They closed the bridge on the Welsh side. Drivers already on the bridge going westwards beat furiously on the dashboards of their halted vehicles in the hot midday sun, then tuned-in to Radio Wales to discover that ‘the virus’ was the reason. ‘It’s coming from the east,’ a politician said, too diplomatic to blame ‘England’. ‘We’re not letting it into Wales.’ The three lanes east were now empty; all traffic from Wales had ceased.
At the far end of the bridge traffic police made vehicles reverse into England, the outside lane first. After a long boiling hour, the middle lane began to go backwards and then stopped. Each driver tuned into English radio stations to hear a politician with a plummy voice say that due to the ‘prevalence’ of the virus in Wales, the Prime Minister had closed the bridge in ‘both directions’.
They were trapped on the bridge! One and a half lanes of glinting hot metal, most of whose passengers were now feeling hunger gnawing within; they were stuck on a wind-buffeted, concrete hammock.
‘It’ll be a standoff between Cardiff and Westminster, you watch,’ a face pock-marked as moonrock said. ‘First one to back down’s a wimp. Bloody politicians!’
‘At the end of every queue there’s always a copper,’ said a philosopher of transport studies.
They were out of their cars now, and several agreed: the cops were following orders ‘too literally’. ‘They can’t keep us up here for ever, can they?’
Puffy glistening clouds hung over both banks of the Severn, and above them the sky was an empire of blue in which to lose yourself. There was a dizzying drop down to the river, viewed through the structure of the bridge that held them all there like a mesh over crawling insects. A helicopter went back and forth, buzzing like a confused fly.
The minutes ticked by as slowly as the placid current below, the hours seemed as long as days. A spirit of community manifested itself among the fellow sufferers.
‘We ought to declare independence,’ somebody said. ‘Set up our own state.’
‘Can’t be worse than the ones we have now,’ came a reply.
‘Bags I get to run the car dealership then,’ another said, indicating the eighty or so parked cars on the bridge.
The radio announced that ‘urgent discussions’ were ongoing between the British prime minister and the Welsh first minister. ‘Know how long it took to relieve Mafeking?’ a wit muttered. ‘Two hundred and seventeen days. You think we’ve got problems?’
At teatime sense broke out, the barriers into Wales were lifted and they all drove off, hooting happily, windows wound down, thumbs up to each other. Once everybody was off, the barriers came down again. The bridge stood empty in the sunny evening, a giant without a purpose. Its job, to carry vehicles in its huge arms, had been denied it. Dusk fell on the brooding hulk and either side of the river the virus continued to spread silently.
