Smith stepped up beside him. ‘Yes, it’s a difficult site: high precipitous river banks and a wide valley to cross.’
Wylie looked directly at him. ‘Is there no other place for the bridge to go?’
Smith shook his head. ‘No, it must be here.’ He laid a hand on the papers. ‘There’s no alternative – it’s the only place where we have access to sufficient land. The other landowners are trying to block us out, you see. We need a contractor who can build a bridge in a difficult place.’
Behind them Wylie heard a warning cough. Smith had been indiscreet. ‘If you don’t feel you can do it, Mr Wylie, we’ll find someone else who can,’ Miller said smoothly from the fireside.
Wylie did not turn round but only bent to examine the plans more closely. ‘Oh, I can do it,’ he announced curtly, ‘and if I can’t, no one else will be able to either. But it’s going to be an expensive job, worse than I anticipated from your tender prospectus. I can see that it’s going to need at least eighteen piers to carry the line over the river, and some of those will have to be sunk in the riverbed and the others on what looks like very sloping land.’
There was a silence behind him before Miller asked, ‘What sort of outlay do you think it will need?’
‘A lot. You want a decent-looking bridge, don’t you? You don’t want an iron skeleton that’ll rust and erode within a few years. That valley gets hard weather in winter and iron might not last long. You’ll need a stone bridge because stone lasts forever.’
He had brought a document case with him and now he bent to pick it up off the floor. ‘I’ve already made a few drawings from what I heard about the site. I brought them for you to look at.’ On top of their plans he spread his own and flattened them out with the palm of his hand.
The men clustered round and stared for a moment in silence, then Smith said, ‘It’s very imposing, very grand.’ Miller coughed. ‘Grandiose, I’d say.’
Wylie looked hard at him. ‘This bridge will give your railway distinction,’ he said.
‘Can we afford such distinction, though?’ said Miller.
Wylie started to fold up his plans. ‘If you can’t, you don’t need me. I only build fine bridges. Perhaps you should look elsewhere for your contractor.’
The way they reacted to this told him that they had tried others, and had been disappointed. ‘Come, come, don’t be hasty. We haven’t turned down your plan yet. I like the look of it myself. How much do you suppose a bridge like this will cost?’ The speaker was the man introduced as Anstruther. He had a scarlet face but shrewd little eyes that sparkled with intelligence when he looked at Wylie.
‘I don’t know exactly but it won’t be cheap. I’ll have to go down there and estimate more exactly. A lot depends on how long it’s likely to take.’
‘We know the answer to that: it must be finished and operative within two years. We’ve budgeted for that.’ Miller’s voice was sharp.
Wylie shook his head. ‘That’s not very long. It’s May now – let me have until the end of eighteen fifty-five and I shall give you your bridge.’
‘And at what price?’ asked Smith.
Wylie stalled. ‘I’ve to buy in stone and bricks… I don’t know what that’s going to cost.’
The man called Caldecott leaned forward and spoke for the first time. ‘I own a quarry about five miles from the site. Part of the deal is that any contractor for the bridge buys the stone from me.’
Wylie looked at him. ‘At your price?’ he asked, and Caldecott nodded. ‘The carve-up begins,’ thought Wylie. ‘What’s going to come next?’
Now the hard talking began. Smith was in charge and he told Wylie, ‘If we can fix a price today, we’ll give you the contract. We are prepared to pay thirty-five thousand pounds for the finished bridge, but you will have to take half of the price in railway shares.’
Wylie knew they were hedging their bets. They were telling him, ‘Build the bridge and then get your profit.’ It was the donkey and carrot principle.
‘How many shares will I get at the end?’ he asked.
The other men in the room looked at each other. ‘We thought ten thousand. They’re pound shares and we’ll each contribute a proportion of our own holdings for you,’ said Smith.
Wylie folded up his plans again. ‘Make it twenty thousand in cash and twenty thousand shares and I’m your man.’
Miller stepped forward and stuck out a hand but this time he was not smiling. ‘Done! Twenty thousand in cash and twenty thousand shares. The shares will be handed over on completion of the project, but we must insist on a fixed completion date. It has to be the first of August, eighteen fifty-five. That way, we’ll have our line operating before winter.’
