A Bridge in Time Read online

  Now she rose from her seat and took her daughter’s arm. ‘Come on, Hannah. It’s time you went back to Bella Vista and I went home. It’s getting late.’ As Hannah stood up, the firelight gilded her fine skin and highlighted her delicate features. Everyone in the party was struck again by how lovely she was. She smiled at her mother without argument for she realised how the talk was upsetting Tibbie.

  Tommy Rutherford stood up with them and said, ‘I’ll have to go too because my wife’ll be wondering where I am. I’ll walk up the road with you, Tibbie.’

  Outside, the night sky had deepened to dark purple and the stars glittered like chips of ice. Hannah kissed her mother and ran off down the hill while Tibbie and Tom climbed the slope past Widow Blackie’s door. When she saw the light in the window, Tibbie paused and said, ‘Meg’s still up. I’ll look in at her and see she’s all right.’

  Rutherford stopped too. ‘Her light was on when I passed and I thought it was strange. She’s usually asleep by this time, isn’t she?’

  They knocked at the door and when there was no reply, turned the handle and went inside. The door opened directly into a low-roofed room with a fireplace at the far end and a bed recess down one side. Tibbie stepped into the flickering shadows cast by the candle and called softly, ‘Mistress Blackie, Mistress Blackie, where are you?’

  A feeble voice came from the bed. ‘I’m here, Tib. Oh, I’m glad to see you. I’m sick, awful sick.’

  Tibbie gestured to Rutherford. ‘Run home and get your wife, Tommy. I’ll maybe need some help.’ He did as he was bid and only minutes later his wife was in the old widow’s cottage with a basket of food on her arm. The neighbours of Camptounfoot always stepped into the breach in emergencies, and now they had everything in hand. It was midnight when Mrs Rutherford went home again and when she did, her husband was waiting to hear her news.

  ‘The poor old soul’s dying,’ she said sadly as she took off her shawl. ‘But Tibbie’s with her and I’ll go back in the morning.’

  Tom shook his grey head. ‘That’s Camptounfoot for ye – that’s what living in a village like this means. Tibbie and William are right: I hope no railway comes here to change things and spoil what we’ve got.’

  When the first grey streaks of light began to appear in the sky, old Mrs Blackie died peacefully with her hand in Tibbie Mather’s. Her neighbours washed and dressed her in the white cotton gown she had laid aside for her shroud, and then Tibbie ran up St James’ Wynd to rap on Jo’s door and call out, ‘Widow Blackie’s gone!’

  Jo shoved his head out of the upstairs window and told her, ‘I’ll be down right away.’ The age-old way of doing things went on without effort. Next day the old lady, whose only son had been killed at Waterloo, was buried by her neighbours in an ivy-lined grave dug in the burying-ground beside the ruined gable wall of an ancient chapel that long ago went out of use when French monks came and built a huge abbey at Rosewell on the opposite bank of the river. Though the villagers of Camptounfoot worshipped in Rosewell, they still buried their dead in the village.

  Tibbie Mather stood beside the grave with her sister-in-law Effie and her friends Mrs Anderson and Mrs Rutherford, and they wept gently for their dead neighbour. They’d known her all their lives; she had been greyhaired and bent when they were girls, and now it seemed right that they should be mourning her death in the graveyard where their own ancestors lay, and where one day they would be buried themselves.

  The village remained silent and subdued for twenty-four hours as a mark of respect, but next morning things were back to normal. Children shouted in the school playground; William’s hammer could be heard clanging on iron in his smithy at the end of the Wynd; a woman called out a cheerful greeting to her neighbour as she passed up the street. Life was flowing on as usual. Neat and tidy in a crisp white apron, Tibbie Mather stood at her front door and listened with her head cocked to one side like a sparrow. Her dread of innovation, her fear of a terrifying railway thrusting its way into the middle of their little community gradually disappeared. In a way, she found the death of the old widow a sort of reassurance because it made her feel that village life flowed like a river and, like a river, Camptounfoot would never change.

