Strangers on a Bridge

by Louise Mangos

  ‘What did he say while all this was going on?’ I asked when Oliver seemed steady enough.

  ‘He said he was sent to look after you. I didn’t understand, Mum, but he said that one day we would all be a family. He said I was getting in the way. I think he’s crazy. He kind of scares me now.’

  Water spattered forward from his face as he spoke, eyes closed. I squeezed his hand, horrified at the thought of what might have happened if I hadn’t turned up at that moment. Tears sprang to my eyes as I thought of Oliver trying to defend me, knowing he would have had no chance once the knife was in Manfred’s hands.

  ‘I realised the knife thing looked really bad. Then I tripped over some grass and fell against that post. I landed here.’

  Oliver pointed to his side, an occasional inward sob the residue of his earlier trauma. I looked at the red scratches and a purple mark on the back of his hip. I sucked in my breath, a whistle across my teeth. Those wounds on his hip and back weren’t just from a fence post. My head felt like it was about to explode. Manfred’s hands had fallen on Oliver’s body. But in the furore, I wondered whose story would be believed in an interrogation. I was too far away to have seen what was going on. And the wielded weapon was actually Oliver’s knife.

  ‘It’s okay, Oli, it’s going to be okay.’

  I forced myself to sound calm for him, relieved he still had enough youthful innocence to talk about this, despite his humiliation. If it had been Leon, I might never have had such a detailed account of their conversation. I could not forget that look in Manfred’s eyes. I asked myself again whether he would have used the knife. I realised I had been stupid to let this thing go on so long. A pyroclastic swelling of anger was now building in me. I had never felt such rage.

  ‘Mum, why won’t he go away? Is that what a stalker is? You know, when Dad and you were talking about it in the kitchen that day? I thought it was just someone who watches people.’

  Oliver flung these questions at me. I reached for the towel on the rail as he turned off the shower.

  ‘I didn’t know this man would try to talk to you again, Oli. He has been following me, and yes, that’s called “stalking”, but usually a person who does this doesn’t come so close. I’m so sorry I didn’t do enough to prevent this happening. I’m so sorry.’

  And as though the tables were turned, and I was the one who required attention, Oliver slipped his arms around my neck again, and I carefully wrapped the towel around his back. As I clung to him, the front of his body soaked my clothes from the shower. I had to control my anger to be able to feed Oliver my love.

  It was nearing lunchtime. Leon still hadn’t come back from school. I left Oliver sitting in front of a cartoon on television and marched outside the house, up towards the farm. I made my way towards the copse near the old plum tree. I couldn’t see anybody. I walked towards the forest where I had last seen Manfred, and stopped before entering the trees.

  ‘Where are you, you freak? Come here right now, come out and face me, you, you pervert. You will pay for this,’ I yelled, rage making my voice hoarse and shaky. Spittle flew from between my teeth.

  Manfred had made himself scarce, must have surely known that, this time, he had gone too far. I walked back down the road, stood in sight of the footpath leading up from the village and waited for Leon. Minutes passed, my heart rate calmed, and I tried to relax the muscles in my face, unclench my jaws. Manfred was nowhere to be seen.

  Right on time, I watched Leon wandering up the road.

  ‘Hey. What’re you doing here, Mum? What’s for lunch? I’m starved.’

  The familiar questions. Back to normality.

  ‘I was taking a walk, and thought I’d wait for you. All okay at school?’

  I tried to make my voice sound normal. Leon continued towards the house.

  ‘Uh, yeah, no problems.’

  I walked next to him, and put my arm through his. He smiled at me uncertainly as my eyes searched the fields.

  ‘What’s your problem, Mum? You’re acting a little strange.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I was late back this morning. There’ll just be bread and cheese for lunch, bit of a spontaneous affair.’

  ‘I’m okay with that. Chill, Mum.’

  Leon looked sideways at me, but didn’t shrug away from my arm, and I squeezed him affectionately. We entered the house together. Leon dropped his schoolbag in the hallway and wandered towards the kitchen, but backtracked when he heard the TV in the living room.

