The Toll Bridge

  Adam waited. Jan perched on the edge of the bunk, ready to flit, his eyes never leaving Adam as he tried to weigh up his odd behaviour. By instinct he kept up a flow of soothing placatory talk.

  ‘What’s up? Is it your head? Does it hurt? I think you banged it somehow, anyway there’s a cut just above your forehead, not a big one, but it was bleeding and I bandaged it, I think it’ll be OK, nothing serious, it’ll heal in a couple of days, but you might be suffering from a bit of concussion, what d’you think?’ He paused. No reply. ‘I don’t know what happened, probably an accident. D’you remember?’ No reply. ‘Well, you really were soaking it up last night, you have to admit.’ He tried a smile. Nothing in return, only the puzzled frightened watchful stare. ‘Probably suffering from a hangover as well.’ Still nothing. ‘Damn near blotto, I expect.’ He returned his face to its concerned serious look. ‘You don’t remember anything about last night?’

  A pause. Then Adam shook his head, just once, but enough. A small triumph.

  ‘No, well, I’m not surprised, to be honest. You’ll be fine by tomorrow. Need to sleep it off, I guess. How about coming into the house? It’s warm in there. The old fire blazing. I’ll make you something to eat if you like. Some breakfast maybe, eh? Then if you want you can go to bed. Sleep better in your own bed. How about it?’

  He felt like an over-tolerant dad wheedling a pesky infant.

  Adam shifted, easing forward from his position huddled in the corner. His mouth started working but again made no sound. He jabbed a finger at his face followed by a frustrated gesture that signalled, ‘I can’t, I can’t!’

  Jan said, appalled, ‘You can’t talk?’

  Adam shook his head, eyes pleading.

  ‘Grief!’ Jan heard himself say before he could prevent it. A new panic flushed through him. He’d heard of concussion causing temporary loss of memory but never of it causing loss of voice. What if Adam was really badly hurt? Brain-damaged even?

  ‘Look, Adam,’ he said, man-to-man serious now, ‘we’d better get a doctor, there might be –’

  The effect was alarming. Adam sprang to his feet, wild and hunted again, and frantically waving both hands, no no no. Jan jumped up too, thinking he was about to be attacked, his own hands raised as a man at gunpoint. ‘Right, OK, no doctor, no doctor –’

  The pair of them were square to each other now, an arm’s length apart, Adam poised for flight, the blanket thrown aside.

  There was a pause. Adam began to shiver. Folded his arms round his chest. But the shivering grew worse till he was shaking all over.

  ‘Come on,’ Jan said, picking up the blanket. ‘Let’s go into the house. You can’t stay here.’ He held the blanket as one holds a coat for another to put on. ‘I don’t know what’s happened, but we can’t do anything about it till you’re feeling better. You’ve got to come inside and get warm or you’ll be really ill.’

  He waited. Adam stared at him for a moment before abruptly, as if acting on a decision before he could change his mind, he grabbed the blanket out of Jan’s hands and clutched it round himself.

  Jan nodded and smiled and led the way out.

  Adam wrote, Who are you?

  ‘Jan,’ Jan said. ‘Well, Piers really.’

  Why Jan?

  ‘It’s what Tess calls me.’

  Adam raised questioning eyebrows.

  ‘The girl in the boat.’

  Why Adam?

  ‘That’s what you said your name was.’

  They were sitting at the table in the toll house. When they came in from the boat an hour ago Tess and Gill had gone.

  Jan had coddled Adam through the process of washing, having his bandage changed, dressing in warm clean clothes (Jan’s yet again), going to the lavatory, and eating the usual breakfast, which Adam gobbled up having by then calmed down, though he was still jumpy.

  Breakfast over, Jan placed a pad of paper and a ballpoint in front of Adam, sat down beside him and, saying nothing, waited. After considering Jan and the paper hesitantly Adam took up the pen and started writing.

  Now Jan said, ‘Don’t you remember anything?’

  Where is this?

  Jan told him.

  When did I come?

