A Web of Dreams

by Tessa Barclay

  If Jenny were to be reinstated, Jenny would be the controlling power. That was not at all what Lucy wanted.

  ‘Well, all I can tell you, Lucy dear, is that I was given the strong impression the entire staff would walk out if I brought in a stranger to take over the management.’

  ‘Good God, are you going to allow yourself to be ruled by the work people?’

  ‘Some of them are irreplaceable, Lucy. Good weavers and dyers can go anywhere and get good wages, but even in that category, Ronald Armstrong is exceptional. You know Jenny sometimes said ‒’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, your father and Armstrong ‒ it was because of them the cloth was so superior.’

  ‘Then don’t you see? We’ve lost Father; we can’t afford to lose Armstrong.’

  ‘You’re not going to submit to blackmail?’

  ‘Darling, I don’t want to get involved in a lot of unpleasantness and uncertainty. I mean to say, you know I don’t really want to be involved in running the place at all. I really think Armstrong may be right. Jenny ought to be left to go on as before.’

  Lucy argued, grew quite heated. Ned, puzzled, said, ‘I don’t know why you take it so personally, my love. You almost sound as if you would do anything to keep Jenny out of ‒’

  ‘No, no, how can you be so silly, Ned? I’m only thinking of what would be best, and of course, darling, you know best. We’ll do whatever you say.’ It was no part of her wish to have her dislike of his sister out in the open. It might give rise to questions ‒ questions she couldn’t answer either to him or to herself.

  Her antagonism to Jenny had been heightened by the manner of William’s death. Jenny had moaned, ‘It’s our fault!’ as she knelt by the twisted body. Lucy knew ‒ she knew ‒ she was in no way to blame. Madame Adair agreed with her. The old gentleman had lost his footing and tumbled downstairs ‒ not uncommon in elderly people, a sudden onset of giddiness. As to the quarrel that had brought him out on to the landing ‒ well, if he hadn’t interfered, he wouldn’t have been there.

  Jenny’s view was that she herself should have handled the quarrel better, should have soothed ruffled feathers and got rid of the upstart dressmaker later, without a fuss. She should never have let Lucy run wild in the first place. She should have dealt with the problem of Lucy’s boredom in some other way than allowing her to spend money and behave like a provincial version of a London hostess.

  Her mother claimed all Jenny’s attention. Millicent seemed stunned. For all that Madame Adair spoke of William as ‘the old gentleman’, he had been only fifty, with twenty of his three score years and ten still to come. Millicent simply couldn’t believe that he had been taken from her.

  So Waterside Mill had been left to look after itself. When Ned at last came to ask her to go back to work, Jenny was almost startled. It had all drifted away from her. It seemed quite unimportant.

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to go back, I’ll have to start looking for a manager,’ Ned told her in perplexity.

  ‘A manager?’ That was different.

  Two weeks after the funeral, Mistress Corvill was seen coming in through the front entrance of Waterside Mill. A sigh of relief seemed to go through the building. It was November. It was time to be planning and experimenting for the spring patterns. New tartans should have been forming on William’s handloom as specimens, Jenny’s sketchbook should have been full of graphs and charts, Ronald Armstrong should have been holding skeins of yarn up to the light to examine new shades. So far nothing had been done. But now the mistress was back. All would be well.

  And so it was, on the whole, except that young Mr Corvill would come from time to time with his wife, to stroll through the place and give opinions. Mr Corvill was somewhat of a fool and often more than a little drunk. Mrs Corvill, though sober, was a sore trial. She complained if she got dust on her white gloves, expected a chair to be placed for her wherever she happened to be, and caused one of the girls to lose her concentration so that a machine seized up.

  ‘Please, Lucy, don’t talk to the girls ‒’

  ‘But I’m sure they like me to take an interest. After all, I am the owner’s wife.’

  ‘It took Maisie four hours to undo the damage you caused ‒’

  ‘I caused? Don’t be absurd, Jenny. You do like to make a fuss about every little thing!’

