‘What are you doing?’ he asked in disbelief.
‘I couldn’t sleep. I’ve a bad pain in my back and I kept thinking about poor Mr Wylie so I decided to get up and clean the house. That way it’ll be perfect when the baby comes,’ she said.
He’d heard that women sometimes got a burst of energy before giving birth and his eyes were anxious as he asked, ‘Has it started? It’s too early.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think it’s started. It’s just that I have this pain—’
Her face contorted as she spoke and he grabbed her, asking, ‘How often do you get the pains? Are they regular?’
‘I’m all right. It’s just backache,’ she insisted, and made him lie down on the bed where she lay beside him and the pair of them slept for a couple of hours. When they woke, she said her backache had gone and he went to the bridge. All the men had heard about Wylie’s death and some were working but others were not, so it fell to Tim to chivvy them back with assurances that everything would go on the same as usual. The bridge had to be finished. He felt he owed it to Mr Wylie to see that it was.
He was walking from group to group promising that their wages would be paid, when the little Rutherford from Camptounfoot came racing down the field calling out, ‘Your wife’s started. Mrs Mather’s gone to the camp to help her.’ Once more he was running over the fields, and did not slacken his pace till he reached the door of Benjy’s, which was firmly closed. As he was about to open it he heard a terrible groan coming from within, and his heart dropped like a stone into his stomach.
‘Dear God, look after my Hannah,’ he prayed aloud.
Tibbie saw his anxious face looking in and waved to him to stay where he was. In a few minutes she came out and told him, ‘I’m fair mad at her. She must have had those pains for at least a day but she held off from telling us. I think she did it because she wants to have the bairn here.’
He understood. He knew Hannah wanted to have the baby in Benjy’s, in their bed, surrounded by the things they’d bought with such love and enthusiasm. ‘Is she all right?’ he asked.
Tibbie clapped his shoulder. ‘She’ll be fine – just leave it to me. I’ve sent down to Rosewell to a friend of mine who delivers babies. She’s the best in the town.’
‘Get the best, the very best. I don’t care what it costs,’ said Tim. ‘Should I go to fetch the doctor?’
‘Heavens no, everything’s normal. I’ll tell you to get a doctor if there’s any problems but I don’t think she’ll need him. Now you go back to work and keep your mind off it. Leave this to the women.’
He went back to the Jessups’ to find out what was happening, but everyone there was waiting for news from Newcastle and there was nothing he could do. He returned to the bridge but found it impossible to concentrate, and was glad when the time came to stop work and he could walk back to the camp with Sydney. With every step he took he thought, ‘When I get home I’ll find Hannah’s had her baby…’
But she hadn’t. Tibbie and her friend were looking more harassed than before and shooed him out of Benjy’s with no ceremony at all. Before he went he saw Hannah lying in bed with her hair plastered around her face. The sight made him frantic with anxiety.
Sydney was outside and put a hand on his arm. ‘Come up to Major Bob’s for a bit of supper and we can have a hand or two of cards.’ Tim enjoyed card-playing and was skilled at it, but tonight concentration eluded him. All he could do was sit by Major Bob’s stove and stare out at the steadily falling rain between forays down to Benjy’s to check on Hannah.
‘Why’s it taking so long?’ he asked every time he came back, and Major Bob laughed at him.
‘How long’s it been?’ she enquired. ‘Only since this dinner-time? That’s not long. Some women labour for days. I remember one woman…’
‘Bob!’ said Sydney in his most ringing tones. ‘That’ll do. We don’t want any of your horror stories, thank you. It’s a pity you’re teetotal now or you could have uncorked the brandy bottle and knocked this poor suffering expectant father out.’
At dawn next morning, before going to the Jessups’, Tim was at the door of Benjy’s again with a headache that felt as if an army of gnomes were driving spikes into his skull. His mother-in-law opened the door and shook her head. ‘Not yet… it’s sort of stopped,’ she said in a weary voice.
