Read Online Abbeyford Remembered by Margaret Dickinson - Free Book Online

for years to come.
    Foster had joined a card school where Squire Trent frequently played. By making himself a good friend to the drink-sodden, sad old man, Lloyd Foster had by now manoeuvred him into a helpless position. To repay his gambling debts to Foster, Squire Trent was obliged to sell off yet more of his land. And with Foster’s blarney he made it seem as if he were doing the old man a favour instead of a disastrous disservice.
    â€œDidn’t I tell you I could do it?” Lloyd Foster boasted, waving a piece of paper under Evan’s nose. “An’ all legal-like too!”
    â€œHow much have you got?” Evan’s eyes gleamed as he grabbed the paper out of Foster’s fingers and scanned it eagerly.
    â€œMy God!” he exclaimed when he saw the figures written there. “Twice as much acreage as I thought you’d get and at half the price I thought you’d have to pay!” He looked up at Foster admiringly. “ You crafty devil!” he grinned.
    Foster laughed and slapped Evan on the back. “An’ it’s all in your hands now, me boy. ‘Course the land belongs to the Railway Board, they laid out the money, you know that, don’t you?”
    Evan nodded. “Of course.”
    â€œAnd now,” Foster said softly, “ the contract’s yours.”
    â€œThe Board agreed, then?”
    â€œThey did too. When I saw them in Manchester last week about that,” he jabbed his forefinger at the paper Evan still held, “I told them I was wantin’ to spread me wings and fly like an eagle.”
    â€œAnd they let you go – without working out your contract?” Evan showed surprise.
    â€œDidn’t I tell them you were me right-hand man, that you knew as much about the building of dis railroad as me, and that, as long as the engineer checks everything, they’ll have their railroad on schedule, if not before? By the way, they want to see you next week – just to make it all official.”
    Evan nodded. He’d had little cause in his life to thank any man for favours, and now he found his gratitude to this man impossible to express. But the irrepressible Irishman needed no thanks. “An’ you’ll not be forgetting your side of the bargain, now, will you, me boy?” For a moment, beneath the banter, there was the hint of steel.
    â€œNo – no,” Evan said swiftly, trying to sound reassuring, but even he could not be sure his wayward daughter would comply.
    During the first weeks of autumn Carrie and Jamie, locked in the bliss of their growing love, each living only for the next moment when they would meet and touch and hold each other close, had been oblivious of the world around them. For Carrie it was an escape from the harsh reality she knew into a dream of tenderness and joy she had never believed could exist. Even Jamie, entranced by Carrie – this wild beauty like no other girl he had ever known – forgot, for a time, his drunken grandfather, his sullen employees, the dwindling estate, and the threatening railway over the hill.
    Now, cruel reality was crowding in upon their private world.
    It was pay-out night and the navvies descended into Abbeyford like a band of marauding Red Indians. They wanted liquor and because Lloyd Foster was an employer who believed that he could extract better work from his men by giving them what they wanted from time to time he had arranged that a quantity of ale was on hand.
    So it was a drunken, rowdy mob who ran, whooping and yelling, down the hillside into the peaceful village below, looking for sport of any kind. They were rough, tough men who worked hard and played hard too.
    â€œCome on out, you village wenches,” shouted one banging on the door of a cottage, whilst behind the door a mother clasped her young daughters to her, her eyes wide with fear. “Hush,” she whispered fearful that the girls’ terrified whimperings would be heard.