Tim Maquire’s gaze was fixed on the red-haired girl he’d seen at Camptounfoot and who had haunted his thoughts ever since. Suddenly he turned to his companions, Sydney, Naughten-The-Image-Taker and Jimmy-The-New-Man to say, ‘I feel like dancing tonight, lads. Let’s go in there.’
Jimmy grimaced: ‘They’ll not let us in, Black Ace. Sure, they close the door against navvies. Look, there’s a policeman standing there. He’ll turn us away.’
‘Let’s try anyway,’ said Tim and, with Sydney close behind him, he made for the door. Their way was barred by a held-up hand and the words, ‘Nae navvies.’ Before Tim could protest, however, Sydney stepped forward and said in his purest tones, ‘My dear man, what makes you think we’re navvies?’
‘Your get-up. Only navvies dress like that.’
Sydney threw back his head and laughed. ‘It fooled you, didn’t it? I’m down here staying with my friend Dicky Allandale and we had a wager that we’d dress up like navvies and get into the dance. Come on, help us win it. There’s half a sovereign in it for you.’
He drove a hand into his breeches pocket and pulled out a golden coin which he adroitly palmed into the constable’s fist. ‘You’re a friend of the Duke?’ stuttered the guardian of the door. Sydney nodded and bent his head towards the constable’s ear. Then he whispered into it. The constable laughed. ‘Oh, all right. In you go, but see you cause no trouble. The local lads might think you’re real navvies and try to pick a fight with you.’
Sydney clapped him on the shoulder. ‘The last thing we would do is fight, old chap. Come on, you fellows…’ In they went, all of them except Sydney looking somewhat sheepish.
‘It’s a good job he didn’t speak to any of us. Our accents would give us away. What did you say to him to make him change his mind?’ whispered Tim.
‘I pretended I’d been the Duke of Allandale’s fag at school. I told him the Duke’s nickname.’
‘And how did you know that?’ asked Tim suspiciously.
‘My dear chap, I made it up. I just said the first thing that came into my head. He wouldn’t know the difference.’
The Corn Exchange hall was long and narrow with a platform at the far end on which were grouped two fiddlers and a woman playing a battered piano. They were just finishing a rousing reel when the girls entered. Immediately they were inside, Madge hissed in Hannah’s ear, ‘Well, I’m off. You’re on your own wi’ her,’ and grabbing Jessie by the hand she fled to the back of a cluster of giggling, red-faced girls who were grouped like penned sheep on the left-hand side of the room. The air was heavy with anticipation as bashful-looking males, wiping their brows after the last exertion, lined up along the other side staring at the girls. One or two of them had got their eye on Hannah Mather and brightened considerably.
Madge and Jessie were giggling and whispering to their friends, pointing out Francine and describing her strange ways. The French girl stood beside Hannah with her head high, pretending not to notice or care what an object of derision she was. If she rued the wearing of such a noticeable gown – for it stood out among the simple cotton dresses of the other girls – she did not show it. Tenderhearted Hannah tried to help her. ‘Do you want to sit down, Francine?’ she asked, indicating a line of benches along the wall on which one or two wallflowers were sitting all forlorn.
‘I will stand,’ was the stoical reply. Francine was determined to show Madge that she was capable of coping with this experience, though privately she found it horrific.
When the music started again, she stood staring bleakly at the hustling crowd as men converged on the girls in a rush to get the best partners. Three swains were heading for Hannah when they were thrust aside by a tall, darkhaired man dressed like a navvy. As he approached he could see from the terror in Francine’s eyes that she thought he was going to ask her to take the floor with him, but his glance swept over her and landed on Hannah. ‘Will you dance with me, please?’ he asked.
She held out a hand and took his. It was a gesture of natural grace and when their fingers made contact, the colour flooded into her cheeks making her face glow like a summer rose. Then she smiled her tranquil smile that seemed to make time go more slowly. ‘I’d like to dance with you,’ she said.
