The Toll Bridge (10 page)

At the door Tess turned back. ‘Nearly forgot. Dad said to tell you he'll be here tomorrow about ten thirty with Major Finn and an estate agent.'

Major Finn was the landowner and therefore my employer. I'd never seen him.

‘What's this, then, a regimental inspection?'

‘There's talk of selling bits of the estate. Now he's not getting a lot in tolls the major needs the money.'

‘But he'd never sell the house or the bridge, would he? He can't.'

‘Dunno. Dad said will you make sure to tidy up and mind your manners while they're here.'

I knuckled my forelock. ‘Yes, mum,' and bowing, ‘know me place, mum.'

When she'd gone I kicked the grotty armchair, then tore up my letter to Gill and chucked the pieces into the fire.

2

They turned up next morning three-quarters of an hour late, the major, once he had struggled out of the estate agent's red BMW, refusing help from Bob Norris with a growl, and supporting a geriatric hip with a swarthy stick. An aged hangover from the Second World War, like a museum exhibit on a day out. His beetroot face with hawk nose and bristly grey moustache was topped off with a fraying panama hat. A crumpled tweed shooting jacket hung from his body as if he had shrunk inside it, which in a way, I suppose,
he had. His baggy heavy-duty light brown corduroy trousers were stained an unappetizing yellow at the crotch. His feet clumped in robust ox-blood brogues. A mobile fossil he might be but he still talked in words clipped sharp enough to slice across a parade ground. There was about him an assumption of authority you just knew he'd been born with. Somehow I couldn't help liking him, even though I didn't want to.

Which is more than I can say for the estate agent, a thirtyish, blue-pinstriped oleaginous creep. Podgy and suntan-brown as well as greasy, he'd just been holidaying, he had to tell us, somewhere in the Caribbean, Dominica I think he said, and kept finding opportunities to slip offhand references to the place into the chat. He sleazed around the major, whom he treated, beneath his unctuous surface, with a condescension betrayed in his eyes and in his sneering answers to the major's questions. ‘No, no, sir, that sort of thing went out years ago! . . . You've rather let the property decline, not a wise tactic, major, if I may say so. You'll be well advised to give it a good going over with a paintbrush, if nothing else . . . We'll do the best we can for you, major – there's always a dumb punter around who'll buy anything, if you know how to sell it.' ‘Your job, your job,' commanded the major as to a parade (he was hard of hearing as well as regimental). ‘And we'll do it, sir, we'll do it, leave it to me!' mimicked Brown-and-Greasy.

I watched him, and thought of them at school, with their careers advice. ‘Banking is safe. Or you might like to follow in your father's footsteps and become a solicitor, or a barrister even. There's the stock market of course, but it's very competitive, which is hardly you, is it? Accountancy might suit you, that's fairly solid, though your maths isn't up to much, but it's a nicely paid profession. Or computing, what about that? Or business management? Or you could do worse than property and estate agenting. Pays well and you could combine it with the law and do well in both areas.'

Watching him, I heard them banging on about earning power and status and career prospects and security, and knew that oleaginous prat was what they meant, what they wanted me to become, and rejected it there and then, that very moment, finally, for ever.

I don't mean there's anything intrinsically wrong with the law or accountancy or business management or even handling property. What's wrong is why Brown-and-Greasy and his kind do it. As a means to something else. To money for money's sake, and living off the fat at other people's expense, usually the people who actually produce
things that make the money the B-and-G brigade are after. They're bloodsuckers. And they have the cheek to parade about as if they are the ones who matter, the ones who are superior, the ones who make the world turn. When what they really are is a drain on the rest of us. Parasites. We'd be better off without them.

An hour after they'd gone, Bob Norris returned. I was reading by the fire.

‘No more easy life for you, sonny boy,' he said, in no mood for jokes. ‘The major's in a huff.'

‘How come?'

‘That flaming agent stirred him up. I knew he'd cause trouble. The major wants the place renovated and completely repainted, inside and out. I'll bring in a builder for the renovation work but you'll have to do the painting. And a proper job, mind, not just to make it look a bit better.'

‘On my own?'

‘He'll do another inspection in three weeks.'

‘I'll never finish by then.'

‘Do the best you can. He'll probably forget. Can't remember when yesterday was most of the time.'

‘What about some help?'

‘Think yourself lucky you're still here. He's laying off more men. We're down to three. Three! Used to be fifteen only two years ago.'

‘But if I can't get it done?'

‘Don't cross your bridges . . .'

‘I'm not a professional decorator, you know that.'

