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

she saw him, for worrying
her so much.
    Mary walked towards the river. There seemed to be thousands of
people there and when she looked towards the west, down the river, the sight
she saw caused the colour to drain from her face, and she had to hold onto the
wall to stop from falling over. About half a mile to the west, was the great
Tay Rail Bridge opened only the year before with a great party that the whole
town had enjoyed. And there, in the middle of the bridge, was a great, gaping
hole. The high girders which had been so conspicuous on the centre of the
bridge were entirely gone. All you could see were the stumps of the foundations
standing desolate in the water. Mary’s hands covered her face and she stood and
cried for a full ten minutes. Then she composed herself and headed towards the
pier where the steamer was just leaving for Newport.
    The guard who checked tickets was surrounded by people shouting “Has
a Tam Milne come off the boat?” “Did an Elsie Hooper travel”?
    Mary waited until the steamer had returned again from Newport and
disgorged its passengers, and when John was not among them she headed back to
the train station. She eventually spoke with an official and gave him all
John’s details. She told him she was unsure if he had travelled on the train,
and she gave her address in case there was any news. He told her divers would
be going down later that day and she choked back the tears once more.
    There were lots of rumours circulating. “I saw the lights of the
Edinburgh train enter on the bridge at quarter past seven and when it reached
the high girders there was a sudden shower of sparks. Then the train dropped to
the river...” she heard one man explain to a crowd of spectators eager for any
titbit of news. There were other stories of mailbags being washed ashore at
Broughty Ferry.
    She slowly made her way back up the narrow dark lanes to the little
flat in Kemback Street.
    Mary carried on through a daze. She went to work at the mill while
her neighbour Mrs Miller downstairs looked after the youngest two with Patrick
still attending school. When the factory hooter went at dinner time, Mary would
scoot out of the factory gates and down the hill to the train station, to see
if there was any news. In the evening she fed the children and put them to bed.
There were no songs or stories for them during this dark time.
     
    Two weeks later, she was given the news that John had been added to
the list of victims of the Tay Bridge Disaster. An inquiry would be held
eventually making this official. But Mary realized, that she had to accept the
fact that John had probably been desperate to get back to the family that
evening, and had managed to get on the train to Dundee, where he had perished
along with all the other passengers.
    The gale had been so violent that night, that nobody had heard the
noise of the great iron structure falling over the howling wind. The part of
the bridge that had disappeared was that in which the lattice girders stood
above the platform and so the train was enclosed in a huge iron cage at the
time of disaster.
    Mary grieved sorely for John, and each evening as she collapsed into
her bed she did not know how she had managed to get through the day. The nights
were the worst when the children were all fast asleep and she crawled into the
little bed she had shared with John. She was filled with guilt for not being
able to be a good wife to John. She knew he had adored her, and loved her, with
all his heart. But Mary had never been able to return that love fully, and this
had been especially noticeable in this little bed, where she had just lain down
and put up with John’s lovemaking. Mary hated herself for the way she had
treated him, and she wished with all her heart, that he would walk back in the
door one more time and she would invite him lovingly and enticingly into bed.
He had been such a good father, too. He had taken on Patrick as his own child.
Not one of the neighbours