Broken Threads

by Tessa Barclay

  Ned’s wife perforce got caught up in the work. Jenny saw it happen, and couldn’t help being glad. For there was no doubt Lucy had felt her nose put out of joint when she came home from her travels. She had thought to amaze the populace with her tales of life in Asia Minor, to tantalise the ladies with her exotic clothes. But what did she find?

  She found a society very subdued by the loss of the Prince Consort. Worse, she found a sister-in-law who received all the attention and consideration because she was expecting a baby.

  Now, however, she was meeting men of politics and letters. She gave tea parties at which the tables were decked with little Union flags. She helped make shirts and knit scarves for the Union soldiers. On the whole, it was quite enjoyable.

  Even so, her attention never seemed to wander far from her sister-in-law. ‘Don’t you find it very wearisome to have to wear such unfashionable clothes?’ she murmured to Jenny, when she came down one morning in a loose mantle.

  ‘Needs must,’ said Jenny, glancing down at herself. ‘Baird is letting out my gowns. Such is life these days.’

  ‘She’s right, Lucy,’ said Millicent Corvill. ‘I’m strong against women lacing themselves up tight so as to get into their narrow waists at a time like this. It harms the child.’ She rose from the breakfast table to go upstairs for bonnet and cape. It was nearly church time.

  ‘You’re not going to church?’ Lucy said rather enviously to Jenny.

  ‘No, I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘I thought you were always saying how well you feel?’

  ‘Yes, I feel well. I just don’t feel like church.’

  Lucy’s lips parted in surprise. Simply to refuse to go was an action quite beyond her. The family expected her attendance: the upright citizens of Galashiels all went to church ‒ therefore it followed Lucy must go.

  But oh, how she longed to get out of it. She hated the boring sermons, the unaccompanied hymns, the kneeling on the bare boards for prayers. If she had to observe the proprieties by attending a service, she would rather have gone to the parish church where at least there was pleasant architecture to look at and the comfort of kneelers.

  Resentment rose in her. ‘I suppose you don’t want to go because you feel so clumsy getting down to pray and lumbering up again,’ she said unkindly.

  Jenny, about to address herself to baps and butter, looked up in surprise. ‘I’m not going because I don’t want to,’ she said, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re taking advantage of the tradition that pregnant women can have whims and fancies.’

  ‘Lucy,’ said Jenny, ‘when it’s your turn, I promise not to be envious if you decide to stay at home on a cold March Sunday.’

  ‘My turn! It’s never likely to be my turn.’

  The maid came in, bearing smoked fish on a server. There was a little silence until she withdrew again.

  Then Jenny said in a gentle tone, ‘Your turn will come, Lucy. Don’t worry about it.’

  Lucy pushed aside her plate with unexpected violence. ‘No it won’t ‒ not ever!’

  ‘But, sister-in-law ‒’

  ‘You never thought to ask, did you? The years are going by and I’ve never had another pregnancy since I lost my first baby. No, no, you never thought to ask ‒ but that’s what happened, that’s what Ned did to me when he knocked me down!’

  ‘Lucy!’ cried Jenny, shocked beyond words. She got up and came round the table to Lucy, attempting to take her hands.

  Lucy, jumping up, eluded her. ‘There’s never going to be a baby for me now,’ she said, the words spilling out scarcely above a whisper.

  ‘But … are you sure? Did the doctor …?’

  ‘He told me. There was damage after my miscarriage.’

  Jenny’s mind went back to that dark time when Ned had been out of his mind with alcoholic poisoning. As he was taken to the ambulance, he had resisted, and in the ensuing confusion Lucy had fallen. The baby she had been expecting consequently made its entry into the world too

  young to survive.

  But nothing had ever been said to suggest she couldn’t have another. Now that it had come out, Jenny understood her sister-in-law’s envy. She regretted now that she had been so overflowingly happy about the coming child. How it must have grated on Lucy, all the planning and looking forward, the making of the layette, the choosing of the cradle.

  ‘I wish you’d told me, Lucy,’ she said with a sigh. ‘It’s the kind of thing that one woman should tell another.’

