A Bridge in Time

by A Bridge in Time (retail) (epub)

  She knew now that he had never had any intention of marrying her. If he could safely seduce her without being found out, he would and still hoped that he might, but he was far too much of a snob to compromise his position by involving himself in a divorce suit or by marrying a girl of mixed race. Bethya’s tempestuous blood surged in her veins and she felt capable of murder, but for an hour and a half, in the lavishly furnished drawing room with Persian carpets on the floor and gold-embroidered silken hangings draped down the walls, she sat drinking tea, making innocuous conversation and stifling her feelings.

  When she at last reached her bedroom again, Francine was waiting with the rose vinaigre and a brandy decanter. ‘I heard the news – the kitchen’s full of it. They say his new fiancee’s ten years older than he is and very, very rich… She’s also very snobbish and treats him like a parvenu but she’s marrying him because he’s rich as well.’

  Bethya, set-faced, said nothing but swept one arm along the table top and sent decanter, glass, bottles and china ornaments smashing on to the floor. ‘I hope she leads him a hellish dance. I hope she makes him wretched. I hope he finds that her estate’s entailed and he can get his hands on none of it,’ she hissed.

  ‘Hush, hush, don’t let anyone hear you,’ whispered her maid, bending down to pick up the smashed glass.

  ‘I don’t care who hears me,’ cried Bethya, pitching a heavy crystal scent bottle at a large painting of dogs chasing a stag over a heather-covered hillside. The glass shattered, spraying the floor with shards.

  ‘Oh Mon Dieu!’ cried Francine, standing back with her hands clasped in front of her mouth, but Bethya was pitching another bottle at the companion picture which depicted the stag dying in a welter of blood.

  ‘I’ve always hated those pictures,’ she yelled as the second painting plunged from the wall. Its fall seemed to satisfy her orgy of destruction, however, and she picked her way among the breakages to her bed, where she collapsed in a flood of tears. ‘I’ve been a fool,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought it wouldn’t matter here that I was half-caste but it’s just as bad as Bombay. He’s been laughing at me all the time, leading me on, hoping he’d get me into his bed. He never had the least intention of marrying me though he certainly made me think he might. What a fool I’ve been, what a fool!’

  Francine, busy clearing up the debris, agreed. ‘Men, they are all like that. I hate them – I really hate them!’ There was a fierce note in her voice that made Bethya sit up and look at her maid sharply.

  ‘I can’t honestly say that I hate them, but I don’t trust them, that’s certain. Oh God, am I condemned to live here with Gus forever? Do I have to go on dressing up and acting like a doll while he plays around in the stables with a lot of little boys?’

  Her maid stood up and said, ‘You must use what you’ve got. If you can’t get a man to marry you, you will have to utilise your assets another way. You must look for a rich protector, someone to take you away from here. Even if he doesn’t marry you, he’ll take you into society — only the demi-monde, perhaps, but look what happened to Lady Hamilton. There’s many others like her too, especially in France. I used to watch them driving in the Bois but I’ve never seen one as lovely as you.’

  Bethya sighed, ‘What chance have I of finding a gentleman protector here?’

  The maid was quite serious, however. ‘There are many well-to-do people living round about. We’re surrounded by huge estates. You must get to know the better-class people, cultivate the gentry.’

  Bethya nodded. ‘That’s more difficult than it sounds, as I have found out.’

  ‘You’re a clever woman. You’ll find a way if you really try,’ consoled Francine.

  When young Mrs Anstruther went down to dinner that night, she was as lovely and light-hearted as ever, making jokes, flirting, waving her fan and entrancing all who saw her, with the usual exceptions of her husband and mother-in-law. Mrs Maria Anstruther eyed her son’s wife suspiciously, searching for signs of grief or swollen eyes but without satisfaction. Eventually, filled with irritation at Bethya’s ability to hide what she was feeling, the Colonel’s wife leaned over the table and asked, ‘What was that terrible noise coming from your rooms this afternoon, my dear?’

  Bethya opened her exquisite eyes very wide. ‘Noise, Mama?’

  ‘There was an awful noise of breaking glass, shouting and thumping about. I was trying to have a nap and it woke me up.’

