The Broken Bridge

“Robert said his mother didn’t get on with them.”

  “Oh, really?” He was trying to fold back the newspaper and making heavy weather of it, flapping it back and forth to get the crease straight.

  “Was his name the same as yours?”

  “Whose name?”

  “Granddad’s, of course.”

  “What d’you want to know that for, for goodness’ sake?”

  “I just want to know about myself,” she said, looking at him openly. “About my family.”

  He didn’t look at her. “His name’s Ken. Kenneth Henry Howard. Her name’s Dorothy. Now, is there anything you want in Porthafon?”

  “No, thanks,” she said demurely.

  The reason she’d given for wanting to know her grandfather’s name was true, but not the whole truth. As soon as Dad and Robert had gone, she phoned Directory Enquiries and asked for the number of Mr. K. H. Howard of Chester.

  The operator found it at once.

  “Can you give me his address?” Ginny asked.

  “Sixteen Grove Road,” said the operator.

  So now she had her grandparents’ name and address and telephone number. Feeling pleased with this secret knowledge, she went off to the Dragon and told Rhiannon, who hadn’t been there to hear it the day before, everything she knew about Robert.

  —

  On Saturday evening, the Yacht Club was busy. Ginny sensed the atmosphere as soon as she walked in.

  “Ah, here’s my little girlfriend,” Andy said, whisking something creamy in a bowl.

  “You haven’t got a girlfriend, you pillock,” said Angie Lime wearily. “Hurry up with that sauce. I need it chop-chop.”

  There were six chickens ready instead of the usual four, and Angie was cursing about the vegetables, because the supplier hadn’t delivered any zucchini. Ginny, caught up in the busyness, swung into the routine at once; this was somewhere she felt at home. She cut the bread, filled the baskets, took them into the restaurant, picked up the salt and pepper shakers for filling. Harry was fiddling with the beer tap.

  “How’s old Picasso? Has old Calvert sold any pictures yet?”

  “Yes, he has, actually,” Ginny told him. “He sold one today for forty pounds.”

  “Get away!” said Harry. “He never!”

  “He did; I was there. There was a young couple having coffee, and the man was really keen on them, but she wasn’t, I could tell. Mr. Calvert was telling them all about the pictures, what they meant, and finally the man said, ‘I’ll buy one.’ I could see her expression. He’s probably regretting it now.”

  Harry chortled, slapping his hands together like a performing seal. “What sort of picture was it?” he said.

  “He does all these sort of science-fantasy ideas….This one was called Alchemical Harmony. There were three glass jar things floating in space, with a nude woman in one of them.”

  “And that was it? A naked woman in a jar, and he gets forty quid for it?”

  “And two other jars,” she said, laughing too.

  “Fantastic…Have you told Angie? Duw, that’s a good one. Have an olive, go on.”

  He threw one in the air, tried to catch it in his mouth, missed, and laughed again. She took one for herself and went back to the kitchen, where she found Andy on his own.

  “Harry reckons we’ll do the ton tonight,” he told her.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Do a hundred dinners. We had ninety-two last Saturday. That’s why Angie’s in a panic.”

  “Are you coming to the barbecue?”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ll be along later. Is your brother coming?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “What’s it like, having a white brother?”

  He couldn’t have asked that with Angie Lime there, and she knew it.

  “He doesn’t seem like anything to do with me,” she said. “We’ve got nothing in common at all….”

  He looked up from the onions he was chopping. His eyes were bright, his face shiny with heat and brimful of vivid life and mockery. She felt her heart beat faster, felt as if the world was full of possibilities, that anything might happen; but Angie Lime came back into the kitchen, and the moment passed. The first customers were arriving. It was time to work.

  When she went home she had a shower and washed and oiled her hair, and then spent a long time deciding what to wear. It was only the beach, but it wasn’t only the beach, because Andy would be there, and she wanted to look as good as she would if she felt good, which, she found rather surprisingly, she did. No jeans tonight, no cycling shorts, nothing clinging and Lycra tight. She wanted to look Haitian, or at least Caribbean. A wide flowered skirt, a white top that left her arms bare, a pink silk scarf twisting into a roll and tied around her hair; and then, hesitantly, a drop of perfume on her throat—sandalwood, which she liked for its heavy tropical richness.