‘Oh God,’ he cried, putting his hand to his eyes. ‘I can’t stand this. What’s wrong? This can’t be normal.’
Even Tibbie looked worried. ‘She’s getting tired,’ she whispered as she pulled him into the room.
Hannah’s face was being washed by the midwife but she saw him and called out his name in a voice that broke his heart in two. Anguished, he rushed over to her and took her in his arms. ‘Oh Hannah, my darling Hannah, it won’t be long now. I love you, Hannah. Oh God, I wish this had never happened.’
She put her hand on his head and whispered. ‘Tim, oh Tim. Don’t worry.’
He felt Tibbie pulling at his shoulder and stood up. She spoke softly in his ear. ‘Wait outside. We’re going to have a look to see what stage it’s at. I’ll call you when we know.’
When she finally appeared, he said impetuously, ‘I don’t care what you say, I’m going to fetch a doctor for her. This can’t go on.’
But she was shaking her head and looking more cheerful. ‘There’s no need for that. The doctor would only haul it out – he’s very impatient in birthing cases. She’s farther on than we thought. It won’t be long now – we’ve just got to be patient. I was like her. It took me a long time, too, because we’ve both got narrow hips but she’ll do it, don’t worry. Go away for a couple of hours and when you come back you’ll be a father.’
He was in an agony of worry while he was with Miss Wylie at the Jessups’, and by the time the cart drove off with her and her father’s coffin, more than two hours had passed. He could not get back to Benjy’s quickly enough, running and tripping over stones as he went, careless in his haste. The door was still closed but this time he did not knock, only charged through it as if the devil himself were at his heels.
Tibbie and the midwife were standing by the stove gazing at something wrapped in a white shawl in Tibbie’s arms. They looked up at him and his mother-in-law said in a faltering voice, ‘You’ve got a daughter.’
He didn’t stop or make any comment. Instead he threw himself at Hannah’s bed and knelt on the floor beside her. She was lying with her eyes closed but she opened them when she heard him saying, ‘Hannah, I love you. I love you more than anything or anyone in the world. I nearly went out of my mind at the thought of losing you. I don’t care if we never have another baby. I don’t want to go through all that again.’
‘Oh Tim,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Take a look at her and you won’t say that.’
He turned as Tibbie held up the baby and put it into his arms – a little doll, so small and fragile in his big hands that he was afraid he would hurt it. But as he looked down at the little face a warm river of love flooded into his heart. ‘My daughter, my own wee girl,’ he gulped and walked across to Hannah again, laying the child down on the cover beside her. ‘Oh, thank you, Hannah. We’re a family now. Nothing’ll ever separate us,’ he said and burst into tears, for once not caring who saw him weep.
* * *
While Tim and Hannah were adoring their new daughter in bright and cosy Benjy’s, Emma Jane’s train was pulling into Newcastle station which was dank and smoke-filled, a suitable setting for misery and mourning. Haggerty was waiting by the platform gate with Christopher Wylie’s lawyer, Mr Johnstone, and a cousin of Emma Jane’s called John Alexander, the son of her father’s sister in London, whom she had not seen for several years. They all rushed towards her as she walked along the platform, their faces anxious.
‘You should have waited till I came. You shouldn’t have gone alone,’ said John, taking her arm. He was a pleasant-faced young man with bright ginger hair, and sharp brown eyes which scrutinised her face with concern.
‘I couldn’t wait, I had to go,’ she told him sadly and he nodded in sympathy as he hurried her to where their carriage was waiting under the station portico. Obviously he was intent on getting her out of the way before her father’s coffin was unloaded. With a sigh she gave herself up to his ministrations. It was a relief to feel that things were out of her hands now. She was immensely tired, too tired to weep, too tired to speak, too tired to think.
Wyvern Villa had taken on a sinister and intimidating look. Every blind in the house was drawn; the knocker was muffled in black crepe, and a funeral wreath made of black ribbon and dark-green bay leaves decorated the front door. Inside there was even denser gloom and silence – total silence. The footsteps of Emma Jane and her cousin seemed to echo in a most unsuitable way in that house of mourning. Mrs Haggerty came tip-toeing over the hall to open the door to them and she whispered, ‘Your Mama’s asleep. The doctor’s been. Mrs Amelia’s in her cottage with the children but she’s coming back in half an hour.’