  Bethya laughed. ‘Oh, that! My maid knocked over a scent-bottle. It was one of my favourites and I shouted at her. I’m sorry we kept you awake. You must have very acute hearing.’

  From that day, however, a hardness entered Bethya. She was as bright and beautiful as before, but inside she harboured a fierce desire to escape from the tedium of her life at Bella Vista. Because she felt that Sir Geoffrey had treated her shabbily, she made up her mind that when she left Gus, she would move into a glittering world that made Sir Geoffrey’s seem pedestrian.

  * * *

  During the last glorious days of that autumn, Tim Maquire began behaving oddly. He had never been a heavy drinker, but his friends noticed that in the middle of every afternoon, he would suddenly develop a thirst and announce his intention of walking into Camptounfoot for a mug of ale. If anyone offered to go with him, he’d find reasons for telling them to stay where they were. He liked to drink alone, he said.

  Frying Pan, who had known Maquire for a long time, worried over this behaviour. ‘He’s never been a drinker. I hope he’s not getting a taste for it,’ he fretted, for he’d seen many good men wasted by their thirsts.

  Naughten shook his head. ‘He’s never away for very long and he’s always sober when he gets back. It must be a woman. He must have found a woman in that village.’

  ‘If he has,’ Sydney joked, ‘she’s not getting much out of it. He’s never gone for more than fifteen or twenty minutes.’

  They started timing him, and what Sydney said was true. Every day Tim set off walking to the village in midafternoon and he’d be back in about the time it took to swallow a pint of ale and walk the distance to and from Camptounfoot. Sometimes when he returned he’d be looking pleased with himself, but mostly he seemed doleful.

  ‘Is the ale in that place very good? You seem to like it,’ asked Naughten innocently one afternoon.

  Tim was in a melancholy mood. ‘It’s not bad,’ he said. He did not tell them that it was not ale that took him to Camptounfoot but the chance of catching a glimpse of the red-haired girl Hannah who, he had discovered, was often going to or from her mother’s house in the middle of the afternoon when she had a few hours off work.

  Hannah saw him the first day he took up his seat opposite her mother’s cottage. She glared fiercely when she stepped out of the door for he was staring straight into her mother’s window. Next day he was there again and the day after that. She did not understand why she did it but she always took care to be coming or going at about the same time. It was as if they had a secret rendezvous, yet for a long time they never spoke. At least she didn’t. He always touched his hat to her and said, ‘G’day.’

  She did not want her mother to realise that she knew this man, but in time his persistence wore her down and one afternoon, coming out on her way back to Bella Vista, she returned his greeting. He immediately stood up and said, ‘Can I walk with you?’

  She bristled. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Just down to the corner,’ he said.

  She hissed at him, ‘Don’t let my mother see you. She doesn’t like navvies.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll walk with me?’

  ‘No, it does not. Stop staring at me.’ She flounced her skirt and hurried off. She felt sharply conscious of his eyes following her until she turned the corner at Bob and Mamie’s. She wished that she could look back at him but she knew he would take that as encouragement.

  Next day, to her strange relief, he was on the bench again when she walked up the street. He tipped his hat over his eyes when he saw her and said, �
��I’m not looking at you.’

  She laughed, she couldn’t help it, and he looked up laughing too. Very white teeth flashed in his dark face and something jumped in Hannah’s heart. She remembered the exciting feeling it had been to dance with him. ‘Oh, what a fine-looking man he is,’ she thought. ‘What a pity he’s a navvy but my Mam would go mad if I started walking out with a navvy.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t sit there every day,’ she said softly.

  He looked innocent. ‘Why not? It’s quiet and peaceful here. All I’m doing is drinking a mug of ale and watching the world go by. There’s no law against that, is there?’

  She shook her head. ‘Well, don’t sit here waiting for me to walk with you,’ she said grimly.

  ‘Oh, to be sure I know that’ll never happen,’ he said in his lilting accent, then he grinned again and added, ‘But it brightens my heart just to look at you.’

  Flushing scarlet she started to run and disappeared into her mother’s house as if a battalion of dragoons were on her heels. From the bench by the wall she heard him laughing.

