The Bridge

by Stuart Prebble

  “No, that’s it. There’s nothing else. That’s the entire sorry story.” Then once again she linked her arm through his as they headed back alongside the edge of the deep water.

  EIGHT

  Michael felt momentarily disoriented when he woke the following morning. His sleep had been one of those which could have lasted for ten minutes or ten hours; the curtains were drawn closed and the room was dark, and it might have been the small hours of the morning or late in the afternoon. He stretched out his hand to confirm that the space beside him was empty, and only then did he sense the movement of someone in the kitchen. He could hear the soft clatter of cups and the sound of the radio. Gradually it came to him that it was midmorning and that he had slept for nearly nine hours.

  Still struggling to place himself firmly in his space, Michael now recalled that, for the first time, he had decided that they should sleep in his grandmother’s room. Until then they had made do with his single bed, but at last it seemed crazy to disturb each other throughout their sleep when there was a larger one in the next room.

  “Are you sure you are happy about this?” Alison had asked. For a moment they’d felt like two teenagers sneaking into a parents’ bed while Mum and Dad were away. Except that neither of them had grown up with any experience of a mum or a dad, and there was no one who might come back unexpectedly and catch them. Alison’s revelations on the riverside had brought Michael a huge surge of relief, and he felt entirely comfortable when he assured her that it was fine; he had thought about it for a long time and reckoned that he was overdue to get on with making the adjustments he would need for living alone. He had made up the bed with fresh sheets several days before, so that he could move in when the time was right.

  Michael looked around the room at some of the objects which made it such a familiar backdrop. There was a pair of candlesticks on the dressing table, and he could picture Rose placing them carefully on a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen table for polishing, methodically turning them this way and that to ensure that she got into all the tiny corners. It was a job she had carried out on the first weekend of every month for as long as he could remember. Next to the candlesticks was a small decorative china bowl containing multicolored potpourri, which had never to Michael’s knowledge been refreshed since the day he had bought it for her as a birthday gift, perhaps ten years earlier. Alongside that was the framed photograph of himself at school, which, he noticed for the first time, had been turned to face the wall. He was amused that Alison must have looked at it, but wondered why she had repositioned it in the wrong place. He saw the door handle turning and was about to leap out of bed to help, when it was nudged open and Alison edged inside carrying a tray. He was surprised that she was fully dressed.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she said, and placed the tray on the space beside him. As well as making tea and toast, she had been out to get the Sunday papers.

  “Wow. Breakfast in bed. What a treat. How long have you been awake?”

  “Only an hour or so,” she said. “You were sleeping for England.” She plumped up the pillows beside him and sat down, lifting her legs onto the bed but remaining outside of the blankets. She opened the newspaper. “It was the funeral of that child from Brighton yesterday. His name was James Mitchell apparently. They called him Jamie. He was one that was thrown off the pier.”

  “That’s been a while,” said Michael. “Those poor parents. I guess that in a case like that they can’t release the body until after the postmortem or whatever, and the coroner has done his thing.” Neither spoke further as they scanned the headlines and photographs of the child’s family standing at the graveside. The main header was “Goodbye to Our Darling Boy,” and the picture showed the mother and father, clinging to each other in their shared grief. Inset was a smaller picture—a close-up of the same words in handwriting on a tag attached to flowers.

  “Did the family have any other children?” asked Michael.

  Alison continued reading. “It doesn’t say so. No brothers or sisters are mentioned. The parents must feel as though they’ve lost everything.”

  Michael sat up in bed and reached for his tea, drinking in silence while Alison read on. He watched her profile as she scanned each line of the news story.

  “What’s going through your mind?” He knew it was an odd question, and it seemed as though she was not going to reply.

  “Just the idea of drowning,” she said finally. “I’ve often thought what a terrible way that is to die. Some people are terrified of fires or falling off a cliff or whatever. My personal terror has always been to die in water. Trying to hold your breath until you can’t any longer and then eventually having to inhale, and at that moment your lungs fill up and you just black out there and then.” She visibly shuddered at the thought. “These poor kids. These poor bloody parents.”

  Michael put down his tea on the bedside table and placed a hand on her arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I don’t really have a special fear of death. My nightmare is this odd thing I sometimes dream, of being manhandled and then pulled apart by a group of men. Just at the moment that I think my limbs are going to be torn off, I wake up.”

  “I wonder what that’s all about,” said Alison, but she had not turned to him, and he could see that she had scarcely been distracted from her reading.

  “I don’t suppose we ever know where these things come from,” he said. “Unless we go to see a shrink or something, and I’m hardly likely to do that.”

  “Maybe you should.” She turned to him, at last appearing to focus on what he was saying. “They can sometimes be very helpful.” He did not know how to answer and merely looked back at her for several moments, trying to read the expression on her face. “Your toast is getting cold,” she said.

