Mistress of Green Tree Mill

by Mistress of Green Tree Mill (retail) (epub)

  Grateful for the distraction, the girl replied, ‘In the Steeple Church. My father’s an elder there. I’ve got a beautiful dress – pale grey satin with ribbons on the shoulders, and a cloak with squirrel fur! I went to Newport for a fitting with the dressmaker.’

  ‘You’ll look lovely,’ said Martha – truthfully, for the girl was a beauty with a sweet oval face and softly curling hair. But even thoughts of the wedding could not distract them for long. Martha’s eyes were continually drawn back to the window.

  Then the train turned a bend in the bridge and she saw something that made her heart lift. The lights of her native city were twinkling at her like glow-worms along the blackness of the river bank. Somewhere among them the fights of the coffee house were sparkling out to guide her safely home. There was joy in her voice as she said, ‘There’s Dundee. We’re nearly home.’

  They smiled at each other in relief and the smiles were still on their faces when the carriage lurched, a deep and terrifying lurch that threw them on to the floor. Then their ears were filled with the horrifying screech of metal on metal that set teeth on edge. The paraffin lamps on the carriage walls guttered and went out but in the darkness Martha saw a long streamer of scarlet and orange sparks dash across the sky. She felt strangely calm as slowly, very slowly, the carriage toppled over. For what seemed like a long time there was a weird silence… the girl was thrown on to Martha’s lap and lay there trembling as Martha held her close.

  Then the panic started. The young man shouted out in terror, ‘Get us out. For God’s sake get us out!’ and his cries were punctuated by a frenzied hammering as he beat his fists against the wooden carriage wall. From the adjacent carriages other people were thumping, shouting and screaming too. But no help came and Martha lay silent, her stillness calming the girl in her lap. Her eyes were staring up at the sky through the window which was now above them like a roof.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t be afraid. I’ll stay with you,’ whispered Martha softly. The last thought in her mind before the train plunged off the broken bridge into the boiling waves was, ‘Oh my poor bairns, my dear wee bairns! What’s going to happen to my bairns?’

  Chapter 2

  In the large bay window of a comfortable drawing room overlooking the riverside park of Magdalen Green, a gentleman and his daughter stared out at the storm. Like Lizzie and Georgie they took vicarious pleasure in its ravages and exclaimed at the force of the wind which bent stout trees along the Green like saplings.

  ‘Look, Papa, there’s a train on the bridge,’ said the girl, pointing through the darkness at a far off pinprick of light.

  ‘What a night to be travelling! Mind you, the train’s only a few minutes late, even in a storm like this! Good service, that’s what it’s all about…’ The father, who had shares in the North British Railway Company, spoke proudly as he consulted his watch.

  He did not notice his daughter stiffen at his side but when she spoke again, her voice was agitated. ‘Something’s happened. I saw a thunderbolt hit the train. There was a terrible flash and the light’s disappeared!’

  He tried to humour her, saying comfortingly, ‘You imagined it, my dear. I didn’t see anything. The train’s gone behind a girder. We’ll see its light again in a minute.’ They stared out fixedly for a long time but there were no more lights to be seen on the bridge. Again and again the gentleman anxiously took his watch out and furrowed his brow. ‘I can’t understand it. The train should’ve arrived at the station by now. It must’ve stopped on the bridge. What’s happened?’

  His daughter stood with both hands up to her face, unable to take her eyes off the spot where she last saw the train’s lights. There was a break in the storm clouds and a sickly moon shone out for only a few seconds but these were long enough for her to see something that made her give a sob. Her father followed her eyes and then stubbed out his cigar with a muffled oath. Running downstairs, he threw on an overcoat and sprinted across the Green to Tay Bridge station. As he ran his mind was in turmoil, obsessed with what he had seen. It must be my imagination, he told himself. He could not have seen the great bridge broken in half like a child’s discarded toy. Such a thing was unthinkable.

  But he was calling out, ‘I think the bridge is down…’ as he stumbled up the stairs into the stationmaster’s office.

