A Bridge in Time Read online

  ‘My God, they’ll have seen plenty of disturbance in their time,’ joked William. ‘Drink your tea and calm down.’

  His wife Effie had more tact than her husband, and with sympathy she eventually succeeded in calming Tibbie and diverting her mind from the threat of the railway to the subject closest to her heart – her daughter. ‘How’s Hannah getting on up at Bella Vista?’ she enquired, and Tibbie immediately brightened.

  ‘Oh, she’s doing very well. They’ve made her a table-maid now. The housekeeper said she was wasted in the kitchen!’

  Effie threw up her hands. ‘That was quick! Trust Hannah. That lassie’s going a long way, you mark my words.’

  Tibbie smiled at last. ‘She’s quick, that’s true. She came home yesterday to tell me that they’re paying her an extra five pounds a year now! Isn’t that grand?’

  ‘She’ll be a lady’s maid before you know where you are,’ Effie said with pride. She was the mother of three sons and the achievements and beauty of her niece was a matter of family pride to her as well as to Tibbie.

  ‘It’s a good place,’ said Tibbie with satisfaction. ‘I’m glad she was taken on there because I didn’t want her to go to work on the land. She’s more likely to meet a good husband in a well-run household like Bella Vista than working on a farm.’

  ‘Oh, you needn’t worry about Hannah meeting a husband!’ Effie laughed. ‘All the lads in this village are daft about her. She could have her pick of them right now.’

  Tibbie frowned. ‘I know, but there’s not one that I’d really want for her. She’ll maybe have to look outside Camptounfoot for a man, I think.’

  Both William and Effie laughed at this. ‘Now that’s an admission, coming from you. You usually think Camptounfoot folk are the best in the world.’

  ‘Oh, Hannah’s special. It’s going to take a grand man to match her,’ said Tibbie, and then she added, ‘I wouldn’t really mind if she went as far as Rosewell or Maddiston to find a husband, as long as he was good enough for her.’

  Effie leaned over and hugged her sister-in-law. ‘That’ll be a grand day, the day our Hannah gets married,’ she exclaimed and Tibbie beamed.

  ‘Aye, won’t it!’ she agreed, and the happy thought made her forget the railway for a little while.

  * * *

  Even before the plans for a railway were officially announced, the village of Camptounfoot was riven by disputes about it. Two camps quickly formed. Old friends fell out; members of the same family quarrelled. Bob and Mamie found that half of their customers stopped coming into the shop when the couple openly announced their support for the pro-railway faction. Some of the women from the oldest-established families in the village now preferred to walk a mile to Rosewell rather than go to the local shop. The Rutherfords, who were against the railway, fell out with their old friends the Armstrongs who were for it, because Alex Armstrong was a mason who foresaw plenty of work coming from railway construction, especially when he heard that a large bridge was to be erected across the river at Camptounfoot. Postman Jock, anti-railway, stopped speaking to his pro-railway brother, Big Will, who was also a mason. Mr Anderson had some sharp words with his wife when he told her to stop agitating against the railway line, and he was deeply distressed one morning when he had to break up a playground fight between two factions of for and against railway-ites among his pupils… There were few residents in the eighty households that made up their little community who did not hold a strong opinion one way or the other. The alehouse-keeper tried to keep the peace but few people listened to him when he reminded them, ‘It doesn’t really matter what you all think – you can’t do anything about it!’

  Though she watched the field behind her house with close attention every day, Tibbie did not see the surveying party again, and she was beginning to relax her fears a little till one afternoon, when she was walking up the street towards the outskirts of the village where she knew the primroses grew, she saw someone coming out of the tall farmhouse that stood right on the village boundary, as bleak and forbidding as an armed guard. The farmer Craigie Scott, spying her in the roadway, raised an arm and came thundering down over the cobbles with a black and white collie dog running at his heels. ‘Hey, Tibbie, wait a minute!’ he was calling as he ran.

