefulness around her, intact, rich, alive in all its details, from the scuttling little crabs among the rocks below her to the station cat yawning and stretching outside the Yacht Club, from the mother-of-pearl water to the great green presence of the hills.

  There was so much to do.

  Apologize to Angie Lime and Mr. Calvert, first, for missing a couple of days without letting them know.

  Talk to Rhiannon. (That could last for days.)

  Get to know Robert. Learn to sail.

  Write to her mother. No. Yes. Maybe. Or write, but not mail it. Sort out what she thought. Talk to Glyn about it….

  Go and see Helen. Explain.

  Think about her grandparents. Maybe it would be possible to meet them with Dad somewhere neutral, somewhere safe and public, where Grandma would feel constrained to be rational. They were so desperate and unhappy; maybe she and Robert and Dad were strong enough to take charge of bringing the family together. Perhaps it was time to start healing.

  Talk to Stuart about her mother’s paintings.

  Those paintings…She realized that she was still dazed by them. The Death of Colonel Paul was an arrangement in red and yellow, a stunning one, but it wasn’t only that; it was about human beings as well, about suffering and justice and greed. It cut through all the jargon and the labels and the boxes of abstraction and post-modernism and neo-expressionism; it was technically dazzling and it showed something true; it was the way a person could paint and be faithful to everything she knew, to Europe and to Africa, to academic discipline and to voodoo. If her mother’s absence all these years had made it possible for her to show Ginny that, then it had been worth it, Ginny thought.

  Her hand itched for a pencil. And that afternoon she was going riding with Glyn….She marveled. Maybe she wasn’t so unlikable. Maybe you could be an artist and have a boyfriend. Anything was possible, really. Even being kind as well as sexy.

  She stood up and stretched. The sun was hot already; the morning train, having unloaded its newspapers, was moving out toward Porthafon, and in the bright clear air Ginny could hear a crate of bottles being put down somewhere outside the Yacht Club, the news dealer’s van turning into the station, distant voices calling.

  She turned to run up to the house. As she passed the station, she waved to the porter and the news dealer, and to Harry Lime, who stood there scratching in the Yacht Club kitchen doorway, and their voices mingled. Bore da, good morning, bore da, Ginny, good morning, good morning.

  One

  Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm night in early June, when one of the colleges in Oxford was holding its summer ball. Undergraduates paid a great deal of money for tickets to balls like this—a hundred pounds, or even more, in some cases. For that they expected a great deal in return, and the organising committees worked hard to provide it: marquees with dancing floors, champagne buffets, hot new bands and famous old ones, alternative cabarets; whatever entertainment was fashionable, expensive and available.

  This particular college had grounds which bordered a lake. There were going to be fireworks, there was a 1920s-style dance band on a floating platform, there was a cabaret-circus in a marquee, and altogether it was a spectacular event, which the undergraduates felt embodied the wealth and splendour due to them, at this time in this country.

  Chris Marshall wasn’t an undergraduate. He was seventeen, with a year still to go at school, and this was a holiday job of sorts, though the holiday was some way off yet. He worked part-time for a firm called Oxford Entertainment Systems, owned by a man called Barry Miller. Barry was a mild, energetic man in his early thirties, blond and lean and slightly short-sighted, which made him blink and open his eyes wide with what looked like innocent candour. He knew that Chris was saving for a decent bike, so he offered him twenty-five pounds for the night’s work, even though he didn’t really need help. Chris was glad to do it. He was tired of sitting at home with his mother and her new lover, trying to make conversation and feeling himself in the way all the time. He’d never felt like that at home before, and it was uncomfortable.

  So on a warm evening in June, Chris found himself setting up the lights for the cabaret-circus: uncoiling lengths of cable, strapping them to upright stands with insulating tape, swarming up scaffolding to check the angle of a spotlight, plugging various cables into a dimmer board, replacing a fuse which had burnt out, freeing a revolving colour-wheel that had become caught, and setting up the maroons to make flashes of green fire, while Barry Miller talked cheerfully to the director of the cabaret.

  Finally the director, twitching anxiously, went backstage, and Barry turned to see how Chris was getting on with the maroon.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he said. ‘Got enough powder? Blimey, there’s too much in there. You don’t need much powder for a socking great bang…’

  Chris spooned some fire powder out of the maroons. These were fire-clay dishes across the base of which you fastened fuse-wire between two terminals. You put some powder—green, red, or white—on top of that, and when you switched the current through, the fuse-wire burnt out, setting off a big flash. Chris hadn’t used one before and hadn’t known how much powder to put in.

  ‘Have we got a script?’ Chris asked.

  ‘No. He’s going to give me a nod from back there. I says does he want a cue light, but it’s one more thing for him to fuss over and forget. I tell you one thing, this lot won’t make it professionally. Bloody shambles. I mean, they didn’t even want to rehearse the lighting cues, shit, I mean, how careless can you get?’

  The performance was due to start at half-past midnight. Before that there was going to be a jazz quartet playing in the marquee, followed by a gay comedian whose TV show had been taken off the air. Chris was bemused.

  ‘I thought people came to a ball to dance,’ he said to Barry. ‘There’s so much going on, it’s like a fair. I’m surprised they haven’t got Dodgem cars.’

  ‘Not a bad idea. I done dozens of these, Chris. This is a bit more ambitious, but I l
ike that. Look, I won’t be needing you till half-twelve. Go and have a wander. Mingle. Circulate.’

  ‘I’m not dressed for that,’ said Chris, but he did as Barry said, fascinated by the braying voices of the young men, the bare shoulders of the young women in their ball gowns, and the sheer beauty of the college grounds in the summer twilight, with torches flickering on the grass, lights glowing among the great trees, and the first snatches of music drifting over the water.

  He’d lived all his life in Oxford, but there was a lot of it he’d never seen. The colleges were private places, except when tourists thronged them, bunches of bored Italian kids or interested Japanese adults, and Chris had no desire to get confused with them. Chris’s Oxford was rougher, louder, dirtier than all that tourist stuff. It was the Jericho Tavern, where good new independent rock bands came to play; it was the football ground; it was the Speedway, where Chris had gone every week till he tired of it and began to cycle seriously instead.

  That was his Oxford, not this upper-class fairyland. Chris decided there and then that whichever university he went to, it wouldn’t be the one in his native city. For one thing, he didn’t like feeling looked down on, and he was conscious of the faintly curious looks he was getting, casually dressed as he was in jeans and T-shirt, plainly neither a guest nor a waiter.

  In fact, he looked as if he might have been a member of a rock band. He was good-looking enough, with rough dark blond hair, and fit and muscular from his cycling. He looked older than he was, and if a person’s character shows in their face, his face showed independence and openness and courage. It might have showed innocence, too.

  When the night was completely dark and the ball was fully under way, Chris wandered down to the edge of the lake. There was a little boathouse at the far end under some great dark trees, and he wanted to see whether there was a boat in it. He left the floating bandstand, with its jokily-suited orchestra and brilliantined, megaphone-holding singer, and made his way into the green darkness under the trees.