‘You'll manage. Learn as you go. Any problems, ask. I'll keep an eye when I can.'

‘And I have to take the tolls as well, remember.'

‘Look, son, stop moaning. There aren't many most of the day now. Hardly worth collecting at all.'

‘I'm not happy about this, Mr Norris.'

‘No, well, who is. Life's like that, you'll find. Just get on with it or do the other thing. And I've no more time to waste chewing the rag with you. The builder will be in tomorrow. There'll be a van out this afternoon with the gear you'll need. Get started as soon as it's been. Do the outside first while the weather's as good as it's going to be.'

3

‘He's in a really filthy mood,' Tess said two days later when she stopped off on her way from school. I was stripping down the window frames at the front. ‘He's upset with what's happening. He's even talking of looking for another job. He's too young to retire, but he's probably too old to find anything else. He's worked on the estate all his life. And Grandad before him. Mum says it would kill him if he had to leave.'

‘He was pretty ratty with me this afternoon, that's for sure. Not enough done, and what was done not done right. He's never been like this before. It's hopeless on my own, but he won't listen. And besides that, the bloody builder expects me to be his labourer.'

‘I'll give you a hand at the weekend.'

‘You've got your own job on Saturdays. You need the money. And I don't care what your dad says, I'm taking Sundays off.'

‘A couple of Saturdays won't matter that much. It's hellish boring anyway.'

‘It's not exactly a laugh a minute decorating this place.'

‘More fun than Tesco's though. I couldn't stand it at all if it wasn't for the other girls.'

‘Wouldn't mind if I was doing it for a good reason. But so they can sell the place! You know what Brown-and-Greasy said? “Make a nice little bijou residence, major, for a London weekender.”'

‘What's a bijou residence?'

‘I didn't know either.'

‘But you looked it up.'

‘Something small and elegant and tasteful, and then in italics:
often ironic
.'

‘Piss-taking, you mean?'

‘It'd be a crime. I know it needs doing up, but not like that. I mean, there's a whole history here. I hadn't thought about it till this happened. Hundreds of years of people crossing the river, millions of them, probably, by now. Talk about ghosts! I mean, think of it, all those feet tramping across the bridge. And people living in this house watching them coming and going and taking the tolls, hundreds of thousands of pounds, and hearing the gossip and the news and keeping the bridge in good shape and watching the river and the boats going up and down, and the river flooding and even freezing sometimes, and being part of all that. So now what do they want to do? Turn it into a tarted-up Wendy house for some part-time prat with money
to burn who couldn't care less about what it's been, what it
stands for
. Something to be bought and sold and pulled down or chucked away or made into whatever the owner wants. This house and your dad, they're no different really. They've both been here all their lives. But that doesn't matter any more. Because what it all comes down to in the end is money and who has it and who doesn't, and how you get more of it, and if you can't or you don't want to, hard cheese, get stuffed.'

Tess was staring at me, all surprised eyes.

‘Haven't seen you so worked up before.'

‘No, well, haven't felt so strongly about anything for a bit.'

‘Almost like you're enjoying it. I didn't think this place meant that much to you.'

‘Neither did I till this week and having to stand there and watch Brown-and-Greasy poking about. It was obscene. I wanted to hit him.'

‘He got on Dad's nerves as well.'

‘I could see he was seething inside. But he couldn't do anything about it either.'

‘Look, I've got to go. Bags of homework.'

I went with her to her bike.

‘What're you going to do?' she asked through her helmet when she was ready to go.

‘What can I do? What your dad tells me, that's all. I sure as hell don't want to pack up and go home.'

‘Dad says it might all cool off in a week or two. The major's old, he forgets.'

‘Brown-and-Greasy won't let him. Not while there's a nice fat commission in it.'

‘You never know.'

‘Optimist.'

‘Pessimist.'

‘Biker.'

‘Janus.'

Brown-and-Greasy had arrived like a blight. ‘Few responsibilities,' the ad for my job had promised. ‘A cushy little number,' Bob Norris had said at my interview. Both were true until B-and-G came poking around. Then, suddenly, I could do as I liked no longer but from morning till night had to scrape at walls, and Polyfill damaged plaster, and glass-paper woodwork, and for a week act as cursed-at labourer
for a sour-faced chippy (‘You can't tell an awl from your arse, lad') while he replaced rotten skirting and floorboards and rehung doors and refurbished window frames, and, when he'd finished, I fetched and carried for a grumpy bricky while he repaired the living-room fireplace and chimney (‘It's a wonder the frigging place hasn't burned down').