  In an unconscious gesture of self-protection, she crossed her arms on her breast and awaited his approach. His tousled hair was standing up like a mop all round his head and his face was red and tense-looking. He was shabbily dressed and did not look prosperous, though village people knew that he was very rich indeed. There were rumoured to be leather bags full of money and other treasures stacked in secret places all over his farmhouse, but he was famous for his meanness and reluctance to spend any of it.

  Apart from its legendary secret hoards of treasure, Craigie’s house had two other distinctions. One was a stone set over the front door which was carved with a bull’s head crowned by a wreath of laurel and surrounded by strange writing that no one could interpret. It had been dug up by a ploughman in 1584 and that date was carved on it too but it was much older, for it had originally been an altar stone in the Roman temple of Mithras that stood in the middle of what was now Craigie’s hayfield. Unknown to any of the villagers, the words carved on it were in Hebrew.

  The farmhouse’s second distinction was the enormous orchard which surrounded it. This was the biggest and most productive in a village of orchards, walled to a height of twelve feet and full of ancient apple, pear and plum trees that showed a springtime frothing glory of blossom over the tops of the walls. There was no way into this paradise except through Craigie’s house or by a little locked wooden gateway in the stone wall. The door was studded with big iron nails but some of the planks were warped and split by age so that passers-by could put their eyes to the gaps and peer into the forbidden world, where rosettes of pink and white flowers decorated the trailing tree branches and snowdrops and primroses spangled the grass. In autumn the fruit ripened and fell to the ground where it lay, a temptation to village children who lusted after Craigie’s fruit although there was plenty in their own gardens. It was a rite of passage, like the manhood ceremonies of primitive tribes, for boys to stage raids on the farm orchard, but Craigie guarded his fruit assiduously and had been known to let off a blast of buckshot at the backsides of running boys when they breached his walls. This of course made the stealing of his apples and pears even more of a challenge.

  Now the guardian of this paradise hurried towards Tibbie. His tacketty boots made a ringing sound on the stones of the road and he lifted his long stick in half-threatening salutation. Suspiciously she watched his approach. They were always polite to each other but she was afraid of him and with reason, for just before her marriage to Alex she had been stopped in the street by a furious Craigie, who shouted angrily at her that she should have married him.

  ‘But we never walked out, you never asked me,’ she protested, knowing full well that even if he had, she would not have considered it.

  ‘I picked you out. I want you. You led me on, you made me think it was possible,’ he yelled intemperately at her.

  After Alex’s funeral, to her horror and anger, Craigie came knocking at her door late one night. ‘Let me in,’ he whispered through the wooden panels and she replied roundly, ‘Go away. Go away and don’t ever come back or I’ll set my brother on you.’ He did so, but she was always conscious of the way he looked at her whenever they met.

  Craigie never married anyone else. He lived with his two unmarried sisters in the big farmhouse and the girls, as they were still called though both were now nearing sixty, were even more peculiar than he was for they never went out at all and were loathed for their extreme greed and obsessive secrecy. No one was ever invited into their house and the door was guarded by the vicious, snarling sheepdog. If they were owed money, even by the poorest of the poor, they insisted on instant payment of the last farthing and never gave anything away, even unwanted rotting fruit. They would rather leave any surplus unused
, and it was said that they crept out at night to pour milk into the village burn rather than give it to poor families who needed it.

  All this ran through Tibbie’s head as she watched Craigie running towards her. ‘What does he want?’ she asked herself, for she knew he was not one to waste time on idle pleasantries.

  He was panting when he stopped beside her and his first words were, ‘I hear you’re against the railway too.’

  She nodded her head. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘I’ve warned the bastards off my land,’ he said, as if expecting her to congratulate him. This was not unexpected: Craigie hated trespassers.

  ‘They weren’t on your land when I saw them,’ she said.

  He looked at her sharply. ‘They’re surveying for that railway line. They’ll have to cross my land to get at it. I told them I’d shoot the first man to put a foot on my ground.’

  Tibbie wondered how much money the railway company had offered him. His anger was perhaps a ploy to raise the price – she wouldn’t put it past him. He was shaking slightly as he spoke, however, and was obviously under a great deal of strain. ‘No navvies are going to cross my land. I told them that,’ he repeated.

