A Bridge in Time

by A Bridge in Time (retail) (epub)

  ‘A reason?’

  Amelia nodded. ‘If you don’t know I can’t tell you, and I hope it comes to nothing but believe me, there is a reason. Just trust me, that’s all. It doesn’t bother me what your mother thinks but I want you to trust me. I’m keeping the cottage till your father says I’ve to give it up.’

  ‘Father? What’s he got to do with this?’ asked Emma Jane, but Amelia put up a hand to stop her.

  ‘No more talk – I want to give you a bit of advice. I saw you last night, and you weren’t the Emma Jane I’ve always known. You should get away from your Mama. If you stay with her too long, you might grow like her.’

  Emma Jane groaned. This was too close to her own secret thoughts to be comfortable. ‘How can I leave Mama? Who would look after her if I went away?’ she asked.

  ‘But she’s using you. She’s not sick, not really. She just needs you and your father to think she is.’ Amelia’s voice was vehement and she grabbed Emma Jane by the shoulders to give her a little shake. ‘Listen. In just over a year your father will have built his bridge. When that happens, go away. Travel abroad, find a husband, take a lover, do anything you want, but go as far away as possible from Newcastle.’

  Emma Jane was learning how much she would enjoy freedom, but she knew it was unlikely that she would ever have the opportunity to seize it. Amelia seemed to sense her inner doubts and gave her a fiercer shake. ‘I do-ant know why I bother about you, I really do-ant! Listen to what I’m telling you,’ she urged.

  When she parted from her mother at Hexham station, Arbelle launched into one of her histrionic performances, weeping, wailing, throwing herself at Amelia and pleading to be allowed to stay. Amelia and Emma Jane had a fearful struggle to get her into the carriage, where she lay on the seat sobbing till the train drew out of the station. Then she sat up, ready to start enjoying herself, but she found herself staring into her aunt’s eyes. They looked fiercer than she had ever seen them, and she shrank back.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Emma Jane between clenched teeth. Arbelle looked, and kept on looking like a mongoose hypnotised by a snake. Her aunt leaned over towards her and said very quietly, ‘If you throw one of those weeping fits ever again with your grandmother or your mother, I’m going to tell them what you’re really like. I will. I’ll tell them that the moment you’re out of their sight, you wipe your eyes and forget all about them.’ As she spoke Emma Jane was deliberately making her gaze as fearsome as possible, summoning up strength and the will to dominate from her innermost soul.

  It worked. Arbelle, who had never been dominated before, nodded meekly and said, ‘All right, I won’t do it again, I promise. Please don’t look at me like that, Aunt Emma Jane. It’s very frightening.’

  Emma Jane sat back against the cushions with joy filling her heart. ‘I can do it! If I can frighten Arbelle, I can do anything,’ she said to herself.

  Chapter Ten

  The rains were followed by a period of beautiful late-autumn weather when leaves made Persian carpets of glowing colour around the trunks of the bare trees; herons fished in the peaceful shallows of the river which bore no resemblance to the raging torrent it had been only a few days before; cheeky robins made their appearance in village gardens where they intended to pass the winter and the last fruit fell from the black branches of the apple trees. In a field outside the village, Craigie and his bondagers gathered in their potato crop. The women walked half-bent along the turned rows of earth, picking up the yellow potatoes and putting them into shallow cane baskets which Craigie then collected in his horse-drawn cart. He sat impassive on the seat with his face like a carved mask. Nowadays he spoke to no one, looked at no one, only kept up a strange muttering to himself as he guided his horse up and down the field.

  ‘He’s in a bad way, is Craigie,’ said the villagers to each other as they watched him. ‘He’ll go like his father, see if he doesn’t.’

  Village people didn’t mention Craigie’s father before strangers because like a big family, they tended to stick their communal skeletons in a cupboard and not look at them unless forced to do so, but now the gossips whispered to each other about how old Scott had ended up a raving lunatic, how in the end he was confined in a private hospital after he had tried to slit his throat with a razor. As the villagers remembered him they saw him again in his son. They felt sorry for Craigie because they knew what had driven him to such a pass, but they avoided the farm and no one would walk past the orchard wall at night.