  Jan began recounting their history together. When he reached the fight over the necklace he pulled it from under his shirt and held it for Adam to see. From his reaction Jan knew at once that Adam recognized it. About the raven, however, Adam’s reaction was quite different. As Jan told about the wound, he took hold of Adam’s hand and pushed back the sleeve of his sweater, revealing the scabby marks of the raven’s talons on Adam’s forearm. At the sight of them Adam braced in astonishment, as if the marks had suddenly appeared by magic. He snatched his hand from Jan’s grasp and inspected the wound closely. When he looked up again he was frowning. He thought for a moment then wrote:

  Could have pinched necklace. Seen mark.

  ‘Why would I make up a story like that? Why would I say you’ve been living here if you haven’t?’

  Adam shrugged.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  Adam shook his head.

  After a moment’s thought, Jan said, ‘Hang on a sec,’ and brought from the bedroom two of Tess’s photos which he laid side by side on the table. One was of Adam and Jan painting outside the toll house. The other was of Adam taking a toll from a car.

  Adam studied them intently.

  ‘You don’t remember any of this?’

  Adam shook his head.

  ‘Nothing? Nothing at all? Do you remember anything before you came here or where you came from?’

  This time there was a pause before Adam looked away.

  ‘But you know who you are?’

  Eyes averted, another shake of the head.

  ‘Don’t even know your name?’

  Another denial.

  It was Jan’s turn not to believe.

  ‘Look,’ he said, undoing the chain, ‘you’d better have this back.’

  Adam hesitated a moment before taking it.

  From the second he heard Tess yelling his name Jan had been, as he put it later, flying by radar. He had no experience, the basis of all thought, to go on, for he had never been faced with anything like this before. But now as he sat watching Adam, stubborn but discomforted beside him, he felt an echo of the irritation he used to feel when Adam first invaded the house, and the same desire as then to chuck him out. He wanted to say, ‘Oh, come on, don’t give me that! You can remember all right, why are you lying?’ But he knew that if he did it would be the end, Adam would go, and though Jan could not fully understand why, he wanted him to stay. To let him go, to send him away, would be a loss to himself and a dereliction.

  Kafka’s strange story came to his mind and vividly the memory of the three of them talking about it as they toasted themselves by the fire. Now the story seemed oddly appropriate to this moment in his life. He and Adam and Tess: each other’s bridges, as Kafka’s young man had become a bridge for someone else. But was the story prophecy or nightmare – what would be or what could be?

  As Jan thought of this, he remembered too the morning after Adam’s first arrival, when, coming back into the house from talking to Tess, he had the weird sensation of déjà-vu.

  Could these be mere accidents, unconnected coincidences? A deep nerve of intuition prickled in his spine, telling him they were part of a larger pattern that made a kind of sense he had yet to puzzle out. Till he could discern the pattern he would have to accept that irrational intuition, take it on trust.

  Never before in his life had Jan consciously taken such a risk. Just the opposite, in fact. Ever since he stopped being a child – a change in his consciousness he dated from an early summer afternoon when he was thirteen and an older friend took him into a garden shed and taught him how to masturbate – Jan had only trusted thought. Feelings, he had decided as his adolescence progressed, were often misleading. They came and went with distressing fickleness and speed: likes became dislikes,
strong desires turned into revulsions. They seemed to be uncontrollable and to come from somewhere outside himself He did not feel responsible for them (feelings about feelings!) yet was required by others – parents, neighbours, teachers, friends – to behave as if he were. Of his thoughts, however, he felt more in charge. Unlike his feelings, his thoughts did not immediately shape his behaviour before he could prevent it. And only when he wanted and was ready need he reveal his thoughts to others. He possessed them rather than being possessed by them.

  So in all things Jan had come to prefer the life of the mind. Thinking gave him physical pleasure. He wanted never to stop thinking, not even when he was asleep. He had learned to regard his dreams as raw material for thought – mind teasers, puzzles with special peculiar secret codes of their own, which he enjoyed trying to crack. That’s why he liked Kafka’s story so much. It was a dream full of possible meanings, some of them contradictory, yet all existing in the one story. Their very complexity and coexistent difference pleased and satisfied him.

