‘You’re bringing your father back here?’ whispered Amelia.
Emma Jane looked surprised. ‘Of course. Where else should we bury him except in his own family grave with James?’
Even Haggerty thought it was a bad idea for her to go to Camptounfoot. Twice she had to order him to bring round the carriage and when he finally did, he stood in the hall and argued with her. ‘There’s plenty of men up there at the bridge that’d bring your father home. He has that good assistant Maquire, hasn’t he? He’d bring him back.’
She was impervious to objections. White-faced but completely calm, she stepped down to the carriage. Then Haggerty put his hand on her arm. ‘I’ll come with you, Miss Emma. You can’t go alone.’
She turned on him and snapped like an angry little dog. ‘Haggerty, I’m going and I want to go on my own. I insist on going alone. Besides, you’ll be needed here. Stay and do your job.’
At the station he put her into an empty ladies’ compartment as if she were a child, tucking a rug around her legs and standing looking anxious on the platform as the train pulled out. She gazed bleakly back at him through the smeared glass, not waving, not smiling, her eyes huge and her face very white. ‘This is a nightmare,’ she was thinking. ‘This isn’t happening – I’m dreaming. Any minute now I’ll wake up and find it isn’t true.’ But she didn’t wake up. The train pulled out of Newcastle and with a shrill scream started to build up to its top speed of thirty-five miles an hour, going in the direction of Morpeth and Berwick with its heartbreaking bridge. Bitterly she remembered how much she had enjoyed the journey the first time she’d done it, how she’d stared out of the window at the line of white dunes and gun-metal-coloured North Sea, but this time it was dark outside and the windows were streaked with driving rain. The world looked as if it was in mourning.
There was a little corner of her mind that simply did not believe her father was dead, and she secretly hoped that when she got to Camptounfoot she’d only find him ill again perhaps, or injured in an accident but alive. He couldn’t be dead, just like that. He couldn’t have gone from his family without saying goodbye. The journey seemed interminable. The lights of little villages and isolated farmhouses slipped past the window and she watched them with a distant stare. If they’d all been burning down, her blank expression wouldn’t have flickered. She was totally outside her own body, unaware of how she was feeling physically, only concentrating on her thoughts and these were directed towards her father. She didn’t wonder what was going to happen to her mother and herself in the future, she only thought about the next thing to be done and that was to get to Camptounfoot.
The train was late in arriving at Maddiston and the town looked grey and miserable beneath sheets of rain that seemed to be trying to make up in hours all that it had denied the earth during the weeks of drought. Clutching her bag, for she had brought little with her, Emma Jane descended a flight of steps from the platform to the station yard and held up a hand to summon a cab from the waiting rank. The man she got was not her old driver but a stranger. ‘Where to, Miss?’ he asked.
‘Camptounfoot, the village beside Rosewell.’
‘I know it. I’ll have you there in half an hour.’ He glanced back over his caped shoulder at the girl in his cab and thought what a po-faced little madam she looked. Not one to make conversation with, or flirt a little to. It was very dark when they left the town; rain was still falling and trees, houses, even the animals in the fields, seemed to swim in a sea of grey mist. Lights twinkled from cottages and farmhouses with a diffused watery glow so that they looked like friendly islands in a hostile world, and Emma Jane felt very alone and lonely as she rode past them. Then she saw the lights of Rosewell clustering close together. The town was deserted, for it was after midnight when the cab rattled past the stark ruins of the Abbey, black against the grey sky, and over the cobbles of the Square, passing beneath the glow of the wall-mounted oil lamp that illuminated the narrow entry of the East Port. Now it was only a short drive to Camptounfoot and her heart began to beat fast and her teeth to chatter at the anticipation of what she was about to endure. ‘Oh God, don’t let me collapse. Help me through this,’ she prayed, and gritted her teeth so tightly that the cabbie heard the grinding noise and looked round in surprise.
The Jessups’ house was in darkness from the street side, but when she went through the gate she saw a lamp shining out of the first-floor window which she knew had been her father’s room. Her heart gave a leap and she thought, ‘He’s up there looking at his plans. He’s not dead after all!’
