On Bone Bridge

by Maria Hoey

  “Haven’t any of your friends got televisions?” I asked as we went downstairs.

  “Some of them have,” said Violet-May, “but I don’t get to watch them. There isn’t time.”

  “Why isn’t there time?”

  “Well, there’s piano and ballet and horse-riding – you know, that sort of stuff.”

  I nodded my head to indicate that I knew all about that sort of stuff. In truth, it was unlikely that any of the kids on our estate did piano or ballet or horse-riding. We played kerbs and rounders, and the boys played five-a-side and all of us, every year after Wimbledon infected us, played tennis in the field above the river valley. But at that moment I was puffed up with pride at finding myself with the power to grant Violet-May’s wish and I believe I approached a state of perfect happiness as we sat next to one another on the sofa in our sitting room and watched The A-Team together.

  Mrs Duff came to collect Violet-May at the appointed time and the car had barely driven way before Mrs Nugent was knocking on our door. I heard her talking to my mother in the hall.

  “I see you’ve had Flora Duff here twice today, Mrs Kelly,” she said. “What was all that about?”

  “Kay seems to have taken a shine to her young one, that’s all,” my mother told her. “With any luck it won’t last.”

  I remember thinking: Oh I hope it does, I hope it lasts forever and ever.

  Somehow or other in that week before our joint birthday, the children in school found out that Violet-May’s mother was pregnant. Ken Fitzgerald made a joke about her being “up the Duff” and then he and another boy began vying with one another to come up with ridiculous names for the new baby.

  “What about Dandelion-July?” said Ken. “And then the next one can be Primrose-August, unless it’s a boy and then they can call it Pansy-August.”

  Everyone sniggered but, although I thought it was quite funny too, I was careful not to let Violet-May see. I nodded solemnly when she said that the only thing to do with ignorant people was to pity them and ignore them. I already pitied Ken Fitzgerald anyway, because he could not spell. He lived three doors up from our house and he was very annoying and famous for farting in the classroom and blaming others. Ignoring him was a lot harder, however, because like a lot of people with little of any interest to say, he said it loudly and at great length. He kept up this particular joke long after everyone had grown tired of it and, finally, in the yard at lunchtime one day, Violet-May snapped. She screamed at Ken Fitzgerald to leave her alone and then she just kept on screaming. Next she lay down on the ground and began rolling around and all the children stood back and just stared at her and even Ken Fitzgerald stopped laughing and looked at her with his mouth hanging open.

  Two teachers came then and shoed us away and between them they lifted Violet-May who had stopped screaming by then and carried her, sobbing, into the school building.

  As they passed me, I heard Violet-May saying through her sobs, “I hate that stupid baby, I hate it, hate it, hate it!”

  Chapter 5

  I have not yet written about the river and yet in many ways it is as much a character in this story as are the people.

  On a map its name is given as the Clone. But, just like many people, our river had, still has, different names for the different stages of its life.

  The part of our river where we swam in summer was called the Dive. We could stand at the far edges of our estate and look down at it. Set deep in the valley between green banks, in summer its light-dappled waters glittered and winked at us in the sunshine. We swarmed to it – to swim, to paddle, to catch minnows in jam jars. The midges ate us, but we didn’t care. My father told me that before mains water had been installed in most of the houses in the town, the Dive was where people sent their children to wash themselves. He himself remembered being sent there by his mother, with a towel and a bar of carbolic soap, and being told not to come home until he was squeaky clean. The Dive was the place where, the previous summer, I had begun to learn how to swim and I longed for next summer to come so I could finish the job.

  The place where our river wound itself close by the ruins of the abbey, where the courting boys and girls went to be alone, was called the Stream and there the river was wide and shallow and made a happy sort of gurgling sound as it rippled over the big flat stones.

  Further downstream, where the river snaked between the feathered reeds, was the part called the Surly, perhaps because the river was slow-moving there. The water, although not so very deep, was green-black and scummy. It was spanned by a bridge known locally as Bone Bridge, which had got its name from the fact that, when the foundations for the bridge were being laid, human remains had been found in the sediment near the riverbank. The remains were dated to a medieval burial site, the boundaries of which the river had eroded over the centuries, and when the decision was taken to go ahead with building the bridge it had stirred up a good deal of controversy. People argued that the bridge should not be built on what they considered to be sacred ground, but nonetheless it went ahead and from that grew up the superstitious belief that the uneasy dead buried there still walked at midnight. But, whatever about at midnight, in broad daylight we found nothing to fear on Bone Bridge and, although we would never dream of swimming there, it was fun to stand on one side of the bridge and throw something, a stick perhaps, over the wall, then run across and count how long it took for it to emerge on the other side.