  And now there was this unaccustomed intuition about Adam, about losing him, about their staying together, about being one another’s bridge to something else. Another kind of code. Not a code in a story he had read, but a code in the story of his own life as it was being lived there and then, here and now, moment to moment.

  Stirred by this revelation, unable to sit still, he got up from the table, and went to tend the fire, thinking as he did so that Adam must stay, must be humoured, must be looked after until he could tell the secret Jan was sure he was hiding.

  Be Janus, Jan said to himself as he laid a fresh log on the glowing embers and swept away the ash that had fallen onto the hearth. He smiled as he thought of Janus as his renewing defining all-containing name. There and then he accepted it. Never again did he willingly call himself Piers. December fourteenth was ever after his own, his chosen birthday, the day he became a janus, called Jan.

  The effect upon him at that moment was like a lens bringing an image into focus. He recognized himself clearly for the first time, knew who he was, felt the urge of his own life, the pulse of the will to be.

  He turned from the fire to face Adam, who was slumped at the table, dejected, crushed, staring at the photos in a brown study.

  ‘Listen,’ Jan said gently, ‘aren’t you worried about not being able to talk and not remembering anything?’

  Coming to, Adam lifted his head, looked weary-eyed at Jan, and nodded.

  ‘Me too. If you aren’t back to normal soon, a day or two at most, we’ll have to do something about it. See a doctor. Maybe all you’ve got is concussion and it’s only temporary. If it is concussion, I think you’re supposed to take it easy. Go to bed, I mean, and try and sleep. I don’t know what else to suggest. What do you think?’

  Adam, listening anxiously, didn’t move.

  Jan went on, ‘There’ll be people here soon. Tess. A girl called Gill who’s a friend of mine. They’ll want to talk to me. And my boss, Tess’s father, could come in any time. They know you, they’ve seen you before, they know you’re living here for a bit. If you’re in bed, I’ll say you’re not feeling too great after the party. They’ll believe me and leave you alone. And tomorrow being Sunday there won’t be much doing, no tolls, you could get up then, see how you feel. What about it? . . . You’ll be safe. I’ll be here to look after you . . . Promise . . . OK?’

  There was a silence while Adam studied Jan’s face, weighing up whether he could trust this person he said he did not know. Then with the resignation of one who realizes he has no option, he eased himself up from his chair, holding onto the table for support, obviously groggy, a wince of pain creasing his face as he stood up straight, and now a frightened, confused, pleading look in his eyes.

  Jan went to him, put a supporting arm round his waist, and led him to the bedroom.

  In town, where they had gone to be out of the way, Tess and Gill mooched from shop to shop saying little.

  It was while they were poking aimlessly about in Marks and Spencer’s, more to keep warm than anything, that Gill suddenly stopped in her tracks and said, ‘I can’t stay. I’m going home. It’s stupid to stay.’

  Tess said, ‘But don’t you want to see him, don’t you want to talk to him?’

  ‘No, it’s no use, I’ve got to go.’

  Outside, Gill stopped, confused. ‘Which way to the station?’

  ‘You want to go this minute?’

  ‘Yes. Is that the way?’

  ‘No, this.’ They set off at a brisk pace. ‘But why? What about your things?’

  ‘Don’t matter. Got my ticket and some money with me.’

  They were almost running.

  At the station Tess said, ‘What shall I do about your stuff?’

  Gill shrugged. ‘Leave it with Piers. There’s nothing I need. Just overnight things. He can post them or bring them when he comes home. And thanks for last night. You’ve been great. And look – don’t feel bad about inviting me to the party. You were only trying to do the right thing. I’m grateful. No – I am. If you hadn’t done it, I’d have gone on and on not knowing, thinking about him all the time, worrying – you know how it is. I’ve been a fool. I shouldn’t have let it drag on. Shouldn’t have thought it was all up to him. It wasn’t, it was up to me. Everything is, in the end, isn’t it, up to yourself? I shouldn’t have put up with it and shouldn’t have kept on letting him know how much I wanted him. I should have kept quiet. If he’d wanted me, he’d have done something about it, wouldn’t he? If people really want something, they go for it, don’t they? And, you know, I was thinking this morning on the bus, when people know you want something from them very much, they don’t let you have it. So maybe the worst thing you can do is let someone know how much you want them. And especially how much you want them to love you. Perhaps it puts them off. D’you think so?’