Mr Jessup in a nightgown and nightcap answered her knock and gazed at her in amazement. ‘Miss Wylie! We didn’t know you were coming.’
‘I’m sorry, there wasn’t time to let you know.’ She was shivering visibly so he opened the door wide and said, ‘Come in. Where are you staying?’
She shook her head in a bewildered way. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ll have to stay here but my sister’s been badly affected by this. She’s had to take to her bed…’
‘I won’t need looking after, Mr Jessup. I just want to see my father and hear what happened to him.’ Her voice cracked as she spoke because now she knew that her father was indeed dead. Touched by her distress, John Jessup took her into his little sitting room, blew up the fire and thrust a glass of port into her hands before he told her as gently as he could about Wylie’s unexpected death. She listened quietly with her head down and when he had finished, she looked up and asked. ‘Where is he?’
‘In his old room. Jo, the village undertaker, is keeping watch with him.’
‘Can I see him, please?’
‘Of course, my dear.’ The girl was still silent but Jessup saw tears pouring down her cheeks. He put out a hand to help her to her feet and led the way to the stairs.
A sinister figure dressed in black was sitting at the foot of Wylie’s bed. Emma Jane flinched at the sight of Jo because he looked like the Grim Reaper, and his presence brought home to her with terrible clarity the truth that her father had really gone. The body seemed very long as it stretched out beneath a white crocheted blanket, but mercifully the face was covered. She thought if she’d had to look at it now she would have collapsed in hysterics.
Fighting to stay in control, she whispered, ‘He didn’t suffer, did he?’
The black-coated man looked up to reveal lantern jaws, unshaven cheeks and deepset eyes like burnt holes in his face. ‘The doctor from Rosewell said it was instant. His heart just stopped. The weather’s been awfy hot and he was down on that site day and night for weeks. He was too old for it.’
She stood in the doorway. ‘Where’s his assistant, Maquire? Does he know Father’s dead?’
The undertaker nodded. ‘Aye, he does. He’s been here but his wife, Tibbie Mather’s lassie, has gone into labour a month early and he’s had to go back to the camp. Ane goes oot and ane comes in, that’s what they say. It never fails.’
Emma Jane shuddered. It seemed to her that the low-roofed room was full of listening shadows, people who had lived and died there before. Perhaps her father was among them now. She wished she could tell him of her grief, assure him of her love, console and comfort him as he left the life he had loved so well.
Mr Jessup was standing behind her on the landing, and from the way he put his hand on her arm while he said, ‘Come away, Miss. Come away and lie down,’ she guessed that her appearance was ghastly. Suddenly that awareness brought on a wave of such weakness that she had difficulty in staying erect but swayed and had to support herself by leaning against the wall. Mr Jessup’s face became even more worried, and it was obvious that he feared having yet another casualty on his hands. ‘Come, my dear, you can sleep in the same little room you had before. Come now… you’re in no fit state to do anything more tonight. Jo’s going to sit up with your father and I’ll be here too. Tomorrow’s plenty of time for everything else.’
When she woke next morning she had no idea where she was, and lay star
ing around the white-walled closet in amazement for several seconds. The cot-bed was shrouded in white muslin curtains, and high up in the wall a tiny square of window with four minute panes like a doll’s-house window let in a narrow shaft of light. The light was cold and grey, and told her that the weather was gloomy outside. Then the terrible realisation of where she was and why she’d come there swept over her like a cold wave. Shuddering, she quickly rose from bed, pulled her travelling shawl over her nightgown and hurried through to her father’s room. The black-coated undertaker was still there, head nodding as he dozed in a chair by the bedside. A guttered candle flickered on the table and filled the air with the smell of burnt wax. The lamp in the window had gone out.
Very quietly Emma Jane walked across the bare boards of the floor and lifted the corner of the blanket. Her father was dressed in his best dark-grey suit, with a pristine white cravat tied beneath his chin, but a handkerchief was bound round his head to hold his jaw in place, and two copper coins rested on each closed eyelid. His skin was a pale-grey colour like chamois leather, and his neatly-combed white hair fanned out around his face like an aura. He looked like someone she had seen in a crowd, only vaguely familiar. It was his elegant hands, crossed on his chest, that really unlocked her grief. How often as a child, she’d hung on to those hands, how often she’d watched with admiration as he unrolled his plans and pointed out things to her with those long fingers. On the third finger of his left hand he wore a gold ring with a flat black stone set in it, and the sight of it was too poignant to bear.
