Broken Threads

by Tessa Barclay

  He flushed. ‘Well, yes … Put like that … I suppose it was inexcusable. And I haven’t come to make excuses. I came to say that if I had known you were aware of all that, I would never have … never have tried now to … ’

  ‘To make advances?’

  ‘I didn’t get very far, did I?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘You can be very cool. I understand now that I was wasting my time, and I’m sorry not only for my actions but for the … the insult to you that’s implied in them.’

  ‘Thank you. I accept the apology.’

  ‘And I wanted to explain to you about Lucy.’

  At the name she stiffened. ‘I don’t want to discuss Lucy.’

  ‘Is it true what they say,’ he plunged on, disregarding her statement, ‘that Lucy took your little girl away?’

  ‘Please don’t let us talk about that.’

  ‘I’ve heard all sorts of odd stories since I came back. Lucy ran away with some man? Is that it?’

  Jenny said nothing. She stared into her teacup.

  Archie seemed to take hold on himself for something difficult. ‘In a way, that is typical of Lucy as I remember her. She wanted something out of life that I don’t think she was equipped to handle ‒ something grand and fulfilling in which she would play the leading role. And you have to understand that she’s very pretty ‒ at least she was when I knew her. Men find her kind of prettiness very … very enticing.’

  ‘Enticing?’

  ‘The little Dresden shepherdess ‒ will she break if you take her in your arms? The little fairy princess ‒ will she take you into wonderland if you make love to her?’ He fell silent.

  Jenny set down her teacup with a rattle. ‘You know, Mr Brunton, all you’re saying is you were tempted and you gave in.’

  ‘Yes. But she did throw herself at my head, you know.’

  ‘I know.’ She rose and moved restlessly towards the window. ‘It didn’t occur to you to wonder why?’

  ‘Well, because she had these absurd notions about herself …’

  ‘And also because you were the man I was supposed to marry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She wanted you because to take you away from me would serve me right.’

  Archie gaped at her, the laughing eyes very serious and concerned. ‘Are you saying she hated you?’

  ‘Yes. Still does.’

  ‘Is that why she … about the little girl …’

  ‘No, that was just an impulse. She was leaving home to go to her lover and it suddenly seemed a good idea to take Heather. I believe,’ Jenny said in a voice that was laden with sadness and regret, ‘that insofar as Lucy is capable of love, she loved Heather.’

  He was sorry now that he had come. He had stumbled into something much bigger and more important than his own amours of the past. He got up, came to Jenny, and held out his hand.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Armstrong. Of course I’ve only been seeing this from my point of view, from the outside. I realise now that you must have thought me a selfish idiot. I’m sorry I mentioned Lucy, or tried to excuse myself there.’

  She looked at him. Her glance fell to his outstretched hand.

  ‘Can we be friends?’ he asked, uncertain of her response. ‘It would be, on a different basis. Respect, on my part.’

  ‘I told you before. I don’t think you can be friends with a woman.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I can be friends with you, if you’ll let me. I’m not asking for anything special ‒ just to be one of your circle of acquaintances.’

  She made a little shrugging movement that seemed to say, ‘Why should I bother?’

  ‘It would matter a lot to me,’ he insisted. ‘I’d feel I was making a new start. It suddenly seems to me I’ve been playing the fool too long.’

  She smiled. He was astonished to see how it lit up her sombre face. ‘The reformed rake?’ she inquired.

  He smiled, but he was colouring up again. She had a perfect talent for making him blush. ‘Call it that if you like. But the thing about a rake is that in the end he has to reform. Either that, or he begins to get bored with himself.’

  ‘Oh, to save you from boredom I had better agree.’ She took his hand for a moment, but let it go at once.

  He knew she wasn’t going to believe in his reformation ‒ if that was what it was ‒ without good evidence. He was trying to frame a sentence or two that might impress her with his good intentions when the sound of carriage wheels on the drive stopped him short.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Strang,’ announced Thirley. The newcomers bustled in, glad to get close to a fire on this raw November day, glad to be offered tea immediately.

