The Bone Clocks

THE SUN’S WARM on my neck and a salty breeze has picked up. Down in the narrow channel between Kent and the Isle of Sheppey a trawler’s blasting its honker: I can see the captain’s picking his nose, and looking for somewhere to put the bogie. The bridge is a Thomas the Tank Enginejob—the whole middle section rises up between two stumpy towers. When it reaches the top a klaxon sounds and the trawler chugs underneath. Jacko’d love this. I hunt in my duffel bag for my can of Tango and find a newspaper—the Socialist Worker. What’s this doing here? Did Ed Brubeck put it in for a joke? I’d chuck it over the barrier, but this cyclist bloke’s just arriving, so I open my Tango and watch the bridge. The cyclist’s ’bout Dad’s age, but he’s slim as a snake and nearly bald, where Dad’s a bit chubby, and it’s not for nothing his nickname’s Wolfman. “All right,” says the man, wiping his face on a folded cloth.

He doesn’t look like a pervert, so I answer him: “All right.”

The guy looks up at the bridge, a bit like he built it. “They don’t make bridges like that anymore.”

“Guess not.”

“The Kingsferry Bridge is one of only three vertical-lift bridges in the British Isles. The oldest is a dinky little Victorian affair over a canal in Huddersfield, just for foot traffic. This one here opened in 1960. There’s only two like it, for road and rail, in the world.” He drinks from his water bottle.

“Are you an engineer, then?”

“No, no, just an amateur rare-bridge spotter. My son used to be as mad about them, though. In fact”—he takes out a camera from his saddlebag—“would you mind taking a snap of me and the bridge?”

I say sure, and end up crouching to fit in both the man’s bald head and the bridge’s lifted-up section. “Three, two, one …” The camera whirrs, and he asks me to take another, so I do, and hand him back the camera. He thanks me and fiddles with his gear. I slurp my Tango and wonder why I’m not hungry, even though it’s almost noon and all I’ve eaten since I left Ed Brubeck asleep is a packet of Ritz crackers. I keep doing sausagey burps, too, which makes no sense. A white VW camper drives up and stops at the barrier. Two girls and their boyfriends are smoking and looking at me, all What does she thinkshe’s doing here?even though they’ve got an REO Speedwagon song on. To prove I’m not a no-friends sad-sack I turn back to the cyclist. “Come a long way, then?”

“Not far, today,” he says. “Over from Brighton.”

“Brighton? That’s like a hundred miles away.”

He checks a gizmo on his handlebars. “Seventy-one.”

“Is taking photos of bridges, like, a hobby of yours, then?”

The man thinks about this. “More a ritual than a hobby.” He sees I don’t understand. “Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going. My son died, you see. I take the photos for him.”

“Oh, I …” I try not to look shocked. “Sorry.”

He shrugs and looks away. “It was five years ago.”

“Was it”—why don’t I just shut up?—“an accident?”

“Leukemia. He would have been about your age.”

The klaxon blasts again, and the road section’s lowering. “That must’ve been awful,” I say, hearing how lame it sounds. A long, skinny cloud sits over the humpbacked Isle of Sheppey, like a half-greyhound half-mermaid, and I’m not sure what else to say. The VW revs up and moves off the moment the barrier’s up, leaving a trail of soft rock in the air behind it. The cyclist gets on his bike. “Take care of yourself, young lady,” he tells me, “and don’t waste your life.”

He circles around and heads back to the A22.

All that way, and he never crossed the bridge.