Bridge of Clay(132)

And he dived right down inside of her.

The small black sea of her lips.



* * *



—

When he brought her toward the car, his clothes looked damp and dark on him, and again, she wouldn’t recede.

“No,” she said, “we’re walking,” and the thought of it struck him cleanly. This woman’s Goddamn dying—and making sure she takes me with her. “Tonight we’ll walk together.”



* * *



—

A crowd of five boys and a mother then, we crossed the expanse of road; I remember our shorts and T-shirts. I remember her girlish legs. There was darkness, then the streetlights, and the still-warm autumn air. The picture slowly forms for me now, but soon it comes to an end: Our father stayed back on the lawn.

A part of him was foundering there, and the rest of us turned to watch. He looked so damn alone.

“Dad?”

“Come on, Dad!”

But our father had sat down, head in hands, and of course it could only be Clay: He returned to our lawn on Archer Street, and approached that shadow-of-dad. Soon he stood beside him, then slowly, he dropped and crouched—and just when I thought he would stay with him, he was up again, he was behind him. He was placing his hands in that area, in what every man on earth has: The ecosystem of each armpit.

He pulled our father upwards.

They stood, then swayed, and steadied.



* * *



—

    When we walked, we walked at Penelope pace, so pale in every movement. We turned a few more corners, onto Gloaming Road, where the pub sat calm and shiny. The tiles were cream and maroon.

Inside, while the rest of us looked for a stool, our father went to the bar. He said, “Two beers and five ginger beers, please,” but Penny had loomed behind him, all sweat and shown-off bones.

She put her hands on top of the beer mat.

She dug deep, through barren lungs.

She seemed to be reaching around down there, for something she knew and loved. “How about”—she called the question up, piece by piece—“we just make it seven beers?”

He was a young barman, turning already for the soft drinks. His nametag said Scott. They called him Scotty Bils. “Excuse me?”

“I said,” she said, and she looked him square in the face. His hair was going missing, but he wasn’t short of nose. “Make it seven beers.”

That was when Ian Bils came over; the pulse of the Naked Arms. “Everything all right here, Scotty?”

“This lady,” Scotty Bils said. “She’s ordered seven beers.” His hand in his fringe like a search party. “Those boys over there—”

And Ian Bils—he didn’t even look.

He kept his eyes firmly on the woman in flux, who was bracing against his bar. “Tooheys Lights okay with you?”

Penny Dunbar met him halfway. “That sounds great.”

The old publican solemnly nodded.

He wore a cap with a galloping mustang.

“Let’s make it all on the house.”



* * *



—

There are victories and there are victories, I guess, and this one still didn’t come cheap. We thought she might let go that night, when finally we got her home.

Next day we all stayed in with her.

    We watched her and checked for breathing: Her naked arms and the Naked Arms.

She stank like beer and disease.



* * *



—

In the evening, I wrote the absent notes.

The best scrawl of our dad’s I could manage:


My wife is quite sick, as you know….



But I know I should have done this:


Dear Miss Cooper, Please excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. He thought his mum might die, but she didn’t, and to tell you the truth, he was actually a bit hungover….



Which technically wasn’t true.

As the oldest, it was only me who made it through my drink, and it was quite an effort, I’m telling you. Rory and Henry had half each. Clay and Tommy managed the froth—and still, none of it mattered, not remotely, for we watched Penny Dunbar smile to herself; a girl’s white dress and bones. She’d thought she might make men of us, but this was every woman for herself.

The Mistake Maker made no mistake of it.

She stayed till she’d finished them off.





When they spoke of Pont du Gard again, it was to herald the beginning of the end.

They walked and started work again.

They worked and Clay wouldn’t stop.



* * *



—

As it was, Michael Dunbar counted a hundred and twenty consecutive days that Clay worked on the bridge, and very little sleep, very little eating—just a boy who could work the pulley, and heave stones he had no right to carry. “There,” he would say to his father. “No, not there, up there.” He’d stop only to stand with the mule for a while; Clay and the faithful Achilles.

Often, he slept in the dirt out there.

He was covered by blankets and falsework.

His hair was matted flat to him.

He asked if Michael would cut it.