Mistress of Green Tree Mill

by Mistress of Green Tree Mill (retail) (epub)

  ‘What I want from you is maximum effort. Anybody who’s not skilled enough or who’s too idle will go. I warn you now. But for the people who stay I’ll pay good wages. I’ll give a bonus every year and I’ll make sure that you work in safe conditions. When I was walking through the spinning sheds a few minutes ago, I saw two flash fires. I’ve just dismissed the forewoman because she shouldn’t have allowed the stoor to build up on the overhead pipes so that it could catch fire.’

  The women turned to each other and she heard them saying, ‘Did you hear that, she said “stoor”? Did you hear that, she’s fired old Armstrong!’

  Miraculously this seemed to turn them in her favour. The feeling coming off them was more sympathetic. A few even smiled when she climbed down from her chair. She walked up to each loom and introduced herself to the weaver. When she reached the end of the line and stood beside the little battler who had barracked her, she was surprised to have her hand shaken, hear a rasping voice say, ‘You’ll do all right. Armstrong was an old bitch. She had favourites and she bullied the bairns. Good luck to you, missus. We’ll back you up.’

  * * *

  Her new regime was strict and if she had not made her tour of inspection first, it could have caused a great deal of trouble. She delegated Mr Richards to carry out her orders. ‘I want a notice posted saying that anyone who’s not at their machine by the time the gates close in the morning and after dinnertime will be dismissed. That’s what the big mills do and there’s always plenty more workers waiting to fill their vacancies. We’ll not be short of people.’

  ‘But Mr Adams knew all his workers personally. If they were late he knew there was usually a good reason.’

  ‘If anyone thinks they’re hard done by they can come to see me and I’ll judge each case on its merits. But the way of working here’s far too easygoing. It has to smarten up.’

  The gates were closed as soon as the starting hooter went. Late arrivals were out of a job. Hearing about the new regime in Green Tree, which had always been regarded as an easy place to work, unemployed women took to waiting in a small crowd at the gate every morning and every lunchtime. When there were vacancies Lizzie went out personally and hired off the street to fill the empty places. She was determined that there must never be a loom or a spinning frame idle.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Cannae you rest yourself even on a Sunday?’ The question came from Maggy, who was exasperated by the way Lizzie rose as early on Sundays as she did on every other day of the week and roamed her lovely house like a caged animal, fretting, fussing, fuming. ‘You’re only waiting for it to be Monday so’s you can go back to work,’ Maggy accused.

  Lizzie was pulled up short in her pacing across the fine Aubusson carpet of the drawing room. ‘I don’t like Sundays,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you go to church?’ asked Maggy, who thought that ladies in Lizzie’s situation of life should dress up smartly every Sunday and show themselves off in their own pews at the Steeple Church.

  Lizzie gave a shiver. Her memories of attending church focused on funerals. ‘I don’t believe in God,’ she said shortly.

  Maggy was shocked. ‘Don’t say that! He’s been good to you. Things could be far worse than they are now. Look at everything you’ve got…’ She swept an arm around indicating the lovely room with its long windows overlooking the river. Every item was brightly polished and in place. It looked like a museum. Tay Lodge, the house of her dreams, had given Lizzie far more pleasure when she was only a visitor than it seemed to do now that she had owned it for three years. Because she regarded it as a kind of shrine to Mr Adams, she maintained it immaculately, paying for a trio of gardeners to manicure the lawn and pick every weed out of the neatly planted flowerbeds; she kept three maids and a cook inside the house to look after herself, Charlie and of course Maggy, whose real function in life was to care for Lizzie, to stick up for her no matter what.

  She knew that Maggy and her father had been talking about her, for only a few days previously David had also tackled her about her absorption in work.

  ‘You never come to see us,’ he said sadly. He was still living at the Castle Bar with his restive younger sons and his red-haired daughter Lexie, who was looked after by a nursemaid.

