The Bridge Builder Of Arta Read online

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  Benjamin next visited Headley View a few days later having spent the Tuesday and Wednesday out of Scarborough on site visits. The day was murky with very low clouds that scuttled across a dirty sky, the sunshine from earlier in the week a memory. He climbed the seventy-nine steps up to his favourite plateau and made for his usual bench, the curved wooden form a comfort to him. Everything was as he'd left it. The deep grass that soaked his shoes on days like this was as thick as ever. The shelter in the centre was continuing to rust to oblivion and the sea out in front of him was as moody a mistress as he'd ever seen: today with whitecaps breaking into explosions of spray that were whipped across the water. Offshore, a couple of small fishing boats ploughed into the swell as they made their way south towards Hull.

  As the sporadic drops of rain began to increase, Benjamin thought about moving to the shelter. It was then that he glanced left to the statue of the bridge builder. It had moved. The plinth was in the same place, a yard or so from the railings. But as he looked at the aspect of his head, it was clear to Benjamin that the statue's head had titled to the right, towards his wife.

  "But that's simply not possible," he thought.

  Benjamin walked over towards it, wrapping his coat tighter around him. Looking up at the statue from below, he realized he could see his left ear, so far had his head been titled towards his wife. Benjamin was sure he had never before been able to see that ear when standing directly in front of the statue. He hurried over to the shelter and sat down on the simple wooden bench that was inside, half eaten away by the elements. He was trembling and suspected it wasn't from the chilly wind that, even there in the shelter, whipped around with a life of its own. Benjamin thought back to the sound he'd heard the last time he was here. Could a statue move by itself? There amongst the oily puddles on the chipped concrete floor, he laughed out loud. Statues didn't move, he said to himself, trying more than a little to convince himself. That wasn't the way things worked. He was a man who believed most strongly in a world of reason and logic and all his many expensive years of study had taught him one irrefutable fact about stone - it was not capable of independent movement.

  Benjamin turned his head again and looked through the grimy rain-speckled glass. Even from this angle, he could see the bridge builder's head was now about halfway turned towards his wife. He jumped off the bench. Only now had he looked for the first time at his wife. With his eyes locked in disbelief on her head, he strode back out into the rain and stood below her. She was looking out to sea, now apparently gazing in concern at the fishing boats that were still struggling against the waves a mile or so from the beach.

  Benjamin's feet were nailed to the spot. The only sound was the intermittent patter of rain on the rim of his hat. The statues had both moved. He suddenly felt lonely and exposed up on Headley View. The part of him rooted in common sense searched for an explanation. The statues could have been in a state of poor maintenance and with the strong gusts of wind, well, anything could have happened. Perhaps a team of council workers had come by and attempted to dismantle the statues. That was by far the most likely scenario. But Benjamin did leave. When movement returned to his feet, he found himself scrambling back down those seventy-nine steps at an incautious pace.