  From the faces that turned to stare at him, he knew he was voicing their own fears. He looked around for reassurance but a uniformed railwayman who was huddled over a brass telegraph key spoke in a strangled voice: ‘There’s no contact with the south end of the bridge. There’s no contact with the train. Oh, my God, it’s gone over!’

  * * *

  The Exchange Coffee House, an imposing building selfconsciously fronted with massive Ionic columns, had been built as a gathering place for the prosperous merchants of Dundee. On the first floor, reached by a fine curving staircase, they had an assembly room, a library and reading room, as well as the Mudies’ flat.

  The Exchange was accurately named for it was the best place in town for news and gossip. Important business deals were done over its tables and everybody who was anybody was seen there. David Mudie was privileged to be awarded the contract for running the coffee house and his customers respected the popular young proprietor, an upstanding fellow with a taking personality whose cheerfulness, intelligence and quick wit made him the equal of men who measured others by their money or family name.

  Like most of his customers, Mudie was Dundee born and bred. He came from a well-respected family and knew everybody worth knowing. He knew their history and their scandals, their triumphs and their failures and he was a proud and ambitious man who would touch his forelock to no one. The clientele respected him because he used his sharp tongue to good effect when annoyed, but most of the time he was affability itself, full of funny stories and gossip, able to defuse pomposity or relax awkwardness with his sallies. He presided over the coffee house like a master of ceremonies over a concert.

  Though David was the figurehead, it was his brisk little wife Martha who was the brains of the business. She had been a parlourmaid in a mansion where she was schooled by a strict housekeeper who instilled every domestic skill in her able pupil. Martha hired the coffee house servants (and fired them if they fell short of her standards). It was Martha who bought the provisions in the Green Market at the best prices and haggled with suppliers. Between them she and her husband had run the Exchange Coffee House for eight years and lived with their neat, well-loved children in respectable comfort in the first-floor flat. They were happy and prospering and they had big plans for the future.

  Those plans ended on the night of Sunday 28 December 1879. While the storm blew, Dundee was like a place under siege. Only those forced to go out braved the streets, picking their way fearfully along wet, littered pavements. The gale was no respecter of rank for while it hurled down the clustering chimneypots in the slums of the Vaults that clustered behind the Exchange Coffee House, it also took its toll of mill owners’ sea-facing mansions at Broughty Ferry or along the Perth Road. Ornamental railings were ripped off turret roofs, stained-glass windows smashed. In the vast gardens, shrub borders were flattened and ornamental trees ripped up by the roots.

  The sheets of rain and remorseless gale kept David’s customers at home and the coffee house still had only a single patron when the brass-handled door was thrown open by a porter from the station who thrust his head in to shout the news: ‘Davie, the bridge’s doon! There was a train on it and they think it’s got three hundred folk aboard.’

  David Mudie, resplendent in his floor-length white apron and neatly knotted silk tie, visibly reeled and dropped a cup to the floor, where it shattered. The colour left his face and he had to put a hand on the counter top to prevent himself from falling.

  ‘The bridge’s doon. It’s awful, isn’t it?’ repeated the porter, advancing into the room. Although it was momentous news, he was surprised at the effect it had on David. Usually the more exciting a story,
the more he liked hearing it. But this time he looked like a man who’d received a mortal wound.

  Maggy stood by the tub of water behind the counter with her eyes round in horror. She looked from the hushed porter to the ashen David and burst into tears. ‘Oh, what about Mrs Mudie? I hope she’s no’ on that train. She went to Newport to see her auntie and she’s no’ back yet!’

  The wailing snapped her employer back into action. ‘Go upstairs and stay with the bairns till I get back,’ he ordered as he roughly ripped off his apron without bothering to untie the strings. ‘And, Maggy, don’t say anything about the bridge. Mrs Mudie’ll have waited the night at Newport. She’s not on that train.’