  * * *

  His grandmother’s most recent meltdown at Greenacres made Michael realize once again that the time had finally come for him to establish a power of attorney over Rose’s affairs. The sight of her in a near-catatonic state was a vivid indication of what might soon become a more or less permanent situation, and he dreaded the notion of having to deal with things on her behalf without her permission. On the other hand, despite her clearly expressed view that this would be a necessary step at some point in their future, Michael worried that anyone should think he was trying to take control of his grandmother’s life or property before the time was right. Something about it seemed to smack of grasping relatives, and he was not that.

  Michael had never before needed the services of a solicitor, and he could not remember Rose ever needing to use one, so had no clear idea where to start. Then he remembered being told on his first visit to Greenacres that among the staff was a welfare officer who was available to give advice. So one day the following week Michael stopped at the care home on his way to work and knocked on her door. She seemed happy to see him, introducing herself as Edwina Morrison, and declaring that she would be glad to help in any way she could. Mrs. Morrison was in her late fifties and looked highly professional in a smart gray suit and starched blouse. If the outfit had been put together to give a sense of reassurance and wisdom gained by experience, it worked.

  “When my grandmother and I first got her diagnosis more than a year ago, we agreed that at some point she would want to hand over control of her decision-making. I’m her only living relative, and there’s no one else who’s very close. She was fine for a long time, but she’s been becoming more forgetful recently, and there’ve been a couple of incidents that have made me worry that she’s deteriorating. So I wondered if this would be a good moment, and if it is, what do I have to do?”

  Mrs. Morrison was happy to reassure him that this was something they had to deal with very frequently at the care home and confirmed that this was a good time for him to proceed. “It’s best to do it while your grandmother is still completely compos mentis for at least some of the time, so that we can all comfortably put hand on heart and say that she knows what she is doing. ‘Sooner rather than later’
is always my motto.”

  Michael said that the last thing he wanted was for anyone to think he was trying to take charge of his grandmother before it was necessary and in her best interests.

  “I don’t think anyone would think that. And if they did, no doubt anyone here could put them right.”

  Mrs. Morrison told Michael that the forms were very clear and simple to complete. “You can download them and fill them in online, or I can provide you with some hard copies which you can post. You’ll also need a few key documents, like the relevant birth, marriage, or death certificates. Do you know where your grandmother keeps all that kind of thing?”

  Michael had an idea where they were. “Let me try to sort them out within the next few days,” he said.

  Michael still had a few minutes before he needed to set off for work, so he walked around the corner into the corridor which led to the residents’ rooms. This was outside of normal visiting times, but in the past he had found Greenacres to have a reasonably relaxed attitude in such circumstances. He was still carrying around in his pocket the photograph which Elsie had retrieved from the envelope and had in mind to ask Rose who the children were—but he doubted that there would be an opportunity to do so this morning. Michael found these days that he had a little less of a spring in his step as he considered the prospect of seeing Rose. Despite his great love for her, the two recent incidents had left him traumatized, and since that first time he always felt a trace of apprehension about how she would be.

  He knocked on the door of number 23 and waited for a few seconds. There was no response from inside and he thought he would try the handle before seeking her elsewhere. He hoped that perhaps she was already up and dressed, and playing cards in the dayroom. Instead he found her still in bed, lying in semidarkness with the curtains all but closed. He could not immediately tell if she was awake or asleep but thought that through the gloom he could see a small movement from her eyelids.

  “Grandma?” he whispered as softly as he could, so as not to wake her if she was dozing. “Are you asleep?” He closed the door softly behind him and tiptoed closer to her bed. “Grandma? It’s me, Michael.” Now almost alongside her, he could see that Rose’s eyes were open and that she seemed to be staring at the ceiling. Her head was on the pillow, her pure-white hair merging with the crisp white linen, but she did not turn to acknowledge him. “I’m on my way to work, but I was a bit early, so I thought I’d drop by. I came on Saturday, but you were not feeling so good.”

  Still Grandma Rose looked at the ceiling, and only the fact that her eyes were blinking reassured him that she was conscious. After a second she lifted her left arm to take Michael’s hand in hers. She held it and gave it a gentle squeeze, but still said nothing nor did she look towards him.

  “You must still be tired, Grandma,” he said. “Maybe you had a bad night. Have you been getting enough sleep?” She turned her head ever so slightly, and as he caught her gaze he wondered whether the water in her eyes was from tiredness or sadness. Her expression was impassive and gave no clue to her emotions. “I won’t stay and disturb you. You should sleep. I just wanted to say hello.” Michael continued to look at her face for any trace of a reaction but found none. He determined to retreat slowly back towards the door and whispered softly, “You go back to sleep and have lovely dreams.” He was about to turn to go when he saw just a flicker of movement from Rose’s lips. Was she trying to speak? “Did you want to say something, Grandma? Is there anything you need? Shall I see if I can find a nurse for you?”