All around them people were scampering on to the floor, for dancing was a wonderful release from the strictures and uneventful tenor of their days. Milkmaids danced with masons, cooks with carpenters, ploughmen with girls who served behind the counters of Rosewell’s shops. In a far corner Hannah saw Wee Lily stamping her feet and giving staccato ‘hoochs’ of delight as she whirled round in the arms of an orra man from Falconwood’s farm.
She knew that the man she was dancing with herself was the one who’d been with the bridge contractor when Craigie tried to shoot him, the same one who had asked her mother to take Mr Wylie in as a lodger; she speculated on how outraged Tibbie would be if she knew her daughter was taking the floor with such an object of terror. But what was the harm? Anyway, she realised with delighted surprise, he was a wonderful dancer.
Tim Maquire had romance in his soul. When dance music began, his feet itched and something joyous wakened deep within him; an innocent sense of joy and delight, the optimism and wonder that had been suppressed in him after he left Ireland as a bewildered eight-year-old and which he had since kept well-hidden. It was only when fiddlers struck up and he could swing a pretty girl around in giddying circles that he forgot to maintain his usual dour facade. Smiling, he stepped and swayed, took Hannah’s hand and guided her around the floor. She was a good dancer too and moved with him like a flowing river, bending and swaying as elegantly as he. They made a striking couple, black head and red head inclining towards each other, for Hannah was tall and he did not have to bend to look down at her. They did not speak, they only danced, their bodies communicating vibrantly with each other. When the sweating fiddlers drew their brows over the strings in a last crescendo, Tim stopped dead in the middle of the floor, surprised at how much he had forgotten himself. He wished he could go on dancing with her all night. In a strange way he felt as if he knew her, had known her for a long time.
‘Dance the next one with me too,’ he asked urgently, but she shook her head.
‘Oh no, I can’t do that. I’m promised to other people. Come back and ask me in a little while.’
For the next three dances, he did not take the floor again but stood watching from the door with his brow-lowered expression back in place. He observed Sydney skipping like a dervish with one girl after another, his elegantly booted feet flashing and his arms in the air. Sydney was still a mystery to Tim for, though he had integrated completely with the other men and did as good a day’s work as any of them, he was obsessively secretive and told them nothing about himself. Normally when men worked together in a gang and lived together too, they picked up facts about each other’s lives but next to nothing had been revealed by Sydney. Tim noticed that his clothes must all have been very expensive when bought new, and his boots had the labels of a Parisian boot-maker stitched inside the mahogany-coloured tops. He also owned leather-bound, gold-tooled books which he occasionally brought out of his satchel and lay reading. They were strange books, full of poetry, but when one of the men asked him what the poems were about – for navvies loved yarns and yearned to be told stories – Sydney only laughed, closed the book and put it away. Looking at him, whirling in the middle of the hall with his lean face laughing and his strange eyes glittering, you would not have thought him anything more than a joker, a jackanape.
Tim’s eyes sought out his other friends. There was that silver-tongued devil Naughten spinning the tale to a round-eyed girl who looked like a housemaid. Tim knew what he was saying. ‘I’m a travelling artist, so I am, and if you sit for me I’ll draw you a likeness that’ll bring tears to your mother’s eyes, it’ll be so lifelike and natural.’ The girl was nodding and staring at him, her eyes filled with uncomprehending admiration. Tim hoped for her own good that she didn’t have a silver florin in
her pocket, for she might lose that as well as her virtue.
Tim started searching the dancers on the floor for Jimmy. He always felt responsible for that lad, for Jimmy was a vulnerable and credulous youth. To his surprise he eventually located him dancing with the odd-looking girl who had been standing beside Hannah when Tim took her on to the floor.
In fact, when Tim first made his bee-line for Hannah, Jimmy-The-New-Man had followed him across the floor heading for the same girl, but Black Ace got there first, so soft-hearted Jimmy extended his hand to the strange, frightened-looking girl who stood beside the red-headed beauty because he felt sorry for her. She accepted him silently, but as they danced he had the feeling that she was trying to keep as far away from him as possible. ‘I don’t bite,’ he told her with a laugh but she did not laugh back until they danced over to the top of the hall where they found themselves beside a group of giggling girls. They all seemed to know Jimmy’s partner. ‘Give him a kiss, Francine!’ called one of them in a jeering voice, and that seemed to have a miraculous effect on Jimmy’s partner. She stepped closer to him and put an arm round his neck. He was so surprised that he nearly fell over backwards. After that he could not get rid of her, for she fawned over and flattered him all night, fluttering her eyelashes and patting his hand like an accomplished flirt.
