The Man on the Bridge Read online

  Half an hour later Mrs Cambourne stood up and wished the Sheldons goodnight.

  “Mr Wilmot, you haven’t forgotten our little chat? I’ll send Janet down as soon as I’m ready. Oliver, I’m sure our guests won’t mind my stealing you away for a couple of minutes. I’d appreciate your arm upon the stairs.”

  I pictured Cambourne’s arm upon the stairs.

  “What a truly remarkable woman!” said Mr Sheldon, the very moment the door had closed behind them—maybe even a second or two before it had. “John, did you ever see anything quite like it?”

  “No,” I said. “I never did.” But it felt as if something a little more were required. I followed his lead. “Remarkable,” I declared.

  At first we spoke only about the Cambournes and their home. Eventually I asked Mr Sheldon what his line of business was.

  “Oh,” he said casually, “I produce hinges and staples. In Boston, Massachusetts.”

  “Ah … useful,” I murmured.

  He nodded, with the kind of manfully suppressed pride which might have been more in keeping with admitting that you ran Twentieth Century Fox.

  “Yes, I don’t want to sound immodest, John, but the Sheldon Company’s just about the biggest in its field on the East Coast. Has just about the finest reputation, too.”

  “Oh, I see.” No wonder they could attend first nights on Broadway, then. (They’d also been present at the ‘West Side Story’ opening: “That’s the most, John. Believe us—that one really is the most!”) Hinges and staples began to sound a bit more glamorous.

  But Tranch came in at that point, with a small basket of logs. He inquired if I had seen my room yet or whether I would like him to show it to me. By the time I got back, Cambourne had returned as well.

  “I’m afraid I’m an abysmal host,” he apologized to the Sheldons. “Could I possibly ask you to entertain yourselves for yet a further few minutes…?”

  He gave them various magazines and put on a record of Gilbert and Sullivan—then, taking some writing paper out of an escritoire, pulled his chair up close to mine and started to jot down the French he’d spoken in the car. He really was a little like Pygmalion … and that was fine: whatever he could teach me I would be happy to learn.

  “As you can see,” he began, “it was all a lot of nonsense. I was talking off the top of my head.”

  The part I found most interesting came towards the end.

  “…the feeling one’s made so many mistakes that the only way of living with them is deciding not to mind making others…”

  Nor did he limit it to writing down the French together with its careful translation. He went to so much trouble explaining every idiom that I was quickly reminded of what Mrs Sheldon had asked him at dinner. Despite his professed horror I thought he’d probably have made the sort of schoolmaster many of his pupils developed crushes on and therefore tried their hardest to impress.

  We took far longer, however, than he must have anticipated. We had barely finished when Mrs Cambourne’s personal maid came to fetch me; and Mrs Cambourne had left us at least forty minutes earlier. As I silently followed the bustling Janet up the stairs—the small, Scottish, flaxen-haired Janet, not a great deal younger than her mistress—I didn’t know which emotion was uppermost: curiosity or apprehension. Even hostility? But once through the doorway my first feeling was one of surprise.

  Surprise, I mean, at the evidence of femininity I found. Mrs Cambourne’s bedroom was fairly similar to my mother’s, except that it was larger and grander and there was a real fire burning in the grate. I’d have imagined my hostess to be more in favour of fresh air; less in favour of frills. She was sitting up in bed with a mound of peach-coloured pillows piled high against the headboard and a lacy white shawl draped around her shoulders. She wore a button-necked, pink flannel nightgown; and somehow seemed much softer than before.

  She said, “Ah, Mr Wilmot…,” and she gave a signal for Janet to withdraw.

  Then she indicated a low satinwood seat conveniently placed for conversation.

  “It’s stronger than it looks. But if you’d prefer one of those striped armchairs, please feel free to bring it over.”

  “No, this is fine.”

  The civilities … I noticed her gold-topped cane propped against the bedside table—it added a touch of severity to the homeliness of books, pills, water, lamp. There was a shiny red apple sitting on top of ‘Mary Barton’.