  So she was ready, and she went to the living room to find Robert.

  His eyes widened in brief surprise when he saw her, and she was surprised too, because he’d combed his hair back and shaved, or washed, or something; and he was wearing a new cream-colored shirt and black jeans, and altogether, she thought, Rhiannon would approve.

  “Okay, then?”

  He got up. Dad was watching, half anxious, half relieved that they seemed to be getting on.

  “Back by midnight,” he said.

  “Oh, go on, Dad! We’ll have hardly any time there!” she said.

  “All right. Just this once. When do you suggest?”

  “One o’clock? Since it’s summer?”

  “One o’clock. If you’re not back then, I’ll come down there with a torch.”

  “Thanks. And can I take some lager?”

  “You’re supposed to be making money. Buy your own.”

  “Not allowed to. Please…”

  “Two cans, then. And pay me back.”

  She kissed him, and they left. Both she and Dad knew that this was a performance for Robert: wheedling sister, indulgent father. What Robert made of it she couldn’t tell, because he was looking sullen again, and he obviously wasn’t going to speak unless she spoke first.

  God, I wish I’d asked Rhiannon to come to the house first, she thought.

  “I got some bratwurst,” she said in desperation after a couple of minutes. “You know, German sausages. For the barbecue. I saw them in the deli in town this morning. Dad and me, when we went to Germany last year on vacation, we had them all the time.”

  “I haven’t brought anything,” he said.

  “It’s all right; this is for both of us. We usually have a couple of barbecues like this every summer. Last year it was raining too much. But it’s not special or anything; it’s just some kids from the village, that’s all. I’m sorry if I went on about your mum yesterday. It was different when my mum died, ’cause I never knew her, obviously.”

  “She dead, then?”

  “Didn’t Dad say? She died when I was born. But I won’t ask about your mum anymore. I was just interested. You know…”

  He sniffed. “Yeah,” he said.

  The walk down toward the sunset-colored beach seemed to take much longer than usual. Whether or not he was conscious of her, she was unceasingly conscious of him, and of the current of suspicion that came from him like a cold wind.

  “Have you been to the beach yet?” she said.

  “No. I’ve not had time.”

  “I suppose not….Is Dad really going to buy a boat?”

  “He said so. I don’t know.”

  Silence again. They were walking some way apart, and when they heard a car coming up the lane, they separated, each going to a different side. She wanted to find a way of asking him about the idea that Dad had been in prison, but not yet; she couldn’t guess how he’d take it. If only he’d say something on his own instead of letting her start every conversation. If only…She could think of a dozen if onlys without even trying.

  At the parking area, almost empty now that the visitors had gon
e to their bed-and-breakfasts, their rented cottages, their mobile homes, Ginny stopped. Robert drifted to a halt a little way off.

  “I’m just trying to work out which way to go,” she said. “Sometimes they have it off to the right, in the high dunes; sometimes they go the other way. Let’s go left.”

  She climbed the gate into the field behind the dunes, the field that on its far side bordered the estuary. He joined her hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure it was allowed.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Everyone goes through here. As long as we don’t let the sheep out…”

  “What’s that?” he said, pointing to a lichen-crusted slate roof among the dunes.

  “That’s the church. It’s half buried. In the Dark Ages, right, when they had Viking raids and such, there was a monastery on an island out at sea somewhere, and whenever a monk or a priest died here on the mainland, they’d take his body over there to be buried. And the night before they sailed, they’d leave it in this church, all night long. It’s called Saint Cynog’s. That’s why the village is called Llangynog, see. They open up the church in the holidays and have a service for the people on the beach. Otherwise it just sits here in the sand.”

  “Are those graves in there?” he said, looking through the tumbledown lych-gate.