‘Is Mama any better?’ asked Emma Jane. The maid shook her head.
‘Oh no, she’s very poorly. Worse than she was over Master James, much worse.’
Emma Jane shuddered. The memory of her mother’s grief at that time came back to her with awful immediacy.
She quailed at the thought of coping with it again. ‘Should I go in to her?’ she asked but Mrs Haggerty shook her head.
‘Not yet – let her sleep. The doctor’s given her valerian. You look tired, Miss. I’ve prepared your bed and I’ll make you some tea. Go and lie down for a bit.’
The fact that she was being treated with kindness and consideration broke Emma Jane’s strength of will and she started to cry, swaying in the hall with her hands over her eyes, sobbing and sobbing as if her heart would break. John and Mrs Haggerty had to half-carry her upstairs. When John was descending the stairs again, Amelia appeared in the hall and looked up at him. ‘How is Emma Jane?’ she asked.
‘Terrible – she looks like a walking corpse herself. She’s not going to be able to stand much more of this, I’m afraid. Heaven knows what we’re going to do with her and her mother,’ he said, shaking his head.
Amelia did not look too despondent, however. ‘I think there’s more to her than people imagine. She’s not the little mouse she looks. You’ll be surprised by Emma Jane,’ she told him.
After three terrible days of mourning and waiting for the funeral, Christopher Wylie’s cortege moved away from his house in splendour, attended by a line of fifteen black carriages full of mourners, for he was a well-known and highly respected man. The only flowers decorating the hearse were huge white trumpet lilies, and the body had been transferred from Jo’s rough box into a coffin of black ebony decorated with silver, which was carried in a glass-sided hearse drawn by two pairs of black horses with magnificent black ostrich-feather plumes nodding from the polls of their heads. Their harness was made of black patent leather studded with silver bosses. It was a sight to chill the most insouciant heart, and people on the streets stood still with their hats off or heads bowed in acknowledgement of mourning even though they did not know who it was that had died.
Mrs Wylie was too distraught to attend the funeral and remained in bed, attended by her sister Louisa who had arrived from Harrogate and her sister-in-law, John’s mother, who anxiously dispensed medicines to her and vainly tried to soothe her continual weeping. In the absence of her mother, Emma Jane, as principal mourner, rode in the first carriage with Amelia, Dan and her Cousin John. She was totally silent during the journey and sat as stiff as a statue in the corner of the carriage, draped in black crepe with a thick veil obscuring her face. Her mind was numbed. She felt as if she was watching a performance on stage with herself as one of the actors. Consistent thought was beyond her but strange mental pictures kept flashing into her mind – sometimes she had a glimpse of her father’s room in the Jessups’ house, the room in which he had died. Then she remembered holding his hand and walking in a field of flowers when she was very small; but most often she kept seeing the bridge, not as it was now, half-finished and surrounded by piles of raw stone and heaps of bricks, but soaring and high, a magnificent creation. That must be how he had imagined it. ‘I wonder if I’m picking up his thoughts,’ she asked herself as she stared through the mesh of her veil at the coffin on the carriage in front.
Did they bury him in the huge graveyard on the outskirts of the town, or did she imagine the whole thing? Had she stood with her family at the church door and shaken the hands of the mourners as they filed out – or was that imagination, too? Did they all return to Wyvern Villa for glasses of sherry sipped in great solemnity?
As he was leaving the house after the grimmest day of her life, Mr Johnstone, the lawyer, shook Emma Jane’s hand and said gravely, ‘I’ll come back to see you tomorrow, Miss Wylie. There’s a geat deal to discuss, of course, and this is not really the time.’ She could tell by his tone that what he had to impart would not be good news.
