The Man on the Bridge

by Stephen Benatar

  She admired me for my calm acceptance; said that all the time she was discovering in me new qualities.

  From Dumfries—where we spent only that one night—I also made a phone call. Unlike Elizabeth, I didn’t reverse the charges.

  “Hello, Mum. It’s John.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “John.”

  “I wondered if you were going to get in touch.”

  “I wrote you a letter but forgot to send it. How are you?”

  “Not very well, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Where are you speaking from?”

  “Scotland.”

  “From Scotland? Then this must be expensive. I’d better say goodbye.”

  “No! No! Don’t do that! The money doesn’t matter. I wanted to give you some news. I’ll soon be getting married.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, aren’t you pleased?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “You will be. Her name’s Elizabeth. She’s impatient to meet you both. You’re going to like her a lot. She’s—”

  “What did your man have to say about it?”

  “She’s sitting beside me right now. Would you like to talk to her a minute—say hello to one another?”

  “Not really. No, I think it will be better if—”

  I wasn’t sure how much of this Elizabeth had been able to make out; my mother’s voice was softer than her father’s—especially at the moment—and for a lot of the time I hadn’t heard Mrs Sheldon.

  Anyway, I hoped for the best and handed over the receiver.

  Hoped for the best? No. I no longer hoped for anything.

  “Hello, Mrs Wilmot. This is just so nice! I’m sorry we had to spring it on you like this—that we couldn’t have gotten acquainted beforehand. But we’re going to put that right the moment we come south. Johnny’s going to bring me down to Folkestone first thing. Aren’t you, Johnny?”

  As I had guessed would happen, my mother was a different person with Elizabeth. After all, Elizabeth might be tarnished by association, but it wasn’t she who’d been at The Copper Kettle last Friday; it wasn’t she who’d walked out without saying goodbye to Mrs Watson.

  It wasn’t she who had been living for the past five months with Oliver.

  Besides. Whatever my mother’s feelings about the way the news had been broken or at the hurried fashion in which the marriage appeared to be taking place—and heaven alone knew what she might infer from that—she must at any rate be glad I had now taken up with a woman. Any woman, practically. One who was nicely spoken and polite and warm and friendly could only be twice as welcome.

  Surely?

  Which isn’t to say the going was completely smooth. Elizabeth spoke to my mother for about three minutes (“Yes, I like England very much … Oh, I think London’s great … I met him at the start of November … Oh, no, we won’t be going to America … For the time being we’ll be living in his flat on Gloucester Place…”) and after that she had a further two minutes—much easier—with my aunt. I also had a word with my aunt. “Well, who’s a dark horse then, who’s the darkest dark horse I ever met? Was this the girl you were cavorting with at Christmas? Mind you, I’m not saying you haven’t behaved a little badly: I get the feeling you’ve been causing your mother worry and I don’t know why you couldn’t have dropped her a hint or two. Anyway, end of lecture. Your bride sounds charming. Better than you deserve.” Before she rang off she said, “Your mother wants me to tell you she thinks Elizabeth seems sweet. You’re a dark horse, did anybody ever mention that? Quite the darkest dark horse I ever met.”

  “I think I’m going to like them,” said Elizabeth, after I’d put down the receiver. “Which doesn’t surprise me in the least, remembering all that you wrote in your letter. At least we do have some family left,” she added lightly, with a brave smile.

  I suddenly wondered what Mrs Cambourne was doing. How she was feeling. I even thought for a few seconds about James; alone in the empty flat.

  That night I took four aspirin … and slept perhaps an hour for each. We left Dumfries the following noon, en route for Selkirk. Before we did, Elizabeth bought some postcards. One was of a fountain in the High Street—a strange, unlikely monument commemorating the arrival of water in Dumfries about a hundred years earlier. This rose in tiers like an elegant cake-stand; on the top there were three gilded cranes—below those, four gilded dolphins—and below those again four gilded round-faced negro children, each bearing a small alligator in his arms. A dreamlike and exotic edifice. “We ought to get another,” suggested Elizabeth, “and send it to Oliver. I’m sure he, if anybody, would appreciate that fountain.”