Wylie shook the extended hand, slightly surprised at the ease of the negotiation. A niggling worry plagued him and he could not rid himself of the feeling that he’d been savaged by a pack of gentlemanly wolves. ‘I’m afraid I’m in for a shock when I see that site,’ he told himself.
Chapter Five
The navigators, or navvies as they were popularly called, lived in a huge camp of wooden sheds, turf huts and tents in a valley just outside the town of Penicuik. Some of their dwellings were more solid and weatherproof than others, and these were the ones that the men moved with them as they went from job to job. Only a few travelled with their wives and children and had their own little houses, sometimes adorned with its name burned in pokerwork on the front door. Navvy humour showed by naming their houses Laburnum Villa, Mon Repos or Blarney Castle. In the Penicuik camp there was even a lean-to shanty with the nameplate Buckinem Palas.
House-owners and heads of families were, however, the exception rather than the rule and the majority of the men lived in bunkhouses, each one run by a slatternly woman who provided their food, made desultory attempts at keeping the hut clean and acted as a prostitute for the lodgers. Fights and sometimes murders were common in those huts, and nights in the camps were made horrible by the screams and yells of battling men and women, for a navvy camp always acted like a magnet for the lowest prostitutes of any district where it appeared. Navvies were highly paid and tough, men who used women in the same utilitarian way as they used their picks and shovels but with less regard. A favourite shovel was always referred to as a ‘navvy’s prayer book’ and kept oiled and rust-free. For most of them, there was no such thing as a favourite woman – and the idea of cherishing one was completely alien to them.
Tim Maquire, twenty-five years old and as tough as tempered steel, with a mop of black curly hair and a threatening dark stare, lived with seven other men in a shed run by a woman called Major Bob. No one knew her real name but she had been given her nickname because of her constant references to her husband – ‘my Major Bob’ – who, she said, had served in the Peninsular War with Wellington. How she descended from being an Army officer’s wife to keeping a hut for navvies was anyone’s guess, but her fondness for brandy was certainly at the back of it. It was unusual to find her sober after midday.
To most of the navvies Major Bob acted in a highhanded and truculent manner, but she was in awe of Tim Maquire who, like his workmates, was always called by a nickname. His was Black Ace – which suited him, because he had a reserved and solitary air. Even the most reckless did not play the fool or try to take a rise out of Black Ace.
He was lying on his cot with one strong arm across his eyes to shut out the light when she walked tentatively up the narrow passage between the beds and whispered to him, ‘There’s a man outside wants to speak to you, Black Ace.’
He lowered the arm and squinted at her. ‘I was working all night – I’m tired. What sort of man is he?’
‘A gentleman by his clothes and his voice, but he seems to know his way about.’ Major Bob was a crashing snob and could spot a gent a mile off. When she pronounced the word ‘gentleman’ she did so in her most refined voice. She had not yet started drinking but when she did, her standards and her articulation would both slip.
‘Tell him to
go away. I don’t have any dealings with gents,’ said the man on the bed, replacing his arm across his eyes. Major Bob lingered, however, because the stranger had promised her a florin if she introduced him to Black Ace.
‘I think you should see this one. He’s not the ordinary type of gentleman,’ she persisted.
Irritated, Tim lifted his head from the pillow to shout at her and saw that the light from the door was blocked out by a tall thin figure who stood leaning negligently against the jamb.
‘He can go away. I don’t know any gentleman. The likes of me doesn’t keep that sort of company,’ he snarled in the very marked Irish accent that he always used when he was annoyed.
The man in the doorway was undeterred. Instead of going away, he strolled along the passage towards Tim’s bed and drawled, ‘You’re quite right, old boy. You don’t know me but really I’m not as bad as I look.’ His voice was excessively smooth and well-bred, and would have told more sophisticated listeners that he was a produce of a famous English public school. When he came nearer Tim could see that he had a long, lean, clean-shaven face with strongly-marked features and a wide, thin mouth. His fine, corn-coloured hair was worn long and was so glossy that it looked as if it were woven from silk. The most arresting thing about him was his eyes, for the lids half-covered his pupils and gave him the look of a predatory hawk. These strange hooded eyes often made people think he was secretly laughing at them. All his life he had got into a lot of trouble because of his eyes.
