On Bone Bridge

by Maria Hoey

  “Stay there while I think,” she said and once again she was pinning me to the seat with the force of her arms.

  My instinct was to struggle but I remembered the force of the way she had dragged me down and I decided not to test her just yet. I did not want to remove any doubt she might have that she could actually hold me physically there. So I made a great effort to force myself to relax.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Rosemary?” I remember that my own voice sounded remarkably unworried. I even managed a smile of mock surprise.

  “Be quiet please,” said Rosemary sharply. “I’m trying to think.”

  She was staring down at me, but I was almost certain that she was not really seeing me. Her face was fixed and intent as though she were working out some complex puzzle. Perhaps I should have stayed quiet at that point, but I didn’t.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere else?” I said. “Somewhere where we can –”

  “I said shut up!” Rosemary screamed. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I need to think!”

  I struggled then but her grip on me tightened. Her face was too close to mine now, contorted and almost unrecognisable, and I saw the rage in those normally mild and smiling eyes.

  “Why are you doing this, Rosemary?” I said. “You can’t really want to harm me. And even if you did, think about it logically, you can’t keep getting away with these things, nobody can. People will work it out, they’ll guess. You told me yourself that Violet-May knows what you did that day on the bridge. And Robbie obviously doesn’t trust you around Oliver.”

  All the time I was talking Rosemary was looming over me, her eyes fixed on my face, but I still had no sense that she was really hearing me. I tried desperately to think of something that might get through to her.

  “The diary,” I said, “they’ll find the diary. They’ll find it and then everyone will know that Alexander’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “They won’t find it if I find it first,” said Rosemary. “And I will find it first because you told me yourself where you put it. Did you forget that, Kay?”

  I remember wanting to slap my own face for being the idiot I was. “I lied,” I said. “It isn’t where I said it was.”

  A gleam came into Rosemary’s eyes. “And were you lying when you told me what was in it too, Kay? Were you lying when you told me you’d written that it was Violet-May who dropped Alexander into the river?”

  I hesitated, unsure how best to answer, and Rosemary watched me and I saw that she was smiling once more, obviously amused at my confusion.

  “You’re not very bright, are you, Kay?” she said. “Well, never mind, either way I’ll find it and if I need to I’ll burn it. But if you were telling me the truth – well, think about it – there it is in black and white – Violet-May did that terrible thing to her poor little brother. After all, everyone thinks she did it anyway, dropped him by mistake, but now they’ll believe she did it on purpose. And who knows what she might do in the future, who else she may try to harm?”

  I knew she was thinking about harming Oliver once more. At the same time I became aware that her grip on me had slackened. The time for playing possum was over and I made a lunge for freedom. I took her by surprise and, although she clawed after me, all she got was a fistful of my hair. She yanked it brutally and I cried out with the pain as I pulled myself free of her and ran. But she was right behind me and then she was on me, felling me with the force of her body. Then she had me by the hair again, with both hands this time, and I screamed with pain as she used it to drag me toward the edge of the riverbank. She bent over me and attempted to roll me forward but I clawed at her face and that was when she kicked me in the side not once but twice and then she was bending over me again and the next thing I knew I was falling.

  I hit the water hard on my back and it was so cold. My heart began to thump violently in my chest and I remember thinking – I can’t swim! I can’t swim! Water flooded into my mouth and I realised that I was actually shouting the words out loud. I was panicking which was what I most needed not to do. I tried to calm myself, seeking with my feet for the riverbed only to find I was out of my depth which made me panic all over again.

  I looked up and saw Rosemary on the riverbank, watching as I struggled and I called out to her.

  “Help me, Rosemary! Please help me!”

  But she did not move and I floundered again, flailing my arms and legs wildly in a desperate effort to keep afloat. An image of my father came to me, trying to demonstrate the dog’s paddle, and I stopped thrashing about and tried to splashily swim. I kept going under but did succeed in moving closer to the riverbank, and then a little closer still, enough that I was able to reach out and claw at the mud of the bank. I found a handhold in a rock that jutted through the earth but there was nothing else to help me pull myself out of the water and so I clung on with all my strength and peered up into the falling rain, calling to Rosemary, whom I could no longer see, to help me. She suddenly loomed above me and stood looking down at me, frowning. When she began taking off her jacket I had a moment of pure hope. Her shoes were next and I remember thinking that she had come to her senses. She disappeared again for a moment then reappeared a little further along the riverbank where it formed a natural curve and I saw her lower herself to the grass, then swing her feet over the riverbank and lower herself into the water.

  I concentrated on keeping my grip on my single handhold then and waited for her to come for me. I heard the splash and fall of the water as she swam toward me and I turned and watched her drawing closer, her rain-wet face, her blonde hair spreading on the water behind her, her blue-eyed stare fixed on me.

  “Hold onto me,” she said, then her arm came out and I let go of the rock with my right hand first and grabbed hold of her before letting go with my other hand.