  Remembering his stricken face, she suddenly said, ‘All right. I won’t go to church but I’ll go down and see my father. Get Charlie dressed and we can all go together. When I’m in the Castle Bar, you can nip over to see Rosie – and George.’

  She knew that Maggy would understand that though she would not go into the Vaults herself, she wanted to know every detail of her brother’s life.

  The Castle Bar was closed and the air smelt beery and still when they entered the side door. Lizzie sniffed. ‘This place smells dreadful,’ she announced as she climbed the stairs.

  What she saw inside the flat disturbed her even more. ‘That child’s dress needs washing and her hair’s all tangled. It’s a scandal the way you’re bringing her up, Father.’

  David regarded his youngest daughter with a concerned face. It had not occurred to him before but she did look a little grubby. Lexie however was a cheerful, taking child and a solace to him in his old age. He hardly ever went out without her and loaded her into his dog cart to drive her around town with him on his various ploys. She enjoyed these outings and never cried or made a fuss. She was not like the normal toddler and was easy to look after because she fell asleep wrapped in a rug on the floor of the dog cart if they were late returning home and would always eat whatever was presented to her.

  When Lizzie charged him with spoiling the child, he said, ‘She makes me feel young again.’

  ‘But it isn’t fair on her. She’s being brought up like a tinker’s bairn.’

  ‘Do you think she’d be better with you?’ he asked suspiciously, because he did not know why Lizzie had suddenly descended on them and was making such a fuss.

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘I told you before I’m far too busy to take on another bairn and Maggy’s enough to do looking after Charlie. It’s up to you to look after her but you should find her a good nurse. If you can’t afford somebody better than the wee lassie who’s here now, I’ll pay.’

  Before Lizzie and Charlie left the Castle Bar they heard feet running up the stairs. Maggy burst through the door and it was plain to see that she had been weeping.

  ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened?’ asked Lizzie anxiously.

  Maggy could only hold out a newspaper and sob, ‘It’s my brother Johnny. You ken he’s in San Francisco. Bertha’s just brought in the paper and look what it says, the whole place has been flattened by an earthquake.’

  On the front page of the crumpled sheet enormous headlines screamed: SAN FRANCISCO DEVASTED - THOUSANDS DEAD IN FIRE…

  Lizzie took it from Maggy’s hand and read the horrifying details. An earthquake had hit San Francisco at a quarter past five on a Wednesday morning and within a hour the whole place was blazing. By the time the report was written it had been burning for three days and three nights and the lurid glare of the flames was visible for a hundred miles. It seemed unlikely that there were many survivors, for nothing but piles of rubble could be seen where San Francisco’s proudest structures once stood and there was no water left to put out the fires that raged through the ruins. The mains had been pumped dry in fruitless efforts to staunch the flames. The report said that some people were camping out in tents on the outskirts, living in squalor but glad to be alive. Millions of dollars had been lost, the city was a smoking ruin.

  She passed the paper over to her father and they looked helplessly at each other, not knowing what to say. Over the years, letters from America had been sent at six-monthly intervals to Rosie, who passed them on to Maggy, and Johnny’s fluent pen had made California sound like paradise. He wrote that there were palm trees lining the streets, oranges and lemons grew in the gardens, and everybody lived well.

  He’d found work in a big newspaper and was highly regarde
d by his employer but sometimes, he wrote, his dreams took him back to Dundee and he woke with a start, thinking that he’d caught a whiff of the smell of jute. More than once he’d leapt out of bed because he dreamed that a mill whistle had sounded somewhere in the darkness of the Californian night.

  Now it looked as if he might be dead. Lizzie put an arm around Maggy’s shoulders, remembering vividly the day that Johnny had asked her to look after his sister. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home. Some people must have survived the earthquake and I’m sure Johnny’s among them. Remember what the gypsy told your mother about him.’

  * * *

  What Johnny’s sisters did not know was that while Maggy was weeping for him, he was quite safe. Far from being a disaster for him, the earthquake was to mark a turning point in his career.

