The word lifts a spell, suddenly, and I kneel by this Esther-Little-inside-Ian, if that’s what it is. “What can I do?”
The eyeball twitches behind its closing lid. “Asylum.”
I just wanted more green tea, but a promise is a promise. Plus, whatever just happened, I’m only alive ’cause Rhоmes is dead, and Rhоmes is only dead ’cause of Ian or Esther Little or whoever this is. I’m in debt. “Sure … Esther. What do I do?”
“Middle finger.” A thirsty ghost in a dead mouth. “Forehead.”
So I press my middle finger against Ian’s forehead. “Like this?”
Ian’s leg twitches a bit, and stops. “Lower.”
So I move my middle finger down an inch. “Here?”
The working half of Ian’s mouth twists. “There …”
THE SUN’S WARM on my neck and a salty breeze has picked up. Down in the narrow channel between Kent and the Isle of Sheppey a trawler’s blasting its honker: I can see the captain’s picking his nose, and looking for somewhere to put the bogie. The bridge is a Thomas the Tank Enginejob—the whole middle section rises up between two stumpy towers. When it reaches the top a klaxon sounds and the trawler chugs underneath. Jacko’d love this. I hunt in my duffel bag for my can of Tango and find a newspaper—the Socialist Worker. What’s this doing here? Did Ed Brubeck put it in for a joke? I’d chuck it over the barrier, but this cyclist bloke’s just arriving, so I open my Tango and watch the bridge. The cyclist’s ’bout Dad’s age, but he’s slim as a snake and nearly bald, where Dad’s a bit chubby, and it’s not for nothing his nickname’s Wolfman. “All right,” says the man, wiping his face on a folded cloth.
He doesn’t look like a pervert, so I answer him: “All right.”
The guy looks up at the bridge, a bit like he built it. “They don’t make bridges like that anymore.”
“Guess not.”
“The Kingsferry Bridge is one of only three vertical-lift bridges in the British Isles. The oldest is a dinky little Victorian affair over a canal in Huddersfield, just for foot traffic. This one here opened in 1960. There’s only two like it, for road and rail, in the world.” He drinks from his water bottle.
“Are you an engineer, then?”
“No, no, just an amateur rare-bridge spotter. My son used to be as mad about them, though. In fact”—he takes out a camera from his saddlebag—“would you mind taking a snap of me and the bridge?”
I say sure, and end up crouching to fit in both the man’s bald head and the bridge’s lifted-up section. “Three, two, one …” The camera whirrs, and he asks me to take another, so I do, and hand him back the camera. He thanks me and fiddles with his gear. I slurp my Tango and wonder why I’m not hungry, even though it’s almost noon and all I’ve eaten since I left Ed Brubeck asleep is a packet of Ritz crackers. I keep doing sausagey burps, too, which makes no sense. A white VW camper drives up and stops at the barrier. Two girls and their boyfriends are smoking and looking at me, all What does she thinkshe’s doing here?even though they’ve got an REO Speedwagon song on. To prove I’m not a no-friends sad-sack I turn back to the cyclist. “Come a long way, then?”
“Not far, today,” he says. “Over from Brighton.”
“Brighton? That’s like a hundred miles away.”
He checks a gizmo on his handlebars. “Seventy-one.”
“Is taking photos of bridges, like, a hobby of yours, then?”
The man thinks about this. “More a ritual than a hobby.” He sees I don’t understand. “Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going. My son died, you see. I take the photos for him.”
“Oh, I …” I try not to look shocked. “Sorry.”
He shrugs and looks away. “It was five years ago.”
“Was it”—why don’t I just shut up?—“an accident?”
“Leukemia. He would have been about your age.”
The klaxon blasts again, and the road section’s lowering. “That must’ve been awful,” I say, hearing how lame it sounds. A long, skinny cloud sits over the humpbacked Isle of Sheppey, like a half-greyhound half-mermaid, and I’m not sure what else to say. The VW revs up and moves off the moment the barrier’s up, leaving a trail of soft rock in the air behind it. The cyclist gets on his bike. “Take care of yourself, young lady,” he tells me, “and don’t waste your life.”
