On Bone Bridge Read online

  When I didn’t move, Robbie raised a hand and pointed. “That way,” he said.

  Then he turned back to his mother and I found my feet and let them carry me slowly away, looking back all the time. Robbie had returned to arguing again, I knew, because his arms were waving about once more and I watched as Mrs Duff got slowly to her feet, her hand to the small of her back. I had once heard my father refer to her as “a handsome woman”, but looking at her that morning, I remember thinking that she was getting quite fat.

  I did hear them before I saw them. The garages, originally part of the stable block, were some distance away from the back of the house and as I rounded it the sound of the dog’s barking grew louder. I became aware of another sound, a thin screeching which I followed across the lawn, past beds of flowers still summer-bright, to a cobbled yard.

  The second garage, the smaller of the two, was farthest away. The door was open and as I came closer I could see Violet-May. She was sitting on a chair pulled up to a small table on one side of a makeshift stage which had been set up against the back wall. There was a second empty chair next to her. In the middle of the stage, Rosemary-June Duff was playing, or attempting to play, the violin.

  Whenever I saw Rosemary-June next to her sister, I wondered how they could be from the same family. She was two years younger than us and, where Violet-May was dark, Rosemary-June was very fair, with ice-blue eyes, very big and very wide. In contrast to Violet-May’s sulky mouth, Rosemary-June was all smiles. When she had finished playing, she began again.

  “Stop,” Violet-May snapped. “You need to practise, Rosemary-June. But go and do it somewhere else, you’re giving me a headache. And, anyway, Kay is here now and we need to work on the play.”

  It was the only greeting I received from her.

  Rosemary-June, in seemingly perfectly good humour, packed her violin into its case. Then she climbed down carefully from the stage and as she passed me fixed me with her great eyes and said, “Do you have a kitten?”

  “No,” I said, surprised.

  “I don’t either,” said Rosemary-June. “I want one, but Mummy says no. It’s because we have a dog. But it’s not my dog, it’s Robbie’s. I don’t even want a dog, I want a kitten.”

  “It’s not because of the dog,” said Violet-May, “it’s because of the baby. Mummy told Dad that she doesn’t trust cats around babies. Forget about the silly old kitten, Rosemary, and go and practise. I told you that Kay and I need to work on the play.”

  “But nobody wants a baby,” said Rosemary-June, “not even Mummy. I heard her say so. And I don’t think I’ll practise anymore. I don’t feel like it.”

  “Well, go and talk with fairies then or something,” said Violet-May. “Kay, come up here and sit beside me.”

  “Does Rosemary-June talk to fairies?” I asked, after she had gone and I had settled myself in the chair next to Violet-May.

  “She says she does.”

  “Do they talk back?”

  “I don’t know, but Rosemary-June says they appear to her in a silver mist.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  It sounded so nice that I wanted to believe it. The thing was, looking at Rosemary-June, I used to feel that if fairies did exist she was exactly the sort of person they would choose to appear to. I don’t think that Violet-May ever believed in fairies – she was firmly of this world.

  The dog was still barking. “Is that Robbie’s dog,” I asked. “Why doesn’t someone let him out?”

  “Because he runs off into the fields every chance he gets,” said Violet-May. “He rolls in mud and then he runs into the house. And he eats things, not food, just things. He’s a mongrel. Robbie found him and brought him home. Now can we do the play, please, and stop talking about the stupid dog?”

  So I opened my bag and took out my pencil case and copybook. “What’s the play about anyway? Is it funny or sad?”

  “Sad, I think,” said Violet-May. “Yes, let’s make it sad.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “Haven’t you started it yet?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it and I have ideas – I just haven’t written anything down yet. But I’ve made this.” She picked up a square of blue paper that had been folded in two. “It’s the programme for the concert.”

  I took it from her. The front cover had a drawing of daisies and daffodils and someone had written, in exquisitely curling letters, the words:

  You are invited to Violet-May Duffs

  Birthday Concert

  on Saturday 24th September 1983 at 2.30pm

  Inside, the same hand had set out the order of events:

  Programme

  Song One – Sung by Violet-May Duff

  Poetry Recitation – by Violet-May Duff

  Song Two – Sung by Violet-May Duff

  Violin Recital – by Rosemary-June Duff

  Play – The Unhappy Princess – written by and Starring Violet-May Duff

  I looked up then and, as though she had read my mind, Violet-May said, “It was done before I knew you were helping me with the play. It’s too late to put your name down on the programme now. Daddy took it to a printing shop and had photocopies made. But I’ll tell everyone you helped me. Isn’t the programme pretty? All the guests will get one. I drew the pictures and made it all up. Robbie helped me with the spelling and he did the fancy writing – it’s called calligraphy.”

  I studied the programme with new respect. “It’s beautiful,” I said fervently. “Is Robbie coming to the concert?”

