A Bridge in Time

by A Bridge in Time (retail) (epub)

  The telegraph line between London and Balaclava was the most recent modern miracle. It has been completed only weeks before, and was used exclusively by the Army or by people with influence like the correspondent for The Times. The men looked at Tim with awe and one of them said, ‘You must have friends in high places.’

  He rubbed his head in bewilderment. ‘I don’t know who could have sent it, but let’s have it.’ He walked over to the impatient ensign and accepted the paper that was thrust at him. ‘Tim Maquire in the navvy gang at Balaclava’ was written along the top.

  ‘Yes, it’s for me,’ he told his companions. Then he read the rest of the message silently to himself. ‘Come back at once. Crisis at bridge. All arranged for you to leave. Godolphin.’

  Godolphin? Gentleman Sydney was called Godolphin, wasn’t he? That was what he’d put on Tim’s wedding certificate. Why was he sending telegraphic messages? Was it some kind of a joke?

  He crumpled up the paper and put it into his pocket. One of his friends asked, ‘Not bad news, I hope?’

  Tim shook his head. ‘It’s a joke, I think.’ But he knew it wasn’t. He had some hard thinking to do.

  That night when work was over, Tim and his companions walked the six miles back to the neat lines of huts where they had lived for four months while building a railway between the port of Balaclava and the fort at Sebastopol, which was under siege by the Allied forces. The Army needed a constant line of supply, and the navvies were working flat out to build eight miles of railway line to take it to them. They had worked so hard that they had broken all records and laid seven miles of line in seven weeks. Only one mile remained to be completed.

  The navvy camp above the port was neater and more orderly than any Tim had lived in before. That was because the men Peto recruited were hand-picked. They were there to work and work hard. Trouble-making ruffians had not been taken on. In spite of that, there were, of course, outbreaks of fighting and disorder from time to time, because navvies were navvies and to keep them sweet their employers not only paid over-the-odds wages of eight shillings a day, but issued a free rum ration four times a day as well. Some of the men were never sober – but they said they worked better that way. Others, like Tim, drank the rum because they believed it made them immune to the terrible fevers that ravaged the Army camps – and they might have been right, for the navvies lost far fewer men to fever and illness than the military.

  As Tim walked into the main street running past the hut doors, he saw James Beatty, Chief Engineer of the line, waiting outside the hut where he was billeted. Beatty saw him coming and walked quickly towards him. ‘I’ve had a message about you,’ he said. ‘You’ve to go back to England by the next available ship.’

  ‘What if I refuse?’

  Beatty frowned. ‘Nothing was said about that. I was just told to release you. Some trouble at home, I understand. The order came from Peto – he says you’re to be let out of your contract. There’s only a month of it left to run anyway. I’ll be sorry to lose you, Black Ace, you’re one of my best men, but orders are orders.’

  ‘I can’t understand this. I haven’t any family at home, only a mother-in-law. She wouldn’t be sending orders to Peto.’

  ‘The Duke of Allandale contacted the War Office, apparently, and they got on to Peto. Strings have been pulled in high places,’ shrugged Beatty.

  ‘I got a message too,’ said Tim, handing it over.

  Beatty read it and wrinkled his brow. ‘What bridge? And who’s Godolphin?’

  ‘He’s a navvy like me. I’m just hoping he’s not making some hare-brained joke.’

  ‘He’d better not be. If he has involved the War Office in his joke, he’ll end up in the Tower. But I’d go if I were you. You might find you’ve inherited a fortune,’ grinned the engineer.

  Tim laughed. ‘No risk of that!’

  ‘There’s a ship going back from here tomorrow night on the tide. You’ve a berth on her, as I understand it – that’s been arranged, too. Some guardian angel has an eye on you, Black Ace. If you come to me tomorrow I’ll pay you what’s due. As I said, I’m sorry you’re going but we must obey the orders of our betters, mustn’t we?’

  ‘Must we?’ said Tim grimly. ‘I’ll have to think about this. I like being here – I might not want to go back. What’s there to go back for, anyway?’

  ‘There’s this bridge – whatever’s wrong with it. They want you for that, I believe.’

  Tim nodded. ‘Yes, there’s the bridge. I’ll think about it, Mr Beatty. I’ll let you know tomorrow.’