  “Yeah. The sand drifts around and covers them up and uncovers them again. It’s really really old.”

  They clambered up past the tiny church and some way into the dunes, and then Ginny heard music and saw the fire, built in a wide hollow in the sand hills facing the sea. The whole scene was varnished with gold like an old picture of gods and nymphs. And if the ancient gods had barbecues, this was what they’d have looked like: healthy, happy figures drinking, or hauling a log up from the beach, or preparing food for the fire.

  But then she looked again and thought, No, they’re not gods and nymphs, these are human beings. Gods never changed. It would take someone like Watteau to paint this, with that strange air he had of delicate melancholy under the enjoyment: the sense in the shadows and the color of the sky that time was passing, that the happy maids and courtiers would change, part, grow old….How could she show that here? If Watteau had painted a barbecue…Couldn’t draw it; need color. Oil? Tempera? With an underglaze of gold…It would all be in the color, precious, fading…

  The tide was high; it would be fully in by midnight. Rhiannon’s kind Peter was there, thrusting a stick into the fire, and suddenly there was Rhiannon herself beside them, bright-eyed, pretty, curious.

  “Hi!” she said. “You must be Robert….”

  And so they arrived at the barbecue.

  —

  Ginny’s experience of parties and discos and barbecues was of other people having a good time and of herself watching. When she was younger, she’d thought that that was what a good time was and she was having it, but in the last couple of years, seeing other girls dancing with boys and holding their hands and being kissed, she’d come to realize that having a good time involved some so far imaginary boy, one who, if not sexy, was at least kind. At the same time she despised her timidity: why didn’t she take charge? Why didn’t she go up to a boy she fancied and…And what? was the question she hadn’t worked out the answer to.

  But tonight was different. Andy was coming, and the tide was high and the air was warm and the good smell of cooking food came drifting from the fire, and music was playing, and she felt pretty and light and tingling with expectation. So when he did arrive, slipping into the circle round the fire to shouts of “Andy! Great! Have a drink!” she felt everything was going to come right. And there was Dafydd, his heavy eyes smiling at her, and—she checked—there was Robert, sitting silent on one side of Rhiannon while Peter, looking kind, sat on the other.

  “Did you do the ton?” she asked Andy.

  “No. Ninety-eight. Harry wanted to get the last two to go round twice, but Duw, we’d had enough. Iesu Grist, it’s bloody hot. Give us a bite to eat. Look, I’ve got a bottle of wine, lads…” He dragged a bottle of Lambrusco out of some capacious pocket and screwed off the top. “Have a swig.”

  Ginny tilted the bottle back. It was sweet and fizzy and cold, and some of it went up her nose and made her sneeze and laugh.

  “Don’t stick it up your nose,” he said. “Dreadful manners. Hey, I was going to bring Gertie, give her a good time, but I thought the excitement would be too much for her. Where’s that sausage? Give us a bite.”

  “Who’s Gertie?” said Eryl. “You changing your spots, Andy?”

  “No spots on me. I’m an Ethiopian.”

  “First time I’ve heard it called that,” said Eryl, but Andy was off on the story of how he came by the smoked salmon. It was quite different from the first version. Dafydd winked and rolled his eyes up at Ginny with a vast secret enjoyment, and she sat clasping her knees beside Andy, the dazzling quicksilver trickster, as he spun one fantastic lie after another. She knew they were lies, knew that the incredible Carlos had probably never existed, but it didn’t matter a bit. Listening to Andy was like sitting under a fountain of champagne.

  When the bottle of wine was half-finished, she felt dizzy and confident, both at once, and she tugged at his hand and made him get up and dance. It was a slow, romantic soul tune, and several couples were swaying in each other’s arms, feet dragging in the soft sand. She faced him for a moment, looked at his dark face directly, and then stepped close and put her arms around his waist.

  His body was warm and slender, his arms light around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder and breathed in the complex intoxicating smell of him: the faint remains of cooking and cigarette smoke, the wine, some distant hint of aftershave, and clean sweat. She marveled at the tension of the smooth muscles of his back, the hollow between them where his spine lay, the way his hips swayed….He had no sense of rhythm whatsoever, and such was her state of mind that his lack of it seemed only one more perfection.