  ‘What did they say?’ she asked.

  He grimaced. ‘They said they’d come in from the other side, from Falconwood’s land. He’s given his permission, they told me.’

  Tibbie’s heart chilled as she remembered that only part of the land around the village belonged to Craigie, but nonetheless he’d be a formidable opponent and he had plenty of money to finance a fight. ‘Maybe they’ll move it away to the south if they know you’re against them,’ she suggested.

  ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘South’s the Duke’s land and he’s warned them off as well. It’s the only time in fifty years that a duke’s opinions and mine have agreed.’ He laughed a strange cracked laugh that was very far from humorous.

  ‘I’m like you. I don’t want our peace to be destroyed by a railway,’ she ventured.

  He glared at her. ‘Peace? I don’t give a damn about peace. It’s my land that worries me. I’m not having them digging it up. I’ll shoot any bastard that puts a toe on it,’ he shouted. His eyes were bloodshot and a line of dried spittle marked his lips.

  She took a step away and tried to calm him by saying, ‘Be careful, Craigie. If you try to shoot somebody they’ll hang you.’

  He did not even hear her, for his head was raised to the sky and he was shouting, ‘I hope they’re listening! I’ll shoot every bastard one of them, that’s what I’ll do.’

  Tibbie turned to flee. It terrified her to think that she and Craigie were on the same side in this dispute. She did not want to be associated with him. For the first time she began to question her attitude to the coming of the railway, but when she was back in her garden looking out over the empty field towards the serene hills on the horizon, she imagined what it would look like when the ground was cut across by a railway line and her fears came flooding back. The peace, the tranquil beauty of the Three Sisters and the dreaming valley would be ruined. ‘Oh no, oh no,’ sobbed Tibbie.

  Chapter Three

  The kitchens at Bella Vista were the last word in modernity. Other country houses in the district had smoky, airless kitchens in the basement, but Colonel Anstruther’s were high-ceilinged and gleaming, tiled from roof to floor in glossy white, and situated in a separate wing jutting out from the back of his mansion.

  In fact the house he had built for himself when he returned from India was very unusual indeed. While the kitchens met with great approval from servants and a place at Bella Vista was greatly sought after among them, in the opinion of other landowners, Bella Vista was grotesque. Where their taste ran to gracious Palladian or Adam mansions, Anstruther had commissioned a pink stone Rajah’s palace with turrets and minarets, pointed window-frames and a castellated walk laid out around the top of the roof. While it was under construction, carriages full of curious upper-class neighbours turned up every day to watch the emergence of this monstrosity, but when it was finished and the Colonel and his lady moved in, society studiously stayed away. A man who could live in a house like that wasn’t quite their sort, they decided.

  It was therefore unusual for the Anstruthers to hold parties but when they did, hospitality was lavish and the care taken immense. From dawn, the servants were whipped up into a frenzy of excitement by the butler Mr Allardyce, who was such a taskmaster that by noon several of the maids had collapsed into hysterics.

  Hannah Mather was not the hysterical type, however. While chaos reigned in the kitchen, she remained outwardly calm, nodding her head when given a barrage of orders and keeping a smile on her lovely face. It was the first time she was to help at table for a large dinner and though she was slightly nervous inside, she managed to conceal how she felt.

  The housekeeper, Mrs Clayton, who was Camptounfoot born and a friend of Hannah’s mother, whispered in her ear, ‘There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll be as right as rain. Just stand by the wall looking bonny and pass Mr Allardyce the dishes when he asks for them.’

  Hannah smiled her serene smile and Mrs Clayton was glad she’d suggested this girl for the table-maid’s place. Not only was Hannah a sensible lassie but she possessed a rare beauty that graced any room. Nor did she clump around like some of the other maids but moved smoothly and silently like a dancer, always gentle and discreet. Now she stood tall, willowy and straight, in the dark gown that made a stark contrast against the gleaming white kitchen wall. Her red-gold hair was pinned up high beneath the stiff lace cap, and two long streamers fell down the back of her neck. They tickled against her skin but Hannah was well aware that she must ignore the irritation. ‘You’re an asset to us,’ whispered the housekeeper before she moved down the line of servant girls to chivvy the red-faced second table-maid Jessie for allowing her hair to come out of its pins.