  “If he feels like it, but he probably won’t feel like it. He’s in bad humour because he’s being sent to boarding school.”

  “Why is he being sent to boarding school?” I am sure my dismay showed in my voice and my face.

  “Because Mummy says he’s not applying himself and she’s afraid he’s getting in with a bad crowd.”

  “Oh.” I said nothing for a while as I processed this catastrophe. “When does he have to go?”

  Violet-May shrugged impatiently. “Not until after Christmas. Now are we doing the play or not? We don’t have much time to write it, only today and tomorrow.” She looked at me anxiously. “You can come over again tomorrow, can’t you? Tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Yes,” I nodded happily. “I can if you want me to. We can do it after school next week too, if you like?”

  Violet-May shook her head. “I have things to do after school so we have to finish it by tomorrow.”

  We set to work then and it soon became clear to me that, other than knowing she wanted to speak most of the lines there were to be spoken, Violet-May had no ideas whatsoever. She did, however, seem to expect me to have a great many. I made some suggestions but at each Violet-May wrinkled her nose and looked disappointed.

  I dug around a little desperately in my mind. “We could choose your favourite book and do something from that,” I said.

  “I don’t have a favourite book.”

  I misunderstood and smiled sympathetically, “I know, there are so many it’s hard to know which your real favourite is.”

  “I don’t like reading very much,” said Violet-May.

  It is always difficult to learn that your idol has feet of clay and I was silent for a little while. “But you like plays,” I said.

  “Plays are different,” said Violet-May. “Mummy took us to a play once. There was a beautiful lady on the stage and everybody was just sitting looking at her. When I grow up I’m going to be a famous actress. I’ll be on the stage and on the television and in films and everyone will look at me too.”

  I forgot that Violet-May didn’t much like reading. “I bet you’ll be beautiful,” I told her. “I promise I’ll go and see you.”

  “Alright then,” said Violet-May, graciously accepting my adoration as her right. “But what are we going to do about the play for the concert?”

  “I still think we should do something out of a book,” I said. “What about Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn – we could probably make a play
out of those.”

  “But those are boys,” said Violet-May. “I don’t want to be a boy. I want to be a princess, a beautiful princess in a beautiful dress. Mummy bought me a princess dress but I can’t wear it if I’m a stupid boy, can I?”

  A princess dress but no princess play – I remember thinking that Violet-May was, as my mother was fond of saying “putting the cart before the horse”.

  “Well, there are a lot of stories about princesses too,” I said. “I suppose we could make a play out of one of them but it won’t be so exciting.”

  “You can make it exciting,” said Violet-May. “You’re the best writer in the whole class and I just know you’ll write the best play ever.”

  My happiness was complete.

  “It’s three o’clock and your daddy was about to go and get you if you’d been another fifteen minutes,” was my mother’s greeting when I got home.

  My father, who was washing his hands at the sink, turned and smiled at me, as though to say that going to get me had not been his idea. I smiled back.

  “I’m starving,” I announced.

  “Did they not give you anything to eat all that time?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “No – but I didn’t know I was hungry until I was on my way home. I never notice I’m hungry when I’m writing.”

  “But what about Violet-May? Didn’t she have lunch?”

  “I don’t know. She may have. She wasn’t with me all the time.”

  My mother rolled her eyes. “Well, wash your hands and sit down and I’ll make you a banana sandwich.”

  Sitting at the table, watching my mother open a sliced pan and begin spreading butter on two slices of bread, I realised just how hungry I was. I could barely wait while she chopped the banana. Thinking about eating made me think too about Mrs Duff getting fat.

  “Violet-May’s mammy is having a new baby,” I announced, “and Robbie Duff has to go to boarding school. I don’t think that’s fair when he doesn’t even want to go.”

  “Oh well, only the best for Florence Duff,” said my mother who was lining up discs of banana in careful rows on a slice of bread. “I heard she was pregnant again – how old is her youngest girl now?”

  “Rosemary-June is eight. Mrs Duff doesn’t want a new baby, nobody does.”

  “Don’t say that,” said my mother, “don’t ever say that.”

  Her voice was so sharp that I looked up in surprise.

  My father stopped drying his hands and came and patted her on the shoulder.

  “I’m only saying what Rosemary-June said,” I told them. I was feeling that sense of frustrated bemusement children experience when some mild wrongdoing elicits a response from adults disproportionate to the misdemeanour. I would be sixteen before I discovered that my mother had suffered three miscarriages and a stillbirth before I was born.

  “She didn’t mean anything by it, Liz,” said my father and he smiled his gentle smile from one of us to the other.

  “Yes, well, just don’t repeat it,” said my mother. “Now eat your banana sandwich. I can’t believe they didn’t give you so much as a biscuit.” She slammed the plate down before me and then came and sat down opposite me and watched me eating. “I suppose the house is beautiful?”