  ‘Hey, toe-rag, what’re you doing home so early? You sick?’ Leon asked Oliver.

  I held my breath, wondering about Oliver’s state of mind, wondering what he would say to his brother.

  ‘Iten let us out early. We could come home if we wanted,’ replied Oliver.

  Nothing about what happened. He seemed okay. I smiled at him over Leon’s shoulder. He shrugged and smiled back. It would stay between us.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Oliver and Leon put their coats on after lunch to head back to school, and I grabbed my jacket. As I bent to tie my shoes, Oliver put his arms around me.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay to go back to school?’ I asked quietly.

  He nodded hesitantly.

  ‘I have to run a few errands in the village,’ I lied. ‘And I’ll meet you after your last class. I’ll give you a ride home as well, okay?’

  ‘Come on, snotty,’ Leon said humorously. ‘Stop the soppy stuff, let’s get to school.’

  As we left the house together, Leon gave me a curious glance. I reversed the car out of the garage and the boys clambered in. Manfred was nowhere to be seen.

  I wanted to reach back and put my hand on Oliver’s knee, but knew the unspoken etiquette between the two brothers would only elicit another comment from Leon. The boys chatted about a football tournament some of the classes were organising over lunchtimes in the playground the following week. I breathed a ragged sigh for Oliver. He seemed to have recovered from the encounter. He was at least talking normally to Leon, his arms raised briefly as he described something to his older brother. I dropped them at the entrance to the school playground, and when they had disappeared into the building, I drove home.

  I sat down at the kitchen table and put my head in my hands, grinding the palms into my eye sockets.

  What the hell had I been thinking at the beginning, trying to help this man? I couldn’t cure him. That was so ridiculous. I thought I could be the therapist, the practitioner. Was my life so empty that I had nothing better to do? Well, it hadn’t worked. It wasn’t as though I’d even been to medical school. I could hardly consider myself a doctor. All my decisions until now had been born out of stupidity. I felt like a fool, even down to becoming complacent to his presence, not realising the danger I was truly putting my family in.

  I stood up abruptly, chair scraping on the floor tiles. I searched behind some pots and pans in the cupboard, and pulled out a bottle of white spirit I usually used to light the dish under the fondue burner. I took a couple of old newspapers out of the recycling bin, a box of matches and left the house without pausing to put on a jacket.

  I limped up the driveway and along the road to the farm track. Balling up the sheets of newspaper, I scattered them on the ground near the old plum tree and sprinkled them with the entire contents of the bottle of fuel. Dropping first one match, then a second when the first one didn’t light, the paper whooshed into flame, dead grass soon crackling.

  I hoped this pyromaniac act would be cathartic, that it would help not only destroy the physical nest from where we were all being observed, but also destroy Manfred’s notion that he had any control over our lives. But as I watched the flames licking around the bark of the tree, it occurred to me that this futile gesture wasn’t going to put an end to the threat that now included my family. Simon and the boys. It wasn’t going to put an end to the crux of the problem.

  Back in the house, I opened my handbag and rummaged through its chaotic mess. Lip balm, tissues, paper clip
s, credit card slips, and pens that no longer worked. At the bottom I found what I was looking for. Manfred’s bipolar medication. I had never had the opportunity to try and persuade him to take it.

  I stared at the box, studied the brand name, Quilonorm, and reflected on what Gerry had once said.

  It would have been better for everyone if you had not been running in the Lorze Gorge that day.

  From the kitchen window I could see smoke drifting out from behind the plum tree, and from time to time a lick of flames. The tree didn’t go up like a torch, as I would have expected from something half-dead, but smouldered disappointingly for an hour or so, before a farm vehicle stopped on the track. Someone, the farmer or his wife or a farmhand, telephoned the fire brigade and they came to put out the fire before it could spread to the farm. The stump of the tree still stood two metres high, blackened branches pointing accusatory fingers at the farm, the barn, our house, maybe Manfred.