  Later he was to tell biographers how he remembered standing among the smoking ruins of the small hotel which had been his home since he arrived on the West Coast. Everything he owned had gone in the holocaust but he said to himself: It’s going to be easier for me to adjust to this than for other people because I know what it’s like to live with nothing. From childhood he’d existed from hand to mouth. The people who had been used to more took it worse.

  Armed only with enthusiasm and energy, he teamed up with a friend who owned a printing press that had miraculously escaped the devastation, though the shed in which it was housed collapsed around it. Johnny and the press owner grubbed about in the earth till they’d collected up all the scattered print letters and re-sorted them in their trays. Then they wrote and printed a news broadsheet which they handed out free among the tents of the homeless.

  More than a quarter of a million souls had escaped the devastation and were living in temporary camps. They were all avid for news which was provided by Johnny’s broadsheet, called the San Francisco Courier after the Dundee paper on which he learned his trade. It was the only newspaper available and the disoriented people relied on it for information.

  Within days the enterprising pair had found another press, hired some men and expanded their operation. By the time the rebuilding of San Francisco had begun John Davidson and his partner Arthur Reitz had enough loyal readers to launch a paper with a cover price, and advertisers docked to them.

  * * *

  An atmosphere of gloom hung over Tay Lodge, however, till the happy day that a letter arrived saying Johnny was safe. After that things returned to normal, with Lizzie spending most of her time at the mill and Maggy fully occupied coping with Charlie, who was proving very intractable. When she heard Maggy’s complaints about his wildness, Rosie exploded with rage.

  ‘You and Lizzie Mudie are both making a stick for your ain backs with that laddie. He’s been indulged since he was a bairn. I though you’d at least have more sense.’

  Charlie, in his expensive kilt and Glengarry bonnet, heard this exchange and paid it no heed. He knew he was the Boss of his world. Whatever he wanted, Maggy or his mother would get for him. Lizzie especially was prepared to distribute money in order to keep her domestic surroundings peaceful, for at work there was anything but peace.

  The first sign of trouble from the other mill owners came when news was leaked by malcontents in Lizzie’s office that she was poaching custom from people who had always bought from other Dundee mills. She did this by cutting her prices and speeding up delivery dates as well as encouraging her agents to sweeten purchasers with gifts and entertainment. Her tactics worked so well that Skelton’s twelve ships a year were soon not going to be enough to cope with her demand.

  ‘Put them up to fifteen,’ she told Skelton, and knocked down his price.

  At first the jute magnates in their club regarded her as a joke. ‘It won’t last,’ they told each other as they stubbed out their cigars in silver ashtrays, but soon the stubbing became more vicious when they discussed the woman at Green Tree.

  ‘She’s taken the Kirkcaldy linoleum factory order off Brunton. Filched it right under his nose!’ said one.

  ‘She’ll come a cropper,’ said another. ‘There’s not enough loom space at Green Tree for all the orders she’s taking.’

  He hit on Lizzie’s weak spot. She could find the orders and she could buy the jute cheaply enough but she could not make looms work forty hours a day. She had to find more space.

  The nearest mill to Green Tree was about the same size and it belonged to a family called Sutherland. Local people called it Sooty’s Mill because its chimney was notoriously given to belching forth black smoke. The man who owned it was Richard Sutherland, grandson of the founder, and he looked with distaste upon the woman who’d taken over the neighbouring mill, especially when she started turning what had been a sleepy concern into a booming enterprise.

  He was far from welcoming when she turned up in his office and requested a business meeting.

  ‘I hope this won’t take long, Mrs Kinge,’ he said stonily, ‘I’m a busy man.’

  His tone implied that men by nature have to be busier than frivolous women, but she controlled her tongue and sat down facing him.

  ‘I’ve come to put a proposition to you,’ she said.