  When he ran out of the coffee house he left the door unlocked and the till drawer gaping open. If anyone wanted to steal the few pennies in his cash box, they were welcome to them. He did not even delay long enough to fetch his coat and though the wind caught him in the chest, nearly tearing the shirt off his back, he hardly noticed it as he sprinted the length of the tree-lined Esplanade. He was strong and fit but his lungs were almost at bursting point when he reached the station, which perched like a stork’s nest on the end of the bridge that was Dundee’s pride. With his shirt clinging like another skin and his hair flattened down he looked as terrible as a corpse washed up from the sea when he clambered up the iron steps to the signal box. Through the window he could see a lamp burning and figures of men staring into the night. He burst through the door and, though they all knew him, none of them spoke or even nodded. They seemed transfixed by horror.

  ‘Is it true?’ he gasped, fighting for breath. ‘Is the bridge really down?’

  In a corner he could see his old school friend Bob Roberts, who worked for the Locomotive Department. He fixed his eyes on Bob’s face and the other man shrugged silently, then turned and pointed through the window into the night. David Mudie leaned forward to peer over his friend’s shoulder, focusing through the sheets of water running down the glass. Every now and again, in fitful moonlight, the watchers could catch a glimpse of the outline of the break in the bridge. When David saw it he felt a terrible chill settle on his heart and he had to fight not to howl like a wounded animal. It can’t be true, he told himself, blinked and looked again, but it was all real. There was a huge hole in the middle of the bridge, a void where there should have been iron girders, steel joists, rails, rivets, wooden sleepers. All around the broken ends of the bridge were clouds of spray driven by the wind from a pipe that carried water over to Newport. A gush of bile rose into his mouth, and swallowing convulsively he looked at the faces of the men. Their horror was too awful for speaking. The sight that transfixed them was so terrifying that they were not yet convinced of the evidence of their eyes.

  Bob Roberts spoke first. ‘The train might still be on the bridge. It might’ve stopped. Somebody’s got to find out what’s happened to it. I’m going to crawl along,’ he announced.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said David Mudie without a moment’s hesitation. He must go with Bob to find out what had happened to Martha, his wife, his dearest and closest companion. Keep calm, Martha’s not on that train, he told himself. She could not have plunged through the dreadful hole to her death. Things like that did not happen to people like the Mudies.

  ‘You can’t go out there, it’s madness. You’ll both be killed,’ said the stationmaster, a benevolent-looking man with a heavy grey moustache and spaniel eyes. As he spoke, he wiped his face with a handkerchief, and his hands were shaking.

  ‘I’m going,’ said Roberts firmly and made for the door. David Mudie squared his shoulders and followed. They had grown up in the same street behind the old Howff burying ground, played games together among the ancient headstones, swum in the Tay on fine days, run errands for farthings, wrestled and fought, and now they were prepared to risk their lives together. As a sign of comradeship, David put a hand on Bob’s shoulder and they struggled, heads down, through the searing wind to the end of the massive steel structure that people believed to be impregnable.

  Mudie found the voice to shout to his friend, ‘Martha might be on that train.’

  Roberts shouted something back but the wind caught hold of his words and sent them soaring away into the blackness.

  Their slow and agonizing crawl along the bridge was like a nightmare, and like so many nightmares they dreaded that it would end with them falling, tumbling into an abyss… down into perpetual blackness. As he inched along with his head almost at ground level David wondered if he was about to waken in his own bed, sweating from a bad dream. But it was all too real. He was actually crawling on hands and knees behind Bob. Like a limpet he clung to the bridge, flattening his body against the iron rails, pushing his head and shoulders down on to the creosote-smelling sleepers in a vain attempt to escape the ripping wind. Their progress was painful and very, very slow and as he crept on he thought about Martha, about how much he loved her. They’d been together ten years, since they were both twenty years old. If she was dead, swept away with the train, how could he live without her? Then with terrible desperation he reassured himself: Don’t be a fool, Martha’s not on that train. She’s still at Auntie Jean’s in Newport. I’ll see her tomorrow and this’ll be like a bad dream. So he crawled on with the wind catching hold of him, viciously trying to hurl him to his death. With each gust, he clung more tightly. Then in the lull he inched on another foot or two.