He could not believe his luck, for though she was an oddly-dressed lassie and spoke very queer, there was a strange allure about her and she seemed besotted with him. Jimmy was a shy lad, but quite successful with women, and in the past he’d enjoyed some tender adventures. This, he thought, might be another one waiting to happen.
When the hands of the big clock on the back wall of the hall neared midnight, Tim Maquire walked over the floor and positioned himself beside Hannah. ‘I’ve come for my dance,’ he said with a smile. She stood up, smiling too, and said, ‘You took your time.’ She knew he’d waited till the last dance, for whoever took a girl on to the floor for that had the privilege of walking her home. The band played a waltz with a wistful theme and as they moved around the floor, Tim found he was thinking about Ireland. A wave of terrible nostalgia hit him and he longed to be able to talk to the girl in his arms about the thoughts that filled his mind. Astonishingly, at that moment, she glanced into his eyes and said softly, ‘You look sad. Are you homesick?’
‘Homesick? Me, of course not!’ he robustly replied. He did not know why he denied his inner self but he was still keeping up his hard exterior, not yet ready to let her see what was inside, and he shivered at the thought of how nearly she had exposed him. ‘Can I walk you back to wherever you’re going?’ he asked her but she shook her head.
‘I’ve come quite a long way and there’s four of us. We’ll all walk back together.’
Tim looked over the tops of the dancing heads and asked, ‘Did you come with that girl in the red dress?’
Hannah nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’
He grinned. ‘Well, from the looks of it she’ll not be walking back with you. She’s got a stranglehold on my friend Jimmy.’ He whirled Hannah round at that moment so she could see Francine with her arms tightly clasped round a blond-haired navvy and her dark head lying on his shoulder.
‘Oh my heavens, I thought she was feared of men,’ gasped Hannah, totally amazed, for this was a side of Francine that she had never dreamed existed. Then the idea struck her that the French girl might be drunk. The man could have been plying her with alcohol – things like that did happen. ‘Is that man your friend? He’s one of the navvies, isn’t he?’ she asked her partner. ‘Is he – is he safe?’
Tim bristled. ‘You mean because he’s a navvy you think he’s some sort of devil?’
Hannah was embarrassed, though that was almost what she had meant. ‘Of course not,’ she protested. ‘It’s just that Francine’s foreign and a bit strange. She might not understand… She doesn’t usually act that way.’
Tim glowered. ‘She’s putting on a good act, then. Of the two of them I’d say it’s Jimmy who has the most to worry about. We’re navvies but we’re not all wild animals, you know.’
Hannah was not easily put down. ‘I didn’t say you were,’ she snapped and walked away from him.
When Hannah with Jessie and Madge emerged from the hall, they had their arms linked and were giggling together about the things they’d seen and heard during the evening. At the door Hannah drew back. ‘I must find Francine,’ she said. ‘We can’t leave her to walk home on her own.’
‘Oh, you needn’t bother about her. She set off earlier with a yellow-headed navvy and said to me that we weren’t to worry about her,’ said Madge. Then she added, ‘My word, she changed her tune tonight. Did you see her, grabbing at him as if he was the first man she’d laid hold of in years? I still think there’s something odd about her, though. She doesn’t act natural.’
Hannah felt concerned. ‘I hope she’s all right. I feel responsible for Francine. She wouldn’t have come with us if you hadn’t gone on at her like you did, Madge.’
‘Maybe I’ve done her a favour,’ giggled Madge and clutched at Hannah’s arm again. ‘Come on, hurry up. It’s late.’
They were turning a corner in the East Port of the town that led to the road towards Bella Vista when a dark figure stepped out of a doorway and faced them, blocking the narrow roadway. ‘I’ll escort you girls back home – just in case there’s any wild animals about,’ said Tim Maquire’s voice.
