The Toll Bridge (6 page)

Tess went out to prepare the boat while I tidied up. She came back chuckling.

‘There's a boy on the bridge playing Pooh-sticks.'

‘What?'

‘You know – dropping sticks into the river, then running to the other side of the bridge to see which one comes through first. Don't you remember?
Winnie-the-Pooh
.'

‘Oh, that.'

‘Dad used to play it with me when I was a kid.'

‘So what's funny about a kid playing it now?'

‘Well, he's not exactly a kid, he's about our age and he's by himself, and –'

‘Let him. It's my day off.'

‘He's having fun. I felt like joining in.'

I went to the window which gave a view along the bridge.

Adam, stood precariously on the parapet, a piece of stick in each hand which he drops with exaggerated care at the same instant, jumps down, races to the other side, leaps onto the parapet with breathtaking aplomb – and in my sweater and jeans, both the worse for his wear.

‘Hey!' I shout uselessly and sprint out of the house, Tess calling after me ‘What's up?' and following to the door.

Adam sees me coming and waves a greeting as to a friend he's been waiting for.

‘What about my clothes?' I shout as I approach.

The affable smile fades. He jumps down. ‘Eh?'

‘You're wearing them!'

He looks at himself. ‘Oh, these.'

‘Why didn't you change before you left?'

He frowns.

‘I need that stuff. My only spares, you see.'

‘Right, sure.' He smiles suddenly, his handsome cheeky grin. ‘I'll change now. That's why I'm here.'

‘You'd better come in.'

Tess is waiting at the door.

Wanting to head off friendly exchanges, I say, ‘This is Tess. He's Adam.'

‘Adam,' Adam repeats as if prompted. ‘Hi.'

‘Hi,' Tess says.

‘The visitor on Friday,' I say with warning emphasis.

Adam goes into the living room. Tess rolls her eyes at me in a mock swoon. I poke my tongue at her. She follows Adam. I go into the bedroom for his clothes, intending to call him in to change. But before I can, I hear Tess say, ‘We're rowing upriver for a drink and a sandwich. Want to come?'

Adam says, ‘I'm skint.'

‘My treat.'

‘Well . . . sure, thanks! I'll row if you like. Pay my way.'

‘Great.'

What!
I think – first my clothes, now my Sunday. What's going on here, what have I done to deserve this?

I join them.

‘Adam's coming with us,' Tess says with the forced cheeriness people adopt when they know they're going against what you want and are pretending it's all right.

‘Your clothes are in the bedroom,' I say, ignoring her.

‘He's not going to change, is he?' Tess says. ‘You know what boats are like. Ours anyway. He might as well wait till we get back.'

‘Why didn't I think of that!' I say and stalk out ahead of them.

3

In the leaky old clinker-built dinghy only just big enough for the three of us, Tess has the tiller, and I'm beside her in the stern facing Adam who is rowing. Our legs interleave. Adam pulls us upstream with steady effortless strokes. His body has an animal perfection in its proportions, the neat way all its parts fit together, the easy relaxed
way it moves, beautiful to watch, very sexy. Tess can't take her eyes off him, which hurts me with a double jealousy – of that animal body, and of its effect on Tess – so that I resent Adam's disturbing presence more than ever.

But being rowed in a boat on a calm river on a warm morning has a soothing effect. Soon I'm lulled, as I remember being lulled as a little boy, by the lazy motion of the boat, and begin to take pleasure in Tess's body squashed up against mine, and Adam's slow, rhythmic movements, and the in-out plashings of the oars, and the glazed autumn colours of the river bank.

I think: I ought to be glad of this, ought to be giving myself to it, not begrudging, not grinding my guts with jealous resentment.

After a while, curiosity getting the better of her, Tess asks, ‘Where are you from, Adam? Not from round here.'

He shakes his head. ‘Up north.'

‘Thought so from your accent.' She looks at me, askance. ‘Two of a kind.'

She waits. Adam takes two more strokes but he adds nothing. ‘On holiday or something?'

‘Something.'

‘A job?'

‘Anything.'

‘How come?'

He takes another stroke, watching his right-hand oar rise, skim, plunge. ‘They chucked me out.'

‘Who?'

‘Parents. Well – my dad.'

‘Chucked you out?'

‘Hasn't got a job himself. And I've two sisters still at school.'

‘But chucking you out!'

‘We didn't get on either. Kept having rows. I'm better off out of it.'

‘When did this happen?'

‘Couple of months ago.'

‘Poor you!'

He shrugs. ‘I get by.'

For some reason I don't believe a word of this but I can see Tess does. He gives her
that
smile, but his eyes have a wary look, observing the effect. A look that bothers me. For a moment someone else inhabits those eyes, not the boy with the foxy grin.

4

The pub is packed with a Sunday crowd of junior yuppies from the posh commuter end of the village vying with university undergrads from across the river for the quickest-wit-of-the-year award and pretending not to pose. We manage to order with difficulty, being obviously members of the shoddier classes if not definitely under-age untouchables.

While we wait for our sandwiches a cohort of noisier undergrads challenges a squad of yahooier yuppies to a yard-of-ale competition.

‘What's that?' Adam asks.

Plastic aprons to protect the yuppies' designer informals and the undergrads' unwashables are handed across the bar while a barman decants two and a half pints of beer into a metre-long glass tube with a bulb at one end and a trumpet-flared opening at the other.

Tess tells Adam, ‘They have to drink all the beer from that thing like a glass hunting horn, which is called a yard-of-ale. They have to drink it at one go without spilling any, which is pretty hard to do. The one who does it the quickest and spills the least is the winner.'

‘Cruel!' Adam is fascinated.

‘Don't they do it up your way?'

‘Not that I've come across.'

‘Round here they say it sorts out the men from the boys.'

‘Or the disgusting from the gross,' I add, ‘the real aim being to see who spews up first.'

A podgy yuppy, the kind of over-eager bod who'll do anything to be thought a big man by his mates, has started the match off. He's a third down and has gone too fast. The trick is to take it at a steady gentle speed, swigging rhythmically so you've plenty of breath for the worst part, which is at the end when you have to lean back far enough to raise the tube nearly upright in order to empty the last of the beer out of the bulb. By then your arms are tired, you're just about gasping, and leaning back makes it very hard to swallow.

‘Easy . . . easy . . . easy!' the yuppies chant, neo-soccer. The students whoop derisively. Both have the effect of over-exciting the already over-excited dolt. He raises the yard too fast. Beer floods out of his mouth, down his front, onto the floor, and puddles round his feet. As he gulps for breath someone rescues the yard. His clothes are soaked. The reek of body-warmed beer fills the room. His supporters mockingly commiserate; the students cheer. The yard is refilled as an undergrad is prepared by his seconds who camp up the boxing image
– extracting the piss out of the whole business in general and of the yuppies in particular.

Our sandwiches arrive.

‘I'm eating mine outside,' I say.

‘Got to see this,' Adam says.

‘Suit yourself.'

Tess says, ‘I think I'll go outside too.'

‘I'll come in a minute,' Adam says, not taking his eyes from the arena.

5

The tables in the garden were occupied so we sat dangling our feet over the stone-paved edge of the river bank where, in summer, holiday boats moor for visits to the pub.