  * * *

  It was just as well that Tibbie did not know about a meeting being held that very morning at an elegant office in Edinburgh’s Rutland Square. Five men sat around a large table poring over maps and papers spread out over its polished surface.

  ‘Just look at all that empty land and not a mile of railway line on it!’ exulted the most enthusiastic of them. His name was Sir Geoffrey Miller and he was the Chairman of the recently formed Edinburgh and South of Scotland Railway Company, which had been inaugurated by a special Act of Parliament only a few weeks before.

  His colleagues leaned forward and followed his pointing finger with their eyes. ‘Look at all those mill-towns, growing like mushrooms and hardly a decent road to any of them. The woollen trade’s booming and they’re desperate for a way to ship their goods out. They’re mad for us to open our line. We’ll make a fortune!’ cried Miller, although he was not normally given to expressions of excitement.

  ‘If we can get it built,’ demurred a cautious banker called Thomas Munro.

  The others round the table made similar doubting sounds but Miller was unabashed: ‘Of course we’ll get it built! The mill-owners are backing us – they’re all eager to put money into the line. We’ve got two local landowners, Anstruther and Raeburn of Falconwood, nibbling too. I’m going down there soon to see them and I’m sure we’ll have them behind us. They’re both sharp businessmen and this is a sure-fire success.’

  ‘What about young Allandale? I’ve heard he’s against it,’ came a voice from the back of the room. The speaker was John Smith, a canny financier who liked to have everything cut and dried before he invested as much as a pound. The new railway company needed his backing and he knew it.

  ‘His sort are always against the railway but that hasn’t stopped them being built in other places, has it? The dukes and the earls don’t want their power base to shift but they’ve ruled their little kingdoms for too long and if manufacturers grow powerful, the old aristocrats will be threatened,’ said Miller, staring over the heads of his colleagues at Smith.

  When their eyes met, Smith countered with, ‘He could still stop your plans in their tracks. He owns too much land down there.’

  Miller gestured with his pen. ‘Come and look at this. I know exactly how much he owns. This and this and this… all the ground south of Rosewell, unfortunately, but he doesn’t own this – or this. That part’s Anstruther’s, and that narrow stretch on both sides of the river belongs to Raeburn. We’ll take our bridge across the river on Raeburn’s land.’

  Smith stepped up beside him and leaned over his shoulder. ‘Anstruther’s a parvenu but does Raeburn know what you’re planning? Is he brave enough to defy his Duke?’

  Miller laughed. ‘For hard cash he’d defy anybody. I’ve offered him a seat on the board and two thousand a year… He’s got land but not much capital. He’ll come.’

  Smith laid a finger on the map. ‘It’s all very well getting his land, but where do you go from there? The Duke owns the area behind it.’

  Miller had an answer to that as well. ‘He doesn’t own the land behind this village here, though, and it marches with Raeburn’s. We can run our line along its boundary. Anstruther bought that ground five years ago from the Duke for a house and a park. He’s built the house, but he’s ready to sacrifice part of his park if what I hear is true. It’s perfect! The line will run down from Edinburgh to Maddiston where the big mills are, then it’ll go on to Rosewell where we can build our station on the north side. After that it’ll cross the river by Camptounfoot and head for the south. Eventually it’ll end up at Berwick.’

  His colleagues stood nodding their heads as the line was traced for them. It was untapped country indeed. ‘It’ll revolutionise trade,’ said one of them, but Smith’s brow was sti
ll furrowed. ‘I know that part of the country,’ he said slowly. ‘I used to fish the river there. Isn’t the bank by Camptounfoot very high? Surely that’s a bad place to try to build a bridge?’

  Miller shot him a glance. ‘It’s not the easiest,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘but it’s the only place available to us because of Allandale. If we build our line at all, we’ve got to use Raeburn’s land and we need Anstruther’s too. I’m sure I can persuade them.’

  ‘No doubt, no doubt,’ said Smith smoothly, ‘but who’s going to build it? That could prove a costly enterprise.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. There’s not much railwaybuilding going on just now, and contractors all over the country are eager for work. We can drive a hard bargain. I’ve put out notices for tender – they’ll be flooding in soon. Are you coming in with us or not, Smith?’

