Free Trapped In She Town : A Romantic Novella (The Jute Mills Series) by Serena MacKay Page A

the fresh air and green
fields of Fife. She knew she couldn’t have survived much longer working in the
mill. The dust had take its toll on her health and lungs, and the wages were no
longer enough to feed her growing brood. Her biggest fear had been for her
beloved Patrick. He was now 7 years old and she had not wanted to see him
following in the footsteps of the other children living around here and
entering the mills to work at eight. The smiles soon wore off the faces of
these children as they trudged each day to the mill.
    Once she had finished cleaning, she saw the large, black rain clouds
scudding over and she called the children in from the backies where they were
out playing with all the local children. She noticed that the windows had
started to rattle violently too as the wind started to get up.
    As she put the children to bed later, she listened to the wind
howling outside and thought of John travelling in such atrocious weather. He
always caught the same train back arriving home around quarter to eight in the
evening.
    At ten o’clock the children were awake again and crying – the noise
from the storm outside was deafening. Mary had never seen or heard a storm like
it. She lay with the children on their bed and sang to them to help allay their
fears until they all fell back asleep again. It was now half past ten and there
was still no sign of John. She felt the worry pulling at her but she told
herself that he was sensible. He had probably decided not to travel in such
terrible weather conditions. The old head groomsman would have given him a bed
for the night and he would make the journey back after work tomorrow evening.
To take her mind from her worries she began to imagine them all living in the
little house and she wondered what it looked like full of the children’s
smiling faces. Green fields for the bairns to play in and fresh air. She fell
asleep thinking of them all out walking and breathing in the fresh country air.
    Mary was awakened in the morning by Tess banging away on her door.
    “Mary! Mary! Wake Up! Look at this!”
    She dragged herself to the door and it was flung open by Tess, as
she rushed past her into the wee house. “Mary! Where’s John! Did he get home
last night?”
    Mary shook her head to waken herself up.
    “Look at this” Tess urged, as she handed Mary the local morning
newspaper. Mary took one look at the screaming headline and fell to the floor
moaning.
     
     
    Catastrophe
on the Tay Bridge
     
     
    Panic
spread through the town of Dundee last night as a great part of the Tay Bridge
blew down in the violent storm that .......
     
     
     
    Tess fell to her knees beside her. “Mary, Mary, listen to me. Was
John on that train?” Tess was shaking Mary.
    “I don’t know, Tess.” she cried. “He usually arrives home around a
quarter to eight but when he didn’t arrive I just assumed that with the
terrible storm he would have taken shelter and not travelled. Oh Tess, what
will I do?”
    “Look Mary you know how John is. I’m sure you are right. He would
not have travelled in that god awful weather. Get yourself down to the pier.
You’ll see, he’ll come over on the steamer today.” Tess rallied.
    Tess took the children with her and Mary quickly dressed and headed
down the road towards the train station, where it was absolute pandemonium. She
was told the train from Edinburgh due at Dundee yesterday evening at quarter
past seven had fallen into the river when part of the bridge had collapsed.
They didn’t know if there were any survivors.
    Mary felt sick to the bottom of her stomach. If there were no
survivors now – she knew that there was no chance of there being any survivors
at all. No one could survive in the freezing water of the Tay in December for
long. All she could hope for was that John had not boarded the train last night
and had taken refuge somewhere, probably unaware of the tragedy unfolding here.
She would give him a right belt around the ears when