She took his beringed hand in hers and started to cry, great heaving sobs of pain that racked her body and made her chest ache. The agony and grief that had been so long penned up inside her flowed out as if a dam-gate had opened. She did not care about disturbing Jo or anyone else in the house, she did not care who heard her, but sobbed on and on till she felt cleansed and strangely free. In a peculiar way she was weeping not only for her father but for many other things that had blighted her life for too long.
When her weeping started, Jo woke, jumped from his chair and left the room, leaving her to mourn alone but the Emma Jane who eventually wiped her face was a different girl from the one who’d arrived at the Jessups’ house the previous night. By giving vent to her grief she had exorcised some of the demons that haunted her.
She kissed her father’s ice-cold cheek and was gently pulling the blanket back over his face when a tap came on the door and Mr Jessup’s voice asked, ‘Can I bring you a cup of tea, Miss Wylie?’
To her amazement she felt very hungry when she heard this. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’d like some tea but don’t bring it in here. I’ll come downstairs to drink it.’ She was sorry for being a nuisance to him because she knew he was very harried by looking after his still-shocked sister as well as having Emma Jane’s dead father and his weeping daughter to worry about.
Her trim and business-like behaviour in spite of her swollen, tear stained face was an intense relief to her host when she stepped into the neat little parlour. ‘Jo’s gone home for his breakfast. He’ll come back with the – er – he said he’ll come back with the coffin in about an hour. He always keeps one ready, half-made I mean, you see,’ he told her.
‘That’s good,’ she said and sat down at the table, grateful that he’d provided bread and butter as well as tea for she was starving and tried not to eat too voraciously. Hunger did not seem correct in her circumstances but Mr Jessup pushed the plate towards her, saying, ‘Eat it up, please. What do you intend doing now?’
‘I’m taking my father home to Newcastle. I’ll need to hire a cart to drive us to the station. I told our coachman Haggerty to meet every train at Newcastle from noon today till I arrive, and he’s bringing a hearse as well.’
Impressed, Jessup asked, ‘Do you want somebody to travel with you? I can’t leave my sister, but Jo’d go to Newcastle if you wanted, and he’ll bring out his cart to take your father to Maddiston.’
She looked confused. ‘Thank him for the use of his cart but it won’t be necessary for him to come to Newcastle with me.’ Her tone was very definite because the idea of making the train journey with the Grim Reaper by her side was too horrifying to contemplate.
Mr Jessup went off to pass on her wishes, and when she was finishing her third slice of bread, the door opened. Tim Maquire stepped into the room. His chin was dark with stubble and his curly hair disordered. He looked exhausted, and he glared at her out of red-rimmed eyes as he said, ‘Mr Jessup tells me you’re taking Mr Wylie home. Do you want me to come with you?’
She stared at him in surprise. ‘But the undertaker said that your wife’s having a baby. Has it been born yet?’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet. It’s not due for another month really but she started last night. It could go on or it might stop, the women say… Her mother’s with her.’ He was distracted with anxiety about Hannah, who had been seized with labour pains in the middle of the night, and he hated the idea of leaving her in travail, but he felt as if he was being hauled in two for he was fond of Christopher Wylie and had loyalties to him as well. The sudden death had come as a tremendous shock to him, and he wanted to express his feelings by helping Wylie’s daughter. For the first time in his life he was totally confused, torn between worrying about Hannah and shocked about Wylie.
The girl sitting coolly at the table eating bread and butter did not seem to appreciate what he was implicitly offering her. She looked up now and told him: ‘It’s kind of you to offer Mr Maquire, but no, thank you. The undertaker said he’d come but I refused him too. Everything’s arranged at the Newcastle end. I’ll be perfectly all right.’