  Not very far downstream from the Surly, the river narrowed and as a result flowed faster once more. It tumbled past the old mill and through the town park, on the other side of which it became something completely different again in the place we called the Pool. The Pool could only be accessed by foot and by way of a turnstile gate and a narrow path leading off the park. A quiet green place, even the water looked green from the reflected trees, and the light came dappled through the overhanging branches. It was the sort of place one might expect to be popular with couples or for families to eat their picnics, and yet for some reason not many people went there. It had a lonely feel to it. Or perhaps they knew or sensed that the Pool was treacherous. It looked peaceful, innocent even, except for a certain simmering, which was how my father described the tiny movements on the surface of the water. “Don’t let that fool you,” he told me more than once, because this was where the river was more unpredictable. Those eddies, that simmering movement of the water was a clue to what was happening underneath, and this was the part of the river where you needed to be most careful. Ken Fitzgerald once told me and the other kids a story about a boy who had gone in to swim there and been pulled down by the force of the swirling water and then had become entangled in the reeds on the bed of the river and drowned. When they took him out the reeds were still wrapped around his neck and face like giant green spaghetti. The story gave me nightmares for about a week afterwards. Eventually I asked my father if it were true. He said he could not be certain but that if it were true then the boy had probably made the mistake of kicking and thrashing in an attempt to disentangle himself. Sadly, he said, that would only have made matters worse. The trick was to stay calm when you encountered reeds in water, and to try to float through them using your arms as paddles. I remember comforting myself with the belief that in a similar situation this was what I would have done.

  In truth I was nervous of the water and still using armbands in the summer of 1983. My father did all he could to tempt me to try to swim without them. He took me to the Dive from time to time, early in the morning when it was quiet and there were no big lads about to make me nervous with their splashing and horseplay. But I preferred to fish for minnows than swim.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Come next summer we’ll have you swimming like a little fish. Just you wait and see.”

  Chapter 6

  On Saturday the 24th of September my father dropped me to Violet-May’s concert on his bicycle. He said it didn’t seem right that I should walk there on my birthday, so I sat on the crossbar of his bike, my legs outst
retched so as to protect my new birthday shoes from the dust. They were black patent, I could see my face in them, and I wanted to keep it that way. I asked him to drop me off at the Duffs’ gate but instead he cycled all the way up the drive and insisted on waiting while I knocked at the front door. The moment I heard footsteps approaching from within the house, I waved to him to let him know that he could go now. I wanted him to go in case it was Robbie Duff who answered the door. I did not want Robbie to know I had come like a baby, on a bike with my daddy. But my father stayed until the door opened and after all it was only Mrs Duff. My father waved at me and I waved back.

  Mrs Duff came out onto the wide top step and peered at him as if she had never before in her life seen a man on a bicycle. Then she looked down at me.

  “I assume you are here for the concert, Kay, but if so you are very early. It doesn’t begin for another two hours. We are only just finishing lunch.”

  “I asked her to come early,” said Violet-May, coming up behind her mother. “Come on and see what we’ve done, Kay.”

  “But you haven’t finished your lunch, Violet-May,” said Mrs Duff.

  Violet-May ignored her. She came out onto the step and took me by the arm. As she led me away, I looked back sadly at the house where most likely Robbie Duff was eating his lunch.

  Walking around the side of the house with Violet-May, I was almost afraid to ask the question uppermost on my mind.

  “Is Robbie coming to the concert?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, if he feels like it.”

  “Do you think he’ll feel like it?” I asked anxiously.

  “How would I know?” said Violet-May. “And anyway who cares?”

  I cared, I cared so much that I wanted to yell at her that she didn’t deserve a brother like Robbie Duff. Instead I said, “Is he still in bad humour about being sent to boarding school?”

  “Probably, but today he’s in bad humour because Prince didn’t come home last night.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Robbie really likes Prince, doesn’t he?”

  Violet-May nodded her head, “Yes, he does. Sometimes I think he likes him more than anybody else in this house. Stupid dog.”

  I almost gasped when I saw the second garage. It had been completely transformed with flowers in vases everywhere, and chairs with cushions set out in rows. The stage had a curtain now: a simple dark-green fabric had been draped over a length of curtain wire but somehow it had transformed the makeshift platform, lending it an air of mystery and suspense.

  “Did Robbie do that?” I asked.

  Violet-May nodded her head happily.

  I sat in the front row while she climbed up onto the stage and spoke her lines to me. She was word-perfect and I clapped when she had finished.

  Then we went into the house and Violet-May and Rosemary-June were hurried upstairs by Mrs Duff to change and I was told to wait for them in the drawing room. I went and perched on the edge of a pink-and-gold sofa and listened to the sound of a gold clock ticking from its place high up on the white mantelpiece and wondered what it was like to have so many beautiful things in just one room of your house. In my opinion, our house was the nicest house of any I had seen in our estate – but this, this was something else entirely.