‘I don’t know you,’ said Tim Maquire shortly.
The hawk grinned and nodded. ‘That’s right – you don’t, but we know people in common.’
‘Like who?’ Tim sounded disbelieving.
‘Like the Tiger and Billy Bouncer.’ On site, navvies all used aliases. They preferred to keep their real names secret for a variety of reasons, not all of them creditable. When a stranger came to a site, the ganger would often give him the nickname of a man who had died or moved away, and in that way some men travelled the country under a variety of aliases but the Tiger and Billy Bouncer were well-known throughout the navvy community as straight fellows and not trouble-makers or rabble-rousers.
‘Did they send you?’ asked Tim curiously, eyeing the stranger’s clothes which were obviously expensive although well-worn. His long-tailed coat was dark blue and his trousers cream. His feet were shod in highly polished brown leather boots that looked as comfortable as gloves, and in his hand he carried a long cane with a silver knob, and a cream-coloured tall hat. He looked a perfect swell – but one who had fallen on hard times.
‘When the Tiger and Billy Bouncer told me to look you up, they said you might find me a place in your gang. They said you always run the best gang on any site where you are working,’ this vision said, leaning his weight on his cane in the attitude of one watching a sporting event.
‘Did they now?’ Tim guffawed. ‘You don’t look like a navvy to me.’
The stranger grinned with satisfaction. ‘No I don’t, do I? No bright cravat, no monkey waistcoat, no nickel watch and chain…’
Tim bristled, for like most navvies, he had a weakness for bright brocade waistcoats and flashy neckerchiefs. To dress up when you weren’t working was one way of cocking a snook at ordinary working men, and showing that you were a member of the labouring aristocracy, the highest-paid working men in the world.
‘What’s wrong with coloured waistcoats and neckties?’ he asked defensively.
‘Oh nothing, dear chap, nothing at all, but a well-tied and well-laundered white cravat does look smarter, don’t you agree?’
‘No, I damned well don’t,’ said Tim, getting up off his bed. ‘And there’s no call for well-tied cravats in my gangs.’
The stranger laughed. ‘Don’t let’s fall out over sartorial niceties. I’m looking for a place in a good gang and your friends told me that you run the best. I want you to take me on.’
Maquire was on his feet now with his well-muscled arms crossed on his chest. There was a tattoo of a shamrock entwined with roses on his right forearm. After the newcomer made his request, the dark shadowed eyes stared at him for a moment and then Tim threw back his head and chuckled. ‘Don’t be half-witted! If I took you on, the men would laugh you off the site. Anyway, you’re too late – the job’s finished up here. We’re going to have to move away tomorrow and find other berths. There’s not a lot of railway work going on at the moment, and we might have to travel a long way.’
The other man drew himself up to his full height. He was as tall as Maquire but he was more slimly built. ‘I know where there’s work,’ he said coolly. ‘I saw the digging going on when I was coming up from the south.’
‘Where?’ asked Maquire, but the stranger only grinned.
‘Take me on and I’ll tell you.’
‘Oh piss off,’ was the angry reply as the ganger turned away. ‘I don’t need toffs like you to lead me around by the nose. I’ll find work myself. I’ve always found it in the past without any help from anybody.’
The other man still stood his ground. ‘Don’t lose your temper, Black Ace. And don’t let your eyes deceive you. I might not have a big gut but I’m strong and I’m a good worker. The Tiger wouldn’t have put up with me if I wasn’t, would he? Look at it this way: take me on and I’ll add a dash of culture to your gang.’
Tim whipped round with his eyes burning bright blue in his weather-beaten face. His hair was tousled and because he had not shaved for a couple of days, his chin was dark and stubbled. He looked dangerous.