He arrived at eleven, and when Mrs Haggerty had shown him into the drawing room, where John was waiting, Emma Jane came shakily downstairs, holding very tight to the banister. There was a strange weakness in her legs and she was mortally afraid of falling. Mr Johnstone and John both rushed forward to help her to a chair when she stepped into the room. The lawyer, who was looking worried already, frowned even more deeply as he watched her, wondering how this frail girl was going to cope with the news he had to deliver.
‘I’m sorry Mother can’t come down,’ said Emma Jame softly when she was settled in her chair.
The lawyer nodded sympathetically. ‘I was told that she is very ill with grief,’ he said solemnly, ‘but what about you, Miss Wylie? Are you sure you can stand a business discussion today?’ The girl seemed to be shivering with cold although the room was oppressively hot.
She stared up at him wide-eyed as if in surprise. ‘Oh, I’m all right. Tell me what you came about, please. Is it Father’s will?’
Resolving to get this business over with as quickly as possible, he whipped a spectacle case out of the pocket of his coat and perched gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose. ‘Yes, it is. There are several things to explain to you. Do you wish Mr Alexander to stay with you while I go through these matters?’
She looked at her solicitous cousin and leaned towards him. ‘John, would you mind if I heard all this alone, at least in the beginning?’
John did mind, but he stood up immediately and said, ‘Of course not. I’ll wait in the library – call if you need me.’ It struck him that her shivering might not be caused by cold but by apprehension. She was bracing herself for bad news and wanted to hear it unobserved by anyone else. Poor Emma Jane, he thought, for he had a better idea than she did of the fraught state of his uncle’s finances.
When John had left the room, Mr Johnstone sat forward in his chair and brought out a folder of papers from his case, saying in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘Then let’s start. It shouldn’t take long – your father left a very simple, uncomplicated will. After your brother’s sad accident, he made a new will and left the bulk of his estate to your mother. On her death everything reverts to you, of course; she has only a life rent of it. There are one or two small legacies as well: five hundred pounds to your coachman Haggerty, for instance; fifty pounds to Mrs Haggerty; a thousand pounds to your niece Arbelle, and some personal things like pictures and furniture to your sister-in-law Amelia.’
He was accustomed to defensiveness or outrage when people heard that things in their home had been bequeathed away from them, but Emma Jane only gave a little smile and said, ‘That’s good – Amelia deserves a legacy. But what about her cottage?’
Mr Johnstone shot a quick glance at her as he said, ‘The cottage is hers outright: your father gifted it to her. It is not part of his estate – just as your annuity is yours entirely. The capital was bought in your name.’
She sat back with a sigh of relief. ‘I was wondering what would happen about my allowa
nce.’
‘It’s not a large annuity but at least it is secure,’ he said, and a certain note in his voice made her open her eyes wide and stare into his face.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked fearfully.
‘Miss Wylie, what I have come here to say is that your annuity is the only sure income you and your mother possess at the moment. I don’t know how to tell you this, but your father’s affairs were very confused when he died. I’m afraid he could not have gone at a worse time as far as his family is concerned.’
To his amazement she did not seem surprised. ‘How bad is it exactly?’ she asked, but before he could reply she hurried on, ‘I hope there’s enough to pay the outside legacies?’
He nodded. ‘We’ll manage to find the money for the Haggerties, and to pay for the funeral. There are also several tradespeople and sub-contractors who owe your father money from various projects in the past. I’ll put pressure on them to pay up, but I don’t expect to bring in much more than will cover the immediate outstandings. Larger sums like your niece’s legacy will have to wait.’
She made no comment, only fixed her yellow eyes on his face as he went on, ‘There’s also a problem about this house, Miss Wylie.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your father pledged the deeds of it against a loan from the bank to finance his work on the bridge. He made an arrangement with your sister-in-law that you and your mother should go to live in her cottage if his loan was ever called in… That agreement was verbal and will only work to your advantage if your sister-in-law honours her promise. There is nothing in writing.’
A Bridge in Time Page 35