  They came into the drawing room together, Violet-May and Rosemary-June, the fair and the dark child side by side, and I could only gaze at them in wonder mixed with envy. I was wearing my best dress and my new shoes that day but, as soon as I saw the Duff girls dressed for the party, I felt plain and ordinary. My mother gave birth to me at the age of forty-three and all my childhood she had dressed me in clothes she’d made herself from Simplicity patterns, with matching Alice bands, handknitted jumpers and cardigans with pearl buttons. Next to the Duffs I looked old-fashioned and, that day in particular, I truly knew it. Violet-May’s party dress was made of heavy silk, pale violet in colour, and she had a hair slide with a purple flower attached above her right ear. Because it was her birthday, she had been allowed to wear blindingly white, lace-trimmed knee socks instead of the hated tights, and on her feet she wore what looked to me like the same shoes that had caused so much drama a week earlier. Somehow her mother had managed to find a match for the ruined shoe or else she had bought a fresh pair. Rosemary-June was dressed in pale yellow and she had a yellow ribbon tied in a big bow on top of her blonde hair.

  “You both look perfectly beautiful,” said Mrs Duff, coming in behind them.

  “Yes, I do think I look very pretty,” said Rosemary-June.

  I knew it was true but all the same I was embarrassed for her and wondered what my mother would have to say if I said such a big-headed thing about myself.

  The birthday concert was a big success. The audience was made up of Mr and Mrs Duff, Mrs Riley who came to clean for Mrs Duff, two ladies from Mrs Duff’s Bridge club, three girls from our class, one from Violet-May’s piano class and three from her ballet class and one from Rosemary-June’s violin class who had come with her mother.

  Rosemary-June made only two mistakes in her violin recital apparently but it was hard for me to tell where she had gone wrong as it all sounded terrible to me. Violet-May sang beautifully and did an extra song when she got an encore from Mr Duff.

  But the play was the highlight of the afternoon, in spite of the fact that it starred Violet-May alone, aside from the occasional fleeting appearance on the stage of Rosemary-June in the roles of (a) a messenger and (b) a drudge/serving woman. It failed in only one aspect: nobody found it remotely sad. I had written a villain who was a sort of amalgam of Rumpelstiltskin and every witch in every fairytale I had ever read, but Violet-May, terrified the character would steal her thunder, had insisted he never actually appear on stage. Instead I stood at the back of the second garage and delivered the villain’s lines by shouting them through the small open window. Based on the same reasoning, Violet-May had decreed that I also play the part of the invisible Prince Charming, but I am no actor and my prince and villain were indistinguishable from one another. For some reason this, and the sight of Violet-May talking to a window tickled the audience (all twenty of them) pink, and they laughed when they should have been moved to tears. But everyone applauded boisterously when Violet-May, in solitary splendour, took her final bows. Mr Duff threw a long-stemmed red rose onto the stage and Robbie, who had put in an appearance after all, wolf-whistled through his teeth until Mrs Duff complained he was giving her a headache.

  I had come in from my spot under the window and was sitting in a seat in the back when suddenly Robbie yelled, “Author, author!”

  Violet-May, who was in the act of stepping down from the stage, turned around and got up again.

  “And the other author!” yelled Robbie.

  Then a hand fell on my shoulder and I was pulled to my feet. I saw it was Robbie and he smiled at me and pushed me gently forward and I found myself walking up the “aisle” with all eyes on me.

  Mr Duff came forward and held out his hand. “Indeed, indeed, Miss Kay must join Miss Violet-May in the limelight,” he said.

  He helped me up onto the stage, where I stood next to Violet-May. I saw her looking at me with a strange expression on her face but then she smiled and took my hand and we took our bows together.

  Afterwards we all went into the house for the party. Mrs Duff insisted that the guests go round the front of the house and in through the front door, but Violet-May grabbed my hand and we stayed back until the others had gone. Then she led me across the garden, up the steps to a terrace and in the back door to the huge kitchen.

  I was desperately thirsty and she waited while I filled myself a glass of water from the big white stone sink. As I drank I looked about me at the polished wood floor and the timber-beamed ceiling. There were two archways in opposite walls.

  “What’s in there?” I asked, pointing to one.

  “That’s the butler’s pantry,” said Violet-May.

  “Have you got a butler?”

  “No.”

  “T
hen why have you got a butler’s pantry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s in the other one?” I asked, pointing to the other archway.

  “You’ll find out if you’ll hurry up and come on,” said Violet-May.

  I put down the glass and she grabbed my hand and led me through the second archway and up a narrow circular iron staircase.

  “You have two stairs,” I said in wonder.

  “This was the one the servants used,” said Violet-May.

  “Have you any servants?”

  “No, just Mrs Riley who cleans, and a man who comes in to cut the grass.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, thrilled to the bone.

  “Just to my room,” said Violet-May.

  “Oh,” I said, a little disappointed.

  We left the stairway on the first-floor landing, where Violet-May’s bedroom was, although I would have liked to continue on up and discover where it finally ended. But there was no time for that today and I followed Violet-May to her room where, having shut the door behind us, she let out a loud whooping noise, made a running leap for the bed and hurled herself upon it.

  “Did you hear them clapping?” she said. “They clapped and they clapped and they clapped!” She pushed herself to her feet then and began bouncing up and down on the bed. “That was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” she chanted. “I’m so happy, so happy, so happy!” She beckoned to me. “Come and bounce with me, Kay, come and bounce!”