  Tibbie heard the talk and felt pity for all the Scotts. It seemed tragic to her that the peaceful life of Camptounfoot had been torn apart by the coming of the railway that seemed to be creeping nearer and nearer every day. One by one her neighbours accepted the inevitable; only a few still held out against the change and she and Craigie were among them. She thought of the others as a flock of sheep being harried by a snapping dog towards a gate. They might not want to go through; they might have put down their heads and shown resistance at the beginning, but in the end they did as they were told. Even the Rutherfords, who had been strong opponents of the railway in the beginning, were won round because their Robbie was now an apprentice builder who came striding proudly back into the village each night at finishing time with his head high and ambition shining out of him.

  Another thing that won some people round was the fact that the bridge contractor was living with the Jessups and had proved himself to be a decent and gentlemanly person. When Tibbie voiced her fears about the change a railway would bring to village life, and her dread about what would happen when the work and the navying gangs drew nearer to Camptounfoot, people only laughed now and said, ‘Och, it’s not near so bad as we thought.’ They were even talking of day trips to Edinburgh or Newcastle when the railway line was finished. They did not seem to care that what they were witnessing was an end to the old way of life altogether. ‘You’re too old-fashioned, Tib,’ they said. Even William and Effie said it, so she learned to hold her tongue and keep her fears to herself. On nights when mists swirled eerily along the bed of the lanes, when white owls swooped overhead hunting little mice in the dying grass and the moon shone overhead like a huge red ball of blood, she sometimes went out hoping to catch sight of the marching men, but was always disappointed. They were staying away and she was afraid that they had gone forever.

  When she spoke to her daughter about her worries, Hannah was as brisk and matter-of-fact as the rest of the villagers. ‘You’re being silly, Mam,’ she said. She tried to divert Tibbie with tales of Bella Vista but without much success. The saga of Bethya’s endless purchasing was beginning to pall.

  It was palling with Bethya too, but she had set herself a target of amassing as much in the way of assets as she could before she finally left Gus. She was piling up money, clothes and particularly jewellery like a squirrel hoarding against winter. The Colonel indulged her unashamedly, bringing out piece after magnificent piece for Bethya to wear, and never insisting that she return them to his strongbox after use. This was all much to his wife’s wrath. She kept warning him, ‘That girl’s milking you, Augustus. One day she’ll take off from here with all your jewels and what will you do then?’ He paid no heed to her, for he could see no fault in Bethya.

  As the days dwindled into winter, Tim Maquire was lovesick; Hannah seemed to be avoiding him and he was too engrossed in work to hang about waiting for her as she came and went in the village. Sometimes he caught a fleeting glimpse of her, always tantalisingly just going out of sight. He did not have time to brood, however, for Mr Wylie was back on the site and working like a demon to get as much done before the bitter winter weather stopped operations.

  As soon as his daughter went away and there was no one to restrain him from overdoing things, Wylie had come back to the bridge site. He was pleased at how work had gone in his absence, but he noticed that Miller’s toady Jopp was now much more in evidence than he had been in the past. He was on the site, in the navvy camp, riding up and down the workings. Wylie knew only too wel
l that Jopp had been detailed to watch him, to pick his brains, to work out exactly what he was intending to do and prepare his own forces for stepping in. At some point, when the moment was ripe, Sir Geoffrey hoped to oust Wylie, who guessed accurately that the shrewd but straight-dealing Colonel Anstruther and the bovine-brained Raeburn were unaware of what was brewing. Anstruther especially wouldn’t like it because, although he had enriched himself in India by a variety of devices, he had always given something, protection or promotion, back in return for his bribes. In his own way he was a gentleman.

  When he went back to the work-site on the valley floor, Wylie said shortly, ‘Watch out for Jopp. Keep an eye on him and don’t tell him anything.’

  Maquire laughed. ‘I’ve been doing that from the beginning. He’s a rat. I’ve been on jobs with him before and I know what he’s like. He’s a company man, always ready to ingratiate himself at the men’s expense.’

  ‘This time it’ll be at my expense. He’s up to something with Miller,’ said Wylie slowly.

  ‘I don’t like Miller either. He’s got a shifty eye,’ agreed Tim. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Wylie, we won’t work for anybody else but you.’