  Rosemary drew me toward her, turning me in the water so that my back was against her chest. Her right arm tightened across my upper body and then she pushed away from the riverbank, taking me with her. Into even deeper water. I opened my mouth to protest and at the same time Rosemary’s arm loosened its reassuringly tight hold on me and I felt a weight on the top of my head as I was pushed under. Water rushed into my mouth and throat. I struggled and thrashed and managed to surface though she still was pushing on the top of my head. I clawed at her face and, feeling something soft, knowing it was one of her eyes, I dug my nails in hard. She loosened her grip on me and I pushed myself free of her. As I floundered she came after me and grabbed my head again. She pushed me down but I grabbed hold of her and pulled her with me. Down, down, down we went and the last thing I remember before the reeds took hold was how different the water was there, so darkly, darkly green.

  I did not feel frightened of them at first. Their touch was soft on my face and neck, a sort of gentle licking which as I wriggled to free myself became a gentle sucking. Then they wrapped themselves about me silently like great wet serpents and I became aware of Rosemary once more, still close to me but not near enough anymore to reach out and harm me. Even if she had been she posed no danger to me any longer. She had begun to thrash and kick and I knew that the reeds had her too.

  That was when I heard my father’s voice. I heard it so clearly it was as if he were there with me in that cold green water, and he was telling me what he had told me all those years ago when I first heard from him the story of the boy who had drowned in the Pool.

  “The trick is to stay calm,” he said. “Try to float through the reeds using your arms as paddles.”

  But it is not easy to be calm when reeds like giant green spaghetti are encircling your arms, your legs and your throat, when almost all your energy is focused on the overpowering need to breathe and the fight not to. But I tried, I tried for as long as I could until in the end I gave in as I had to and inhaled. In one great spasmodic breath I drew water into my mouth and it was like accepting death.

  In the moments before death supposedly a person’s life flashes before their eyes, the past
spooling before them. That did not quite happen to me. After the struggle was over and I was surrendering to the inevitable, one thought came to me: the heroine cannot die, she must live to tell the story. It was followed by another: you have never been the heroine, you are only Little Kay Kelly, the watcher-on. Then I could see myself at Violet-May’s play, standing behind the second garage, invisible, delivering my lines through the open window. And at that memory something rose up inside me, a shot of spirit, of rage – no, more than rage, of outrage – Kay Kelly should not die like this. But it was too late. The last thought that came to me was: I’m sorry, Daddy, I did try, I really did, but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it.

  Chapter 30

  I was aware of a great weight on my chest, like something was pushing down on it. It hurt and a thought flashed through my mind that I could not be dead because dead people cannot feel pain. I opened my eyes to see Robbie Duff leaning over me, his eyes fixed intently on my face. The weight on my chest lifted suddenly and I knew then that what I had been feeling were his hands on me. Then something rose up in my throat and I felt myself being rolled over none too gently. My nostrils scented damp earth and I was violently sick into the grass. This time the hands that rolled me onto my back were gentle and Robbie was leaning over me once more, raising my head and holding me there against his arm. I saw Violet-May standing a little way back, her phone in her hand. She saw me watching and she smiled at me bleakly. The next thing I was aware of was my lungs which felt as if they were burning while the rest of me was cold, colder than I had ever been in my life before. I was aware that I was shivering violently and my teeth were chattering. I understood now why they called it chattering, it was like a cacophony of sound in my ears and it was coming from my mouth.

  “She’s freezing,” said Robbie.

  A moment later something came around me. My fingers brushed against it and I realised it was his tweed jacket.

  Then a young voice said, “Is she dead?”

  I let my head drop to one side so I could see who was speaking. Two boys of about twelve or thirteen, each with a fishing rod in his hand, were standing a little way back, staring at me with avid eyes.

  “I’m not dead,” I tried to say but my voice did not work – instead I began to cough so violently it was more like choking.

  Robbie leaned me forward some more and held me there until the spasm passed.

  Then I tried again and a voice that sounded very unlike my own managed this time to say croakily, “I’m not dead.”

  “She pushed her,” said the other boy. “The other woman pushed her.”

  And everything came back to me then in a flood of memory, Rosemary dragging me by my hair to the edge of the riverbank, the savage kicks, the shock of the cold as I hit the water and the moment of hope as I saw Rosemary taking off her jacket. The force of her hands on my head pushing me under and last of all the slippery softness of the treacherous reeds on my skin and the sight of her thrashing and flailing next to me.

  I leaned back and gazed up at Robbie. “Rosemary?”

  He shook his head gently.

  “How did I ...” I began but I could feel another coughing episode coming on and I cut my question short.

  “He went in after you, missus,” said the first boy, pointing to Robbie. “He got you out first and then he went back for the other woman, the one that pushed you in the river and tried to drown you.”

  Too many pronouns I remember thinking, so confusing when there are too many pronouns. But I caught the sense of what he was saying and looking at Robbie I realised for the first time that he too was shivering and that his clothes were saturated and sticking to his body. I remember thinking, he saved me, he got me out first and he saved me.