  “Elizabeth,” I said. “Listen.” I knew she had to hear it sometime and I thought for my own sake it would be better to tell her now.

  “Yes?”

  “You need to get ready for some bad news.” She looked at me inquiringly. “I saw it in the paper yesterday but didn’t … didn’t want to spoil things for you right at the beginning.”

  “What is it?”

  “Really bad news.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s about Oliver.” I paused again, fractionally. “He’s dead.”

  Now she still looked at me inquiringly; but more as if she couldn’t comprehend.

  I went on, without expression: “There was an accident. He must have been drunk. He fell into the Thames.”

  And mightn’t that be true? Mightn’t it? The paper had said nothing about suicide. (Though what difference would it make?)

  “Oh, God!” she said. “Oh, God—oh, God! How horrible!”

  She put her hand on my arm. We were standing in the centre of the High Street, by the Mid-Steeple, and its clock began to strike twelve as eventually we turned and walked back to the Jaguar. “And you didn’t tell me,” she said, when it had finished striking. “But you should have. It might have made things easier for you. No wonder that…”

  We went the remainder of the way in silence.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said, as we sat in the parked car. “That night at the Savoy—he was so warm, so very much alive. It must have come as … as such a terrible shock! I know how close you were.”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.” (Again, not quite true. I was torn between wanting to and not wanting to.) “Possibly later; perhaps in a day or so. Where shall we have lunch? Here or on the way?”

  Questions of importance.

  We left the town; were soon going fast—speedometer showing eighty. Impossible to escape him, though, when everything was a reminder. Apart from his having chosen this car in the first place—and no doubt having spent hours of thought on such a purchase—hadn’t Oliver sat in the very seat where I now sat, held the very steering wheel which I now held?

  Yes, impossible to escape him. Yet Scotland helped, a little. Scotland and Elizabeth together. Not to escape him—he was always there—there was never an hour, hardly a minute, when he wasn’t at my side, causing me to imagine the comments he might have made, the comments and the judgments, causing me to feel I might be seeing the world through his eyes as much as through my own. But the hills, the glens, the lochs, the wild romantic landscapes—the charm, the beauty, the tranquillity (even at a time when I’d have said the very last thing I wanted was tranquillity)—all these things did help. And the need to keep up a façade before Elizabeth. And Elizabeth’s natural kindness and good sense and easy companionship. All these things, as well.

  In any case—somehow I got through.

  25

  We were in Edinburgh for Elizabeth’s birthday. It was a Sunday but the previous day we’d gone shopping in Princes Street and had chosen an antique ring which was part engagement ring and part birthday present: the jeweller said it was Georgian—turquoises surrounded by tiny pearls. Pretty. It cost eighteen pounds. (Oliver’s money.)

  Perhaps it was a
sign of my getting better that I felt sorry for her on her birthday. Although we’d been in Edinburgh for several days and her parents actually knew where we were staying, she had received nothing in the post, not even a card. I thought about the way it would have been in the States. Dozens of expensive presents—a magnificent party—anticipation—festivity. And despite the fact she didn’t seem in the least self-pitying I couldn’t believe she didn’t feel it. A twenty-first birthday occurred only once in a lifetime.

  Therefore I tried to give her a good day. But my desire to take her to a smart restaurant for a dinner-and-champagne celebration was frustrated: even in early spring there weren’t many places open in Edinburgh on a Sunday evening.

  So we had an adequate but unexciting meal at the guest house; afraid of our money running out we’d made it a rule only to stop at modest places. I suppose we could have gone to one of the big hotels for dinner but I didn’t think of it in time. However, we smuggled a bottle of good wine up to Elizabeth’s bedroom to supplement the one we’d had with our supper—luckily, since it was a Sunday and Woollies was closed, I’d been able to cadge a corkscrew off the waitress; and the tooth mug in each of our rooms was made of glass, not plastic.

  “I’m afraid you haven’t had much of a birthday,” I said, whilst drawing out the cork. “I am sorry.”