  After a few exchanges, Archie took his leave. He felt very strange. It was as if someone had taken hold of his life and shaken it, like one of those paperweights in which a snowstorm whirls. What the landscape would be like when the snow cleared, he wasn’t quite sure.

  To Jenny’s relief he didn’t follow up this encounter with more gifts from Edinburgh emporiums. They happened to meet at a charity concert, were civilised to each other, and that was all. Thirley was quite disappointed. She’d hoped to see Mr Brunton calling at Gatesmuir frequently.

  ‘It’s a strange thing,’ she confided to Cook, ‘she doesna seem to fancy him at all. And him the handsomest man in the Borders.’

  ‘She’s a married woman!’ said Cook, making indignant punches at the bread dough.

  ‘And where’s her man?’ riposted Thirley. ‘Oceans away! I daresay it’s good business sense, but I wouldna care for it if I were a married woman.’ She made a little pattern in the floured board with her finger. ‘The mistress has been sad a long time. A wee fling would do her the world of good.’

  ‘Much good it did the young Mrs Corvill,’ grunted Cook.

  Thirley pouted. The shame brought on the household by the young Mrs Corvill had been hard to bear.

  Certainly Jenny brought no shame on her house. She had too much to occupy her mind for any little flirtations. Winter brought the usual crop of colds and coughs among her staff, both at home and at the mill. Heather succumbed to a bout of bronchitis. Dr Lauder assured her there was no need to worry, yet she worried all the same.

  Then the letters from Ronald began to trouble her. At first he had been very businesslike. He visited woolstores, he took temporary membership in the associations concerned with the gathering and selling of the wool, he spent many hours in shipping offices.

  But when he began to travel out into what was called The Riverina, the tone of his letters changed. A touch of unaccustomed lyricism began to glow in them.

  ‘I wish I could describe to you how rich this countryside is. It gleams under the sun among the rivers. The rivers and creeks have the strangest, most appealing names ‒ the Murrumbidgee, the Waakool, Moolamein. These come, of course, from the Aborigine language, and the Aborigines are very expert sheep-herders. Not at all like our Scottish shepherds ‒ they work from horseback and tend perhaps a hundred thousand sheep.

  The distances, the open skies, the feeling of freedom ‒ it’s so exhilarating! I wish you could see it all with your own eyes …’

  And so on: descriptions of travels that took him far from Sydney and more towards Melbourne and Adelaide, accounts of long talks with the squatters, the herders. Sometimes he enclosed photographs ‒ stiffly posed waggoners alongside carts laden with fleeces and drawn by oxen, or the children of a sheep station standing proudly beside a newly purchased piano.

  When Jenny replied she always expressed pleasure and interest in these reports. But she always asked practical questions: how much wool would the farmer expect to get from a hundred thousand sheep? How long did the shearing take? Did the wool get to collection points by the farmer’s own transport, or was it organised by a waggoner?

  Sometimes the questions were answered, sometimes not. It seemed to her that Ronald’s attention was not concentrated on the business of wool for the weaving trade.

  Here at home there were other worries. In the previous
August, the Reform Act had come into being, extending regulations for factory work. Added to that was a subsidiary act which made provision for maximum hours of work and conditions in workshops for children, young persons and women.

  The manufacturers of the Borders had not been troubled by the debates in Parliament. In the first place they were sure the Acts would never be passed. Then, when they were passed, they were sure they couldn’t apply to them. Everyone knew that the Border weavers had the best conditions in Britain.

  And yet … there were thirteen-year-old boys in the mills, whose activities must now be strictly supervised. Most of the employees were women, and though they were well-treated and well-rewarded, the factory inspectors began to point out improvements that must be made.

  ‘Whatna way is that to run a business?’ complained Herbert Cairns at Jenny’s dinner table one evening. ‘The women were perfectly content the way things were. It’s all added expense, pandering to these fools in Parliament.’

