A Bridge in Time

by A Bridge in Time (retail) (epub)

  There were still many problems, of course. When it looked as if they had cured the cracked pier, they completed the line of elegant arches that joined the whole thing together. Then Jopp pulled his last trick. One dull morning in mid-July, Tim turned up at the site to find only a handful of workers there. He gazed round in astonishment. ‘Where is everybody? We’re going to start laying the hardcore on the top today. Where are they all?’

  ‘Jopp’s men are all out and they’ve talked most of the rest into staying out with them. It’s the money. Jopp’s cut their daily rate again and the food’s worse than ever. If he doesn’t bring in better stuff to the truck-shop, there’ll be fever in the camp again. The food he’s selling is stinking – you wouldn’t give it to a dog,’ said an old navvy who was too long in the tooth to go on strike.

  ‘Jopp! Bloody Jopp! I wondered how long it would take before he started his dirty work,’ yelled Tim, and he ran off up the road to Rosewell and the navvy camp. It was the first time he’d been in it since he burned down Benjy’s, but now he had no time to spare for nostalgic rememberings. He went from hut to hut throwing open the doors and yelling at the men inside, ‘Get up off your backsides and come to the bridge at once. Get up! You’re not going to leave it now, are you? This is what Jopp wants you to do. If you play into his hands you’ll all be earning half a crown a day and no truck. The minute he sees off Miss Wylie he can do what the hell he likes with you.’

  Most of them listened to him and went back to work, but others stayed sullenly in their huts, grumbling and complaining. A few even packed up their traps and left the camp because there was more work available locally for navvies now. Branch lines were being built off the main line that was to cross the bridge, and they no longer had to stay.

  Tim headed back for the bridge with any strike-breakers he could persuade to go with him, and his rage was so incandescent that when Emma Jane walked out into the field to ask him what was going on, he spun round at her and snapped, ‘Don’t ask what’s happened – don’t talk about it. I’ll finish it, that’s all.’

  ‘Please tell me what’s going on,’ she said quietly. ‘This is my contract after all.’

  He glared at her. ‘All right, it’s your contract. You talk to them. You tell them to work and ignore Jopp. I’ll leave it to you.’ He stepped back and indicated the watching men with a sweep of the hand.

  She walked past him and stood in front of them, a tiny figure in her work-clothes, her golden eyes looking from one face to another as she spoke. ‘Is Jopp making trouble again?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ said one of them.

  She held out her hands in an imploring gesture. ‘But the bridge is almost finished. I’ve almost done what I set out to do. Please don’t leave me now. Please keep on working as you have done these last weeks. I’ve been watching you. I know how hard it’s been and I promise that if you finish the bridge for me, I’ll pay every man a loyalty bonus at the end, you have my word on it.’ Then she walked away.

  Behind her, one man cheered and another, then another joined in. She’d swung them behind her. They’d work and they’d go back and persuade the others to work as well.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Let me take you for a drive tomorrow. You’ve been living here for almost a year and you’ve not been anywhere except Maddiston and Rosewell. There’s some lovely places round about and you need a break – just one day,’ Alex Robertson pleaded with Emma Jane as they walked up the hill from the bridge to Camptounfoot on a romantic evening when dog roses were blooming in the hedges and the air smelt heady with the scent of hawthorn blossom.

  She leaned on his arm, for she was very tired and her big boots weighed down her feet like lead. She gave a disbelieving laugh as if he’d suggested a trip to the moon, and replied, ‘Oh Alex, I can’t go driving around like a tourist. There’s so much to be done and anyway – what would Maquire say if I went off on a jaunt!’

  The young doctor laughed. ‘You and Black Ace! You’re as bad as each other. I think you both see this bridge as your own property and neither of you will go away for even a minute lest the other one takes it over. You’re like a pair of children quarrelling over your favourite toy.’

  ‘That Maquire is dreadful and he’s getting worse and worse,’ Emma Jane complained. ‘I was furious today because he shouted at me in front of the men as if I was a servant girl or something, just because I wanted one thing and he wanted another. He really does think he’s the boss, Alex. One of the things I’m looking forward to when the bridge is finished is not having to argue with him every day.’