  A stream of buyers and agents came to the mill to look at the new designs. Sometimes, if they were important customers, Jenny would invite them home for dinner. These were the occasions when Lucy loved to shine. The table would be dressed with an épergne full of flowers, crystal and silver would glitter on the table, the meal would run to at least eight courses.

  Lucy would chat. ‘My husband’s plans to extend the mill next spring … My husband’s cloth has been bought by the Viceroy … My husband expects some Japanese agents to pay a visit next year …’

  Ned would smile and pass the wine. After dinner Lucy would play the piano. The guest would stifle his yawns, eager to get away to his comfortable bed at the inn.

  Mr Tyler of Pickersville and Thomas in Chicago made his escape before coffee on the grounds that he expected a message by the new telegraph system which had just been connected to Galashiels. He was so embarrassed by his own lies that he left early next morning without placing an order.

  Despite the legend that only women gossip, men pass on malicious little stories. Word got round that it was better to escape the pains of being entertained at Gatesmuir. When Jenny had received three quick refusals of her invitations, she decided to speak to Lucy.

  ‘Lucy, I think it would be better if you entertained on a smaller scale for the men who come on business. You know, they’re tired, and all they want is a hearty meal and a cigar and then an early bed.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, my dear, I’ll run the house while you run the mill. I know what’s expected of the wife of Edward Corvill.’

  ‘But I assure you, Lucy, it’s not necessary to go to such lengths. In fact, it would be preferable to be more … more welcoming and less imposing.’

  Lucy bridled. ‘Only a very ignorant person would mistake elegance for ostentation.’

  ‘Lucy dear, don’t let’s argue; after all, we only do it for the good of the business ‒’

  ‘That’s not my view! I do it because it’s expected of a great firm like Corvill’s ‒’

  ‘What’s expected is hospitality and suitability, not a performance like a grand opera.’

  ‘Grand opera!’

  Jenny was at once sorry. ‘I didn’t mean that. But all that silver and so forth, and having a musical soiree when all the poor men want is a quiet chat ‒’

  ‘If you will allow me to run my house the way I see fit, I’ll be obliged!’

  Jenny could see it was useless. So when the next buyer from abroad called, she entertained him to supper at the Abbotsford Inn, with her lawyer and his wife as makeweights to prevent any censure about dining alone with a stranger.

  Lucy was furious. An almighty row ensued the moment Jenny got home at ten-thirty. Next morning Lucy had in revenge given orders to hold breakfast back by half an hour so that when Jenny came down, nothing was ready. Lucy descended at the new time to find Jenny finishing bread and butter in the kitchen.

  ‘Please have the goodness not to eat with the servants! It lowers the tone of the house.’

  ‘But if I had waited for breakfast in the dining-room I’d have been late at the works ‒’

  ‘If you wish to breakfast at seven-thirty alone, I’ll leave instructions to that effect.’

  ‘But that means having the servants do it all twice!’

  ‘The servants are my concern, thank you.’

  It was too much. Jenny went away quickly, wrapping her tweed cape closely around her against the December morning, and fumed all day.

  That evening she took Ned into the room that had been her father’s study, now seldom used. ‘Ned, things have got to change. I cannot put up with Lucy’s interference any more.’

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nbsp; ‘Jenny!’

  ‘I’m sorry. Lucy’s notions of how to run the house are quite wrong. She doesn’t seem to understand that part of the thing is to help with our business needs. She makes our business guests uncomfortable, she went out of her way this morning to upset my routine. And when she comes to the mill she puts everyone’s back up. It’s got to stop.’

  Ned had been having a pre-dinner dram or two. He had been feeling full of goodwill towards the entire world. Now he felt baffled. ‘But Lucy’s such a sweet wee thing, Jenny. You’ve only to tell her what you want ‒’

  ‘I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. I want things on a new footing.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure, just say the word.’

  ‘You’ll agree to a change?’

  ‘Certainly, certainly,’ Ned said, with an expansive wave.

  ‘I want you and Lucy to move out.’

  ‘Wha’?’ That was a facer. After a moment he sobered up a little. ‘Move out? Where to?’