  ‘But there’s fines if you don’t abide by the new regulations,’ pointed out Mr Begg in mournful tones.

  ‘Are you going to take notice of these new hours of work, Jenny?’ Cairns asked.

  ‘I think we must, gentlemen. The reputation of the Board of Manufacturers has always been excellent. We don’t want to blot its escutcheon now.’

  ‘In the name of God, why do they want a place to hang their coats and shawls? They’ve always been happy enough to hang their shawls on the end of the loom ‒’

  ‘But it is dangerous, Herbert. And besides, in wet weather they need somewhere to dry their outer clothes ‒’

  ‘It implies they’re less hardy than their mothers and fathers. It’s all rubbish!’

  And so the disgruntled argument went on. Jenny, however, had decided from the first to comply with the new regulations. She felt that Ronald would have wanted it. Besides, there was little that needed doing at Waterside. Her workforce had good conditions to begin with. An earlier ‘loosing time’, a row of hooks for coats, more protection from the working of the machines ‒ these were easy enough to give.

  The other manufacturers grumbled and delayed, on principle. They and their workforce were not on bad terms. They felt they didn’t need members of parliament to tell them how to run things.

  By the spring of 1868 the new regulations had been accepted. But the long rumbling argument, the continual meetings and persuadings and reasonings, had been very tiring.

  As if that weren’t enough, someone in Yorkshire produced an almost instant copy of one of Jenny’s new cloths. She had no doubt that one of the London warehouses had shown her pattern to a mill owner willing to make it from cheaper materials. It was vexatious in the extreme to have telegrams and cables of complaint that her new ‘Bracken’ tweed was on sale at a much lower price in rival establishments.

  No amount of investigation or complaint would bring the culprit to justice. Nor would finding him make amends unless, with positive proof, she took him to court and sued him. She knew it would cost a tremendous outlay of time, money and energy so she wrote it off. But it hurt her. She had loved that new tweed, the more so since one of Heather’s lopsided designs had given her the idea for it.

  One May afternoon she was with her maid in her bedroom, looking through the summer clothes newly unpacked from storage, trying to decide on refurbishments for the coming season. A letter was brought up by Thirley.

  ‘From the maister, mistress,’ she mentioned, having recognised the stamps.

  ‘Thank you. Go on, Baird, I’ll just glance through this for now. Do what you can with that gown ‒ but try to save it if you can, I don’t want to part with it.’

  Baird went on with the work of unpicking the frayed hem. A new gown, that was what was needed. But she knew fine the mistress would keep this one if she could, for Mr Armstrong had aye been fond of it.

  A gasp from Jenny. Baird looked up. Jenny’s face was white.

  ‘Bad news?’ asked the maid, scrambling up from her knees.

  ‘He says … he says he never wants to come back to Scotland, Baird! He says he wants me to go out with Heather, to live there!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The shock of the letter was all the greater because Jenny had expected it to contain news of his imminent return home. He had been gone a year now. In the discussions before he left it had always been taken for granted that he would stay in New South Wales for six months or so; he had been there now over nine months.

  Jenny was made unwell by the letter. She was overcome by a sick headache that drove her to her bed in a darkened room. Baird ministered to her while inwardly uttering terrible Scottish oaths towards this dunder-headed man off in the wilds of Australia. Heather sat by the bed, clutching the counterpane, very distressed at this unheard-of calamity ‒ her stalwart, dependable mother laid low like any common mortal.

  In thirty-six hours the misery was over but the anxiety remained. Jenny had no one to discuss it with except Baird.

  ‘It’s perhaps my own fault,’ she mourned. ‘Heather had that bad cough when I wrote one of my recent letters. Dr Lauder told me it would pass but I probably made too much of it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand, Mistress Armstrong.’

  ‘Well, you see, my husband says the climate out there is so exceptionally good ‒ it would be much better for Heather ‒ it’s an understandable reaction.’

  Baird thought, but didn’t say, that in the past the master hadn’t seemed too concerned about his daughter’s childish ailments.