  Wylie was grateful but he added, ‘If bad weather sets us back, I’ll be in real trouble.’

  Maquire told him, ‘All right – while it’s fine, we’ll work round the clock to make up for lost time. I’ll tell the men tonight. Go back to your lodgings and have a rest, Mr Wylie, you look tired. Leave it to me.’

  That night in the camp, he gathered his men and told them what was planned. ‘The bad weather’s coming soon and we’re behind schedule. We’ve got to make up time. I want half of you to work through the night. The building of the lower piers has to be done before the frost comes.’ Bullhead, in the front of the crowd, called out, ‘There’ll be extra money for night-work, won’t there?’

  ‘I didn’t think that would be necessary,’ hedged Tim, but Bullhead walked away, saying over his shoulder, ‘I’ve just got myself a new woman so I’ve better things to do with my nights. I’m not going to work unless you make it worth my while.’ His friends laughed and catcalled in approval. Tim remembered that Mariotta was the new woman. He’d seen her slinking around the camp like a beaten dog since she moved into Bullhead’s hut and dreaded to think what her life must now be like. In his pocket he still carried the key to her old house. He’d never even gone to look at it. Somehow it didn’t seem right.

  ‘All right, Bullhead, don’t work. Will anyone else volunteer?’

  Sydney was the first and he was followed by Jimmy-The-New-Man, who was worrying Tim because he was rapidly sinking into drunkenness and lassitude. His old innocent cheerfulness and optimism had vanished and he had taken up with bad company – Bullhead and his gang of ruffians. It wasn’t uncommon or unexpected for young navvies to go to the bad, but somehow Tim had not thought it would happen to Jimmy. ‘Good, that’s good,’ he said approvingly, thinking that if the lad was working at night and Bullhead during the day, they’d not come across each other so often. Jimmy, who was the youngest member of Tim’s gang, seemed to have no one in the world to care about what happened to him.

  For the next week Tim hardly slept at all; he supervised both day and night-shifts, exhorting the labouring men, listening to complaints, imbuing them with his sense of urgency. He took up a pick and worked alongside them so no-one could accuse him of being a slacker. In the light of the flaring lamps one night, Gentleman Sydney leaned on his shovel-handle and said, ‘Tell me, Black Ace, do you happen to know if any of your ancestors were the fellows who cracked whips over the backs of galley slaves?’ Tim only laughed and went on digging.

  By dint of superhuman efforts, nine foundations were laid in the deep holes along the face of the field. On the morning of the eighth day, snow began to fall from a pewter-coloured sky but the navvies went on digging. Maquire went in search of Wylie who was in a little shed on the side of the bluff poring over his plans by the light of a flickering oil lamp. It was bitterly cold and the white-haired man was wearing an overcoat, a muffler and thick gloves as he worked. He looked terribly ill. ‘We’ve done it, Mr Wylie,’ Tim announced triumphantly. ‘We’ve laid the stone in all the bases. When this snow stops, we can starting building them up.’

  When Wylie looked up he was smiling, but the light of the lamp showed that his face was deathly white. Concerned, Maquire stepped towards him and said, ‘You’ll ill again, sir. You’ve been doing too much. I’m going to take you home.’

  Wylie sank into his chair with a gasp and admitted, ‘Yes, I am tired, Tim, but you must be too. We’re well ahead, though, and it’s nearly Christmas. Give the men a couple of days off because we can’t do anything in snow. You’ve all done a magnificent job. Tell them I’m grateful.’

  When Tim returned from telling the men that they were to have paid leave, he found Wylie slumped in his chair and put out a hand to help him to his feet. ‘I saw your carriage waiting up on the road. The driver will take you back to the Jessups’. You should be in bed.’ He rolled up the plans on the table as he spoke and added, ‘Take the plans with you. We don’t want Jopp casting his eye over them.’

  Wylie did as he was told without protest but added, ‘Come to the Jessups’ with me and have a glass of something to celebrate the season, Tim. I think we deserve it.’