  ‘Wherever you like. You have plenty of income and I’d imagine you could amuse yourselves perfectly well in some other place than Galashiels. Talk to Lucy about it. She might very well like to go back to Edinburgh to be near her mother ‒ or to Glasgow, where there’s always a lot going on.’

  ‘Really? You think we ought to go and live in Glasgow?’

  ‘Why not? You don’t really like the mill, so there’s nothing to keep you here, and Lucy could give parties and entertain to her heart’s content.’

  Lucy was stunned when Ned put the idea to her. At first she grasped the opportunity, then she saw she was being got rid of and wanted to resist, and then in the end she saw that it was possible to act the part of the wife of the rich and important mill owner to perfection in a city. After a week of argument and discussion, it was agreed.

  Lucy favoured Glasgow as her new home. She had no desire to live close to her interfering mother. And Ned, who hoped never to set foot in Waterside Mill again if he could help it, pictured himself really getting down to his treatise on The Influence of Greek Culture on Scottish Society in some pleasant little apartment close to Glasgow University.

  A wagon from the mill was used to take their trunks to the station the day they left. The mill workers were going home for their lunchtime mutton broth. Ronald Armstrong leaned on the big iron gate to watch it trundle by. Jenny had come out too, to see her brother and sister-in-law off on the train.

  ‘So you got rid of her,’ he said to Jenny as she paused to let the way clear.

  ‘Mr Armstrong!’

  He grinned. ‘Come on now, don’t deny it. There isn’t a soul at the mill who isn’t cheering today. She was as much help to anybody as treacle toffee on the hair.’

  ‘I think you’re being over-familiar, Mr Armstrong,’ Jenny reproved, trying not to return his smile.

  ‘Maybe I am. That’s because I feel a great interest in everything concerning you.’

  ‘Indeed!’

  ‘Of course. Whatever concerns you concerns the mill.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She was glad the remark hadn’t been as personal as it sounded, and yet she was a little disappointed.

  Lucy’s departure seemed to give Millicent Corvill a new impulse to take hold on life. Since William’s death she had kept more or less to her room, emerging only to go to church. But, urged now by Jenny, she took hold of the reins of the household. ‘If you don’t do it, Mother, I shall have to hire a housekeeper ‒ and neither of us would like that.’

  ‘No, dear, it’s bad enough having to let someone else do the cooking,’ her mother agreed. She always had the feeling that the cook was extravagant and wasteful, particularly under the regime of Lucy.

  Millicent descended to the kitchen, had a long chat with the domestic staff, and almost at once began to restore the former appearance of the rooms. Out went all the spindly new furniture Lucy had bought. Down came all the shiny curtains. Gradually Millicent found plain, comfortable replacements and the house began to seem quiet and homelike again.

  For her part, Jenny was busy. Her plan to extend Waterside Mill was put into execution. She had a railway line laid so that wagons could be shunted to the very door of the loading bay to take the big bales of cloth, thus cutting out the time-wasting loading of horse wagons.

  With the extension of the passenger rail network throughout the Borders, visitors became frequent. One manufacturer came after a promising correspondence: he made raincoats and capes from the rubberised cloth invented by Charles Mackintosh some twenty years previously. ‘My thought is this: the cloth itself is cold and unpleasant to the touch so the usual practice is to line it with a softer material,’ he had written. ‘As most of the garments are, of course, sold to people for outdoor use, it would make sense to have a hard wearing, outdoors fabric for a lining.’

  They spent an afternoon going through the pattern books. He chose two designs, the plaid adopted by the American Gun Club for its especial use and now popular throughout the world, and a dark green tartan. He left after giving a substantial order.

  Jenny was still smiling to herself with pleasure at this coup when next day another visitor was announced. ‘Mr Ross, representing Dudovsky of Moscow,’ said the chief clerk, showing in a middle-aged man of ample girth.

  ‘Mr Ross.’ She rose to greet him.

  ‘Miss Corvill. I come to introduce myself. I hope we shall meet often. My firm has hitherto contented itself with a man in London, but the demand for new tartans in the Russian wholesale houses has caused them to place me here, in Galashiels.’

