A Bridge to the Stars (7 page)

She must be brave, and everybody's frightened of
brave people.

When Joel sees her in the street he thinks it's both
disgusting and exciting to see her face without a nose.

She usually has a white handkerchief stuffed into the
hole where her nose should be.

Every time he sees her he tells himself he's not going
to look, but he can't resist it.

She goes to the Pentecostal chapel next to the
Community Centre. She patrols the streets every day,
selling religious magazines. Hardly anybody dares not
to stop and buy one off her.

He knows she tried to drown herself in the river when
they'd cut off her nose at the hospital. But somebody
saw her jump in, and rowed out in the horse dealer's
boat and rescued her. She'd had a heavy iron in her
pocket and a thick chain wrapped round her neck. Then
Happy Harry, the Pentecostal minister, took her under
his wing, and now she sells magazines for him.

She lives all alone, in a little house at Ulvkälla, on the
far side of the bridge. That seems to be where she's
heading for.

They follow her as far as the bridge. Then it gets hard,
because there are so many lights on the bridge. They
watch her disappear into the shadows.

Joel tells Ture what he knows about her. When he's
finished, Ture asks a peculiar question.

'Do you know where there's an ants' nest?' he asks.

An ants' nest?

Joel knows where there are lots of ants' nests, but they
are all still covered in snow. The ants don't usually
emerge until May.

'We'll pay her a visit tomorrow,' says Ture. 'I want to
go home now.'

'You said you were going to show me something,'
says Joel.

'I have done,' says Ture. 'How to trail a person.'

Joel goes with Ture as far as his gate. He hopes Ture
will invite him to call round after school, but Ture says
nothing. He simply jumps over the gate and vanishes
into his vast house.

Joel has the feeling that Ture is already beginning to
take over The Secret Society.

That's a good thing but also a bad thing.

What is good is that Joel no longer has sole
responsibility for it all. But what is bad is that
everything has happened so quickly.

He hurries home. It's freezing, and he feels cold. He
can hear The Old Bricklayer's lorry somewhere in the
distance. When he enters the kitchen he has the same
feeling as the night before. There's something amiss.
This time it's even stronger.

He feels scared. What has changed?

He unlaces his boots and hangs up his jacket. Everything
is the same as usual, but at the same time, it's
different.

Without really knowing why, he opens the door to his
father's room. He knows exactly how far he can open it
before it starts creaking.

He listens for his dad's breathing. But he hears
nothing.

Just for a moment he's so scared that he almost bursts
into tears. Has Samuel died?

He gropes his way forward. It's pitch black, but even
so he closes his eyes.

Breathe, he thinks. Breathe, breathe, breathe . . .

He knocks against the side of the bed with his knee.

He has to open his eyes now. He must face up to the
most difficult task he's ever been landed with.

Face up to something he doesn't really dare face up
to.

His eyes fail to respond.

His eyelids are secured by heavy padlocks.

Big dogs are running back and forth, preventing him
from opening his eyes.

But in the end he forces his eyes open, as if he'd used
dynamite to set himself free.

Despite the darkness he can see that the bed is empty.

His father has abandoned him.

What actually happened that night when Joel discovered
that his father was not in his bed?

He wasn't at all sure. All his memories were blurred,
as if he'd been looking at unfocused photos, when he
tried to remember later. What he would really like to do
was to forget that night altogether; but his memory was
stronger than the urge to forget, and his fear was so great
that he couldn't shake it off.

What happened?

What did he do?

He sat quite still on the edge of his father's bed and
cried his eyes out. That deadened his fear. Then he ran
round and round the empty flat, as if he were suffering
severe pains that he was trying to shake off.

All the time he kept thinking he could hear Samuel's
footsteps on the stairs, but when he flung open the door
there was nobody there. He looked out of the window
but the street was deserted, and the night glared disdainfully
back at him.

And he thought lots of awful thoughts.

First he'd been abandoned by his mother. Now his
father had done the same thing to him.

The good humour, humming the sea shanties,
promising to buy him a bike – it had all been false.

His fear was so great, he could hear it bellowing deep
down in his subconscious. As if there were a dog
chained up inside him, howling non-stop.

It was a long time before he calmed down sufficiently
to think straight again.

There were no trains running at night. They didn't
have a car. And Samuel could hardly have set out for the
far side of the vast forest on foot.

There was only one explanation and Joel felt he
needed to have immediate confirmation of what he
knew was true.

As he runs down the stairs again, the door to old Mrs
Westman's flat opens and she stands there framed by the
light coming from her hall, wearing a brown dressing
gown and a white nightcap.

'It's shocking, all this running up and down stairs,'
she says. 'Has something happened?'

'No,' says Joel. 'Nothing at all.'

It occurs to him that it might be a good idea to hide in
Mrs Westman's flat. Hide behind all her embroidered
pictures of Christ in the flat smelling of apples, and
pretend that he doesn't exist. But he runs out into the
street and keeps on running.