  I wanted desperately to talk to Simon, but he was in London on a two-day trip to finally secure and sign the contract he had been working towards for months. It was a pivotal moment for both the company and his career. I shouldn’t disturb him. Anyway, he would have told me to call the police, and I knew I should do this, but the failure of my previous attempts to have Manfred stopped remained at the forefront of my mind. Would Police Officer Schmid still not believe ‘the fantasies of an eleven-year-old boy’? Oliver was twelve now, had celebrated his birthday a month ago. Would that make him more likely to be believed? I didn’t think so, especially as Schmid now thought he was a liar and a thief. And Oliver wouldn’t want the whole sordid thing dragged up among strangers.

  I had taken an incredible risk by burdening myself with Manfred. At the beginning I’d been too naive to see he wouldn’t accept my help. And now he had displayed this dangerous behaviour, I couldn’t risk his breaking in and casually picking up our breadknife in the kitchen. Or worse, fiddling with the car and putting all of us in danger. I finally had to agree that his own son’s original assessment of him must have been correct. He was beyond help. In addition to which it seemed he would stop at nothing to have me. Even at the expense of my family.

  Adding the latest encounter with Oliver to the list of Manfred’s offences had only enhanced his form of insanity. I must stop him before he ruined all our lives. I needed to be exonerated from my original error. He must go, and go for good. There was no getting rid of him for an hour, or a day, only to be a continual threat in our lives. This thing had to be permanent. I had the tools. Now it remained to be seen if I also had the power of persuasion.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Once the fire department had packed up and left the farm, I drove back down to the village. I sat on the wall outside the school and waited for Oliver and Leon to finish their last class. We went back home together. Oliver seemed a little nervous, but bravely stoic. Leon made no comment about my presence, assuming I had run my errand in the village.

  As we took off our jackets and hung them on the coatstand, Leon ran up the stairs to his room, and I quietly reassured Oliver this would never, ever happen again; that I was going to make sure that, after tomorrow, we would never see Manfred Guggenbuhl again.

  I could not have known what was going through Oliver’s mind. Perhaps he imagined I had the power to make the police or a doctor come and take that man away. I was his mum. He would assume I could do anything. He accepted my promise without asking how, and seemed more comfortable.

  That evening I sat beside him for a while before he went to sleep. There were only so many times I could ask him if he was all right, whether he wanted to talk about what happened. He had closed in on himself, maybe realising that his openness with me earlier in the day had caused as much anguish for me as it had for him. As I sat next to him on the floor beside his bed, speaking of sledding and skiing, and plans for Christmas, he patted me gently on the head, and spoke as though our roles were reversed.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum, I’m pretty tired. You can go now. It’s okay.’

  I checked on him again before I went to bed. He made a couple of whimpering sounds in his sleep as I watched, and I wanted to climb under his duvet with him, hold him like I did when he was a small child. My chest tightened, remembering his wondering eyes on the newborn calf in the field next to the house.

  I went to my bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and dialled Simon’s mobile number. No answer. He must still be out to dinner, celebrating the deal perhaps. The ringing clicked over to his voicemail, and my mouth went dry. I ended the call before his message had finished. Despite being ready to tell him everything, there was always the thought that Simon, now more than ever, would still blame me for all this.

  The next day was Tuesday. I woke up with gritty eyes. I felt like I hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours. As I prepared breakfast for the boys, Simon called.

  ‘Hey, Al, I saw you called last night. Sorry I didn’t answer. We were in a loud restaurant, and by the time I saw your number, I thought it might be too late to call back.’

  He knew if I had needed him urgently I would have left a message. I could hear him moving about his hotel room, clicking his briefcase, packing his things.

  He called me ‘Al’.

  ‘No, it’s okay. Did you sign the deal? Are you coming back today?’

  ‘Yes, we signed the deal, at last, thank God. I just have a few things to clear up this morning and then I’m flying back at lunchtime.’