  He lay awake most of the night staring out through the open hut door at a black velvet sky that sparkled with stars. It was warm and the air smelt sweet, for they were high above the port and surrounded by trees. He smoked black cheroots while he pondered. ‘Will I go? There’s trouble at Wylie’s bridge, obviously. Why should that bother me?’

  Then he remembered Christopher Wylie’s burning vision of the bridge, how he talked about it with shining eyes. He’d infected Tim with his enthusiasm at the time, but poor Wylie had died and Tim’s world had crashed around him. Who cared about a bridge any more when you were dead or broken-hearted?

  But Wylie’s words came back: ‘I want to build a bridge with such impact that it’ll take people’s breath away.’

  Tim thought of the Wylie girl. As he had anticipated, she must have come a cropper. It probably meant that all Wylie’s money would be lost. Everything gone… Everything Wylie had worked for dissipated and nothing left behind, not even his dream of a bridge. He recalled what Wylie had told him of the contract into which the railway company had manoeuvred him, and it seemed to Tim as if the old man was calling out to him. ‘You were good to me, Mr Wylie,’ he said aloud. ‘I know I owe you this.’

  He turned on his side and stubbed out his cheroot. Anyway, the Crimea contract ended in May. In only a few weeks he’d be wandering the world again. He might as well go back and finish the job he’d started. Beneath his thin pillow he felt the crackling of the paper on which Naughten had drawn Hannah. He always kept it there. The reason he’d fled from Camptounfoot was because everything reminded him of her, but he’d discovered that travel didn’t take away memories. Even in Balaclava the vision of her still haunted him.

  Next morning he stood in Beatty’s office and received his wages in gold. It was more money than he’d ever possessed at any one time in his whole life, because Beatty did not work the truck system and was an honest man who acted as a bank for navvies who did not want to dissipate all their earnings. Tim, who had worked every available day for five months and spent little, had over fifty pounds to his credit. Feeling rich, he went to the wharf to put his bag on board the ship that was to carry him home.

  The port was bustling with labourers unloading ships, and carts drawn by mules or oxen were lined up along the quays. Among them wandered men in native dress and scarlet-coated soldiers on furlough, who gazed longingly at the troopships being loaded up with their comrades who were lucky enough to be wounded or ill.

  Tim had been allocated a place on a clipper called Wildfire – the same vessel that had carried Peto’s band from Birkenhead. The captain recognised him and called down from the bridge, ‘Going back with us, are you? You’re lucky the weather’s good. We should be in Birkenhead in two weeks if this wind keeps up.’

  On his last afternoon in Balaclava, Tim went to the huge market that had grown up near the navvy camp. The men called it Donnybrook Fair, and in its thickly-packed alleys you could buy almost anything from anywhere in the world… cigars and cheroots, exotic alcohol, silks, gold and silver, spices, strange sweetmeats, beautifully-wrought brass and copper vessels, carpets and rugs, jewellery, pet animals ranging from monkeys to snakes, parrots which talked and toys for children… With a pain in his heart he remembered Kate and wished he had a child to buy presents for as he walked from stall to stall, picking up things and looking at them. The money in his pocket clinked and he was back in memory to that wonderful day with Han
nah, buying food for Benjy’s after their first night together. How Hannah would have relished this place, he thought, and reeled again from the painful realisation that she was dead. ‘How long will it take before it stops hurting?’ he asked himself miserably.

  In the end he bought a pair of piratical-looking gold earrings for himself, and submitted to the ordeal of having his ears pierced by the vendor, who performed the operation with an enormous needle and a piece of cork which he held behind Tim’s earlobe with dirty fingers. ‘I’d better rinse my ears with my rum ration tonight,’ was his chief thought when the needle stabbed through the soft flesh.

  He wanted a gift for Tibbie, too, and spent a long time pondering over what she would like, finally choosing a long scarf of finest silk interwoven with gold and silver. It was graded in shimmering shades of violet, purple and mauve and he was sure that no one in Camptounfoot would have ever seen anything like it. He was sorely tempted to also buy her a parrot in a brass cage that cocked an eye at him and said, ‘Bonjour’, but decided against it. He’d travel lighter if he had no baggage that couldn’t be dropped by the wayside. He was still not entirely sure that he was really going back to Camptounfoot.