  ‘Oh yes, and have everybody saying I was a poor wife to Ned. And now,’ said Lucy, frowning and shivering a little, ‘I suppose you’ll tattle about it and everyone will know ‒’

  ‘Of course not! What makes you think I would ever ‒’ Jenny broke off. A thought had struck her. ‘But, Lucy, you have in fact told Ned?’

  Her sister-in-law was moving to the door of the dining room, head turned away.

  ‘You haven’t told him?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Lucy muttered, and made her escape.

  So, it was quite clear that no one except Lucy and the doctor in Glasgow had ever known this secret. Naturally she wouldn’t want to discuss it, but nevertheless, it made a difference.

  Because the child Jenny was now carrying would be heir to William Corvill and Son of Waterside Mill.

  Ronald was still in the house, though he was preparing to go to St Aidan’s, where the service began later and ended earlier than the Secessionist Church. Jenny went upstairs to him. She had protested at Lucy’s accusation of ‘tattling’, but she felt this was something she must discuss with her husband.

  He was looking for his gloves as she came in. ‘Changed your mind?’ he said. ‘I don’t think you should go out ‒ that wind’s biting.’

  ‘No, Ronald, it’s something quite different. Put down your hat and coat. I have to tell you something.’

  Her serious expression made him pause. He threw the thick black overcoat on the bed, led her to the cushioned chair in which she felt comfortable these days, and looked down at her.

  ‘Lucy been baiting you again?’

  ‘Lucy!’ She was taken aback that he should speak her name at once.

  ‘Oh, if there’s a cloud on your brow, it’s usually that one who’s put it there. Dear sakes, I’d love to shake her till her brains rattle, if she has any.’

  ‘Ronald, don’t speak like that about her. I know she’s difficult ‒’

  ‘Difficult!’

  ‘She was brought up with different values from ours. She ‒’

  ‘She never lets a chance go by to prick at you. The way she puts it, you’d think having a baby was a sin against elegance and propriety ‒’

  ‘There’s a reason. Ronald, I’ve just been talking to her and she blurted it out. She says … that she can’t have children.’

  ‘What?’ He was startled, then second thoughts came. ‘But I understood ‒ didn’t I hear there had been a baby ‒?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the point. She lost it, very early in her time. And the doctor told her she would never have another.’

  Ronald went to the fireplace to kick at the remains of the morning’s bedroom fire. ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You see what a lot it explains? No wonder she’s been so … so …’

  ‘So ill-natured. Well, mebbe it’s that, though I noticed from the first that she leaped at any chance to take you down a peg or two.’ He stared down at the small flicker of life in the fire. ‘Are you sure it’s true? She’s not just saying it to get sympathy and make you feel guilty?’

  ‘Ronald! She wouldn’t do that!’

  ‘Oh, would she no? She’s been sore put out at the way she’s had to take second place ever since she got back from her legendary trip to the Middle East. I wouldn’t put it past ‒’

  ‘No, no, my dear, this was the truth. She didn’t mean to tell me, it all came gushing out, and then she was terribly afraid I’d tell everybody and make her look small.’
/>
  ‘And now you’ve told me.’

  ‘Never let her know I’ve told you, Ronald. Promise me.’

  ‘I’m not likely to be having little confabs with Mrs Edward Corvill, Jenny.’

  ‘No, but never let it slip out, never ‒ I was going to say, never taunt her, but I know you never would.’

  He stooped, picked his wife up out of the chair, and kissed her while they wrapped their arms about each other. ‘My lass, you’re too tolerant of that girl, but it’s like you to be so. However, I know you. Why have you told this secret to me, instead of wrapping it up and putting it away with the other skeletons in the family cupboard?’

  ‘I want your opinion. It’s important. You see, husband, I think it’s very likely Ned doesn’t know.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Ronald inelegantly.

  ‘From the way she acted I think, in fact I’m almost sure, she’s never told Ned.’

  ‘Mercy on us,’ said Ronald, and let Jenny go sufficiently far to look at her troubled face. He smoothed back her dark hair from her brow.