  The financier leaned over the papers for a long time before he finally straightened up and stuck out his hand. ‘It has possibilities, I think. Yes, I’ll back you, providing you arrange certain things to my satisfaction.’

  ‘And what may these be?’ enquired Miller confidently. ‘The first is that you rope in Anstruther and Raeburn and have their agreement in writing. The second is that you find a bridge-builder capable of tackling a project like this, and I can tell you before it starts that it won’t be easy. I’m not going to back any scheme for a bridge which falls down before it’s finished. Get the best man for the job and then I’ll put in my money.’

  * * *

  The prospectus for Camptounfoot railway viaduct arrived on Christopher Wylie’s office desk in Newcastle the next day. Wylie pored over the papers for an hour and then sat back with his hands over his eyes. ‘Can I do this? Can I take this on?’ he asked himself. Standing up, he stretched his arms high above his white head and felt his aching bones creak with the effort. He was getting old. A few years ago, nothing would have stopped him from putting in an offer to build the Camptounfoot bridge but he was fifty-six years of age and he’d lost his enthusiasm. His only son was dead and there seemed to be no point in striving so hard any longer.

  He turned and walked towards his office window and stared out across the River Tyne at the boats lined up along the busy wharves. Newcastle was booming. With every year that passed, more ships came up the river; more money flooded into the city. Wylie remembered when he’d been able to walk the streets and greet most of the people he saw. Now those streets were full of strangers, prosperous and busy, confident and bustling – people who did not recognise him and whom he did not know.

  His eyes ached with the effort of reading the closely printed prospectus in dim light, and he rubbed them with his knuckles. Behind him he heard the office door open. ‘Is that you, Claud?’ he asked without turning round.

  ‘Yes,’ said the gravelly voice of his old assistant and secretary Claud Cockburn, who had worked with him since he first started up his contracting business some thirty-four years before. Like his employer, Cockburn was growing old and anxious to retire.

  Wylie still did not turn. ‘Did you read the papers about that bridge?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Claud, none too enthusiastically.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you could do it. You’re probably the only contractor in the north who could.’

  ‘You don’t sound too keen,’ grunted Wylie, finally turning round.

  ‘I don’t know if you want to put yourself through all that again,’ said Claud slowly. A little hunchbacked chap with a deeply lined face, he looked like a gnome from a fairy tale.

  ‘I don’t know either. I’m getting too old… it would have been different if James was still alive,’ sighed Wylie.

  Claud nodded. ‘I know. But if you don’t mind me saying so, you could do with the money. You’ve not had a contract for eighteen months and you lost a lot on Hudson’s collapse. You can’t afford to retire yet, Chris. You need one last big job to recoup your losses.’

  ‘How bad are things?’ asked Wylie.

  His old friend shook his head. ‘Bad enough. You owe the bank a packet, and if you don’t start making some money soon they’ll foreclose on you.’

  Wylie groaned. ‘That’s what I’ve been afraid of. My God, I used to be the biggest railway contractor in Newcastle – everybody came to me with their work. What’s happened?’

  ‘There isn’t any railway work at the moment. Everybody’s scared off because of what happened to Hudson. This bridge is the first thing that’s come in for a year.’ Wylie stared at the old man’s face. ‘You mean I should try to get it?’

  Claud nodded. ‘You have to get it if you’re not going to go bust,’ he said. Then he sighed. ‘But I’m too old to help you any longer. I’m sixty-seven, Chris.’

  Wylie straightened his broad shoulders and turned away from the window. ‘I know. I’m going to pension you off, old man, but let’s sit down and go through the prospectus together. Light the lamps, Claud. Give me the benefit of your help one more time. I hope you’re not in a hurry to get home tonight.’

  ‘I’m never in a hurry to get home,’ Claud sighed. ‘There’s nobody waiting for me, not like you.’

