The story of the Oxford scholar poor,
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore,
And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deem'd, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.
Matthew Arnold,
CHAPTER 75 THE WILD BROTHERHOOD
A thin bearded man sat on the step of his van. Quite a new van, the sort he may have bought with the last money from a former life. Before he sought freedom, anonymity and the endless road. Parked down here under the flyovers, it was almost peaceful, till a bigger truck added to the background whoosh of traffic overhead.
They were still building the Cumberland Basin Flyovers when Arthur Holder and Sue and Sarah Cushing went by on their school bus.
Of course the concrete structure had mellowed with age. It became a vantage point where tourists slowed and photographed Clifton Suspension Bridge spanning the Avon Gorge. While down here underneath concrete ramps the old dock roads became first, a truck park with transport café, and then a winter resting place for travellers, Bristol Hippies, the Wessex Wallies, and would be Gypsies who returned again and again, despite endless attempts to evict them.
The man just sat and looked, his brain in neutral as though he were sitting rod in hand by a river, or listening to a nagging woman, or forgetting a woman who didn't nag.
A woman who wouldn't care enough to nag. A woman who would betray him.
A woman who would......He stood up and slammed the door behind him. If he'd gone towards the old red brick tobacco warehouse, he might have seen Hosmer Angel taking money from a white bearded man on a motorbike.
But the view called. Sometimes he just stood there looking down Clifton Gorge, through between the steep grey cliffs towards the invisible sea, wondering if boats would come. Now the Bristol Channel was dammed by the Severn Barrage there were practically no tides here. Floods had ended and lock gates were permanently open. The water in Bristol docks, fed by the Avon from Bath, was almost fresh. The muddy tidal banks had grass starting to grow as the salt was washed out, even a few bushes.
He remembered Abigail and her beautiful slim body, walking up from the sea and drying herself and saying “I'll come with you.” Saying it to Thorney, and Thorney's wife saying “Yes, keep an eye on him.”
And Grim taking no notice, just working away at the laptop while Abi walked up the hill with Thorney, and returned pregnant.
Yes. Right there and then. She returned a different woman, she left as Grim's wife and returned as the mother of Thorney's bastard. That beautiful baby, that clever boy, the one he had loved as his own. The one they all knew was not his.
Even Thorney's wife Catherine seemed to know. At least she accepted the news quietly as if she had always known. And she and Thorney were still together. Still at Oxford. Still part of society. Still useful. Still important. Still real people. Still holding meetings. Still getting support for his Geology Department in Space. Not hiding under a bridge with dossers and losers and junkies and runaways and battered wives, and abused children, and all the inadequate human wrecks that society didn't want.
A big cathedral-hull ferry, its hull stained green from the algae farm, probably from Cardiff or Swansea, rumbled up the gorge towards him. Looking quite like one of the Flying Cows.
“Hallo,” said Professor Edith Presbury.
This page has been visited 5 times. Legal and copyright information can be found here.