  “It’s good of you to humour an old lady. Thank you for coming.”

  I smiled. “But I could scarcely have refused.”

  “Ah! So you see me as a martinet?”

  Although I didn’t deny this she may have thought I had. “Oh, but I am! Disgracefully so! Especially as Merriot Park isn’t even mine. I’m only here on sufferance.”

  “No, I can’t believe that.”

  She chuckled. “And of course you’re perfectly right not to. Oliver and I mean the world to one another. I think you probably noticed?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  Either my words or my expression must have carried conviction. “There! You’re obviously perceptive.” There was scarcely a pause. “You’re also very beautiful.”

  Annoyingly, I felt myself begin to blush.

  But I gazed down at my shoes and enjoyed, in spite of my embarrassment, the way they shone in the soft pinkish light; enjoyed the sensation of being beautiful, with long legs and well-shaped ankles and shoes that shone in the soft pinkish light.

  “Yet I have to say I always find them difficult to like.”

  “Whom?”

  “Beautiful people.”

  “Though with some exceptions, clearly! Your son is very good-looking.”

  I had intended to say beautiful but found I couldn’t quite manage it.

  “And if I may remark on it, Mrs Cambourne, you too…”

  This wasn’t insincere. Earlier, my assessment might have been grudging. Possibly it was the sort of face which improved on acquaintance. Possibly, it was the sort of face which a black dress didn’t complement.

  She gave a smile—albeit a grim one. “Might that be how I came by my mistrust?”

  “I don’t know. Might it?”

  “For in the main, you see, I think beautiful people are spoilt. And ruthless. And don’t mind whom they hurt.”

  “I mind very much whom I hurt.”

  “That may be true. But excuse me—it’s pathetically easy to say. And only time will tell.”

  She pulled her shawl more closely about her.

  “Let me,” she suggested, “be a little more specific.”

  I would have thought she was already doing all right in that department.

  “To you my son may seem like someone who knows about life. He isn’t. He’s a baby. Time and again people have tried to exploit him; time and again he’s allowed them to. For all his outer sophistication he remains naive. For all his claims to cynicism he remains trusting. For all his pretence of world-weariness … well, do I need to go on? No matter how he would deny this—and even as a smokescreen accuse others of the crime, myself included—at heart he’s a romantic. He still imagines there are those who won’t be swayed by the money which his paintings earn, or by the fortune which his father left him. Well, perhaps there are but my own faith in the possibility is not strong. All I am certain of”—and here she leant forward and fixed me with a regard so emphatic it was hard to maintain eye contact—“all I am certain of is that I am not prepared to stand by and watch him suffer again. I am not! I hope you understand.”

  I shook my head.

  She’d made it too explicit.

  I wasn’t about to meet her frankness with a comparable one of my own.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. What has any of this to do with me?”

  “Do you love my son?”

  (Who says the English are reserved?)

  “Love him?”

  “Yes, Mr Wilmot. Are you in love with my son?”

  I thought of standing on my dignity�
��I mean, of standing more upon my dignity. (“Mrs Cambourne, what are you suggesting? And why do you suppose my being a guest here allows you to behave in this manner? Shouldn’t the very opposite apply?”) I might have enjoyed that. But what good would it have done?

  I said eventually: “Apart from the fact I didn’t meet him until yesterday…”

  “Yes?”

  “…well, apart from that, I don’t believe that I’ve ever been in love in my life.”

  And because I sometimes worried about this—wondering whether it might not be indicative of some rare, perhaps incurable, disorder—I now added a rider.

  “At least I hope not. Otherwise all the poets and screenwriters have been woefully exaggerating.”

  For a moment it appeared she had actually been sidetracked.

  “Never been in love?” she repeated.

  “No.”

  “How extraordinary! At your age I had fallen in and out of love more times than I remember.”

  I said nothing. I wasn’t sure that “Lucky you!” would have been exactly right.