  Still there was no sign of expression on Rose’s face, but she seemed to be trying to form some words. He came back to be closer to her and turned his head to one side to place his ear next to to her mouth. “What are you saying, Grandma? Do you need anything?” He heard her breathe again, as though wishing to put some voice behind her whisper. She was trying to speak, and he could make out some individual sounds but nothing that he could form into a word. After two or three more tries, she appeared to give up, and when he looked again at Rose’s face her eyes were closed, and she was breathing deeply. Michael turned back and walked lightly towards the door, opening and closing it as carefully as he could. Now he was running short of time, and so he put on a pace as he left the main building and walked towards his car. What had she been saying? Nothing that made sense. He played what he could remember of the syllables over and over in his head, trying to turn them into something recognizable. “Dancey Lisa”? “Dant Sea Lisson”? And then it hit him like a cricket bat across the top of his skull. He believed that he knew what she had been trying to say.

  “Don’t see Alison.”

  NINE

  With the annual Dragon Boat Festival due to take place on Saturday, activity on the river at Kingston was more than usually frenetic. Some thirty-five boats, crewed by men and women of all ages and abilities, were making their final preparations to take part in a series of colorful races throughout the day. Each of the boats was crewed by sixteen people, eight rows of two, with every person wielding a single paddle. Momentum and coordination would be maintained by keeping time with the beating of kettledrums at the rear of the boat, which traditionally represent the heartbeat of the dragon. Every summer thousands of sightseers looked forward to a special family day out, and the riverbanks were crowded with people enjoying the spectacle.

  Having its historic playing fields adjacent to the river meant that Teddington Junior had a long tradition of excellence in all water-based activities, and over the years the school had attracted onto its staff a number of teachers with distinguished careers as oarsmen or sailors. The deputy head Adrian Dunlop had rowed in the Cambridge eight which won the 2004 boat race by a record margin after a controversial clash of boats at Fulham Reach. Mr. Dunlop was known to be highly competitive, and with so many teams using the river during the daytime, few of the students and parents were surprised when he suggested some extra training after dark. Not only would the river be less congested, but it would give him a chance to put into practice some of his secret training techniques without being so easily spied upon by the opposition. The idea of paddling their multicolored boat like crazy, in time with a frenetic drumbeat, was already exciting enough for the eight-year-olds in the crew, and the sense of subterfuge further added to the anticipation. The additional thrill of training by the light of Oriental lamps and spotlights placed it somewhere close to fever pitch. Mr. Dunlop was alongside in the motor-powered safety boat as the thirty-foot-long canoe went into the water.

  “Alexandra!” She was head girl of the school as well as captain of the canoe team. “Get a grip on things there, will you?” Parents who were sharing steaming coffee from a vacuum flask were amused to hear their eight-year-olds spoken to as if they were Olympic athletes.

  Minutes later the children settled into their seats, and the canoe was shoved towards midstream. With a gentle tide running against them, Alexandra picked up the padded drumsticks and followed Mr. Dunlop’s instructions to begin very slowly. At the outset there were two or more seconds between each beat. Then, as the boat began to steady and to move through the water, the rhythm of the drumming gained pace. Gradually the vessel picked up speed, cutting its path through the pitch-black river. Mr. Dunlop steered his motorboat just a little distance ahead to check for floating logs or other debris, motoring into the shadow of the railway bridge which carried suburban trains between Hampton Wick and Kingston. Once he was through and clear, the water reflected vivid streaks of yellow light from the streetlamps on the road bridge which crossed up ahead. Now the paddles were synchronized perfectly with the primordial rhythm of the drumbeat, and the full power of the gathering momentum helped to thrust the canoe through the water like the mythical dragon advancing on its prey. Mr. Dunlop yelled encouragement as he watched the children straining every muscle, but the smiles on their young faces told their own story as the boat forged forwards. The oncoming tide caused the teacher’s boat to slow and put him alongside.

  The object came ou
t of the deep black sky with the dull thud of a meteor landing in a desert. The first that Mr. Dunlop knew of it was the shattering sound as it smashed into the canoe, more or less dead center, miraculously landing between the four children clustered around the fulcrum of the vessel but hardly pausing in its descent. The boat jackknifed in the middle, launching the children sitting at each end into the air like stones from a catapult. Their limbs momentarily flayed out of control before they splashed down hard on the water and disappeared into the inky blackness. The wake splashed against Mr. Dunlop’s boat, which now careered out of control and smashed into the concrete plinth of the bridge, tossing him, unconscious, into the water.

  * * *

  Ten children managed to swim or cling to the splinters of wood for long enough to get to the bank, but six of the sixteen, all ages either eight or nine, were drowned on that night. The incident had taken place well out of sight or sound of the school at Teddington, and so parents were still chatting and drinking coffee under the stars when the police arrived twenty minutes later with the terrible news that would change all their lives forever. Mr. Dunlop was taken to hospital suffering from shock and exhaustion and would never teach or be seen on the water again.

  “So, are you telling me that there is no CCTV coverage of Kingston Bridge, day or night?” Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Bailey had been working late at the incident room in Charing Cross and had reached the scene in less than thirty minutes. He knew that it was not fair to make the local sergeant feel personally responsible for the omission, but right at this moment he did not care. “A main thoroughfare crossing the busiest and most important river in the country, and we don’t have a bloody thing?”