  ‘Here? You mean you are going to live here?’

  ‘Precisely. I shall of course travel to Selkirk and Hawick and Walkerburn ‒ my brief is to look at tweeds as well as tartans. I hope we shall have a very profitable relationship, Miss Corvill. Ah …’ He hesitated. ‘It would make my task much easier if you would be so … ah … so kind as to let me have first sight of any new designs you bring out.’

  ‘First sight? You mean, give you favourable treatment?’

  ‘Miss Corvill, it would be greatly to your advantage. The market in Russia is enormous. Since the Tsarina followed the example of our royal family and took up the tartans, the entire Russian court has followed suit, for informal wear, you understand.’

  ‘I know the Tsarina likes Scottish tartans. I have had the pleasure of supplying them more than once.’

  ‘Not only Her Imperial Majesty, I assure you. I have visited Moscow and Leningrad and I may say that at the moment la mode d’Ecosse is all the rage, particularly for spring and autumn, those periods between the extreme cold of winter and the enervating heat of summer.’

  Jenny let him have half an hour of her time, said she would consider giving him first approval of Corvill’s new designs, and eventually signed an agreement that he should be given favourable treatment on condition he spent at least five hundred pounds per annum with her. It seemed to her a sensible arrangement ‒ there was no other agent for the Russian market with whom he was in competition.

  But Mr Ross was the harbinger of others. A French gentleman, M Lamotte, set up an office in rooms on the ground floor of the Old Commercial Hotel. She heard that a ‘spy’ from Yorkshire had taken premises in Hawick. All the cloth merchants, it seemed, wanted to have early knowledge of the new designs in the Borders so as to be first in the field at the fashion houses in Paris and London.

  ‘We’ll have to put the mill on an extra shift,’ Jenny told a meeting of her foremen. ‘It may not last beyond the year, but we must take advantage of this upsurge in business while it lasts. Can you get me extra scribblers and spinners, Mr Ritchie?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. What wages will you be offering, mistress?’

  ‘We’ll offer a shilling above the norm, so as to be sure to get them. Sixteen shillings a week as compared to fifteen. And as the mending department is short of staff already, we’ll offer another sixpence a week for menders ‒ that’ll bring the wage to sixteen and six.’

  ‘Miss Corvill …’
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  ‘Yes, Mr Armstrong?’

  ‘This won’t make you very popular with the Manufacturers’ Corporation.’

  She flashed him a smile. ‘Why should that bother me, since I am not a member of that all-male association?’

  The department foremen exchanged glances. She could make a lot of enemies if she wasn’t careful.

  ‘Come, come,’ Jenny said, with a little motion of her hands that waved away difficulties, ‘we’re all in the same boat, all starved for mill hands to take advantage of the market. We’ll all have to offer increased wages ‒ you’ll see, there’ll be nothing unusual in it by the end of the month.’

  She was proved correct. But having moved fastest, she had enough people to extend production and meet all her orders in good time.

  One evening she went home earlier than usual. Waterside Mill was still running, and would continue to do so until midnight, but her presence wasn’t required. It was fine July weather, the hills gleaming in sunshine, the heather just beginning to tint the slopes with that soft purple like the glow of a pure amethyst.

  Jenny walked up the slope through the town, nodding to acquaintances. She saw the carriage in the distance but paid no heed until she saw it go in at the entrance to Gatesmuir. She quickened her step. A visitor, in a hackney from the railway station?

  She came up with the carriage as it was turning to go back down the drive. The passenger had descended and was waiting for the house door to be opened. It was a man in a light dustcoat and a pale top hat.

  She came up to the door. At the sound of her step he turned politely. The light of recognition flooded across his face. He raised his hat.

  ‘Fraulein Corvill?’

  She went hot and cold with surprise. It was Franz Lennhardt from Hamburg.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In dreams Jenny had sometimes lived through this moment. Through the dappled shade of some sunlit glade a figure, indistinct in the half-light, would walk towards her. He would hold out his hand. When she stretched out and touched him, every nerve in her body would leap in recognition.