He doesn't stop until he gets to the entrance door of
the block of flats where Sara lives. He's been running so
fast that he has a stitch, and the cold air is biting into his
throat.

He opens the door carefully and sneaks into the dark
rear courtyard. There is a faint light behind the curtains
in one of Sara's windows.

He looks round the courtyard but can't see a ladder.
He knows there is one behind the ironmonger's on the
other side of the street, so he runs back through the
entrance door, over the street, and sees the ladder
half-buried under the snow. It's heavy. He can hardly
lift it. He has to use all his strength to lug it over the
street.

Jesus with the cross, he thinks. Jesus with the cross
and Joel with the ladder . . .

By the time he's carried the ladder into Sara's rear
courtyard, he's soaked in sweat. His bladder is bursting,
and he pees all over the bicycle he thinks belongs to
Sara. There is still a faint light behind one of the
curtains. He's shivering with cold, and tries to work out
how best to raise the ladder and lean it against the wall
without making a noise.

But he can't think of any way. The ladder is too
heavy. He'll just have to try to slide it up the wall and
hope nobody hears anything.

Not that it matters. Nothing matters any more.

So he braces himself, heaves with all his strength and
manages to raise the ladder against the wall.

No sign of movement behind the curtain.

He's out of breath and sweaty, and his throat feels raw.

But the worst is yet to come.

He climbs tentatively up the ladder until his head is
almost up to the windowsill.

He closes his eyes; once again his eyelids are
padlocked. He's prepared to give up everything – The
Flying Horse,
Celestine
, his rock – as long as Samuel
isn't behind the curtain.

Then he looks.

Sara is lying under a sheet in a brown bed.

Her mouth is moving, but Joel can't hear what she's
saying.

Sitting on the edge of the bed is Samuel.

He's naked, and is listening to what Sara has to say.

Through the curtain Joel can see the long, red scar on
his father's thigh. The scar he got when a hatch burst
open in a severe storm off the Hebrides, and he almost
lost a leg.

He's giving that scar to Sara . . .

Joel is overcome by a deep sense of pain and sorrow
as he perches there on the ladder. It's as if he no longer
exists, as if he were condemned to perch on that ladder,
frozen stiff, for a thousand years.

Why has he been abandoned? He's never abandoned
anybody. After all, he's his own mum.

He doesn't know how long he stands there on the
ladder. But he doesn't climb down until his sorrow has
slowly given way to contempt and fury.

He doesn't climb down until he feels strong enough to
avenge himself.

He digs out a stone from under the snow next to the
wall. It's not very big, only half the size of his fist, but
it's big enough.

Now he has to make sure he doesn't miss.

He'll only have one throw, no more. If he misses and
then tries again, he'll be discovered.

It doesn't matter if he is discovered, of course, but he
hopes to avoid that even so. He has to hit his target with the
first stone. He's not bothered about the ladder. Explaining
to the ironmonger how the ladder turned up underneath her
window will be even more revenge on Sara.

He takes aim. He's taken his glove off, and holds the
cold stone in his frozen hand.

Then he hurls the stone, and feels a pang of regret as
he lets go. The stone hits the window right in the middle,
and the glass is shattered with a crack that echoes all
round the courtyard.

He runs off as fast as he can. He doesn't stop until
he's back at home, and the cold air feels like sandpaper
in his throat.

When he's got his breath back, he tiptoes cautiously
past old Mrs Westman's door.

He wonders if she'll tell his father that he's been out
in the middle of the night.

Samuel will understand what has happened if she does.

But the thought only worries Joel a little bit.

He turns on all the lights in the flat before untying his
boots with his freezing cold fingers. One of the laces has
got a knot that he can't unravel. He fetches the bread
knife and cuts it off. He undresses and snuggles down
into bed in order to warm up.

He's not going to think about his father as such any
more. From now on he will call him Samuel.

It strikes him it was silly to leave the lights on. He
switches them all off then creeps back into bed. Then
he waits, waits for Samuel to come back home. But
he's so tired, he can't keep his eyes open and he nods
off to sleep.

His dreams are restless, nasty, long-drawn-out.
Dreams he won't remember anything about . . .

When he wakes up next morning Samuel has already
left for the forest. Joel stands in the kitchen doorway and
sees that he has been there and made coffee. The stove
is still hot.

The bootlace Joel had cut off is lying on the floor like
a strip of a shed snakeskin.

Joel is tired. He must hurry up if he's going to get to
school on time.

But when he emerges into the cold dawn he decides
that he's not going to go to school. He can't face it, he
has to do some thinking. Mind you, it's not sure that
he'll have the strength to think either. It would be good
if he had a tap inside his head that he could open, and let
all his thoughts run out . . .

For no obvious reason he finds himself heading north
out of the little town. First the long hill up to the railway
station. Beyond that is the hospital, and then the endless
forest.

In a little hollow by the road, almost completely
hemmed in by dense fir trees, is The Old Bricklayer's
house. It's a dilapidated smithy that has been converted
into a private home. The garden is full of junk and
overgrown currant bushes.

