Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters – a tale of two clichés
The water swirls and becomes still as I bend over that big old Belfast sink. The light fading outside the kitchen window, clock ticking with a slight grey lapping as the suds subslime against a tide of chores. More chores to be done but my hands are numb, my arms as permanent as pier supports. Eddie is pulling at my skirt, "mummy mummy it's time to go" and I wrench them from the sink bed, trawling a plug chain from the deep to whoosh up my little boy and hug him cheek to plump cheek, "OK sweet chicken we're on our way".
It’s cold as we step outside, our breath streaming into the frosted night, furling out of my red-lipped mouth and puffing from his baby dragon snout muffled up in a thick winter scarf. Eddie's mittens are attached to a piece of elastic and threaded through both sleeves of his duffle coat so they won’t get lost. Our step quickens as we hurry along damp pavements reflecting street lights. The stars so high they don't move at all. "Not so fast mummy NOT SO FAST... I can't keep up MUMMY WAIT FOR ME" but we are late already. One hand clutching the bag with tea towel, dressing gown and cord, the other gripping his mittened hand.
Past the shops lit with hope and the promise of tomorrow, down the alley, take a left, follow the privet hedge to the top, along the tall wall, round the bollards, across the crossing, over the road and what's this? Everything is cordoned off. A few people are gathered this side of the tickertape and Eddie and I push our way through. "What's happening? Is the Suspension Bridge closed?" I ask a man. He shrugs and moves away. Seeing a policeman I head towards him to ask the same question, "I'm sorry miss you won't be able to go this way tonight, we've had to close the road". I explain about Eddie and his starring role but he shakes his head and puts up a gauntleted hand, "I'm sorry the bridge is closed".
We edge up by the rock slide. I was hoping to find a way through somehow. There isn't a moon but the stars are so bright they outline the scene and everything is frozen into this moment. The perfectly symmetrical rigging of a bridge in full sail suspended over the Avon Gorge. The silhouette of a man standing on the parapet hanging onto railings. The iron bars must have been so cold. I remember thinking 'if only he had some gloves on it wouldn't be so bad' and holding on tight to Eddie’s hand. His mitten is dangling on the end of the elastic from his sleeve. On the bridge's footpath near the man, a policeman is painted into the picture, playing sleeping lions. Every time the man looks away the policeman inches forward. The man turns and catches him, "DON’T COME ANY CLOSER" he screeches, like a line from a terrible old film. The voice sounds familiar.
When my eldest son grew up he became a professor of psychology and didn’t want to be called Eddie any more. “According to The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance there are three ways of seeing things” he once explained, “by knowing, feeling and understanding. When the situation doesn’t match up on these three levels you feel uncomfortable. So you decide to perceive a preferred belief of what is real or true based on assumptions and stereotypes. It’s easier than challenging them”.
Edward became interested in Maori culture and went to live in New Zealand. By the time he came home most of the family had died or moved away, but that’s all water under the bridge now.
“Whatever we touch ripples on through people’s lives” he once told me, his words breaking the surface to widen circles of understanding, “show me something and I’ll see it, tell me something and I’ll hear it, involve me and I’ll understand it”. But because he’d lost everyone he loved, Edward didn’t want to play the starring role in his life any more. How can he know, as I do, that he doesn’t have to spend Christmas on his own ever again? Though our eyes are not cameras and our ears are not microphones, there is a film crew in my head recording everything tonight.
I see a man dangling over the edge of a bridge two hundred and forty five feet above a rushing silted river. I feel my little boy’s hand clinging onto mine. I hear the man drop a terrible cliché and understand why I am here, right on cue, stepping forward to shout, “DON’T DO IT DON’T DO IT” with simultaneous and seamless unfoldings.
The man is momentarily distracted by my voice, the policeman sees his chance and lunges forward to grab him.
Underneath the words ‘Suspensa vix via fit’ engraved in his masterpiece, Isambard Kingdom Brunel claps his calf skin-gloved hands triumphantly together and pulls down his felted beaver hat against the chill, “MY FIRST CHILD, MY DARLING” he announces to no-one in particular, although I am sure he is looking at me and Eddie. The man follows his gaze and stares at us in shock and disbelief. I understand how it feels to be in love with the impossible.
My grown-up Edward feels the bruise where the policeman pulled him down to safety and can’t stop shivering, “but it’s not the cold” he says, thinking aloud and turning towards the small figure in his stove-pipe hat, now propped against the tower striking a fuzee on the stonework to light his cigar. Little Eddie and I hurry on our way, melting into the crowd and back to a time before mobile phones and washing machines.
Above Brunel’s head a brass plaque urging suicidal people to call the Samaritans is glinting on a bridge now ablaze with a thousand lights. Being a psychologist Edward feels the need to explain, “it was seeing Mum again after all these years and the small me looking so excited about being a shepherd” he tells Brunel, who nods politely, “she looked so young! I remember that red mouth kissing me and those rough hands dragging me along. They were always in the sink, those hands. But that night they were putting on my coat and gloves and she was laughing at my dragon breath. Telling me she was so proud of her big boy”. Brunel takes off his hat, gives a deep bow and disappears back into his century, some time before electricity snuffed out the stars.
Time doesn’t heal it just passes. And young mums are only a few years away from old women who no longer notice their hands. And piers are only bridges cut off in their prime. And bridges are only piers with two sides to their bow. A place to meet again on one side or the other whether you are related or not. But I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
(1187 words) Mal Sainsbury © December 2012
