Crossing the bridge.


Koji had gambled recklessly. Miki, his young and inventive mistress, had demanded that he take her for a night or two to the resort town of A. but since his wife looked after his entire modest income there had been no means by which he could have squirrelled away the necessary money for the train fares and the hotel. Miki had talked about the hotel over-looking the river, of the famous cake shop. He owed her that; he had promised. But where could he find the money?.

The answer had grown and gleamed in the mind of Koji, astute football fan, smoker and insomniac. Manchester United were to play a needle match in a few days time and the result would dictate the outcome of the season. It was, therefore, likely to be, certain to be, a hard and bruising game with fouls by the dozen. An early foul would provide the great Beckham with an opportunity to strike the penalty ball with that magic foot and the ball would fly in a graceful curve beyond the reaching hand of the goalkeeper.

So, Koji had laid big, borrowed money on Beckham scoring the first goal. The match would be shown live from England down in the bar at the foot of the hill at 2a.m., a perfect time for an insomniac football fan.

He had no doubts, felt no apprehension. Nevertheless he thought it prudent to call at the shrine above the inn where he worked. He had thrown coins into the box, raised the plaited rope and swung it against the bell; he had clapped his hands twice and said a short prayer requesting a favour. He now wished he hadn't augmented this act by spending another few coins on an omikuji; he had shaken the box slowly and with his eyes fixed in the same obfuscating manner that Beckham employs as he prepares himself for the strike, drew out the protruding stick; the number on the stick was a whole number when he would have preferred an odd number. He thought the omen was not going to be helpful. The attendant then handed him the twist of paper; it said 'Disappointment may come from an unexpected source'. It wasn't the message a gambling man welcomes.

The bar at 2a.m. was crowded with Manchester United fans. There was the usual preamble of advertisements and comments by those who were experts in the game; then the tiresome, too long and fanciful titling sequence. Finally there was the Old Trafford ground and then the team names, two opposing sets of eleven names that drew a cry of wonder from the audience in the bar. Koji was mute. He blinked and blinked at the names until the screen fell out of focus. The manager, the evil Ferguson-san had omitted from the team the great Beckham, the magical striker of the dead ball. A weakness started from his feet and filled his body. After a few moments he left the bar and began the slow, long climb back to the inn. The moon was starting to show itself above the dense web of branches and spring leaves. The next evening would see himself and Miki scheduled for night duty at the inn, together for the first time for a week. He could think of no way to begin to tell Miki that the promise could not be fulfilled; and not merely postponed, either, for that now required, of course, two lots of money.

Muriel and Kenneth were enchanted by the inn. The manageress had fallen on her knees on welcoming them; there was much bowing. A gloomy middle-aged man took their cases. Slippered, they were taken up to their large and beautiful room. A low lacquered table stood on the blond tatami matting that spread to all four sides of the room; the window of thin timber struts and paper slid back to be filled with a vision of the moss and lichen covered branches of old trees. The bright green new leaves and the patches of remaining cherry blossom were all stage-lit by the inn's front light; below the window ran a short tiled porch roof over the entrance they had just used and where, just beyond the roof and in the middle of the night, Koji would, unfortunately, be standing shortly after the rain had stopped, smoking, lost in troubled thoughts.

A delightful young lady explained by hand-waving how to lay out their bedding on the tatami floor. She was also the one who smilingly provided them with tea and toast in the dining room. It was she, too, who took them down to the bathroom and emphasised the procedure for bathing, the soaping and showering at one side of the bathroom before entering the huge and very hot bath, spotless and free from soap, there to soak in the burning, sulphurous liquid that came from the hot springs that welled up all around the small town. They had looked in at both bathrooms, one containing a gigantic oval bath that could accommodate six people and the other of a more modest size into which two could happily lounge.