  ‘Well, then, don’t fret about it. It’s none of our business.’

  ‘But Ronald …’

  ‘It’s none of our business, Jenny. It’s up to Ned and Lucy how much they confide in each other.’

  Jenny nodded, resting against him with some relief. But conscience forced her to go on. ‘You see, Ronald, Ned owns William Corvill and Son.’

  A silence.

  ‘Waterside Mill and all that it implies is legally Ned’s.’

  Still no reply.

  ‘If what Lucy says is true, and I feel it in my bones to be true, Ned can never have an heir.’

  A long indrawn breath. Then Ronald said, ‘Dear God. What a mess.’

  They stood in silence for a moment. Then Ronald began to untie his cravat, as if preparing to change into less formal clothes.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I think we ought to sit down and talk about this.’

  ‘No, darling ‒ please!’ She looked really alarmed, he noted. ‘If you change your mind and stay at home, Lucy will know I’ve told you and we’ve talked about it.’

  ‘Oh.’ His hand paused in its tugging at the silk bow. ‘Aye, you’re right.’

  ‘You must go to church as you intended. We’ll talk about it this evening.’

  Evening, when they had gone to their own room, was a time when they often had long, undirected discussions about the usual problems that came up ‒ at the mill, at the house, in the community.

  That evening they went upstairs as soon as Ned’s reading from Macaulay ended. It was clear Ronald’s mind had been ranging far all through the preceding hours.

  ‘Tell me, Jenny, has Ned made a will?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Kennet insisted on it when Father died. As far as I remember, it leaves the firm to Lucy. In the event of their having children, the will was to be revoked in favour of another. Mr Kennet has the draft. I think it goes to the effect that everything goes to his son or, if no son, to his eldest daughter ‒ something like that.’

  ‘Nothing to you?’ Ronald said, shocked.

  ‘Oh yes, you know of course that Mother and I own the house and grounds here, and I was to get ‒ I forget what, a share of the profits throughout my lifetime.’

  ‘It’s damnable!’ He was angry. ‘The ingratitude of it! You earn every penny he spends on himself and that doll of a wife ‒’

  ‘Ronald ‒’

  ‘Don’t protest, it’s a disgrace and if you hadn’t been brought up a strict Huguenot woman you’d feel it. Jenny, where’s your business sense?’

  She sighed and tried to explain. ‘It was always the way in the Huguenot community. The men managed the business and the things of the world, the women ran the home and brought up the children. I never imagined myself inheriting anything to do with the business ‒’

  ‘But you made it, you built it up, it’s yours if it’s anyone’s.’

  ‘I know, I know, but I never did it for the money, Ronald. It was to be someone, to achieve something ‒ not for the money.’

  ‘I accept that. But things are different now, my lass. You are the moving spirit in William Corvill and Son ‒’

  ‘No, no, I’ve stepped aside ‒’

  ‘Ha!’ snorted her husband. He patted her hand with kindly tolerance. ‘You’re about as capable of stepping aside as an old barge-horse ‒ you’d drown in the canal water if you didn’t keep to your well-worn path.’

  Jenny felt herself blushing. ‘I’m sorry, Ronald, I never meant to get in your way.’

  ‘Did I say you had? It’s true I thought to see you keep to the home-place more, but who else could have handled those insurance rascals? Who had dark checks on the loom for when they were needed? And who’s drawing up plans for enlarging Waterside to while away her pregnancy?’

  ‘Oh! I didn’t know you knew about that.’

  ‘No, I never noticed when you hastily put away sheets of drawings in the desk drawer. Nor did I observe you pacing out the distance to the boundary wall of Messiter’s Mill.’

  Jenny began to laugh. ‘You’re gey clever, Ronald Armstrong.’

  ‘I’m not as green as I’m cabbage-looking, as the saying goes. But look you here, lassie. All that just goes to show I’m right in what I say. You have the good of William Corvill and Son at heart, you make it a success ‒ and it’s grossly unfair that Ned never makes any acknowledgement of the fact.’