  The snow drifted round them like a curtain as they rode into the village. Wylie lay against the cushions with his eyes closed, knowing that Tim Maquire was watching him with concern. When at last they rolled up to the Jessups’ gate, Maquire jumped to the ground and half-lifted the other man down, saying, ‘I won’t come in after all. I’m tired too. Go to bed, Mr Wylie. I’ll come back when the weather changes but it looks as if this has set in for a while.’ As he spoke snow was settling on his bare head like a cap.

  Before Wylie would go in, however, he looked up at his carriage driver and said, ‘Take Maquire back to the camp at Rosewell, please. It’s too far for him to walk in this storm.’

  Tim gazed up at the grey outline of the hill towering over the village. Its top was shrouded in snow, and white sheets of snowflakes were blowing around the lower slopes. The roofs of the village houses were already covered, and only two marks in the white surface of the road showed where a cart had passed along before them. The air was full of the comforting smell of woodsmoke from nearby chimneys, and he longed to warm himself before a blazing fire. He shuddered as another gust of snow caught him and cut through to his skin. Gratefully he climbed aboard the carriage box and the cabby cracked his whip over the old horse’s back. ‘Won’t take long,’ he said, hunching his shoulders beneath his thick coat.

  The horse was slithering and slipping round the corner by Bob’s shop when Tim caught sight of a dark-clad figure standing back against the wall to allow the carriage to pass at that narrow point. Wondering who was abroad on such a terrible evening, he leaned forward in his seat and then caught sight of the flash of Hannah Mather’s red hair under the hood of her cloak.

  ‘Hold up, hold up,’ he told the cabby, and leaned down to say to Hannah, ‘What are you doing out in this? Go home. You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘I’ve got to get back to my work,’ she said, looking up at him. Her cheeks were bright pink with the cold.

  ‘Go home to your mother and wait till this storm’s over,’ he said shortly but she shook her head.

  ‘I can’t. I’ve to be back by half-past six because the housekeeper’s mad at me. I was late yesterday too. If I’m not back in time I might lose my place, and if I don’t go now I won’t be able to get through later.’

  ‘Get in. We’ll take you to Bella Vista,’ he said.

  The coachman heaved a heavy sigh and groaned, ‘You’re awful good at giving lifts in other folks’ carts.’

  But Tim told him, ‘It’s not far. Drop me there too and I’ll walk back to Rosewell. That’ll save you going too much out of your way.’

  When Hannah saw that this suggestion met with agreement, she d
id not argue but put her booted foot on the metal step and jumped into the back. As they started up, her glowing face was pressed to the little window between the front and the passenger seat as she thanked them. ‘This is kind of you. I didn’t realise how bad the weather was getting. I don’t want to lose my place. It’d be hard to find another as good so near home.’ She seemed to have forgotten her hauteur against Tim and her laugh was like a tinkling bell as she settled into her seat. The sound of it made him smile and he was still smiling when the carriage stopped at the gate of Bella Vista. Hannah hopped out, pretending to act the lady, and said, ‘Thank you, kind sir.’

  She was about to start running up the drive when he put out a hand and stopped her. ‘Aren’t you going to thank me properly?’ he asked.

  Behind them they heard the noise of the departing carriage-wheels in deep snow but they stood very still staring at each other for a few moments before she said, ‘But I did thank you. Didn’t you hear me? I said “Thank you, kind sir” in my very best voice.’ There was a suppressed giggle in her tone which showed she was not a bit afraid of him though he loomed large beside her in the grey light.

  ‘Is that all you’re going to do?’ he asked her.

  ‘What else do you suggest?’ she countered.

  ‘You could give me a kiss,’ he said. She said nothing but her eyes searched his face, taking in the square chin with a deep cleft in the middle of it; a wide mouth with a surprisingly soft and feminine upper lip that was broader and more curving than the lower; deep-set eyes that looked thoughtful and brooding; cheeks darkened by the stubble of two days without shaving. She knew the bristle would scrape her skin if she put her face to his and she suddenly longed to feel it. He was having a most peculiar effect on her.

  ‘You’re a brazen fellow asking a girl for a kiss when she thought you were a gentleman who’d saved her from being frozen to death in a storm,’ she said cheekily and he laughed. Tiny wrinkles appeared around his eyes giving him an unexpectedly boyish and merry look. He was not nearly as old as she had thought. ‘You should laugh more often,’ she told him seriously.