  At that moment Allardyce, the excitable butler, came charging into the noisy, frantic kitchen and clapped his hands to drive his army of maids up to the dining room. ‘They’re going in soon, they’re going in now. Get to your places, hurry, hurry.’

  The girls climbed the stairs, giggling among themselves about him, and as Hannah lifted her skirts to negotiate the steps she felt a surge of excitement. She had never attended a grand occasion before and was looking forward to it as eagerly as she would have done if she had been a guest and not a servant. She was determined to notice everything, remember every detail, so that she could regale her mother with the full story tomorrow. Tibbie loved hearing about the doings at Bella Vista. The Anstruthers were like characters in an on-going novel to her.

  Seven maids were lined up along the dark-green wall facing the long table when the double doors between the salon and the dining room were thrown open by two footmen and the procession of diners advanced. Mrs Maria Anstruther, plump and straining the seams of her pink satin crinoline gown, led the way on the arm of a tall, supercilious-looking man in his mid-forties. This, the maids knew, was an Edinburgh gentleman called Sir Geoffrey Miller who was guest-of-honour and was staying with the Anstruthers for a few days. Behind the leading couple walked Colonel Anstruther himself in his scarlet and gold military uniform. On his arm leaned Lady Miller, a whey-faced, feeble-looking woman who, the kitchen gossips knew, travelled with two maids, a nurse and an enormous box of medicines and potions for her various ailments. The other guests filed in at the back of their host and hostess – four dark-suited men from Edinburgh who had arrived without their wives and, the only recognisable local faces, Raeburn of Falconwood, the next-door estate, with his jolly wife who had a very loud voice and a great liking for claret.

  Hannah eagerly watched the advancing procession as the ladies were handed into their chairs. She was disappointed at the lack of fashion or style among the three women. Lady Miller was wearing dull grey that matched her skin, while Mrs Raeburn was in a shabby blue gown that looked none too clean. Mrs Anstruther outshone them all, not by her unsuitably girlish pink
gown, but because of the jewels with which she was richly adorned. Tonight she was wearing rubies and diamonds – hanging from her ears, clasped around her neck, pinned to her bosom in a huge brooch, and made into bangles for her plump wrists. The value of the stones that glittered from her must have been immense.

  The appointments of the dining room, one wall of which was lined with tall looking glasses and the other with long windows overlooking the gardens, were all contrived to echo the hostess’s ostentatious display of wealth. Tubs of palms and white-trumpeted daturas filled the corners, and the long table stretching down the middle of the floor was draped in white linen and adorned with heavily chased silver ornaments. Beside the Colonel’s chair stood a massive silver wine cooler containing half a dozen bottles of champagne, and another urn, almost as large, stood in the middle of the table full of tropical flowers that scented the air with a heavy sweetness. At every place was lined a battery of wine glasses in varying sizes, and cutlery that looked too heavy to lift. What Hannah most admired was the cunning way the napkins were folded so that they looked like little castles. It seemed a pity to her when the guests opened them carelessly, shook them out and draped them over their knees.

  When everyone was seated, the first course, pale jellied consommé, was carried in and gilded plates reverently placed before the diners. Spoons were raised and voices hushed, when suddenly the solemn atmosphere was shattered by the sound of a coachman’s horn and the crunch of horses’ hooves and carriage-wheels on the gravel outside the windows.

  The Colonel dropped his spoon with a clatter and an exclamation. ‘Who the hell is that, arriving at this time of night? Go and send them packing, Allardyce.’

  Before the butler had time to do as he was bid, however, the dining-room door flew open and a young man came bursting in. With both arms extended he advanced on Mrs Anstruther’s chair while the servants and other guests stared open-mouthed. The hostess sat goggling for a few seconds, then she stood up and held out her arms as well. ‘Gus, my darling Gus!’ she cried, and burst into tears. After that she stared up the table at her husband and called out, ‘It’s Gus, my dear. It’s Gus – back from Bombay!’