Muriel and Kenneth's journey there had wracked them with anxieties. They had watched the stations flying past. Both began to be certain they were on the wrong train even though the destination on the front had matched their instructions. None of the other travellers spoke English. The station names on the diagram in his hand might as well have been in Sanskrit for all the recognition it obtained from a fellow passenger. Muriel blamed Kenneth for not having checked. Kenneth well knew this although she hadn't uttered such thoughts aloud. Usually she did and he wondered why no blame had been aired but he knew that asking might precipitate a lengthy, carping diatribe that would not help their predicament. She knew he was wondering why she had said nothing. When they were back in England she would tell him. 'Kenneth, I'm leaving you'. The holiday had helped her make up her mind. She would avoid any unpleasantness during this, their last holiday together. He could have the house which had become a valuable asset; her father's recent death had left her richer than she had anticipated. And she had a secret: long after her father's estate had been settled the solicitor had unearthed two properties in France and funds in a Swiss bank that made her very wealthy. There was no need to tell Kenneth this; she knew how to handle him once he'd got over the surprise. He would be comfortably off and happy with the proceeds of selling their present home, enough to spend out on a new small flat and with plenty left over to put in his bank. And then time to test out Roger, whether his jokey, naughty chat meant anything; to see if his hand that patted her bottom at the last two parties was keen to explore further. And it was true, what he had been whispering, she had married someone too old for her though it hadn't seemed so at the time, didn't seem so for a long while. Kenneth had ceased to be interested in the world outside of his home and his work. This visit to Japan had needed an exhausting effort to obtain his agreement. Kenneth was dull and expected her own horizons to have shrivelled alongside his. She was forty-one next birthday and Kenneth would be fifty-eight; she still felt, what?, about thirty; Kenneth looked and moved like someone in the refuge of a care-home. He could still smile that smile that had charmed her when she was eighteen but it was no longer enough. There was no real companionship; they merely co-existed. And if not Roger, then? Who knows?

They decided to leave the train at the next station. There a smartly dressed woman spoke fluently in English to their relief and explained that there were three trains all with the same destination but the Express and the Semi-express stopped at certain stations only. She translated advice from a porter. Return by the next Semi and they would arrive at their destination by 8pm. They wondered at what time the Inn would decide to offer their room to another guest. Despite this, the certainty of being on the right train was comforting. Muriel looked at the other passengers half of whom were asleep. The girl next to her who could be aged fourteen or twenty-four was turning the pages of her magazine. A page arrived of photos of young ladies with their skimpy clothes awry revealing breasts. Then a cartoon story appeared showing a young girl experimenting in, revelling in, all sorts of sexual activities. She thought she recognised the magazine as one of many similar ones on sale in kiosks at stations and on shopping streets. There were aspects of Japanese culture, contradictions, too, that were impossible to understand, she decided. The girl turned the page and the heroine was now deliriously enjoying 'Here we are!' said Kenneth.

There was only one taxi parked outside the station. The door had swung open as they approached. The driver took Kenneth's leaflet showing the station and the zigzagging road to the inn. There were several disconcerting minutes while the driver stared at the diagram. Kenneth began to writhe in frustration and disbelief that the directions could be a problem for anyone with two eyes behind such thick lenses but at last the driver gave a small cry of understanding and a big smile. 'OK, OK', he said.

And they were gliding away and up into a twisting lane flanked by ancient trees, past small shrines smoking with incense, glimpsing, there, a huge temple in dark wood and, here, another in orange paint, all romantically lit by subtle floodlights, all partially screened by high, sagging ancient trees or clumps of feathery bamboo. They seemed to be travelling into a fiction by a master stage designer.

The trials of the journey, the hot bath, the hot cups of tea and the huge slices of toast and jam pointed to an early night. They decided to put down two foutongs on the floor to provide as near a European mattress as could be managed. Both fell asleep almost instantly and the small noises that drifted through the inn from other guests, a French couple, two Japanese ladies and a single American man, were merely faint subliminal and comforting murmurings. The guests and the manageress became soft and silent breathers long before midnight which was when Koji and Miki would make use of the guests' bigger bath.

Koji was washed and already lying in the hot spring water when Miki arrived. It had been a week since their duties coincided like this. Miki lathered herself and her long black hair and stood for an age under the shower. She then stood on the wide rim of the big bath, feet apart, hands held together above her head and gyrated her pelvis. Koji waved a feeble hand towards her. 'Please, come. I have something important, something difficult to tell you'.

