Jane Higgins - The Bridge

‘Is he here? Where?’

But he put a hand on my shoulder. ‘They’re in the study, four of ’em got here. They’re meeting with the Commander and Tasia. Patience. They’ll be busy for a while yet. They don’t get together too often, and Remnant’s stepped up a gear. They’ve got a lot of talking to do.’

Which left me sitting, then standing, then pacing in the hallway. My stomach was churning, and the hall was too close and airless.

I went outside and sat on the steps. Across the road a man was trying to fix his wreck of a car, and three others stood around him, smoking, laughing, offering advice and friendly abuse. A couple of old women in black came out of a little church down the way. Its dome, which probably once shone gold or bronze, was stripped to a dull gray base.

At last the study door opened. Jeitan came out with two women and a man. They were deep in conversation as Jeitan ushered them into the kitchen and I heard him say, ‘Max will look after you.’ Then he came down the hall to me. ‘Your turn. In the study. But wait in the hallway till you’re called.’

Easier said than done. I leaned on the door Jeitan had come out of and listened. I heard a voice I didn’t know. A man’s voice. And Levkova’s. The man was talking but I heard only fragments, as if he was pacing towards the door and then away. ‘No, of course I didn’t… what Elena wanted… a child grown fat on their lies… or a feint, it would be a potent weapon for them…’

The churn in my stomach climbed up my throat. I gripped the door handle hard. Levkova was saying, ‘I don’t think—’

‘What don’t you think?’

‘He doesn’t strike me as either of those.’

‘Don’t go soft on me, Tasia.’

‘Will you see him?’

‘I’ll have to.’

Yes, I thought. Yes, you will. I opened the door. The man stopped pacing and looked at me. Levkova bowed to him and headed for the door, but he said, ‘Stay, Tasia. Please.’ Commander Vega was across the room by a tall window.

My father was white, an easterner for sure. His hair was gray, but his face wasn’t old. It was strong and hard. Battle-hungry. He was lean, like all of them, and tall, and his stare was sharp and calculating.

‘Sit down.’ He nodded towards a chair in front of a wall of shelves crammed with books and watched me cross the room. I sat on the arm of the chair and dug my fists into my pockets.

My heart beat hard.

He went back to pacing. ‘So, then, here’s my dilemma,’ he said, like I was part of the conversation he’d been having with the others. ‘I’m telling you this because, if you’re a soldier you’ll understand. If you’re not… well… My dilemma is this: even if you are who you say you are, I can’t know what you are. Twelve years in an ISIS school is too long.’ He glanced at me. ‘In any case, I don’t have time to find out. Regardless of who you are, if they’ve sent you, that means they’ve found me. That would be a useful thing for us to know.’ He drew on his cigarette and breathed out a cloud of smoke. ‘They say you speak Breken. Have you understood me?’

I nodded.

‘What did they tell you, in the city, about me?’

‘That you,’ I cleared my throat and tried again, ‘That you were dead… in the… in the uprising in ‘87.’

‘Do you remember Frieda Kelleran?’

‘A bit, not really.’

‘She didn’t visit you?’

I shook my head.

‘Did anyone else?’

‘Visit me? No.’

‘It was not my wish to put a child in that school. When I got out of the Marsh, I was told what Frieda had done. Then it was too late.’

‘Why too late?’ I asked. He studied his cigarette as it burned down to his fingers and didn’t answer. ‘What was it too late for?’ I said. ‘To get me out? You had moles in there. You were planning to blow it up. How hard could it be to get one kid out?’

‘Nik…’ said Levkova.

He stared at the cigarette. ‘That child is lost to us.’

My throat closed.

‘Tasia tells me you claim to remember Elena?’ He rolled another cigarette and lit it. Watched me. Waited. ‘What do you remember?’

I watched him back.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘This is a test, right?’

‘I’m wondering what you remember, that’s all.’

I headed for the door.

‘Wait!’ he said. ‘It’s a simple enough question. Why not answer it?’

I stopped in the doorway. ‘What would that tell you? That they’ve briefed me well? She’d be a key piece of intelligence, wouldn’t she? Looks. Quirks. Habits. Manners. There’s bound to be an ISIS dossier about her for just this purpose.’

‘So you don’t remember—’

‘Or I haven’t read it. Which do you think?’

‘Come back and sit—’

‘I remember her voice in my ear saying my name. I remember her hair reaching down to her waist when she let it out. I remember her smell, like soap and linen. I remember the orange scarf she wore when she went to market and the gold pins in her ears. I remember her fear when men came pounding on the door and wrecked the place – for you? Was that? Looking for you. And I remember the sound she made after they’d gone. I remember her . I don’t remember you .‘

Enough. More than enough.

I left.

If you climb the Southside riverwallat the western boundary of the Moldam district and work your way past the smashed-up signs telling you not to and through the barbed wire strung across the top, you can drop down onto a narrow stretch of bank where things wash up and get caught in the reed clumps that grow there. Bits of make-shift boats and rafts, bodies sometimes, and pieces of them, mines escaped from their moorings. The bodies get fished out when someone notices them, but the mines are left alone. There’s too many, they’re too dangerous to defuse, and detonating them could destroy the wall. To the right is the Mol, Moldam Bridge, in all its glory. And a way off west, to the left, hazy in the river spray, are the bridges at Bethun, Sentinel and, a long way lost in the distance, St Clare.

The riverbank was clear of boats and bodies that day, picked over by scavengers who’d left nothing but gravel and clay and a few tufts of spiky grass. In among the reeds I could see the glint of a couple of small metallic disks untouched by any scavenger. Mines. I wondered if they really would take out the riverwall. I sat down and scooped up a handful of gravel and threw a pebble at the nearest one. I was pretty sure it would take more than a stone. Anyway, my aim was off.

Across the water the city shimmered in hazy afternoon light. I imagined I could see Bridge Street, a dark narrow strip going up from St Clare gate through Sentian. North-east of that was Watch Hill and, beyond that, Pagnal Heath. The trees would be bare now, and there’d be a blanket of snow except on the walkways where it would be shovelled sideways into muddy piles. Not many people would be out in all that wide, empty space. But well before the heath, if you turned left at Weston, and took the short cut through the alleys, Kemryn, Ry, Madan, you’d come out on Tornmoor Avenue. Walk up Tornmoor for about five minutes and you arrive at the school gates. I stood there once, with Frieda Kelleran – stood and looked up the tree-lined drive towards the library. Memory flickered. She wore black gloves and a long gray coat, and she held my hand as we walked up the driveway. At least I think she did. Maybe I’d made that up. Maybe she never existed and it was all a lie and ISIS was playing a very long game after all.

When I hauled myself back to the riverbank, Eleanor was there – Elena – my mother, whose right name I hadn’t even known. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Threw another stone. She didn’t speak, just sat there and looked across the water.