She sounded as if she were talking to a casual acquaintance, not to someone who felt as close as a son to Christopher Wylie, Tim thought angrily. She didn’t appreciate that he too might be grieving and want to give practical expression of his grief. ‘Poor old Wylie, if this hard little piece is his daughter,’ he thought. He glared at her and she was taken aback by his evident hostility. In her surprise at Maquire’s reaction she returned her most intimidating look, the one that even quelled Arbelle. He was good at intimidating stares too, and gave her one back of equal ferocity.
The atmosphere in the room froze. ‘I’ll go home right away. Hannah needs me more than this cold bitch,’ he thought. Then he remembered that he had not paid the customary respects to the dead man. He was not going to say he was sorry to her, but what he could say with honesty was, ‘I had the greatest respect for your father, Miss Wylie. He was good to me. Everyone here will miss him but me most of all. I know I’ll never see his like again, as a builder or as a man.’
She dropped her head to hide from him the fact that she was in danger of weeping again. ‘Thank you. I’ll tell my mother what you’ve said. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to start getting ready to leave.’ She stood up from the table and pushed her chair back. He was flustered and surprised that she did not say anything about what was to happen to the work in progress. She’d never mentioned the bridge or said who was to take over from her father.
‘Do you want his men to go on working?’ he asked roughly.
She looked surprised. In all her grief and confusion, the matter of the bridge had not yet concerned her. ‘Yes, of course. Yes, the men must go on working,’ she said. She cast her direct glance at him again and asked, ‘Will you do the same as you’ve always done?’
He was stiff and ready to take offence at anything she said, but for Wylie’s sake he replied, ‘Of course I will. I’d do anything for your father and I know what that bridge meant to him.’
Through the window she saw the black shape of Jo coming up the path. That was the signal it was time to go. ‘That’s good, thank you. I’ll let you know what’s going to happen when I know more myself,’ she said and turned to leave the room. He stared after her in disbelief. Not a word about who was to take over the contract, not any enquiry about how the work was getting on. His heart surged with anger at her disregard of t
he work that had engrossed, and killed, her father.
Jo spied Tim standing in the parlour and called out, ‘Give us a hand with the coffin, lad.’ He had another two men with him, weedy-looking specimens who were none too keen on work, and they stood back while Tim and Jo negotiated the coffin round the bend in Mr Jessup’s stairs. Then the black-painted box was laid on the flat bed of the cart and covered with a drapery of black velvet rimmed in tarnished gold, the village mort cloth that had covered every Camptounfoot coffin for nearly two hundred years. At that point, Emma Jane came out of the house carrying her holdall and a large folder with all her father’s plans for the bridge. Tim stared at them and without thinking, asked abruptly, ‘Are you taking those away? I might need them.’
She looked surprised at his objections. ‘But I want to look at them too. I’ll bring them back as soon as possible. Just do what you know he’s sanctioned in the meantime.’
‘My God,’ he thought with rage, ‘she’s treating me like any navvy, like a spadesman. I helped to draw those plans up, but she doesn’t know how much I’ve done on the bridge and she doesn’t care either.’
He stood with his hat in his hand as the cart drove away. He wanted to go to Maddiston with it; he wanted to see Mr Wylie off on his last journey but she didn’t ask him and he didn’t offer. Though he’d have gone with Emma Jane if she’d needed him, he was glad not to be put to the test because he was in an agony of anxiety about Hannah.
Her labour had started the night Mr Wylie died, and as he looked back on the events since, he felt bemused by the obtuseness of fate in making everything happen at the same time.
When Miss Jessup and Tibbie found Wylie dead, the first thing they did was send one of the little Rutherfords from the village to bring Tim, who came running up from the bridge. He was overcome with grief at the sight of his dead employer and friend, but soon wiped his eyes and became practical. Though Emma Jane did not know this, it was Tim who had gone and found Mr Jessup in Rosewell; it was he who had organised the sending of the message to Wyvern Villa and had fetched a doctor. Then he went home to check on Hannah, whom he found well and happy, before returning to sit through the first night with the corpse, grateful that the weather had turned and the rain had cooled everything down. Early in the morning Jo arrived to measure for the coffin and Tim went home again. Though it was early, Hannah was already up and feverishly scouring the floor of their little house.
A Bridge in Time Page 34