A Bridge Too Few Read online

  McVitie made very little effort to hide his smirk. “Folklore Studies?”

  “Folkloric. I asked this gentleman who was in charge.”

  McVitie smiled to his underling and then looked down at Epiphany. McVitie was a tall man — a wide one too — and he was apparently one of those tall men who emphasised their height by standing too close to others and looming over them. McVitie loomed.

  “You happen to catch me while I’m doing a site inspection.” He looked at the shiny watch on his wrist. “And I’ve got two minutes before I have a dinner appointment elsewhere.”

  From behind the construction screen, Professor Smutcombe called, “As do we, Epiphany!”

  “What do you want, doctor?” asked McVitie.

  Epiphany took a deliberate step back so she didn’t have to look up at such a severe angle.

  “I want to know what’s going on here,” she said.

  “Bridge improvements,” said McVitie.

  She gestured to the concreted archway. “Improvements?”

  “This old girl needs propping up. She might have been fine back in the day but since she’s going to be used to carry high speed trains to Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Hull we need to zhoosh her up, give her a bit of a facelift and some underpinning.”

  “But these arches…” said Epiphany.

  “To be filled in, every last one of them.”

  “They are in use!”

  McVitie made zero effort to conceal his smirking laugh this time. “Have you seen these businesses? Shoe repairs? Costume hire? A trophy shop? A bloody trophy shop! These places must be clinging on by their fingernails.”

  “They’re thriving businesses,” she said, because she could hardly say ‘They’re occupied troll homes’!

  “Thriving? They need putting out of their misery! Limping dogs, the lot of them. City-Link Rail owns all of this. The tenants were all given notice months ago.”

  “Letters?” Literacy was not a strong point among trolls. Apart from the occasional makeshift sign saying ‘Brij! This Way!’ they had little use for letters.

  “We’ll have the rest of them kicked out before the week’s end,” said McVitie.

  “No, you can’t,” said Epiphany automatically.

  “Can’t?” McVitie stepped forward, closing the gap between them for some intensely unpleasant looming.

  “I shall… I shall complain.”

  McVitie laughed in her face. Actually laughed. In her face. “I’m the McVitie in McVitie Dainty, sweetheart. There’s no one above me. Just me and Mr Dainty at the top. We’re the big cheeses. I don’t understand why this is any of your business. Bloody university types, totally out of touch with the real world. This is business. We’re building the future, enabling the great big cities of the north to expand and grow. And if some poxy businesses go to the wall and some little towns get gobbled up along the way then that’s the way of the future, isn’t it?”

  Epiphany had no idea what the way of the future was, but even if something was destined, it didn’t mean one had to like it or shouldn’t fight it. She was about to tell him as much when he cut in first.

  “Time’s up,” he said, brandishing his expensive wristwatch. “Now, piss off, Dr… Pifflepuff or whatever your name is.”

  She was going to get nothing more of value from this man. Without a word, she turned around and slipped out again through the security fence.

  “And — you — secure that breach,” McVitie shouted to the site worker as she left.

  Westerby Smutcombe gave her an oddly reproachful look. “Perhaps now we can go to dinner.”

  Epiphany gave him a hard and uncompromising look and battered on the door of the nearest arch.

  “I’m hungry,” Smutcombe whined, which was deeply unbecoming in a man of his years.

  There was the sound of the bolts being drawn behind the door of what advertised itself to be a business-to-business laundry service (ASK US ABOUT NAPKINS!) but what was clearly a dank cave that smelled of dead and rotting things.

  The troll with flabby moobs bent down and sniffed Epiphany, its long greasy hair slapping Epiphany’s face.

  “Who’s that trippin’ over my bridge? I’m gonna gobble you all up.”

  “Oh, please don’t,” sang Epiphany. “I’m only small. There’s a much bigger university lecturer coming along soon. Now, tell me, did you receive a letter?” she asked in a much more normal voice.

  “What?”

  “A letter,” said Epiphany. “A piece of folded paper, probably inside an envelope.”