  “It’s beautiful from the outside,” I said. “I didn’t see inside.”

  “What, she didn’t let you in?”

  “No, we were working in the second garage, me and Violet-May. We nearly finished the play.” I looked up anxiously. “I have to go back tomorrow afternoon, I promised Violet-May I would. Please can I?”

  “Please may I?” said my mother. “You may if you want to.” She looked at my father. “The second garage, did you ever in all your life?”

  Chapter 3

  I went back to Violet-May’s house the following afternoon, annoying my mother by rushing my dinner in my hurry to get away. This time there was nobody in the garden and I got as far as the shiny yellow front door. My knock was answered by Violet-May’s father and we stood and surveyed one another, him smiling down and me gazing up.

  At that time Mr Duff would have been in his early sixties but to me he seemed an old man. He was stout and almost bald with a rusty-coloured head and face and slightly protuberant eyes. He also had a black-and-grey monobrow which held me close to spellbound every time I saw it. I could never see exactly where the two brows knit – to me it seemed all of a piece and so, anytime I was close enough to do so, I examined it minutely. But in spite of his facial affliction, I liked Mr Duff intensely on first sight.

  That day, when he opened the portal to the interior life of the Duff house, I remember him looking at me as though, pleased enough to find me on his doorstep, he was uncertain what to do with me, now that I had come.

  I decided to help him, “I’m Kay,” I said. “I’m here to help with Violet-May’s play.”

  “Kay,” repeated Mr Duff. When he frowned his monobrow descended toward his nose. He put a finger in his right ear and waggled it briefly. “Come to help with Violet-May’s play.”

  “For the birthday concert,” I said, and Mr Duff’s brow climbed upward once more.

  He took his finger out of his ear. “The birthday concert,” he said. “Certainly there is to be a birthday concert. Perhaps you will step inside, Miss Kay, and we shall endeavour to find Miss Violet-May this instant.”

  Nobody had ever called me Miss Kay before. I liked the way it sounded very much so I happily followed him inside and gazed about me. The Duffs’ hall was not like our hall at home – it was more like a room all of itself, a room that was bigger than our kitchen and sitting-room put together. The paintwork was light blue on top and palest yellow at the bottom and the walls were covered with pictures in big golden frames, of what I thought of as people from the olden days: whiskery men and women with silly expressions on their faces. I wondered if they were Violet-May’s relations and thought that I wouldn’t have liked any of them to be mine.

  Ahead of me, beyond a pillared archway, the wide and elegant staircase rose up between its darkly gleaming wooden handrails. I thought everything was wonderful except perhaps the grey stone floor which to me looked cold and a bit dirty – we had carpet everywhere at home, except in the kitchen.

  “Perhaps,” said Mr Duff, “Miss Violet-May is to be found in the drawing room.”

  The drawing room – I had a glorious vision of Violet-May in a room filled entirely with colouring books, pencils, crayons and markers – but the room to which Mr Duff led me, although remarkable for its size, the great flood of light through the big windows and the enormous gleaming white mantelpiece, was a great disappointment to me. It held nothing more remarkable than pretty pink-and-gold sofas and a lot of chairs and tables and things.

  “Not here,” said Mr Duff and he waggled his ear again.

  “Maybe she’s in the second garage?” I suggested.

  “The second garage,” said Mr Duff. “The second garage?”

  While he was considering this, Violet-May herself appeared behind us.

  “Oh, you’re here,” she said. “Daddy, what are you doing with Kay? I need her. Come on, Kay, we’ll go out through the kitchen.”

  As I walked away after Violet-May, I looked back at her father. He raised his arm and I thought he was about to wave to me so I waved to him first, but after all he was only going to waggle his ear again.

  In the second garage we settled down to work once more on the play. This time there were refreshments provided: a plate of pink and white iced biscuits and a big glass jug of lemonade that had bits of the lemon still floating about. It didn’t taste like the real lemonade you bought in bottles but it was nice enough and I drank a lot of it. We had been working for a while when a shadow fell across the open doorway. Looking up, I saw Robbie Duff standing staring in at us. He was dressed just as he had been the day before, the same black-and-white scarf and the grey fingerless gloves. But today he was wearing what looked like earmuffs, at
tached by wires to a small blue-and-silver box which he was carrying in one hand.

  “Have you two seen Prince?” he shouted.

  “No!” Violet-May shouted back. “Robbie, when are you going to put up the curtain?”

  “Later!” shouted Robbie and he went away again.

  “What’s that thing on his head?” I asked.

  “It’s a Walkman.”

  “What’s a Walkman?”

  “It’s for playing his music. That’s all Robbie cares about – music and his stupid dog Prince. He promised he’d put up the curtain today.”

  “Maybe he’ll come back later,” I said hopefully.

  But Robbie did not come back and we worked on until eventually Violet-May got up.

  “I need to go inside for a minute,” she said.