  Tess sighed. ‘Don’t know. Could be.’

  As they stopped to say goodbye, each searched the other’s face before spontaneously they hugged and held on with genuine emotion.

  It was Gill who let go first and, turning away, walked onto the platform without looking back.

  By the time Tess arrived back at the bridge about midday Jan too was in an emotional slump. She found him sprawled full length in the armchair, his feet in the hearth, his face collapsed, eyes drooping. Adam was asleep in the bedroom.

  Tess herself felt much better. Gill’s departure meant a considerable complication was out of the way.

  Jan had been gloomily considering the prospect of a heart-to-heart with Gill. He couldn’t think what he wanted to say and was still suffering bouts of resentment that she was there at all. So when Tess arrived on her own and told him that Gill had gone back home he perked up and chuckled with relief.

  Suddenly they were both desperately hungry, and while Jan told Tess what had happened during the night she made Welsh rabbit, double helpings of which they consumed with gusto, both feeling the meal was a celebration, a recovery of their own treasured private rituals, though neither said so.

  When Jan had finished his story, Tess told hers: the attack on Gill, their overnight talks, the events of the morning. That done, the meal finished, a quietness settled on them. They sat back, the unadmitted euphoria having evaporated, leaving in its place the awkward unresolved problem of Adam, whose slumbering presence seemed to hang heavily around them.

  Their mood was changed again by Jan hiccupping. ‘Ate too fast,’ he said, standing up and clearing the dirty plates into the sink. He began washing up and tidying away the mess Tess had made. (She was [is] a disorderly cook, never putting anything she used [uses] away and managing to spread her jumbled leavings over all available surfaces. Jan regarded[s] this as bad work[wo]manship; Tess regarded[s] his tidiness as obsessively fussy, a sign of a dangerously neurotic closet-authoritarian personality.)

  Later, having looked in on Adam (sleeping still) and at the boat, they sat by the fire and discussed what to do next.

  The easies
t decision was that the boat must be cleaned up and returned to its mooring before anyone noticed it had gone. They agreed that Jan would clean it while Tess took tolls and kept an eye on Adam. Then they’d shift it downstream together under cover of dusk.

  The problem of Adam was not so easy to deal with. They agreed it was unlikely he was any worse than badly concussed. But Tess wanted to call a doctor, saying they shouldn’t chance it, and being anyway secretly keen to get Adam off their hands. Jan refused, they started arguing, Jan became stubborn, irrational, almost belligerent, and they ended up having a row.

  ‘Why?’ Tess demanded. ‘First you didn’t want him anywhere near the place, now you won’t let him go, even when he might be very sick.’

  ‘You can talk! You’re the one who wanted him to stay, and now you want to get rid of him. I wonder why! And he’s not very sick. Not physically sick.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do, that’s all.’

  ‘Doctor Jan now is it?’

  ‘Oh, shut it!’

  ‘I won’t. I can’t see why you’re going on like this. Why are you protecting him? What is there between you two?’

  ‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘No, I’ll bet you don’t! I’m fetching Dad. See what he thinks.’

  Tess sprang up and made for the front door. But Jan was there before her, arms spread.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘Get out of the way.’

  They were nose to nose.

  ‘I promised him.’

  ‘Don’t care.’

  ‘For me, then, just for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because – we’ve got to give him a chance to explain. Oh, I don’t know – I keep thinking . . . It’s as if he were me. No, not me. I mean – the other me. Christ; I don’t know! It’s too hard to explain.’

  ‘But you do know? You can make some sense of what’s going on, can you?’

  ‘Not in a way I can say it. Not yet. And I told you – there’s something terrible he’s afraid of. I don’t know what it is but I’ve never seen anybody so scared. Till I know, I have to help him. I don’t know why. I’m responsible . . . Anyway, he’s ill, for God’s sake, you can see that for yourself.’