Madge giggled. ‘The wildest animal round here is my mither’s dog.’
‘Never mind, I’ll walk with you anyway,’ said Tim. Hannah did not protest but neither did she speak as they walked the mile and a half to the big house, though Madge and Jessie prattled on. When he left them at the servants’ door of Bella Vista, Tim said nothing about meeting Hannah again, and though she had given him no encouragement, his failure to do so made her angry and disappointed.
‘Ssh, don’t make a noise. If Mr Allardyce hears us, he’ll give us a terrible talking-to for waking folk up,’ whispered Hannah when the three girls crept into the dark kitchen.
‘I hope he didnae hear that navvy speaking out there,’ Madge whispered back. The maids were not meant to bring back ‘followers’, and transgressions could be punished by dismissal if the butler was in a liverish mood. Hannah said nothing to that so Madge added, ‘That one has a real notion of you, Hannah.’
‘He’s too cheeky for his own good. I wonder where Francine is?’ said Hannah in a worried tone but Madge replied, ‘She can look after herself. Don’t worry about her.’
What they did not know as they slipped up the backstairs to the attics where they slept was that Francine was standing in a corner of the kitchen corridor listening to them. Her heart was racing and her fists were clenched so tightly that the fingernails cut into the fleshy pad below the thumbs. She was waiting for them to go to bed so that she could run up to Bethya’s bedroom.
When all was quiet, she slipped like a shadow up the main staircase and silently opened her mistress’ chamber door. Bethya lay as she had done when Francine left, hair piled on the white pillow and one arm thrown out by her side. A little candle in a glass holder burned by the bedside. Bending down, Francine breathed softly into Bethya’s ear, ‘Madame, madame, wake up, wake up.’
Bethya stirred and slowly opened her eyes. She stared at the maid’s face for a few moments as if she was having trouble remembering who she was, and then she yawned and said, ‘It can’t be morning yet. It’s still dark.’
Francine’s eyes were glittering strangely. ‘Madame, waken up. I’ve brought you a present.’
‘A present?’ Bethya turned in her bed and yawned again. ‘What sort of a present? Do go away, Francine, I’m sleepy.’
‘Madame, I’ve brought you a lover. He’s down in the summerhouse now, waiting. I brought him specially for you. You’ll like him.’
Bethya was wide awake now and she stared at her maid in disbelief. Then she said, ‘Go to bed, Francine. You’ve been drinking.’ There was indeed a smell of
alcohol coming from the maid, who had needed its help to brave the dance.
She did not go away, however. Instead she pleaded almost tearfully, ‘But you said you wanted a lover so I went to the dance and brought one home for you. He’s young and strong and very handsome with bright yellow hair. He’s a navvy, one of the men you’ve seen working on the bridge site.’
Bethya was shocked. ‘How could you even think of such a thing? I wouldn’t take a navvy as my lover! I might admire them, but I’m aiming higher than that. You can’t seriously imagine that I’d get up and go out to meet a completely strange navvy in the middle of the night, do you? You’re mad. Go to bed.’
‘But he’s waiting for you,’ pleaded Francine.
‘If he is, get rid of him. Don’t let him wander round the house. We might all get murdered in our beds,’ snapped Bethya and shoved her head under the pillow.
Francine ran back down the stairs and out through the open kitchen door. The moon was shining brightly and the trees surrounding the huge lawn cast velvet black shadows on the grass. She flitted over the expanse like a wraith till she came to a white-painted summerhouse set in a grove of trees by the side of a little ornamental pool. There was a man sitting on a low seat with his head in his hands and when he heard her approaching he stood up and stepped towards her, intending to embrace her as soon as she stepped into the summerhouse’s sanctuary. But she paused on the grass before the threshold and hissed like a cat, ‘Go away! Go away this minute and never come back.’
Surprised, he sat down again and gasped, ‘But you told me to wait for you!’
‘Go away, go away!’ There was a note of hysteria in her voice and she did not seem to understand what he was saying. In a furious voice she went on, ‘I want you to go away. If you don’t, I’ll rouse the menservants and have you thrown out.’
A Bridge in Time Page 16