  When he bade farewell to his friends, they clapped him on the back and told him that they’d be sure to meet again on some navvying job in the future. One of them offered to give him a shave, for his beard had grown while he was in Balaclava and was now a thick, curling beaver that glistened blackly round his chin. He was quite proud of it in fact and put a hand protectively on it. ‘No, I’ll keep it.’

  ‘Yes, you keep it,’ said one of the other men. ‘With those earrings and that beard you look like Morgan the Pirate.’

  On his way to the ship that night, flushed with rum and friendship, he suddenly stopped, turned back and ran to Donnybrook Fair where he bought the talking parrot.

  * * *

  To Tim’s surprise, Gentleman Sydney was waiting on the platform at Maddiston station when he alighted from the train. He strolled towards Tim, as negligent-looking as ever, and said as casually as if it was only yesterday since they had last met, ‘Where have you been? I’ve met every train from the south for two days. The Wildfire arrived at Liverpool four days ago.’

  Tim did not tell him that two days, and more importantly two nights, had passed very pleasantly in the company of the daughter of the proprietor of the inn where he’d put up on arrival at Birkenhead. She’d taken a tremendous shine to him and it had been difficult to drag himself away. It was the first time he’d made love since Hannah died, for he didn’t relish prostitutes, and the happy experience had lifted some of his gloom. Sydney didn’t need telling, however. ‘A woman, eh? Well done, that’s what you need. But what’s that on your face and what’s all this?’ He indicated first the beard and then the parrot.

  Tim laughed, white teeth flashing beneath the beard. ‘Don’t you like my beard? And that’s a parrot for Tibbie. I call it Napoleon because it speaks French.’

  Sydney sighed and lifted up the cage by the ring in the. ‘Well, well, travel does broaden the mind, doesn’t it?’ he said sarcastically.

  He had a dogcart waiting with a driver at the reins of a workmanlike-looking cob. Tim raised his eyebrows when he saw that the man was wearing livery, but Sydney only said, ‘Get in, there’s a lot to tell you.’

  ‘The first thing I want to know is what’s this all about? Then I’d like to hear how you managed it. Sending telegraph messages to Balaclava can’t be easy.’

  Sydney laughed. ‘It is if you’ve the right friends – that’s another advantage of an expensive education. But seriously, I sent for you because you’re the only person I could think of who has a chance in hell of finishing that bridge in time for poor Miss Wylie. I can’t, and Jopp won’t. She doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her. She’s tried so hard.’

  Tim stared at his friend’s face. ‘“Poor Miss Wylie”? It sounds as if you’re smitten with her.’

  But Sydney shook his head. ‘No, I’m not, though our friend the doctor is, poor devil. If I were a better person I might have been, but nice girls don’t appeal to me in that way, I’m afraid, and Emma Jane Wylie is a very nice girl indeed. Things are desperate, Black Ace. She needs your help.’

  Tim said flatly, ‘Why should I help her? I didn’t like her much.’

  ‘But you liked her father, and what she’s doing is because of him. I don’t think for a moment she’d be plodding through mud every day if it wasn’t for that. She’s trying to salvage something from the ashes of his hopes.’

  ‘Very poetic,’ commented Tim. ‘What’s gone wrong exactly? And give it to me in plain language, please.’

  ‘What’s gone wrong is that Jopp’s out to make her fall down on her part of the contract – the bridge itself. He’s succeeded in stirring up discontent among the workforce. They strike, they go slow, they fight among themselves… you know, the usual things when men are fed up. They need someone to pull them together and they need to see that the job’s going to end soon. It’s gone on too long. And then there was the trouble with Jimmy and Bullhead.’

  Tim didn’t know about that and had to be told. He was sorry about Jimmy, but the death of Bullhead seemed to him to be well-deserved, especially when Sydney explained about Mariotta and Wee Lily. ‘I’d have thought that bastard being blown away would make things better, not worse. What happened to the man who shot him?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, they shut him up. He’s raving mad. They didn’t hang him because Bullhead had raped his daughter and he was taking primitive vengeance. Local opinion is very much on his side,’ said Sydney.

  ‘There’s been a lot of drama in Camptounfoot since I went away,’ Tim commented wryly. ‘They can’t have had so much excitement there since time began. But Bullhead getting shot hasn’t stopped the bridge being built, has it?’