He circles around and heads back to the A22.
All that way, and he never crossed the bridge.
CARS AND TRUCKS wallop by, gusting seeds off dandelion clocks, but there’s no one to ask the way to Black Elm Farm. Lacy flowers sway on long stalks as trucks shudder by, and blue butterflies are shaken loose. The tigery orange ones cling tighter. Ed Brubeck’ll be working at the garden center now, dreaming of Italian girls as he lugs bales of peat into customers’ cars. Must think I’m a right moody cow. Or perhaps not. The fact Vinny dumped me is fast becoming exactly that, a fact. Yesterday it was a sawn-off shotgun wound but today it’s more like a monster bruise from an air-rifle pellet. Yes, I trusted Vinny and I loved him, but that doesn’t make me stupid. For the Vinny Costellos of the world, love is bullshit they murmur into your ear to get sex. For girls—me, anyway—sex is what you do on page one to get to the love that’s later on in the book. “I’m well rid of that lechy bastard,” I tell a cow watching me over a gate, and though I don’t feel it yet, I reckon one day I will. Maybe Stella’s done me a favor, in a way, by tearing off Vinny’s nice-guy mask after only five weeks. Vinny’ll get bored of her, sure as eggs is eggs, and when she finds him in bed with another girl it’ll be herdreams of motorbike rides with Vinny that’ll get minced, just like mine were. Then she’ll come crawling back, eyes as red and sore as mine were yesterday, and ask me to forgive her. And I might. Or I might not. Up ahead there’s a roundabout and a cafй.
And the cafй’s open. Things are looking up.
THE CAFЙ’S CALLED Smoky Joe’s Cafй and it’s trying hard to be an American diner off Happy Dayswith tall booths you can’t see into, but it’s a bit of a shit-hole, really. There’s not many customers, most of them glued to the footy on the knackered telly up on the wall. A woman sits by the door, reading the News of the Worldin a cloud of cigarette smoke coming from her pinched nostrils. Buttony eyes, stitched lips, frizzy hair, a face full of old regrets. Over her head is a faded poster of a brown goldfish bowl with two eyes peering out and a caption saying: JEFF’S GOLDFISH HAD DIARRHEA AGAIN. She sizes me up and waves her hand towards the booths, meaning, Sit where you want. “Actually,” I say, “I just wanted to ask if you know how to get to Black Elm Farm.”
She looks up, shrugs, looks back, and breathes smoke.
“It’s here, on Sheppey. I’ve got a job there.”
She returns to her paper and taps her fag.
I decide to phone Mr. Harty: “Is there a pay phone?”
The old moo shakes her head, without looking up.
“Would it be possible just to make a local call using your—”
She glares at me, like I’ve asked her if she sells drugs.
“Well … might anyone else here know Black Elm Farm?” I hold her gaze for long enough to tell her the quickest way to get back to her paper is to help me.
“Peggy!” she bawls, into the kitchen. “Black Elm Farm?”
A clattery voice answers: “Gabriel Harty’s place. Why?”
Her button eyes swivel my way. “Someone’s askin’ …”
Peggy appears: she has a red nose, gerbil cheeks, and a smile like a Nazi interrogator’s. “Off fruit-picking for a few days, is it, pet? It was hops in my day, but hops is all done by machines nowadays. You take the Leysdown road—thataway”—she points left out of the door—“past Eastchurch, then take Old Ferry Lane on the right. On foot, are you, pet?” I nod. “Five or six mile, it is, but that’s a stroll in the park for—”
There’s a godalmighty clatter of tin trays from the kitchen and Peggy hurries back. I deserve a packet of Rothmans now I’ve got what I came in for, so I go to the machine in the main part of the cafй: Ј1.40 for a packet of twenty. Total rip-off, but there’ll be a bunch of new people at the farm so I’ll need a confidence booster. In go the coins before I can argue myself out of it, round goes the knob, plop go the ciggies. Only when I straighten, box of twenty Rothmans in hand, do I see who’s sat behind the machine, bang across the aisle: Stella Yearwood and Vinny Costello.