  It seemed an eternity before he felt Bob Roberts come to a sudden stop. David’s shoulder was pressing against Roberts’ boot and he shouted, ‘What’s wrong, Bob?’ but there was no answer. Roberts was rigid, almost paralysed.

  Both men lay silent on the sleepers till Bob turned and shouted with all the force of his lungs, ‘It’s the end. We’ve reached the end. We can’t go any farther. It’s broken right enough. Oh, God, Davie, it’s really down!’

  Mudie inched forward cautiously to stretch out a hand beyond Roberts’ shoulder. His fingers groped about gingerly into the blackness, reaching out for something to contact, but met nothing. Where there should have been support, where his mind told him there ought to be rails, sleepers and steel, there was nothing – only a terrible emptiness that engulfed him as his hand swung about in the void. Beneath him he became aware of the boiling turbulence of the river and every muscle of his body went into spasm. They were perched on the edge of an abyss. If they crawled another inch they would spiral down into the water. With a huge effort, as if drawing away from a magnet, he tore himself back and huddled panting beside his friend on the ravaged stump of bridge. Stricken dumb by exhaustion, horror and grief, Mudie and Roberts lay side by side, listening to each other’s rasping breaths for a long time until, by unspoken agreement, they turned around and crept back with their dreadful burden of news.

  * * *

  Lizzie was still awake when Maggy slipped up the stairs after tidying the coffee house counter and wringing out the damp tea cloths.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’ asked the little girl.

  A convulsive sob shook Maggy but she managed to say, ‘You ought to be asleep, Lizzie. Your daddy sent me up to stay with you. He’s gone out.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘He’s gone to the station.’

  ‘Then he’s gone to get Mammy off the train. She’ll be home soon. I’ll go to sleep when she comes back,’ announced Lizzie. But Maggy was weeping and the way she was behaving seemed so strange that Lizzie began to feel frightened. In a tone that was older than her years she said, ‘It’s only a bit of wind and rain, Maggy. Don’t be scared. You can stay here tonight if you don’t want to run home across the courtyard.’

  ‘Your daddy said I was to stay with you. He’s closed the place. Oh, go to sleep, please,’ sobbed Maggy and her tone was so distraught that a chill descended on Lizzie. Her bravado left her and she was too afraid to ask what had happened. She lifted anxious eyes to Maggy, who lay down on the bed beside the children and they all huddled together like puppies till they eventually fell asleep.


  * * *

  After midnight the wind died down enough to enable a boat, ironically called the Fairweather, to put out from the harbour in search of survivors. Nothing was found, though the men reported seeing bits of wood tossed about in the maelstrom and what looked like bodies being carried down to the sea in the raging waters. As dawn was breaking, news came from Newport that the train had left that station on time. With this terrible information was included a rough list of the number of tickets bought between Newport and Edinburgh, where the ill-fated journey began. As the news of the disaster spread through the town, frightened people came rushing down to the station to inquire about missing relatives but no one was able to help them. The rapidly growing crowd was kept in control by the feeling of being in the grip of some power beyond human control.

  David Mudie sat silent, huddled in his wet clothes in Tay Bridge station signal box till dawn, which arrived in strange and ironic glory, streaking the steel-grey sky with flourishes of pink, purple and orange. With the day came the news everyone was dreading. A grim-faced messenger entered the signal box bearing a piece of paper which he handed to Bob Roberts, who read it and then passed it over to his friend. Davie looked at the scrawled words without expression. Then he crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor. It bore the news which he had known in his secret heart must eventually come. The ticket collector at Newport reported three passengers boarding the train at his station. He knew the name of one of them… Martha Mudie.

  * * *

  Icy sleet seeded the wind as David Mudie walked home. In spite of the bitter cold and the early hour, crowds were gathered on the Esplanade looking with horror across the river at the devastated bridge. Many people in the crowd, knew the staggering man who passed by and greeted him but he walked by without acknowledging them, dead-eyed as if in another world. Surprised but not angered, for it was plain that something terrible had happened, his friends stared after his filthy, tattered figure.