  * * *

  Brilliant sun beamed down on the beautiful Borderland for over a month, and every day Tim sat by the alehouse waiting for Hannah, but one Monday morning, a heavy, threatening bank of purple clouds covered the sky and in the distance thunder could be heard rumbling. By noon a terrible storm descended on the valley. Jagged forks of lightning flashed across the sky and rain lashed down in torrents that seemed capable of cutting through cloth. The corner outside Bob’s shop was flooded by the little burn coming down from the hillside which now tried to find a new course through his parlour. Mr Jessup’s garden was awash and the few people who were brave enough to go out found that they were forced to wade through pools of water that in places were waist-deep.

  Work on the railway stopped. With his shirt soaked through and sticking to his skin, Tim ran around the site putting tarpaulins over half-dug holes or over rising pillars of stone. Navvies huddled in their huts smoking their pipes and watching the lashing rain through the open doors. They earned no money while work was suspended and the hold-up frustrated them sorely, driving some to drink and others to gambling. In the camp there were fights and disagreements; women dragging buckets to the swollen burn quarrelled noisily and the soaked dogs fell snarling on each other’s necks.

  In Major Bob’s hut, the landlady took out her brandy bottle and began drinking. By mid-afternoon on the second day of the rain she was incapable of speech and had to be carried to bed, where she lay snoring loudly. Tim Maquire looked at her with stern disapproval. ‘She’s on a bender,’ he said. ‘She won’t be capable of cooking anything for days. We’d better start foraging for ourselves.’

  ‘I’ll cook,’ offered Naughten, but the others all shouted, ‘Oh no, not you!’ The last time he’d done the cooking they’d been served charred beef and watery cabbage.

  ‘I’ll cook,’ came Sydney’s drawl. ‘I’ll make a ragout.’

  ‘A what?’ asked Frying Pan.

  ‘A stew,’ said Sydney.

  ‘If that’s what it really is. We don’t want any of your foreign muck,’ was Gold Tooth’s contribution.

  ‘Then make it yourself. As far as I know, all your countrymen can do is boil potatoes,’ snapped Sydney.

  Tim groaned aloud. He could foresee trouble and did not want to be there when it happened, so he took his coat off the peg by his bed and said, ‘I’m going to walk over to Camptounfoot to see Mr Wylie. I’ll leave you to it.’ He didn’t think Hannah would be abroad in this weather but he was going over just in case.

  As he stepped outside, the rain hit him with the force of a whip but he put his head down and strode along paths that had turned into liquid mud. Within minutes it squelched over his boot-tops and soaked between his toes. Men standing in hut doors hailed him. ‘Where are you going in this, Black Ace?’ they asked.

  He paused to speak to some of them and heard the same from all, a tale of irritation and ennui that was taking its grip of the whole camp. ‘There’s been a terrible fight in Bullhead’s hut. He half-strangled Panhandle,’ he was told by one man. Then Tim swore. ‘Damn Bullhead, he’s always ready to cause trouble. I’d better go and have a word with him.’ Bullhead could cause a lot of damage, and Tim did not want any of the men to be disabled or out of action when the rain stopped because they would have to work twice as hard as usual to make up for lost time.

  Bullhead’s hut was one of the filthiest in the camp. When Tim opened the door he was assailed by the stink of stale tobacco smoke and frying fat. From somewhere at the back of the shed came the sound of strangled choking and coughing. Bullhead was sitting by the stove in the middle of the floor with another two navvies. They were all very drunk. Putting his hands on his hips Tim glared at them. ‘I hope you’re all going to be able to work tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘And how do you know it’ll not be raining tomorrow?’ asked Bullhead belligerently. When drunk he was always ready to pick a fight with anybody about anything.

  ‘I don’t, but it’s bound to stop some time and judging by the way you’re going on, you’ll be drunk then too,’ said Maquire.

  ‘Damn you, Black Ace. You’re a cocky young bastard. Just because you’re Wylie’s right-hand man you think you’re God, but you can’t push me around. You’ll take on more than you can cope with if you even try.’ Bullhead rose to his feet with his fists up and took a swing at Maquire’s head. The blow went wild because he was too drunk to stand up and Tim ducked it easily.