  “What in heaven’s name do you mean?” Her indignation seemed so genuine she sounded angry. “I’ve had a lovely time!”

  “Not even a proper present. An engagement ring shouldn’t have to double as a twenty-first birthday gift. I’ll make it up to you.”

  Why in fact hadn’t I bought her something? A dress, perhaps, from Marks & Spencer? I could at least have found the money for that. I could have done it up in fancy paper and bought her other, smaller things—a collection of gaily wrapped surprises—and really made an occasion of it.

  No, I couldn’t.

  But, the dress at least.

  “Johnny Wilmot,” she said. “Come here.”

  She’d been sitting on the bed but now she stood up and walked over to me. She took the corkscrew from my hand—I’d been untwisting the cork from it—and placed it on the dressing table, by the bottle. “Don’t you ever again dare apologize for the birthday you’ve just given me. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.” Her arms were about me and she kissed me … again, almost angrily, it seemed. One of her hands went underneath my jumper and moved slowly up my spine. I wasn’t wearing any undervest or shirt.

  She had never done that before.

  Throughout the time we’d spent in Scotland it had never seriously occurred to me to anticipate our marriage. Our kisses had been chaste—on my side, almost mechanical. (She had viewed this as consideration!) But now, of course, I recognized the signs; and within five minutes we were both undressed and in the bed.

  It was disastrous. Perhaps I seized on it as an opportunity for losing myself in a vast, mind-shattering explosion; I was too frenzied and too quick; humiliatingly quick; and the explosion, such as it was, would scarcely have rocked a teacup.

  So—added to everything else—I now had an extra shame and an extra guilt to contend with: one that in the darkness brought hot, silent tears running across the bridge of my nose and down onto her pillow.

  But that was the nadir. On successive occasions I was more thoughtful, and the situation improved, for both of us.

  In the end, however, we didn’t get married in Scotland; there seemed no point. We came back to London and on the thirteenth of May were wed at the Marylebone Registry Office. My mother was there (spared, I couldn’t imagine how, by Mrs Watson) and Aunt Clara and a great-aunt on my mother’s side, whom neither she nor Clara had ever much liked. A schoolfriend of mine, down from Cambridge for the day, also attended. But he was the only male apart from me, for neither of the Sheldons was present. They had finally returned to America three weeks before—having paid us a surprise, abortive, upsetting visit in Edinburgh, on the day after Elizabeth’s birthday.

  What a farce! Amongst other things, Theodore Sheldon had declared he couldn’t think why he didn’t knock me down. Sturdy though he was, I could have given him a hint. But I refrained—throughout, I was remarkably controlled. It was he who did most of the talking, while his wife—tired, resigned—continually put me in mind of my mother. With one major addition, what he said was merely a repetition of all he’d said before: I was despicable and Elizabeth was a fool, heedless of her obligations, little knowing what she was throwing away—the love of her family, the respect of her friends, the place in Bostonian society regarded as her due. “Have an affair with him if you must,” he told her. “Thresh about in a bed. Get it out of your system in that way if you can’t in any other…” I was thankful at least that the previous evening had been succeeded by the following morning, that morning, otherwise I should no doubt have felt quite as small as he’d intended me to. He forecast dire results for the marriage and was convinced we’d live to regret it. He gave it less than a year. He appealed to my better nature and—here was the addition—tried to buy me off. One day, I thought, they might open a club for those who had tried to buy me off. Elizabeth later informed me that at the mere suggestion I’d turned pale. Not unnaturally she ascribed this to righteous indignation but in fact I was suddenly remembering Mrs Cambourne’s cry: “I am not prepared to stand by and watch him suffer. I am not! I protect my son, Mr Wilmot, I do everything in my power to protect him!”