  ‘What else are you looking forward to?’ asked Robertson tenderly.

  She glanced up at him with a little laugh. ‘Lying in bed till eight o’clock and not having to rise at five… wearing a proper dress and slippers… taking tea from china cups… going on drives.’

  She didn’t say ‘with you’, he noticed, but smiled as if that was what she meant and the smile was good enough for him. For weeks he had been longing to speak to her of his growing love, but although this would have been the perfect evening to bring the subject up, he knew that she was not yet ready to listen. The bridge and its problems obsessed her. All she wanted to talk about was the work, which was going flat out in order to finish on time.

  Both she and Tim Maquire thought of nothing else but the bridge. They even dreamed about it at night when they fell into their respective beds and lapsed into exhausted unconsciousness. Day followed day, task followed task, problem followed problem without them ever lifting their heads and seeing how close they had come to achieving their objective – until the afternoon Sir Geoffrey Miller turned up unexpectedly. Looking as bland as a neutered cat, he announced to Emma Jane, ‘Well, Miss Wylie, I think we can safely organise the bridge’s official opening for August the eighth, don’t you?’

  Tim, wild-looking in an open-necked shirt and scarlet throat-cloth, was standing beside her when this announcement was made and he growled, ‘What’s the date today?’ As he spoke Emma Jane realised that she, too, had lost track of time.

  Miller looked surprised but he said, ‘It’s July the fourteenth. That gives you enough time, doesn’t it? You’re well ahead. All that needs to be done now is for the rails to be laid.’

  Tim looked at Emma Jane and gave a huge grin. ‘God, girl, he’s right, ain’t he? We’ve done it, we’ve done it!’ Then he seized her round the waist and whirled her off her feet. She put a hand on each of his hard shoulders and hung on to him, giggling like a child, while the navvies round about gave a huge cheer and threw their hats in the air. Emma Jane had become very popular among them and they looked on her with a mixture of awe and affection, as if she was some sort of mascot. It was Black Ace they worked for, however: it was he who drove them on.

  When Tim dropped her back on her feet, Emma Jane, hearing the men’s huzzahs, was suddenly overcome with embarrassment and acute self-consciousness, so she stepped primly away from Tim and told Sir Geoffrey, ‘I’m sure we’ll finish the bridge on time now. The date you mention is perfectly acceptable.’

  That evening, when work was finished, a sort of anticlimax set in. Tim Maquire went off up the hill to the alehouse with a group of navvies and sat on the bench opposite Tibbie’s door with a huge mug in his hands, drinking as heavily as any of his companions. He wanted to get drunk and fuddled; he wanted to drive away the memories of the times he’d sat on that same bench waiting for a glimpse of Hannah; he wanted to forget that the project which had engaged his thoughts and energy for so long was almost completed, and he’d have to make a decision about what he was to do next, where he was to go…

  Emma Jane was similarly affected by a strange tearfulness, and when Robbie limped off home, she stayed in her hut, sitting on her high stool with her head in her hands staring down at the plans which had now become a reality. Outside, the bridge soared as she had dreamed it would, beautiful and elegant, a fitting memorial for her father. Why then did she want to weep? She was wiping he
r eyes with the edge of her sleeve when the hut door opened and Alex Robertson walked in. He had been waiting for her on the road, and when she did not emerge, he’d come looking for her.

  ‘Aren’t you going home tonight? It’ll be dark soon,’ he said gently.

  She stood up and mumbled, ‘Oh yes, I’m coming. I’m a little tired, that’s all. I was sitting here on my own thinking – it’s hard to think when everybody’s milling about around you.’

  He lifted her shawl off the back of a chair and draped it over her shoulders. ‘I’m taking you home and I’m going to tell Tibbie to put you straight to bed. If you don’t stop driving yourself like this, you’ll have a breakdown. You can’t keep up with the men, no matter how much you want to.’

  Astonished by his firm tone, she gazed up at him and he saw how the freckles that marked her face were so close together that they made her look as brown as an Indian. He wanted to put his finger on them and trace the pattern they made over the bridge of her nose. ‘I can’t stay at home now. There’s still too much to do,’ she protested, but he took her firmly by the arm.