  “Mind you,” she went on. “That now makes it easier to request a favour.”

  Uh-huh, I thought. Here we go!

  “And I would admire you enormously for granting it. I assure you, Mr Wilmot, you would rise high in my esteem.”

  She plainly regarded this as a greater prize than I did. For—hardly to be wondered at—I had guessed exactly what was coming. And the irony of it made me laugh.

  Literally.

  I said: “So if I promise to step out of your son’s life forever I shall then become the sort of person worthy to remain in it?” Did this smack of something Groucho Marx had said?

  In any case it made no difference. Mine or Groucho’s, she clearly didn’t appreciate such humour. Her manner grew cold.

  “Yes, that’s precisely what I’d like: that you should indeed step out of my son’s life forever.” She didn’t seem much interested in the sort of person I’d become.

  Then the steely quality receded—she must have realized that it wouldn’t serve her purpose. She leant forward again.

  “Don’t you see? You could leave here in the morning—first thing in the morning—well before Oliver was down! Thomas would drive you to the station!”

  Her eagerness was pitiable.

  “And that would be the end of it! We could invent some story…”

  “Oh, Mrs Cambourne…”

  “Yes?” Her energy was unabated.

  I spread my hands. “This is ridiculous!”

  The light disappeared from her eyes. It didn’t go fast—rather, it faded, as though the implication of that word couldn’t instantly be assimilated.

  And the difference in her tone was awful.

  “I protect my son, Mr Wilmot, I do everything in my power to protect him! I’m sorry if that seems to you ridiculous.”

  She added: “However, I wouldn’t think of insulting you through the offer of a bribe…”

  “No? Why not? Why stop at that?” I had risen to my feet by this time; it would have been virtually impossible to stay seated. “Hasn’t everything you’ve said during these past ten minutes been an insult?”

  And I derived something darkly entertaining from the change in her expression.

  “All right then, Mr Wilmot. All right. What figure might you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I answered casually. “Perhaps two thousand?”

  She considered the proposition. Finally she nodded. She smiled thinly. “Beauty obviously comes dear this year.”

  “Beauty allied to much loveliness of nature.”

  “But I’m not going to haggle with you. Naturally I shall want a line or two in writing to the effect that you’ve accepted this money and for what you have accepted it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not that I should dream of ever showing it to Oliver. Other than in extremis.”

  “But you would have to show it to him!”

  I felt almost dismayed by the fact she hadn’t thought this through.

  “Otherwise, he’d come looking for me, wouldn’t he? If only to seek out some explanation.”

  “Would he? Yes, I suppose he would.”

  “And he knows where I work.”

  “But I would never have chosen to hurt him so. I would never have chosen it.”

  “How could you not have? What kind of story did you think we could invent? Supposing I’d said, ‘Yes, Mrs Cambourne, I will grant your favour!’—even then you’d have needed a note, even then you’d have needed me to take money. I would never have confessed to something so abominable if I hadn’t actually done it.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected you to.”

  “No, perhaps not, but…”

  “Anyway.” She gestured tiredly towards a chest of drawers on the other side of the room. “You’ll find writing materials in the top left-hand drawer. You’ll also find a chequebook.”

  “Ah, yes! But that’s another thing. How can I be sure that you won’t stop the cheque?” It suddenly dawned on me that, in some thoroughly perverse fashion, I was actually having fun.

  But then I remembered something.

  I remembered the look that I had seen at dinner.

  And it was a timely reminder: a sure indication of the love felt for this woman by the man who had invited me here; the man who was not only offering me hospitality, showing concern over my future and even an interest in my writing, but who had so recently—and, most convincing of all, as a guide to his integrity—been doing everything he could to improve my French.

  So I turned to face her before she had replied to my question. (She might not have believed it merited any reply.)

  “Oh, Mrs Cambourne,” I said again, wearily.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “I really do apologize.”