In the very early, black hours of the morning with the room softly lit through the paper screen by the Inn's outside lamp, Muriel woke to find she had been lying on her left arm. It had become quite numb, quite dead and unresponsive to any messages from her brain. She lifted it a little with her other hand; a tingling, ticklish almost unbearable sensation began to trickle through the limb as the blood re-entered the veins and capillaries and stirred the nerves. She took the dead wrist in her good hand and lifted her arm into a vertical position; she then attempted to clench the hand but although it folded fairly well she couldn't apply any strength to the action. As an experiment she took her good hand away and then watched aghast as her arm with its loosely clenched fist fell sideways out of control.

Kenneth was asleep on his back. The blow by itself, fair and square on his nose, would not have been enough to explain his reaction. But Kenneth was being pursued by frightening creatures, not quite human, not clearly seen, which added to the horror, through a network of alleys in an old Japanese city. They were near, they were persistent and cunning, he could hear their breathing; they seemed fleet of foot whereas he could only manage a cloying half-run. Had the subsequent events of the night provided him with the chance for reflection he would have attributed the nightmare to the troubles of the day, the wrong train, the tripling of the hours spent on the journey, the missed dinner, all compounded by the worrying fact that Muriel had, unusually, made no complaints, made no accusations, laid no blame on him for their hours of anxiety.

His reaction to the blow astonished her. From the corpse position and in one dramatic, fluid piece of athletic movement that had Muriel frozen, speechless with awe, Kenneth reared up and over into the position that Muriel instantly recognised as a sprinter's 'Steady' pose, the one after 'Ready' and the one before 'Go!', the one where the fingers are spread on the ground, the backside raised, one leg waiting as a piston. Kenneth's eyes stared into some distant scene; a trickle of blood appeared at one nostril.

Whenever Muriel reran these scenes she knew that this sprinter's pose had lasted no more than two breaths; she was bereft of speech, wide-eyed, pierced through with guilt. And then came the seizure of cramp in both of Kenneth's legs, a complaint he was saddled with, had been saddled with since a child, due, he believed, to poor circulation, at its worst an agonising bunching of muscles and fired, he knew, not merely by a poorly upholstered chair or car seat since the electrical system of his nerves and brain frequently conspired to convulse both of his limbs at the same time when, surely, only one limb was truly being affected. And this attack was the full double-leg version. The trans-formation to the vertical was as instant and as spellbinding to Muriel as Kenneth's original move to the sprint position. She whimpered slightly at his contorted face and bared teeth and the one bellowed word 'Cramp!' that brought most of the household of the inn out of its sleep.

Kenneth's foot turned over on the edge of the double f'tong and he reeled sideways beyond hope of recovery.

Muriel and Kenneth had both uttered unearthly cries, she as her husband catherine-wheeled out of the window amidst spinning wooden struts, flying strips of paper and flickering shards of glass; his cry came as he struck the small roof and descended like a flail carrying with him wires and an exploding floodlight.

Koji was raising a cigarette to his lips. He had decided to stop trying to solve the problem of his debt to which there seemed to be no answer, neither to himself nor to the quick-witted, bitterly disappointed Miki. To him, the cry of 'cramp' was meaningless though disturbing. But the combination of snapping wood, ripping paper and the shattering of the glass half of the window above him, were three sounds that combined as one to create something that Koji imagined lightning must sound like when striking a pylon, this the best explanation he could manage several days later for the benefit of the two police officers at his bedside. He thought there had been a bang at some point; he said he had half turned to look upwards and saw a spinning mass, He said he was too paralysed to move; he said he knew no more until waking up here in hospital, bandaged, in plaster. He apologised for his poor speech but the cigarette had been rammed into his mouth and had smouldered on, it seemed, for some time.

The inquest heard from Muriel and the others in the Inn how they had emerged from the front doors to see Koji crumpled on the ground, unconscious and breathing oddly. A dislodged and smoking floodlight swung slowly on its cable from the porch roof. It took another minute to locate Kenneth whose momentum on the entrance slope had carried him another four yards down the wet and slippery paving where he had slid head first to stop half under a parked car, his legs protruding in the manner of a mechanic looking for a fault.