  “Envelope?”

  “Another folded piece of paper but stuck together.”

  The troll — not a troll but a trollop, she realised; the long hair, the moobs that weren’t moobs — the trollop scratched her bum in thought.

  “Let me look,” she said and went clanking and bashing around inside her dark hole.

  Epiphany felt no inclination to go inside and help her. Rituals or no rituals, only an idiot human would go beneath a troll bridge willingly. Shortly the trollop returned with an unopened letter that look like it had been recently put to use as a spatula. Grease and egg yolk stained its edges.

  “Thank you,” said Epiphany.

  There was the soft crunch of tyres on broken tarmac. McVitie leaned out of the window of his Audi and said, “You can tell her she’s got until week’s end. Then they’re all out.”

  He didn’t exclaim that there was flipping seven foot troll standing there or scream in terror. Did most magical creatures cast a glamour of near invisibility over themselves? Or were humans too wrapped up in their own thoughts and drives to see what was really there? Epiphany suspected the answer was somewhere in between.

  McVitie accelerated away.

  “What’s ‘e mean?” asked the trollop.

  Epiphany pointed at the concrete-filled hole of her neighbour. “Do you know the troll who used to live there?”

  “Ek Midek,” nodded the trollop. “And ‘is oity-toity missus.”

  “Do you know where he’s gone?”

  She scratched her bum thoughtfully once more. “I reckon ‘e’s on ‘is ‘olibobs.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “There was all this fumping and banging and then I ‘eard ‘im say, ‘I ain’t stickin’ round for this’ and I saw ‘im go under ‘is travel bridge.”

  “Travel bridge?”

  “You know,” said the trollop. “A bridge. For travellin’ under.” She pointed at Smutcombe.

  “Oh,” said Epiphany, understanding. “A hat.”

  “Don’t know what you’re on about,” said the trollop. She sniffed and gestured at the letter. “You can keep that. I licked all the sauce off it now.”

  “Thanks.”

  The trollop retreated to her archway home. Epiphany was unable to bring herself to tell her that the archway’s days were probably numbered; there was no point causing a panic if she couldn’t provide a solution.

  “Please tell me we can now go for dinner,” said Smutcombe.

  “Not at all,” said Epiphany. “We have a troll to find and a bridge to save!”

  Chapter 3

  “Rumplestiltskin cheated out of his reward, the beanstalk giant a victim of theft, the ogre from Puss in Boots deprived of his castle and his life. If fairy tales teach us anything, it is that fairy folk deserve any punishment meted out to them. They don’t just live in the margins of society; they deserved to be marginalised.”

  Six Out of Seven Dwarfs aren’t Happy: The Mistreatment of Little People in Fairy Tales

  Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

  “To Eccleshall,” said Epiphany.

  “Why?” pouted Smutcombe, still sulking about dinner. “We can skip starters but we can’t put dinner off indefinitely.”

  Epiphany stabbed her phone with her finger. “Ah-hah.”

  “What?” said Smutcombe.

  “As I said, Eccleshall. There’s been a spate of people complaining about their ponds being vanda
lised”

  “Oh, you expect me to drive?”

  “I would like that very much, Westerby.”

  “So,” said the aged professor as they drove, “you think the garden ponds are worth investigating. Oh. Did they have little ornamental bridges, by any chance?”

  “Not all of them,” said Epiphany, reading from her phone, “but one man seems quite put out that his cat can no longer sit and watch the fish from his miniature Japanese bridge of tranquillity.”

  “How can it be a bridge of tranquillity if it enables his cat to indulge in its most murderous fantasies?”

  “It is well known that cats have a glamour capable of delivering a mild sedative effect,” said Epiphany. “So, the bridge will indeed be more tranquil with a cat upon it, even a cat that is entertaining murderous thoughts.”

  “Well I never. Always an education, being with you.”

  “I will message the man with the peeved cat.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Smutcombe’s Hillman pulled up outside a substantial detached house, with a huge copper beech screening it from the road.