  She was no longer aware of the other kids, of the fire, the sea, the music, Robert. Everything was Andy; she was obsessed, she was drunk with him, she was in love….This was it, love, she was there, it was hers. She moved her head slightly and brushed his neck with her lips, once, twice, and then kissed it gently, lost.

  Then someone spoke nearby. There was a muffled laugh. Andy’s body tensed at once; she could feel it like electricity. She looked up at his face, dismayed, and saw it grim and cynical.

  “Take no notice,” he whispered. “They’re not worth it. They’re just a bunch of stupid kids.”

  “But what did they say?” she whispered back, though she knew. Someone had joked about them, about their being black, some crude racist crap….Her friends. Andy, sensing her anger, held her tight and didn’t let her whirl around to confront them.

  “They don’t understand,” was all he said.

  “But we have to fight this, Andy! Not just for us but for everyone! We can’t just give in….”

  There was something disconcerting about his response. She couldn’t see his face clearly enough, because he had his back to the fire, but she sensed a sadness in him she’d never known before. The music stopped, and they stopped moving, and someone put another tape in. The moment had gone.

  They sat down. She was puzzled. There he was, talking to Glyn and Siân and Eryl, making them laugh, accepting a cigarette, offering the wine; and Ginny found herself next to Robert. Something had happened, but she didn’t know what it was.

  Robert was saying something. She had to ask him to repeat it.

  “Who’s the gay pair?” he said quietly.

  “Gay pair? What’re you talking about?”

  “Those lads. The one you were dancing with and his mate. What’s their names?”

  She was bewildered. “Gay?”

  “You know. Homosexual.”

  “What d’you mean, gay? How can they be—you don’t mean Andy and Dafydd? Whatever gave you that stupid idea?”

  “Rhiannon told me. Anyway, it’s obvious.”

&nbs
p; And suddenly it was.

  A hundred little meaningless things—comments, looks, jokes—acquired a meaning all at once. And she knew what the whispered voice had said that had made Andy at first tense in her arms and then sad—it was all as clear as water, and she’d been duped again. Everyone else had known, and she hadn’t. Rhiannon had known; her best friend. Even Robert had known. It was too much to bear.

  With a choking sob, she flung herself up and away from the fire, into the darkness of the dunes. She plunged over the top of the nearest one and fell down into the cool feathery sand on the far side, stumbling and sprawling, and then scrambled up again and struggled through the yielding sand, the pricking marram grass, till she was out of earshot of the group by the fire and their mocking voices, their knowing eyes; and then she sank to her knees and beat her fists into the white unresistant softness all around, the hot tears scalding her hot cheeks.

  She’d never felt so humiliated in her life. The worst of it was that she’d made her infatuation for Andy so obvious; she’d flaunted it….And Rhiannon had known. And Angie had known: You haven’t got a girlfriend, you pillock. And Eryl, just now: First time I’ve heard it called that. And Stuart: suddenly everything about Stuart became clear. God! Even her father—seeing her with Stuart, and hearing that Stuart was a friend of Andy’s, he’d known what that had meant, and said, Oh, that’s all right, then, meaning You’ll be safe with him….

  And she hadn’t seen it. Stupid, naive Ginny, the only person in the world who didn’t know. She knelt there, her head bowed, the tears soaking into the sand as they fell from her eyes.

  Minutes went by, and little by little the crying stopped. She sat up slowly and mopped her face with the skirt. She was alone, and that was how she wanted it.

  Very dimly, in the faint starlight, the roof of the old church was visible over the marram-fringed rise in front of her. She sighed a long shaky sigh, stood up and brushed the sand off her skirt, and slowly climbed the slope.

  There was a single strand of wire marking the boundary of the churchyard, but the posts were sunk so low in the sand that it was easy to step over it. She slid down among the graves, the leaning tombstones, and made her way to the corner of the church.