Joel pauses and peers in through the dense fir trees.
He can see wheel tracks in the snow. Then somebody
shouts to him.

'Come here,' somebody says. 'Come and give me a
hand.'

He looks round. He can see nothing but trees. Fir trees
with a thick covering of snow on their branches.

'I need a hand,' he hears the voice say once more.

And then he sees The Old Bricklayer, in among the
fir trees.

He waves to him.

'Come over here and hold this,' shouts The Old
Bricklayer.

Joel approaches hesitantly.

The Old Bricklayer emerges from the trees with the
end of a thick, long rope in one hand.

Joel thinks that his real name is so appropriate. A man
with a name like Simon Windstorm has to look exactly
like The Old Bricklayer. He has big gaps in his mouth –
no doubt his teeth have blown away. Bushy eyebrows
are sprouting round his eyes like rambling rose bushes.
His eyes are bright and piercing, and he seems to be
looking right through Joel.

The Old Bricklayer is wearing a voluminous fur coat
riddled with large moth-holes. He has a Wellington boot
on one foot, and a spiked boot on the other.

The Old Bricklayer notices that Joel is intrigued.

'You're looking at my feet, are you?' he says.
'People have no idea of what's best. I can slide forward
using my Wellington, and use the spiked boot to dig
into the ice and keep me steady. Who says you have to
have identical boots on both feet? Does it say anything
about that in the Bible? Do the police have the right to
arrest people who wear odd boots? Of course not. Not
even any two feet are the same. Hang on to this rope
now!'

He stuffs the end of the rope into Joel's hands and
vanishes again into the trees. The rope becomes taut, and
The Old Bricklayer comes hurrying back through the
snow.

It strikes Joel that he looks like an animal. A sort of
cross between an elk and a human being. A Windstorm
Ox.

He takes the rope from Joel and lays it down in the
snow so that it stays taut. All the time he's mumbling
and snorting to himself.

'What are you doing?' Joel asks.

The Old Bricklayer looks at him in surprise.

'Doing?' he says. 'I'm laying out the rope in the snow.
I think it looks good. I only do things that look good.'

Then he looks worried.

'Do you think it looks good?'

'Of course,' says Joel. 'It looks really good . . . '

The Old Bricklayer lies down in the snow and relaxes,
as if he were lying in the warm heather on a summer's
day.

'I feel less isolated when I do something that looks
good,' he says. 'That's my medicine. I was ill for a long
time. It was only when I started doing things that look
good that I started to be healthy again.'

The man's mad, Joel thinks. No normal person lays
out ropes in the snow and thinks it looks good.

'The earth is round,' says The Old Bricklayer. 'It
spins round and round. Sometimes I get dizzy and I have
to lie down in the snow, and cool my head down. Then
I can think about the past and the future. And while all
that stuff's going on, I'm alive. When I'm dead I won't
be alive any longer. That's the top and bottom of it. But
I'm a bit worried when I think that nobody will realise
how important it is to lay ropes out in the snow when
I've gone. I wish I had some apprentices . . . '

'Why do you drive around in your lorry at night?'
asks Joel, hoping that The Old Bricklayer will recognise
Joel as the boy he helped out of the snow when The
Flying Horse had crashed.

But Simon Windstorm doesn't recognise him. He lies
in the snow, gazing up at the sky.

'I've given up sleeping,' he says. 'There's nothing so
lonely for a lonely man as sleeping alone in a lonely
house. So I get into my lorry and drive round. I think
about all those years I was in hospital, and I sing to
banish all the nasty memories. You can sing away your
sorrows. And you can whistle away your nasty
memories so that they don't dare come back . . . '

He suddenly sits up in the snow and looks at Joel.

'Thank you for your help,' he says. 'You can go now.
I want to be left in peace. But come back some other
time and I'll give you some soup that will enable you to
see into the future.'

'That's not possible,' says Joel.

'Oh yes it is,' says The Old Bricklayer. 'Come back to
see me, and I'll show you.'

Then he gets up, brushes off the snow and plods off
into the trees.

Joel continues on his way.

He tries out what The Old Bricklayer said, to find out
if it's true. That you can sing away the things you'd
rather not think about.

He knows 'Shenandoah' off by heart.

He thinks about Sara with her red hat, and starts
singing, loudly and out of tune.

After the first verse she is still patting him on the
cheek. After the second verse, that he can't really
remember properly, she is starting to fade away. After
the third verse she's disappeared altogether. But as soon
as he finishes, she comes back again. I can't remember
the words, he thinks. It doesn't help . . .

He goes back home to his house by the river. It starts
snowing, and it's hard going.

I have to speak to him today, he thinks. Samuel. If he
tells me where Jenny is, he can sit on Sara's bed and
show her his scar as much as he likes.

Although he prefers not to think about it, he does
realise that when Samuel sits naked on the edge of her
bed, that means he could end up with unwanted brothers
and sisters.

Sisters, he thinks. It would be bound to be sisters.
Little Saras with red hats . . .