  ‘I don’t want Ned’s gratitude ‒’

  ‘But you ought to have justice. Ned ought to pay you a salary, just as he pays me ‒’

  ‘No, no! I could never ask it!’

  ‘And,’ said Ronald, disregarding her protest, ‘he should leave the firm to you.’

  ‘It’s impossible, Ronald ‒’

  ‘Because I’ll tell you one thing,’ he ended, rather grim, ‘if anything ever happened to Ned, and Lucy inherited, she’d have us out of there so fast our boots would make sparks on the stones.’

  There was enough truth in this to make Jenny very thoughtful. Then she said, ‘She wouldn’t do anything that might make her look bad in the eyes of society. Nor would she want to damage her own fortunes.’

  ‘I’m glad you see her clearly enough to admit that.’

  ‘And in the first place, Ronald, Ned isn’t going to die. He’s got forty of his three score years and ten still to come.’

  ‘Yes?’ her husband demurred. ‘And when he has some setback that tips him over into drink again, can you guarantee he won’t fall under a carter’s dray?’

  Jenny put her hands up to her ears. ‘Don’t say things like that!’

  ‘Ach, I wish you didn’t have such a fondness for the man, Jenny! It hurts you even to think he might scratch himself on his own tie-pin. Well, let’s suppose he lives a long and honoured life. The time must come when he realises he’s not going to have any children ‒’

  ‘That’s looking too far ahead, my dear. And Ned isn’t thinking of things like that.’

  ‘No, his mind is set on raising two thousand pounds for a first aid wagon for the Union Army.’ Ronald sighed. ‘Nor can we mention any of this to him, I suppose.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Unless …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you really going to expand Waterside Mill?’

  Jenny went to the bureau by the window. From the drawer she took out sheets of cartridge paper. She had never been good at representational art but she had drawn up in pencil a careful plan of the mill as it now stood, with a rough sketch of its frontage and a view of the abandoned mill which stood at the back.

  ‘You see Messiter’s goes down to the Old Mill Lead, which never proved satisfactory as regards the flow of water.’

  ‘But that, of course, could be remedied if someone would pay an engineer to construct a proper water gauge.’

  ‘As you say,’ Jenny agreed, suppressing a smile. ‘My thinking is this. It’s time for William Corvill and Son to extend their range into plain tw
eeds ‒’

  ‘Plain tweeds?’ Ronald said, astounded.

  Jenny had had the idea in her head a long time. Once, sitting on the hill above Galashiels, she had looked down at the colours of the town on a cloudy day. She had seen soft, muted tones ‒ slate grey, sandstone red, river-water brown. She had thought then, I could make a tweed cloth, a soft mixture cloth, with those shades. It could be as beautiful in its way as a tartan. One day, I’ll make a plain cloth.

  ‘There’s a coming market for soft tweed,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said her husband drily.

  ‘I’m going to get Ned to speak to Mr Kennet about buying Messiter’s.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ But there was no real question in the tone. ‘Well, while you’re speaking to Mr Kennet, it wouldn’t be difficult to introduce the notion of a fair share of the firm being put in your name.’

  ‘No, Ronald!’

  ‘But why not? You’re not asking for anything unfair. You’re only asking for your just deserts.’

  ‘But Ned and I … we’ve never discussed such a thing. We’ve never had any thought of it …’

  ‘Then it’s time you did.’

  ‘It sounds so grasping!’

  ‘Jenny,’ Ronald said, ‘if you won’t ask it for yourself, ask it for the boy. When he comes into the world, he deserves to have a share of what his mother has built up.’

  His words silenced her objections. Though her upbringing made it impossible for her to insist on rights for herself, she wanted everything that was right and good for Ronald’s child.

  So in the course of the next few months she put the idea of the expansion of Waterside Mill to her brother. Once he had been convinced that this was a good and workable idea, he took the project to their lawyer.

  Mr Kennet had been half-expecting something like this for a long time. He had been the family lawyer ever since they had come to Galashiels and, moreover, was part of their social circle. His antennae had been telling him for almost a year that Mistress Corvill ‒ or Mistress Armstrong, as he must force himself to call her ‒ would want to enlarge their premises soon.