The inquest, the obtaining of certificates, the decision to have Kenneth cremated all took time and during these days the manageress of the Inn was kindness itself. Muriel took to walking up and down to the various temples finding some consolation in watching the acts of worship, listening to monks singing, listening to gongs and bells, breathing in the incense. She began to burn incense sticks herself alongside the local worshippers.

With three days to go before her rearranged flight home one of the English-speaking guests, Mrs Tatsuke, showing clear signs of embarrassment, told Muriel that the girl Miki had asked if she could speak with her. Mrs Tatsuke had an incomplete grasp of English and her opening words worried Muriel until she realised that Mrs Tatsuke's 'touching up' should have been 'sounding out'. The three sat in the garden under the morning sun, Miki bringing a tray of green tea and six cakes. Miki spoke, Mrs T translated.

The unfortunate Koji Fukushige was to employ a legal gentleman to obtain damages; he may be permanently disabled and his employment prospects now depended on retraining; the accident happened outside the inn and the owners were refusing to accept responsibility; this could mean postponing Muriel's return flight until a court settled the matter. Mr Fukushige had no wish to burden her or make life difficult and only wished her well but his whole future was bleak; wife, four young children, one of whom was diabetic and another blind. He would not be asking for all he was entitled to, indeed he needed and asked for only enough to tide him over. Doubtless Kenneth-san's insurance policy would take care of everything but Miki knew it would be in Muriel-san's interest to sort the matter out quickly so as to return to England soon and mourn her dreadful loss at home. Koji was seeing the legal gentleman tomorrow. At 11am.

Muriel doubted the reality of the implied threat to her return to London but guilt for the cause of the whole tragedy to both Kenneth and Mr Fukushige hung heavily on her. She would now be far richer than in her earlier plans for a new life since their house, given to Kenneth in her mind's original scheme, was now a bonus. Muriel went the next day to the bank with Miki and transferred the equivalent of six month's of Koji's annual wages into his brand new account.

One month later Koji explained to his wife that though he was happy to continue to work at the Inn he was being invited to take a post at one of the hotels at A. and that he was to spend three days there to see if he was suited to the work or, indeed, if the work suited him; he was doubtful if it was what he wanted but he owed it to himself to explore this opportunity.

Miki shopped at the main department store for a fashionable and very short skirt, a pair of tight trousers, strappy high heeled shoes, two sets of skimpy underwear and a small night-dress that to Koji, when he saw it unpacked and lying on the bed, was a puzzle as to how it could be worn. Their room overlooked the wide river and the pontoons, the rowboats and the diesel passenger boats. The opposing high green hills were reflected darkly in the water. Way off to the left they could see the long bridge spanning the river, a newish bridge in concrete and timber but one that cunningly resembled ancient Japanese wooden bridges. With holidaymakers criss-crossing with their parasols it truly looked a Hiroshige wood-cut come to life.

Muriel, too, was looking at a bridge, the stone bridge across the Thames at Richmond in early morning sunshine, as she walked down the lane beside the river and away from Roger's house. She now knew she could put Kenneth's death behind her; she was not responsible for the attack of cramp; she had to embrace her future; her age made it necessary to accept chances and to take risks; she could certainly put Roger out of the reckoning. On the bridge a man was looking out over the water towards the bank that held rowboats, skiffs and motor cruisers. She stopped to see what had attracted his attention. It was a calm scene of almost still water reflecting the dark greenery of the island and over this reflection a heron was gliding. Cormorants were on one side and on the other rowboats were slowly swinging on their moorings in the slow flow of the river.

The man and Muriel both straitened up at the same time and turned to walk in the same direction. They gave small smiles to each other. His smile reminded Muriel of the smile that had attracted her to Kenneth. Everything to gain; what was there to lose? She knew that within a dozen steps she was going to ask if he, too, thought the river scene was wonderful and then would he like to join her for a coffee in the small cafe on the other side of the bridge from where he would find the view every bit as delightful.