CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Rotten Bridge

Spring came again. The garden was bright with the flowers that Christine had planted in the autumn. Now Andrew would allow her to do no more work. ‘You’ve made the garden. Now sit in it,’ he ordered her.

Excited at the thought of becoming a father, Andrew suddenly decided to ask Dr Llewellyn to attend his wife at the birth of the baby.

Llewellyn, when Andrew telephoned him, seemed pleased. ‘I shall be glad to help you, Manson. I didn’t think that you liked me enough to ask me to do this. I promise to do my best. For now, I think that it would do your wife good to have a short holiday.’

Acting on Llewellyn’s advice, Christine went to stay with an aunt. Andrew missed her even more than he had expected to do. He spent one or two evenings with the Bolands and the Vaughans, but most evenings he continued with his research into coal dust.

He made a discovery which excited him greatly. Standing in front of the dead fire, long after midnight, he suddenly seized Christine’s photograph and cried: ‘Chris! I believe that I am going to do something important!’

Christine returned at the end of June. ‘Oh, it is nice to be home again!’ she said, throwing her arms round him. Then, as she looked into his face, her expression changed. ‘Andrew, dear, you look tired! I don’t believe that you have been eating properly.’ She was worried about him.

Andrew told her about the developments in his research.

‘How long is this going to take you?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. It may take a year, or it may take five years!’

‘Well, in that case, you will have to work to a system – keep regular hours, and not stay up too late, wearing yourself out!’

‘There’s nothing the matter with me.’

But Christine was firm. Every evening, while Andrew worked, she sat in his work room, reading. Then, at 11 o’clock, she would rise from her chair and say: ‘Time for bed!’

‘Oh – not yet! You go up, Chris! I’ll follow you in a minute.’

‘Andrew Manson, if you think that I’m going to bed alone in my state of health-‘

These last words, a joke about the baby that she was expecting, always ended the argument. With a laugh, he would stretch himself and put away his microscope.

Towards the end of July, Andrew became particularly busy with his practice. One afternoon, as he walked up the road feeling very tired, he saw Dr Llewellyn’s car outside his gate. Thinking that perhaps the baby had been born early, he ran home, burst into the house, and said eagerly: ‘Hullo, Llewellyn. I – I didn’t expect to see you here so soon.’

‘No,’ Llewellyn answered.

Andrew smiled. ‘Well?’

Llewellyn did not smile. ‘I have been trying to find you all morning,’ he said.

‘Is anything wrong?’

Llewellyn looked through the window towards the old bridge in the garden. ‘Manson,’ he said gently. ‘This morning, when your wife was walking over that bridge, a piece of wood broke. She fell. She is all right – quite all right. But I am afraid that the baby…’

Andrew understood even before Llewellyn finished.

‘We did everything that we could,’ Llewellyn continued in a voice of deep sympathy. ‘I came at once, and brought a nurse from the hospital. We’ve been here all day.’

There was silence. Andrew covered his eyes with his hands and cried to himself.

‘Nobody is to blame. It was an accident,’ Llewellyn tried to comfort him. ‘Now go upstairs and see your wife.’

His head lowered, Andrew went upstairs. Outside the door of the bedroom he paused, breathing heavily. Then he went inside.