  ‘You’re going home,’ he repeated, ‘and I’ll tell Tibbie not to let you out tomorrow, even if she has to lock you in.’

  She stepped back. ‘Did Maquire tell you to do this?’ she asked suspiciously, for she thought that Tim wanted her out of the way for some reason.

  Robertston was surprised. ‘Black Ace? Of course not. I’m a doctor, remember, and I can see that you’re in need of a rest. I’m going to make sure you get it, that’s all. I met young Robbie on the way here and he told me the date for the opening ceremony’s been fixed. If you crack up now you’ll not be there.’

  Suddenly she felt so exhausted that her legs almost buckled under her. ‘I think you’re right – I am tired. I’ll go home,’ she agreed.

  ‘Take my arm,’ he said in a gentle tone, and she did as she was told. Over their heads, tiny pipistrelle bats were swooping and when they reached the top of the hill, she looked down on the bridge with a returning expression of delight on her face.

  ‘It hasn’t spoiled that valley, has it?’ she asked him.

  ‘On the contrary, it adds to it,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘Even Tibbie thought we were going to ruin the countryside when we started, but we haven’t. Soon we’ll all go away and everyone here will forget about us. They’ll forget any of this ever happened and they’ll become as used to the bridge as they are to the trees and the hills. It’ll be part of the landscape.’

  ‘I won’t forget you,’ he said softly. She said nothing to that so he added, ‘What are you going to do now it’s finished?’

  ‘I don’t know – I haven’t had time to think about that yet. All I want to do is to see it through to the end.’

  He stopped in the middle of the road and looked at her with great intensity. ‘Please listen to what I’ve got to say. I’ve fallen in love with you, Miss Wylie. I’ve not a lot to offer, not what you were used to when your father was alive, but I admire you and I’ll really try to make you happy and take care of you forever if you’ll let me. Perhaps you’ll think about what I’m saying.’

  She opened her mouth to speak but he put a hand on her arm and said urgently, ‘No, I know it’s a surprise. Don’t say anything yet. Just think about it and tell me what you’ve decided when the bridge is opened. I’ll wait till then.’

  She took his arm and nodded her head. ‘Thank you very much for the compliment, Alex. I’ll think about it very carefully,’ she said solemnly. ‘Perhaps I should have called him Doctor Robertson since he called me Miss Wylie,’ she thought, but decided to stick to Alex. After all, that was what she’d been calling him for months.

  Just before they reached Tibbie’s, she saw a noisy group of navvies milling around the hatch in the alehouse wall. Standing tall in the middle of them was Tim Maquire, laughing merrily and obviously drunk. It was the first time she’d seen him like that, though she’d seen plenty of other navvies in a similar condition, but somehow the sight of Tim drunk shocked her deeply and she averted her gaze as she and Alex walked past. But he’d spotted them, and she heard him shout, ‘Miss Wylie, Robertson! Miss Wylie, have a mug of ale with us!’

  Pretending not to hear him, she hurried through Tibbie’s door and pulled the doctor behind her. In the little hall she said angrily, ‘Maquire! Isn’t he awful? He’s always trying to make a fool of me.’

  Robertson grinned at her discomfiture. ‘I don’t think he’s doing that, Emma Jane. You mustn’t be so critical of him. Everything he does is wrong, according to you.’

  She was quite annoyed. ‘That’s because it usually is wrong,’ she retorted. From the other side of the closed door she could hear Maquire’s big laugh and she was sure he was laughing at her.

  Tibbie had a kettle on the hob and food on the table, and she hurried across the room saying, ‘I’ve been boiling water in the boiler so’s you can have a bath. You’re tired out, you poor wee soul. Come on, you’ve done enough. You need a rest.’

  ‘That’s just what I’ve been telling her,’ Alex commented. ‘I’ll leave her to you then, Mrs Mather.’ Before he went away he turned to Emma Jane and said softly, ‘Think about what I said, won’t you?’

  Tibbie looked from the girl to the man in the doorway and her eyes were sharp. When he had left she said to Emma Jane, ‘That’s a good man, you know.’