  “I suppose these things can’t be helped.” She spoke in a voice every bit as weary as my own, yet it struck me as a generous observation. “But please don’t get sentimental. For better for worse we’re all as we are. We can only hope that little by little we shall improve.”

  “No,” I said, “you don’t understand. What I’m apologizing for is this whole nonsensical charade. I feel ashamed—but at the same time think you more or less deserved it.”

  It again took her several seconds to adjust. I didn’t wait for her to comment.

  “And I’m glad Merriot Park doesn’t belong to you and that therefore you haven’t the right to turn me out of it. But I’m sorry if we’re going to be enemies. I’m sorry if the next two days are going to be awkward for us.”

  I didn’t know, quite, how to bring this to an end.

  “But do you think our talk might, in some small way, have cleared the air? Obviously, I won’t say anything to Oliver. And I promise you I’ll always do my utmost not to hurt him.”

  She looked older. She was gazing down at her hands, which lay clasped before her on the eiderdown. Absurdly, I now noticed the scattering of liver spots.

  “I’ll bid you goodnight, then. Would you like me to send up Janet?”

  She still didn’t answer.

  I left the room and went down to the library; opened its door but didn’t advance far beyond the threshold. Cambourne and the Sheldons were playing cards. I expressed the hope they were enjoying their game. “Don’t let me spoil your concentration. I’ve only come to say goodnight.”

  Cambourne said: “We’ve nearly finished. Wouldn’t you like a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’m feeling tired. It must be all that good food and country air!”

  I sensed his disappointment, yet knew he’d be anxious to hear what had been spoken of upstairs—and I wanted to work out how I was going to present it. (Doctor it!) “Where would I find Janet, in case your mother needs her?”

  “Don’t worry. There’s a bell push by her bed.”

  “Ah, yes, of course.” I smiled at the Sheldons. “Good night.” I smiled at Cambourne. “And thank you, Oliver, for ev
erything.”

  I realized this was the first time I had called him by his first name. It felt strange. “You’ve been very kind to me. I appreciate it.”

  He replied lazily and with none of the robust good wishes I’d received from the Sheldons. “Oh, je t’en prie, mon vieux.”

  “See you in the morning,” I laughed.

  In the second before saying it I had become aware of something else. That very ordinary phrase was one which—tonight—would give me a peculiar satisfaction.

  5

  I got up some seven and a half hours later feeling thoroughly refreshed and even elated. A maid had brought me tea and biscuits. Though normally I didn’t enjoy that kind of attention, for the present I revelled in it. I said to myself: This is me drinking Earl Grey (I think) in bed at Oliver Cambourne’s home on the eighth of November 1958; today can never be repeated; I intend to savour every minute.

  So I drank the tea and then sprang out of bed, like healthy, wholesome, head-of-the-house heroes are always supposed to. I performed fifty-four slow press-ups; touched my toes twenty times; did some deep-knee bends, cycling and handstands; more sit-ups than I had ever yet managed—which I saw as a glorious omen—then spent ten minutes under a blissfully powerful shower. And all the time I felt obscurely that I was getting my own back on Mrs Cambourne. In the shower I sang ‘D’ye ken John Peel?’, ‘The Eton Boating Song’ and ‘Over the Sea to Skye’, and finished off by gritting my teeth and turning on the cold jet full force—soon to be rewarded by feeling both morally and physically invigorated, as I wielded a large and luxurious towel. I shaved, splashed on cologne, gave my hair its regular three-minute brush, got dressed in slacks and a tartan shirt—and eventually presented myself as fit for the world’s inspection, in the dining room, shortly after nine.

  The world turned out to be represented solely by Elizabeth Sheldon. She had finished her own breakfast and had been about to leave, but she sat down again and encouraged me to explore the half-dozen covered dishes keeping warm on the sideboard. I took a succulent-looking kipper.

  “Before I forget,” I said, “thank you for helping me out last night.”

  “Good gracious, no call to thank me—I happened to agree with what you were saying! In any case, it didn’t appear you needed much helping out, either from me or anyone.”