  He raised one eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  ‘It would be to our mutual advantage if we merged. I know you’ve spare loom capacity and your order books are low. I’ve more work than I can cope with and I need more space. Why don’t we share my work?’

  He glared at her. Such nerve to sit there in her smartly tailored grey suit and big purple hat like someone off the stage and talk to him like that – order books low indeed. How did she find that out?

  ‘If I merged with anyone it wouldn’t be with Green Tree. I’d merge with one of the big mills,’ he said rudely.

  Lizzie half rose from her chair, fists clenched, and fixed him with furious eyes. ‘I heard you were a damned fool and now I know it’s true. Go ahead, merge with anybody you like, but I’ll beat you in the end. Just you see if I don’t.’ This exchange was reported back to the clientele of the jute-barons’ club, who all expressed astonishment. Some even laughed. One or two, however, decided that they’d have to stop David Mudie’s daughter stirring up too many ripples in their comfortable sea.

  ‘I think we’d better talk to her about the way she’s going on,’ said a senior man, who was so rich that he and his family would be able to go on living in luxury even if their mills lost money for fifty years.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said a man who was his equal in fortune. ‘Where can we talk to her? You don’t suggest we should go and visit her at Green Tree, do you?’

  ‘We could talk to her here in the club.’

  ‘Nonsense, this is a men’s club.’

  ‘It’s a jute-men’s club. It’s the club for people who own jute mills. She owns Green Tree and that’s a good enough excuse for us to invite her here and make her see sense. She can’t go on poaching business from all and sundry like a scavenging dog.’

  ‘It’s a flash in the pan. It won’t last. Let’s just ignore her,’ said another.

  ‘We can’t ignore her. She’s not going away,’ said the first magnate.

  Eventually they decided to do nothing, but he was proved right. The next thing they knew was that Lizzie had built another two work sheds in the Green Tree yard and filled them with the latest machinery bought from a workshop on the edge of Dundee’s docks. She negotiated a good price because the workshop, though renowned for its faultless engineering, was idle and glad of the order.

  Then, beneath her rivals’ noses and before any of them knew it was for sale, she brought off a major coup by snapping up a tiny mill whose property abutted on to the back of hers. By her tactics she doubled the capacity of Green Tree. Instead of being just a wisp of storm cloud on the horizon, she became a huge black cumulus over the heads of the jute-barons. It was not so much that she was making money while the others were in recession that worried them – because she was a woman the insult was felt far more keenly.

  A charming young scion of the Brunton family was s
ent to Green Tree to invite its proprietor to the jute magnates’ annual dinner in their club rooms.

  ‘There’s a sort of business meeting after the dinner,’ he said. ‘Everyone hopes you’ll be able to attend.’

  She looked sceptical but she was equally gracious when she accepted the invitation. ‘I’ll be honoured to be there,’ she told him.

  The dinner was held in June and some older club members boycotted the event when they heard that a woman was to be present. Gossip of their disapproval filtered back to David, who repeated it to his daughter.

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t go,’ he suggested.

  She was outraged at his cowardice. ‘Of course I’m going. Nothing could stop me.’

  In spite of her bravado however she was nervous while she dressed for the dinner and kept changing her mind about which piece of jewellery looked best against her silk gown. She had taken care to order the most expensive one available through Draffens’ exclusive department and it was sent up from London in a huge box lined with black tissue paper. The skirt alone contained fifteen yards of material. Following mourning protocol she’d progressed in the colour of her clothes from black through grey to purple and had now arrived at the final stage when mauves and violets were allowed.

  No more reds, greens or bright blues, she thought sadly as she smoothed down her amethyst-coloured dress. When she slowly turned in front of her pier glass, a painful stab of memory hit her, for the smooth curve of her white shoulders looked soft and seductive in the lamp light. All at once she was carried back in memory to nights of lovemaking with Sam, and with an angry shrug she drove these unsettling thoughts out of her mind. She could not bear the fury of frustration they induced in her.