  ‘It seems a long way to go to cure a cough,’ she remarked.

  Jenny laughed despite her anxieties. ‘It’s not just that, of course. He finds the country very much to his taste, and he likes the people ‒ hard-working and reliable, he says, and with a gritty common sense.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt they’re the salt of the earth. The question is, mistress ‒ why is he asking you to go and live among them?’

  ‘I’ve just explained ‒’

  ‘Na, na, you’ve told me the weather’s good and he likes the place, but why are you expected to give up your home and the mill and everything you’ve built up here?’

  Jenny hesitated. It was the big question ‒ but she had no real answer to it. She sidestepped. ‘He says there is great scope for a good woollen mill in New South Wales. The wool, of course, would be much cheaper ‒ no transport costs worth speaking of. Ample water supplies. I imagine it would mean building from the ground, but then that can be an advantage ‒ we could have all the latest machinery ‒’

  ‘And it would all have to be taken out from England at vast expense,’ ended Baird.

  Jenny sighed.

  ‘Mistress Armstrong, forgive me if this is a daft thing to say, but is it no true that Scottish woollens have the best name in the world?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Scottish tweed is wanted everywhere? America, Russia, Germany, Peru, Timbuctoo?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny agreed, smiling at the list.

  ‘Tell me this. Who wants Australian tweed?’

  Since Jenny didn’t know, she made no direct answer. She took another aspect. ‘My reputation would stand for something. If we set up again in Sydney or Melbourne ‒’

  ‘Your name would be a help, I quite see that. But I canna understand why you should be asked to do it. You’ve a thriving business here, the mills are working to capacity, you have a full order book, your designs are wanted by all the buyers. Why should you uproot yourself and start all over again at a disadvantage?’

  ‘But you see, Baird, you see … a wife’s place is with her husband.’

  Baird considered this. ‘ “Whither thou goest, I will go”,’ she quoted. ‘But that lassie was speaking to her mither-in-law, if I recall my Scriptures correctly. I wouldn’t argue against what you say about a wife’s place, all the same. All I’m asking is, where is your husband’s place?’

  Jenny frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He’s in Melb
ourne the now. Last year he was here in Galashiels. A few years afore that he was in Perth. Afore that it was Berlin or one of the German towns. He never settles long in one place by all I’ve ever heard. Can you be sure when you’ve upped stakes and gone out there, he won’t want to move again in a year or two?’

  ‘Baird, Baird,’ Jenny murmured, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, ‘don’t say things like that.’

  ‘Well, I’m old enough to be your mother, near enough, and I canna stand by and see you torturing yourself wi’ ideas about dragging yourself up by the roots just because your man has a sudden notion. Do you not think you ought to write and ask if he’s of a serious mind afore you start selling up the property?’

  It was good advice, and Jenny took it. She wrote at length to her husband, asking if he was serious in what he said. She reminded him of the problems, not the least of which was that though she had power of attorney from her brother, she had no right to sell his property. If they were to start a new weaving mill in New South Wales it would have to be after they had persuaded Ned ‒ and he had always said he didn’t wish to speak to Ned ever again.

  On the other hand, if they were to start entirely on their own, they would need capital. There was some money put by out of the salary she now paid herself and Ronald from the profits, and Heather of course would inherit something one day. But it wouldn’t be nearly enough. They would have to go to the banks or the merchants, and gamble on their own abilities to be able to pay off the loan.

  She ended by assuring him that she wanted to be at one with him on this important matter but she needed to know if he had thought it through to the end. She suggested they wait until he got home again to Galashiels, and then they could discuss it thoroughly. She signed it, Your loving and anxious wife, Jenny.

  The letter would take something over two months to reach him, and it would be as long again before she had his answer, unless he had meanwhile set off for home. But somehow she felt he had not.

  While she was still wondering if she had done the right thing another letter came, this time from Chalmers, the agent of William Corvill and Son in Sydney. It was full of statistics and information about the wool he had bought for her at recent auctions, but the last paragraph was something quite different.