  “I’ll be waiting,” he said as she got out. “There’s still time for dinner, if we leave soon.”

  “I would not count on it,” she said.

  “At this rate I’m going to have to get a sausage roll from the butchers on the corner!”

  He said it as an acerbic comment but Epiphany chose to take it at face value and said, “Might be wise, Westerby!”

  She walked up the driveway and knocked on the door. It was opened by a round man in his sixties. A large white cat brushed his legs.

  “Mr Clegg. I’m Epiphany. I messaged you a short while ago.”

  “You don’t look like a policewoman,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m definitely not with the police,” said Epiphany.

  Mr Clegg looked her up and down. “I’m sure you’d make a fine addition to any force, lass,” he said.

  “Thank you. I think.”

  He invited her in. The house was spacious and well-kept, although a good deal of the furniture looked as though it had been bought especially for the cat. There was an elaborate tree-like structure in the lounge, with padded platforms, and limbs that were wrapped with something that looked like string. The cat bounded easily from one level to the next until it was at head height. It regarded Epiphany with its large eyes.

  “Does your cat always do this?” asked Epiphany. She didn’t elaborate on what this was, wanting Mr Clegg to interpret the question in his own way.

  “Renaldo is an excellent judge of character, and always appraises newcomers. He seems to be taking some time to consolidate his thoughts on you.”

  “I see. And Renaldo has been inconvenienced by vandals of late. Has he shared any thoughts on that matter?”

  Mr Clegg stared at her, with a deadpan expression. “Are you mocking me?”

  “Not at all,” said Epiphany.

  “It’s a cruel thing, the mockery of a beautiful lass. Party ring?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “A biscuit. To go with your cup of tea.”

  “I don’t have a cup of tea.”

  “Soon remedied,” he said and moved slowly to the kitchen.

  “I have made use of the wisdom of cats a great many times,” she called after him. “I find them to be cunning and opinionated, although one must always be aware of their innate self-interest.”

  The cat narrowed its eyes but then sat down and started to purr loudly.

  Mr Clegg made a noise of agreement. “Yes, you are quite right. What’s more, it seems that Renaldo has decided that you are to be tolerated. Well done. In terms of the vandalism, you should come and see for yourself. Shocking, it is. Most alarming is the fear that it’s put into Renaldo. He’s generally afraid of nothing, and yet he has steadfastly refused to go into the garden since the incident. I’m not sure why.”

  “Let’s take a look then,” said Epiphany.

  “Let me show you.”

  She followed Mr Clegg out through some folding French doors into a huge garden. The lawns were green and stripy, the flowers bloomed in graded tiers in every bed and the wooden fences were all freshly painted.

  “Immaculately maintained,” nodded Epiphany. “And such a large garden.”

  “If one cannot enjoy the spoils of being a former captain of industry, what can one do? If only I had someone to share it with,” he said.

  The only thing that marred the scene was the smashed bridge across the pond, and the blood that was smeared liberally across the remaining stonework.

  “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to wait here so that I can make my own assessment?” asked Epiphany.

  “I’ll finish making the tea.”

  She walked across the lawn and circled the pond so that she could examine the remains of the bridge from every side. As she walked across the grass, she found various remains in differing states of decomposition. The tails of several large fish were starting to smell quite bad. A black and ginger cat sat safely in the upper branches of a nearby tree and eyed the fish remnants hungrily.

  Epiphany regarded the trail of blood and bent to inspect the remnants of a duck. She could tell it had been a duck because of the feet and the bill, but that was all that remained. A large shadow fell across the lawn. “Would you be Ek Midek?” she asked without looking up.

  “That’s me dad.”

  Epiphany looked up. She was faced with a young troll, about her height. He smiled broadly at her. “Dad! Da-ad! Can I do this one?”

  A voiceless grunt came from nearby. The young troll jumped with glee. “Who’s that trippin’ over my bridge?” he said, pitching his voice low to emulate the rumble of a fully-grown troll.