  ‘No,’ Sydney agreed, ‘but you haven’t heard it all yet. The rain swept the north embankment away and took the pier with it. The railway company’s hopping mad because that’s their responsibility, not Miss Wylie’s. She can’t finish the bridge though, until it’s built back up. That’s where we were working when the farmer shot Bullhead.’

  Tim gaped. ‘The north pier swept away? That was the first one that Mr Wylie and I built, and we thought it would stand till Doomsday.’

  ‘It would have done if it hadn’t been affected by the collapsing embankment.’

  ‘But Jopp was building the embankment, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you. He was in a terrible state in case his bosses in Edinburgh blamed him for the collapse. They’ve had to give Miss Wylie another few weeks’ grace because of it, and that makes them mad. The point is, it fell down and took the bridgehead with it. Even though she’s got extra time, it’s only three or four weeks, and the project will be months overdue unless there’s a miracle. I thought you might be that miracle.’

  Tim sighed, ‘August the first’s the original finishing date, and three weeks or so takes you to the end of the month. Today is May the twentieth. If there’s a whole pier to build up again, I don’t see how it can be done. How far has the rest of the bridge got? Is it almost completed?’

  Sydney nodded. ‘Yes, amazingly it is. All but the spans over the river are finished and it’s a good job they weren’t up or they’d have come down too. Once they’re in place, only the superstructure has to be erected and the track laid—’

  ‘In two months? Impossible,’ said Tim categorically.

  ‘Try it,’ urged Sydney. ‘Go on – try it. What this project needs now is new energy and enthusiasm. Everybody’s tired and dispirited. Even the girl is tired and I’m so sick of the whole thing that I’ve only been waiting for you to come before I leave. I’m off tonight.’

  Tim stared at him. ‘Tonight? That’s quick. What’s your hurry?’

  ‘I told you, I’ve been hanging on waiting for you. But I’ve also had a death in my family. I’ve got to go back. My runaway days are over, I’m afraid.�
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  ‘I’ve always wondered about you, but you don’t give much away, do you? Have you a wife somewhere that you’re trying to dodge? Is that what this is all about?’ Tim asked curiously.

  ‘Oh no, no wife. But I’ve a father – or at least I had a father. He’s the one who has died and that is why I’ve to go back. I have a younger sister and brother, you see. Well, a half-sister and brother by two different mothers. My father was a serial marrier. My mother was the first. She stood him for twelve years before she died. That’s the longest any of his wives survived.’

  Sydney’s voice was hard and Tim could tell that this was not a subject that ought to be pursued. ‘I hope we don’t lose touch when you’ve gone,’ he said, and Sydney grinned.

  ‘Oh, I’ll always keep in touch with you, Black Ace. Didn’t I tell you once how I pride myself on recognising men with potential? You’re going places in spite of the beard and the parrot. We’ll meet again – don’t worry about that.’

  When they drove into Rosewell, Tim turned to his friend and said, ‘Drop me at the Abbey first. I want to see Hannah’s grave. I want to tell her that I’m back.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll take your traps and that awful bird to Mrs Mather’s and then I’m off. Goodbye, Black Ace. Do your best for the bridge. I’ll come and see it when it’s finished.’ Sydney stuck out his hand and Tim grasped it. Then they parted.

  The ruins of the Abbey looked grim and skeletal beneath a grey sky. Rain was drifting on the wind and the trees and bushes in the burial-ground were bent to the west by its force. Moss-covered gravestones leaned at strange angles, some sideways, some forwards, some deep in the ground as if the inhabitants of the grave were hauling the stone down in beside them. There were no paths and he had to weave his way among the haphazardly-placed stones till he reached the boundary wall where the cholera mound was plainly visible, but mercifully covered now with a carpet of green turf spangled with daisies and wild flowers. The white marble memorial stood at the end where he’d put it, rain-washed and shining. Flavia and her daughter stared at each other with the same look of love. Tim felt tears prick his eyes as he stood looking at them. To his relief, the grief that he felt didn’t have the terrible impact on him that he had feared. It was still acute, but also more settled and philosophical. His wound was healing. He’d been right to come back, to stand on the mound and accept that his wife and child were really dead. He would never have been free of grief if he hadn’t.