‘I’ve already told you. Piss off!’ he shouted. As he spoke he shoved the cheeky stranger in the chest with one extended hand. He thought he’d used enough force to make him tumble backwards but he was disappointed because the other man did not budge an inch and the chest he pushed against felt as hard as iron.
In retaliation the stranger even had the nerve to push Tim back and say, ‘Don’t resort to violence, old boy, if you don’t want it to become quite nasty.’
Maquire was furious. ‘I don’t like you or the likes of you. I wouldn’t have you in my gang if there was no one else to hire. I don’t need some toff sniggering at me and using fancy words that he thinks I can’t understand.’
The stranger was contrite. ‘Oh don’t misapprehend me, I wasn’t trying to patronise you. That’s just the way I talk – it’s a habit I’ve got into. The Tiger called me Gentleman Sydney because of it. What can I do to show that I’m capable of pulling my weight? I really want to work with you. They say you’re the best and I only like the best in everything.’
Some of the other navvies had come into the shed during the altercation and now stood at the door watching. When Gentleman Sydney asked what he could do to convince Tim, one of them, a saturnine individual with a fierce squint whose nickname was Frying Pan, shouted out, ‘Fight him! Take him on! Black Ace is a great fighter.’
‘Yeah,’ laughed the others, ‘fight him for a place.’ They nudged each other in anticipation of a spectacle.
Surprisingly, the stranger agreed. ‘All right,’ he said, and began peeling of his smart coat. Underneath it he was wearing a pristine white shirt with wide sleeves and a pintucked front. With a grin he rolled the sleeves up to his elbows and then struck a prize-fighter’s attitude before Tim. ‘I’ll fight you for a place. First blood wins, all right?’ Tim hesitated, but only because he did not want to hurt a man who had been sent to him by his friends. However, the yells of the other navvies convinced him that he had to accept the challenge and, with a lift of the shoulders, he said, ‘All right, first blood. I hope I don’t kill you.’
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a sharp jab from his opponent’s fist caught him on the eyebrow. He reeled and shook his head, then went in like a bull. Fists flailing, he hammered away at the other man’s ribs but there was no retreat. When he lifted his head to see how Sydney was taking his punishment, another quick punch caught him on the jaw and made him see stars. This was serious. He couldn’t let himself be b
eaten before his men. He drew back a fist and swung through with a massive punch which threw his opponent’s head back. Sydney staggered against a bed, half-collapsed but quickly got up again and stepped forward once more. ‘By God, you’re tough,’ thought Tim, just as a fist hit him full on the mouth and, to his horror, he tasted blood on his tongue.
He wiped a hand across his face and when it came away it was stained with gore. Both of them stopped fighting and stared at the red smear. ‘First blood,’ said Sydney, as casually as if he was making a remark about the weather.
Tim nodded. ‘You’ve won. Well done. Who taught you to box like that? I never saw it coming.’
‘A sadist of a master at my old school taught me,’ Sydney said wryly. ‘He called it the manly art – huh! But you’re some boxer yourself. You really hurt me – I’ll be black and blue tomorrow. Do I get a place now?’
‘Go on, Black Ace, you’ve got to take him on,’ called Frying Pan and Tim grinned.
‘All right, you’ve earned it. I hope you’ve been on navvying jobs before and all your talk isn’t hot air.’
‘I’ve navvied before – in France where I met the Tiger and then in the Midlands, that’s where I met Billy Bouncer. When I said I wanted to see Scotland, they both told me to look up Black Ace and give him their regards.’
Tim nodded, only half-believing, but another look at his bloodstained hand convinced him. ‘Oh all right, come here at half-past six tomorrow morning and help us load the hut on to a cart. I want to be out of here before the others. There’s not a lot of work around.’
‘Do you want me to tell you where there is work?’ asked Sydney.
Tim sighed. ‘I see I’m not going to be able to stop you. Where is it?’
‘At a place called Maddiston. They’re cutting a line southwards from there to the Scottish border. There’s going to be a lot of work on that line for at least two or three years.’
‘Well, I suppose we’d better head for Maddiston,’ said Tim. ‘Now push off and come back tomorrow. I’ve had enough of you for one day.’
A Bridge in Time Page 8