  ‘Oh sit down, you silly sod. Sit down and keep out of trouble and don’t go injuring any of my men or I’ll put you off the site. I’ll make sure you don’t work for anybody else either. You’re a troublemaker,’ he shouted at the weaving Bullhead before he turned and went to go out of the shed. He heard the racking coughing again and wondered if the sounds were made by Panhandle, recovering from Bullhead’s attempts to strangle him.

  The woman who looked after Bullhead’s hut was an evil crone called Squint Mary and she was huddled in a corner by the door, taking cover from her drunken lodgers. Tim paused beside her and asked, ‘Is that Panhandle who’s coughing? Is he all right?’

  She looked up at him. One of her eyes was purple and she’d obviously been beaten up recently. ‘Panhandle’s fine,’ she spat. ‘He ran away after the fight. That’s young Dogface who’s coughing. The infection’s all over the camp – haven’t you got it in your hut yet?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, we haven’t. Who else is ill?’ Illness was only an irritating hold-up as far as he was concerned.

  Squint Mary frowned and reeled off a list of names. She finished up with: ‘They say Benjy’s just about dead. He was never very strong at the best of times but this cough’s really done for him.’

  Benjy was a good, quiet workman and a skilled carpenter, one of the best in the business. Tim had known him a long time, and his work was always done correctly. Besides, Benjy was a decent little fellow. Worried, he hastened through the mud to where he knew Benjy had erected his neat little house. Among the wild navvies Benjy was a sort of a joke because he was so uxurious, a good family man, a loving husband to his quiet wife and a doting parent to their two small children. When he went from job to job, he took his house with him. It was a wooden shack, painted dark green with white trim around the window and doorframe. On the lintel he had carved the name Benjy’s, and his wife painted the white trim with multi-coloured flowers every time Benjy gave their home its annual refurbishment. It had been redecorated when they came to Rosewell and was still gleaming with bright paint and prettily painted flowers through the grey and driving rain.

  As he drew near, Tim’s heart gave a lurch for he heard the unmistakeable sound of Irishwomen keening over a death. He had heard that noise too often in his childhood to mistake it for anything else. Above the background noise soared the voice of one woman who was not weeping because she’d been beaten, nor because a child was ill – she was weeping because her man was dead.


  The door was ajar and Tim put his head round to look inside. Benjy’s house was as he would have expected, neat and scrupulously clean. Three women were sitting round a table in the middle of the floor with their heads in their hands as they wailed and a fourth was standing by a bed in the corner beating her breast. Her fair hair was flowing wildly round her face which was lifted to the roof as if she was addressing the deity. ‘Oh God, why’ve You taken my Benjy? My Benjy’s dead. I’ve lost him. Oh, my Benjy’s dead. I’ve lost him,’ she howled over and over again. Two frightened-looking children were sitting on stools by the fire watching their grief-stricken mother. The oldest, a boy of about six, held his little sister in his arms. Tears streaked both their faces.

  When Maquire stepped into the house, the women at the table looked up and one of them sobbed bleakly, ‘There’s been a death here, Black Ace.’

  He nodded, looking at the shape of a body lying on the bed beneath a patchwork cover. ‘Benjy?’ he asked.

  The dead man’s wife, whose name was Mariotta, turned round and ran towards him. ‘What’s to happen to me and my bairns now, Black Ace? What’s to happen to us?’ she cried in anguish.

  A second woman stood up and put an arm round the frantic woman. ‘Hush, Mariotta, hush. Take a sip of brandy and that’ll make you feel better. You’re upsetting the wee ones.’

  Gulping and hiccupping, Benjy’s wife accepted a tea cup with brandy in it and swallowed down the fiery liquid, but her grief was unassuaged. ‘Oh my Benjy, my dear Benjy. What’ll I do without my man?’ she howled again.

  One of the women, the wife of an older navvy and a devout Christian, gestured Tim towards the door so that she could talk to him out of earshot. ‘I’ll take her bairns to my house tonight. Will you fix up the funeral?’ she asked.

  ‘What happened? I’d no idea he was even ill,’ said Tim, who was unnerved by the terrible scene being enacted in the hut. Mariotta was still howling and it seemed as if her yells echoed and re-echoed across a cold and unheeding world.