  ‘I know. I like him but…’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry there’s a but. It usually means you’ve got your eye on somebody else,’ was the reply.

  After she’d soaked in the big tin bath before the fire and had dried and dressed in her nightgown, darkness had fallen and Emma Jane was walking through the hall on her way to bed when she heard noises outside the front door. Male voices were muttering; someone was laughing, there was a chink of saddlery. It sounded as if a group of men were standing on the doorstep. Surely Maquire was not still out there, poking fun, making trouble! Slowly and quietly she opened the door a crack and peered through the slit. What she saw made her freeze. Just as slowly she closed it again and tip-toed back to the kitchen where Tibbie was tidying up for the night.

  ‘Tibbie, Tibbie, you didn’t put whisky in my tea, did you?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘I’ve just seen the queerest thing at the door.’

  Tibbie turned round. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s three men out there, dressed like Roman soldiers. They’re all having a gossip and a laugh – right outside your door! Who are they? I’ve never seen any of them before.’

  Tibbie threw her arms out in delight and grabbed Emma Jane round the shoulders. ‘Och lassie, that’s grand! They’ve not gone away, then! I haven’t seen them for two years – not since all this started – and I thought they’d gone forever. I’ve been really bothered about them, but now you’ve seen them. They’re back. It doesn’t matter about the railway – things are going to be the same as always. Och, that’s grand!’

  The parrot was wakened from its doze by the fuss and it croaked in the Scots-French it now affected, ‘C’est bon, that’s grand, ma belle, that’s grand…’

  When he left the alehouse, Tim’s head was swimming with alcohol and he was filled with a kind of wild rage that needed assuageing. Striding like Colossus, he walked to Maddiston where there was a large hotel popular with navvies. It was crowded when he walked in and the men, all of whom knew him, rushed over to buy him drinks. He asked for brandy and threw back glass after glass, pouring it down his throat as if he was trying to quench a fire inside. Women crowded round him too, stroking his arm, pecking at his bearded cheek and when midnight struck, he staggered off into the darkness with a prostitute on his arm. She lived in a cottage on the edge of town and when they reached it, she guided him indoors like a tug steering a huge ship. He stood swaying in the middle of the floor while she began trying to pull off his clothes, but suddenly he seemed to come to himself and pushed her away. ‘Get off me, I’m going home,’ he muttered and heade
d for the door again. Her angry screeches followed him but he did not pause and was heading in the direction of Rosewell when he met Alex Robertson returning from a late call.

  The doctor jumped from his horse, grabbed the staggering man and asked, ‘Where are you going, Black Ace?’

  ‘Rosewell. I’m drunk, Robertson. I’m going to bed,’ Maquire’s voice was slurred and he swayed on his feet.

  The doctor said, ‘It’s too far to go in that state. Come back with me and sleep on my sofa. You can go home in the morning.’

  This idea appealed to Maquire who said, ‘All right, but will you make sure I wake early? I don’t want Miss Wylie getting to the bridge before me.’

  Robertson snorted with mirth. ‘What a pair you are! Don’t worry – she won’t be there tomorrow. I told her to take a day off.’

  Maquire groaned, ‘Are you mad enough to think she’ll do what you tell her? If she does, you’re a better man than I am, Doctor Robertson.’

  Maquire was right. Emma Jane was back at the bridge next day, but she was late in arriving, even later than he, and the pair of them stayed well apart. Tim was positioned on the top of the bridge making arrangements for the linelaying. She, tactfully, gave him a wide berth and stayed on the ground.

  The last days of the great project continued to be anti-climactic. When the final stretch of hardcore surface was laid and driven down between the shallow stone parapets that edged the top, Emma Jane, in her lady-like black skirt and jacket, walked the length of the bridge for the first time with Robbie limping by her side. He’d abandoned his crutches now, and got around with the help of a stick which he used with a flourish, for he’d accepted that he would always have a marked limp but he’d beaten his disability and proved the doctor wrong. His confidence was great and his ambition unlimited, for already he’d been offered a job with another contractor in London. He was going there when the bridge was completely finished.