  Wylie sighed too as he thought about his once bright and cheerful wife, reduced now to a weeping, hysterical wreck because of the death of their beloved son. ‘Send the carriage home with a message for Arabella to say I’ll be back late, and then come and help me work out what it’s going to take to secure this project,’ he instructed his faithful old clerk.

  Chapter Two

  Tibbie Mather lived in a stone-built cottage with a thatched roof that was situated by the side of the main road opposite the opening of St James’ Wynd. Overlooking the street, it had a green-painted front door, one window with tiny opaque panes, and a wooden gate that opened into a disused stable. At the back were two bigger windows facing south on to the sheltering hills, and a door into a garden that was full all summer with flowers, neat rows of vegetables and old-established herbs. A well covered with a wooden lid stood in one corner of the garden and at the other was a little lavatory, the walls of which were washed down with white lime every spring.

  The cottage was a warm and cosy place even in the most bitter weather, for its walls were five feet thick and its thatch was one of the thickest and oldest in the village, so deeply covered with grass and houseleeks that even in the middle of winter it looked as green as a lawn. This thatch was home to hundreds of birds, who made their nests there and rustled companionably through the nights, listened to by the people inside the cottage as they lay in bed.

  Tibbie’s late husband Alex had been a stonemason, and when they married he had carved a sundial and erected it above the back door. It bore their entwined initials and the date of their wedding, 1829. When Alex died in 1843 of the lung disease that plagued men who hewed away at dusty red sandstone, their child Hannah was only eight years old, but Tibbie was not left badly off because her husband, being twenty years older than she, had saved his money carefully during his working life. Also, the proud and self-protective Society of Master Masons in Camptounfoot ran a benevolent fund which was distributed to their widows and orphans. When Alex died, Tibbie received a gratuity of ten golden guineas, and every New Year’s Day a half-guinea tied in a silk handkerchief was left on her window-ledge.

  She was a proud, erect little woman in her late forties with a smooth-skinned plump face and brown hair tinged at the temples with silver strands. Even in middle age there was a kittenish quality about her that was infinitely appealing, and she looked at the world through round, innocent eyes that seemed always to be pleased with what they saw. If anyone in the village was in trouble, Tibbie would turn up on their doorstep with offers of help, food and sometimes even a few coins from her savings. People told her their secrets because there was no viciousness or malice in her, and they knew she would not condemn them as silly or feckless, even when they were.

  When Alex died she grieved, but the delight she took in her home, her garden, the vi
llage where she lived, the friends who surrounded her and most of all her bonny daughter, healed the hurt. On this bright spring morning, as she opened her door and stepped into the garden to look at the snowdrops that were thrusting their green spikes through the dark earth, she would have said to anyone who asked that she was a truly happy woman. She had no idea how much everything was about to change…

  The sky was a very pale shade of blue, almost the colour of pearls, really, and there was a stillness in the air that meant the overnight frost had not yet lifted. The nearest hill looked very close and the gorse-bushes which marked its sides stood out as black as charcoal against the red sweep of withered bracken.

  Tibbie pulled her black shawl off the back of the kitchen door and draped it over her shoulders. She kept her head lowered and her breath spiralled out in front so that she looked like a busy little black dragon as she emerged into the open air. The path on which she stood was lined with snowdrops growing together in big clumps, their delicate white heads nodding on the ends of fragile stems. She gazed down at them in delight, for their annual emergence always seemed to be a miracle after the bleakness of winter. Then she was startled to hear voices coming from the field on the other side of her cottage wall.

  She straightened up and stared. A party of men were walking along the hedgerow. Some of them carried long poles over their arms and others were consulting sheets of paper, pausing and assessing the lie of the land as they went. She did not recognise any of them and felt her heart leap with fright as she watched their progress along the field boundary.

  A tall man in the front of the party saw her and lifted a hand in greeting. ‘Good morning,’ he called.

  Her mouth was too dry to reply at first and she had to swallow before she could speak. ‘What are you doing?’ she shouted.

  ‘We’re surveying for your new railway,’ he sang back cheerily.