  ‘Congratulations, Simon, I know how much effort’s gone into this. You should be so proud of yourself.’ I paused. ‘I just wondered if you’d mind if I went for a hike this evening. I know you might want to celebrate, but the weather forecast is good until tomorrow. My ankle feels better when I get a little exercise, and I’d planned to take a couple of photos before the season changes. The autumn colours are still so beautiful.’

  ‘No problem. After all the stress, I’m absolutely knackered. We can wait for the weekend to celebrate.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you okay, Al? You sound out of sorts.’

  ‘It’s fine. I’ll be fine. Well done on the deal, honey. Everything will be fine.’

  I heard him stop what he was doing, to concentrate on our conversation, but knew he wasn’t sure what to ask. If he could have seen my face… I took a silent breath, hating the remote neutrality of the phone. Before I could speak, he continued.

  ‘Where are you going to hike?’

  ‘Oh, above the farm, on this side of the lake. My usual. To see the sunset…’

  I feared he might ask if he could join me. I’d had the feeling, over the past few weeks, that he wanted to talk to me properly, wanted to examine what was going on between us, but knew he could only initiate a conversation without the boys around. I wanted desperately to reconnect with Simon, but there was one thing I had to do before I could feel free. It was with relief, then, that he said he would pick up takeaway pizzas again on the way home for himself and the boys. He re-emphasised that he was exhausted and needed a good night’s sleep.

  ‘Bye then, see you later on tonight,’ I said.

  ‘We can celebrate my success later. Hopefully I won’t be going away for a while, sweetheart.’

  It was the first time he had used an endearment in weeks.

  It felt as blithe as a kiss.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  As I walked the path next to the road leading around the lake, my senses buzzed. I kept my eyes mostly earthward, one moment afraid to see Manfred, the next afraid I wouldn’t. But knowing without doubt that he would follow me.

  Traffic was frequent at this time of day, people heading home from work. The sun was low in the sky. It skimmed the distant ridge of the Zugerberg to my rear. A cyclist passed me on the pavement, making me jump as I looked up. He called a jovial apology and pedalled on without looking back, his rear strobe light blinking along the path. The straps of my backpack dug into my shoulders, burning.

  Two fishermen sat on a jetty by the lake, one smoking a Krumme, a twist
ed cheroot. Both men silently contemplated their motionless fishing lines. I smiled nervously as I passed and the non-smoker mumbled a gruff ‘Grüezi’. I followed the lane around the south of the lake, past the hamlet of Morgarten, and turned off the main road. Ten minutes’ brisk walk heading west on the one-lane road, and I hadn’t seen a soul. A breeze rattled the reeds at the lakeside and a moorhen chirped sharply, sending my heart fluttering to my throat.

  The late autumn sun had already disappeared behind the hill as I climbed the steep, leaf-strewn trail up through the forest. I walked slowly, allowing for the fact that Manfred might not be wearing appropriate footwear. I was determined that tonight he would be able to follow me.

  As I climbed higher into the forest, at each step I had to dig deep to keep hold of my courage. My brief thespian career was hanging in the balance. If I held the image of Oliver in my mind – not him sobbing in my arms, but his curious, lighthearted view of the world – I would pass my audition with flying colours. But when I heard the light swish of leaves and the rumble of a rolling stone underfoot somewhere behind me, I thought my head would burst.

  I reached the high point of the path where a gap in the trees afforded a spectacular view across the Aegeri Lake. I stepped gingerly towards the edge, grabbing the rusted railing of the barrier erected to prevent the over-adventurous from losing their foothold and falling several hundred feet to a sure demise. The steep drop to the lake hundreds of metres below invoked the familiar sensation of wanting to jump. I released the rail to wipe the sheen of perspiration from my temple and breathed in the smell of the rusting iron on my fingers.

  It reminded me of chain-links on park swings. The dangers of swinging as high as I could in the playgrounds of my youth rang a bizarre symmetry with flying high off cliffs and bridges in my mind. I continued up the trail, driven on by hearing Manfred trip on an exposed tree root behind me.