  “She didn’t push me,” I croaked. “It was an accident. Nobody was to blame.”

  After all, it was what I had been saying, what we had all been saying for what seemed forever now. What was one more lie?

  I was still shivering even with the jacket around me so Robbie sent Violet-May to fetch the blanket from her car. She came back with it just as two ambulances arrived within seconds of each other.

  Robbie asked Violet-May to go with me and I was a little surprised when she nodded in silent acquiescence.

  “But you’ll stay here until they ... until they find her, won’t you, Robbie?” she said.

  “Yes, I’ll stay,” said Robbie.

  I knew then that Rosemary was still in the Pool.

  Then I was lifted off the ground and carried into the ambulance.

  At the hospital I was examined and tests were run and then I was informed that I was being kept in overnight for observation. I was glad. I had no desire to go back to the Duff house and, even if it had been habitable, there was nothing and no one waiting for me at my parents’ home. And so I let myself be put to bed in a hospital ward.

  At some point I must have fallen into an unhappy doze, the pathway to unhappy dreams out of which I woke with an unpleasant little jerk and found myself once again staring into the face of Robbie Duff.

  He was not watching me this time, he had fallen asleep in the chair next to my bed, the bag that had fallen to the ground in my struggle with Rosemary lying on his lap. I could see the little twitching movements of his eyeballs under the thin skin of his lids and, as memory flooded back, I remember wondering if he too was dreaming about the sullen dark waters of the Pool and I imagined what it had cost him to leave his sister down there wrapped about in those cold slippery reeds. At the thought I almost felt their hold on me once more and I stirred in the bed and Robbie must have heard it because he started awake.

  For a moment he just stared me as though puzzled to find me there.

  “You’re awake,” he said.

  “So are you,” I said and my voice though still not my own sounded a little more robust.

  We looked at each other then for a while without saying anything at all.

  “Rosemary,” I said then. “Did they ... have they ...?”

  “Yes, they found her,” said Robbie and he bowed his head.

  “I’m sorry, Robbie,” I said.

  Then we were both silent for a long time.

  “How did you find me?” I said. “How did you know where we’d gone?”

  “You have Violet-May to thank for that,” said Robbie. “She found Rosemary’s phone – she’d left it on the kitchen table. She checked her messages. She’d been feeling uneasy after overhearing some of a conversation between you and her. And she saw the messages from Rosemary-June asking you to meet her outside of the house today. And there was the message you left me too, you mentioned Rosemary in that. As soon as I got it I booked the first flight back.”

  Of course. That would have been like an alarm bell to him.

  “She’d seen Rosemary watching you and it worried her, so she decided to go and find you. I arrived back at the house just as she was leaving, so I came with her. We saw the car outside the park but we couldn’t find you. Then I remembered that part of the river beyond the park proper.”

  “The Pool,” I whispered.

  “You were both at the bottom by the time we got there. But there was no way of knowing that and if it hadn’t been for those two kids being there ...”

  He got up and walked to the single small window and stood with his back to me. I had come to recognise that this was characteristic of him: he turned away to hide emotion or even perplexity.

  After a while I said, “Those boys, they said you brought me out first and then you went back for Rosemary. You knew it was already too late for her?”

  “I didn’t know,” he said, still with his back to me.

  “But …”

  He turned and looked at me. “The boys told me when we got there. Rosemary pushed you under, she tried to drown you. You tried to make them believe it was an accident but you and I know it was no accident. And I knew a great many other things by then. Violet-May told me a great deal today that I just wish I had been told before.”<
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  He was looking me fixedly and I thought I saw reproach in his eyes.

  “I see,” I said.

  “So, if you’re asking me if I made a choice, Kay, the answer is yes. I brought you out first and I left Rosemary there and I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. But I made a choice, Kay, and I chose you.”

  “So Violet-May told you about Alexander,” I said.

  Robbie was sitting next to my bed once more. He looked up from the polystyrene cup he was holding between both hands. “Yes, she did,” he said.

  After our earlier exchange, he had gone to get himself a coffee, or that was the reason he gave, except that when he came back about ten minutes later he had a stoic smile on his lips but tell-tale red-rimmed eyes. It pained me to think of him crying in a hospital toilet or some corner of the car park.

  While he had been gone I had lain in my hospital bed and thought about what he had done. I thought about him diving into the dark waters of the pool and finding us there, both of us caught in our prison of weeds, both of us only barely alive. His decision had to be made in a nanosecond. Surely every instinct should have sent him first to the aid of his own flesh and blood. But he had chosen me: he had closed his heart against his sister, saved me and left her down there all alone in the long weeds.

  “But you’d already guessed,” I said.

  “Guessed?” said Robbie. “More than that. I’d known for a very long time that there was something wrong with Rosemary. It was she who poisoned Prince, you know.”

  “I know, she told me so today,” I said.

  “She admitted it? Did she say why she’d done it?”