  “Yes, I’ve come to talk to you about this bridge,” said Epiphany. “It’s not really ideal for your family, is it?”

  “No! That’s not what you say!” complained the troll. “You’re supposed to tell me your name and then I say ‘I’m going to gobble you all up’, and then —”

  “Indeed,” said Epiphany, “but rest assured there will be no gobbling, as my very large colleague will definitely be along in a moment. My name is Epiphany and I’ve come to help. Now, may I speak with your father?”

  “S’pose,” said the young troll, despondent. He went over to the bridge and reached underneath the rubble, shaking some unseen body part of the hidden troll. “Dad, the lady wants to help.”

  “Has she got a goat with her?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Go and tell your mother then.”

  The young troll skipped across the lawn, leaving clumsy dents in the turf with every step.

  He approached a large rustic pergola with a bench underneath it. “Mom, come and see the lady!”

  A trollop emerged from underneath the pergola. “Manners, Skakky! Did you ask our guest if she’s come trippin’ over our bridge?”

  “Yes, but she’s not playin’ right,” grumbled Skakky.

  The trollop approached Epiphany and smiled. Unusually for a troll, she had piled her hair up into something like a bun. It was as wiry and twiggy as a rook’s nest, but Epiphany recognised it as a level of grooming that was generally unheard of in trolls.

  “Welcome! My name is Penelope.”

  “Penelope? Your name is Penelope?”

  “It used to be Uggle Yok. I had it changed by the deed pole. Can I invite you to trip over our bridge?”

  “As I explained to your son, I must point out that I am the smallest of university lecturers, and a much plumper colleague will surely be along in a few minutes. Now, I need to talk to you all about this business of taking up residence in suburbia.”

  “Oh, it’s so wonderful!” said Penelope. “The local school will be perfec’ for young Skakky.”

  Epiphany looked more carefully at Penelope. Something that she hadn’t reckoned on was an upwardly mobile troll that actually wanted a better class of residence.

  “Is it worth me pointing out,” she said
carefully, “that the only actual bridge in this garden is a heap of rubble, presumably since your husband attempted to insert himself underneath it? Is it also worth me pointing out that you’re not amongst trolls here. It’s a very different world?”

  “A bridge is still a bridge,” sniffed Penelope. “The boys don’t mind getting wet. We don’t need to be wiv trolls. I will be joining the Dubbya Ay and spending time wiv other ladies.”

  “You plan to join the women’s institute?” Epiphany asked. This was a surprise, but she kept a poker face and nodded at Penelope. “Well, they are famously inclusive, but I don’t know if a troll will be welcome when they realise that you’re eating their pets.”

  “We don’t eat pets!” insisted Penelope.

  “The evidence would suggest that you do,” said Epiphany, pointing at the scattered remains across the garden. She had also noticed that a well-stocked bird table was positioned right next to the pond, as if a hungry troll was using it to lure in its dinner.

  There was a call from the patio door as it squeaked open. “Hello there! Do you have milk and sugar in your tea, lass?”

  “No thank you!” called Epiphany. Penelope raised her head and looked as if she was about to answer, but Epiphany put a finger to her lips. “It’s best that you don’t draw attention to your presence.”

  Skakky came running over. “Dad says can you ask the man for a cup of tea with a goat on the side?”

  Epiphany felt the vibration of the earth through her feet as Ek Midek shook off the rubble that formed his cosy blanket. He ambled over and joined them.

  “Nice bit of goat then?” he asked with a yawn that showed his grinding teeth. They resembled millstones.

  “No, I’ve told you!” hissed Penelope. “We don’t eat that any more. We need to start eating quails and rice cakes.”

  “Tell that to your boy!” said Ek Midek pointing proudly.

  They all turned to see the young troll sitting on the edge of the pond, chomping on a large duck. In his other hand was a koi carp. Ek Midek moved swiftly over and snatched the carp, biting its head off with a grunt of pleasure and then swallowing the rest of the fish with a huge gulp. Before anyone had time to react, the patio door squeaked again.