  But after a tense two-hour interview the Sheldons eventually left. The short taxi-ride to Waverley Station was accomplished in almost total silence, presumably meant to shock Elizabeth, even at this late stage, into a proper sense of what she was doing; into a full knowledge of the awful remorselessness of parental renunciation. There had, of course, been no suggestion of a present, although there’d been an intimation of the ones she might have received if she had only proved herself worthy—if she had only displayed that grit which, heaven knew, was never easily acquired but which became all the more laudable for that very reason and had always been an integral part of the true Sheldon heritage. “Elizabeth, there was never a time when we thought it possible we could one day regret…” And he had called me despicable, I murmured contemptuously—at the moment when my restraint came nearest to giving way.

  Neither of them mentioned Oliver’s death; I had no idea whether or not they knew about it. But at no time had I felt like introducing the subject. At best, in such an atmosphere of ill will, they would have viewed it as subsidiary; at worst, they might have seen it as a form of special pleading, calculated to tone down their attitude.

  So I had no idea whether or not they had written to Mrs Cambourne.

  Clearly—now on our wedding day—they had not written to us.

  Not officially, that is. And not the two of them together. But nevertheless, in her handbag, Elizabeth carried a letter posted by her mother immediately before departing London. The package containing it had been forwarded by the guest house.

  “My darling, your father doesn’t know I’m writing this but I absolutely cannot leave England without wishing you all the happiness in the world and telling you how much I love you and am prepared to love John, for your sake. Enclosed is the necklace I always planned for you to wear at your wedding and a very small amount of money (but as much as I can lay my hands on) to help tide you over until your own starts coming through … Please write to me as often as you can, letting me know how things are going for you both…”

  Elizabeth kept it in the same wallet as the letters she’d received from myself whilst she had been in Europe.

  A change of heart—or, rather, a belated surrender to it. Not so startling as it would have been in her husband, but, because we knew there could have been no coercion involved, far more welcome.

  And it was mirrored by my mother’s.

  Not simply had my mother bought a new outfit for the occasion, a light-blue linen costume with a matching hat and gloves, so smart and up-to-date it could only have bee
n chosen with Aunt Clara’s assistance, but her manner seemed wholly back to what it had been, prior to the revelation of the car; as far removed from the grotesquery of her performance in the restaurant as from the frank coolness which—since January—she had been showing me at home. The reason for this, I knew, wasn’t only Elizabeth and the wedding. When I had written to tell her of the date, I had also apprised her, on a separate sheet, of what had befallen Oliver, requesting she should never refer to him again.

  Well, she hadn’t … not verbally. But I knew that I still read—in her eyes, in her kiss, in the pressure of her hand—a gravely meaningful allusion to his death; and I should almost have preferred to witness honest pleasure than be subject to such basically insincere, such very woolly, sympathy.

  Still, she was changed—and in every other way, naturally, this was something to be grateful for. As a wedding present she gave us a dinner service which came from Harrods and for which she and Aunt Clara had made a special trip to town, two Mondays earlier.

  After Harrods, they’d come to Gloucester Place, to meet Elizabeth in person. They had liked her; taken it for granted she should be living at the flat; complimented her fulsomely on her cooking.

  But although on one level it had been a success—Elizabeth had judged it so in any case, and in all likelihood my mother and aunt had too—for me it had been impossible not to draw comparisons. No waltz-time for Anna and Michael, no evening birthday treat to anticipate, no meaning any longer to that happy, frightful pun. For all time had dwindled down to just three months, and then had stopped, irreversibly.

  When we left the registry office we all went to a restaurant in Baker Street—that was part of Aunt Clara’s wedding gift. Elizabeth and I weren’t going on honeymoon; for the time being we felt we had done enough travelling. (Or, to be more accurate, it could hardly have mattered less to me whether we honeymooned or not.) There was another reason, however: some small delay with regard to the inheritance. So, on a temporary basis, I went to work at Selfridge’s. Elizabeth, who—married—now had no further problems concerning visas and work permits, also considered taking a job there. But in the end she thought better of it. We could get by on my wages and commission … especially when these were bolstered by the little I still had in the bank and by the money Mrs Sheldon had sent us. So Elizabeth stayed in the flat, made new curtains, did tapestry work, bought dress patterns and recipe books—and told me she was happy.