Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Welcome to the world of Mollie Walton!
A Letter from the Author
Glossary of Shropshire Dialect Terms
Rachel Woodvine’s Fidget Pie
Tales from Memory Lane
Readers First
Copyright
To my lovely Mam, my compass in fair weather or foul.
Prologue
The iron bridge glimmered in the moonlight. A woman trudged across it, carrying a precious package. She could barely walk, one foot dragging as she struggled to place it before the other, dry leaves crisping underfoot, her pale face wincing with every step. She peered up at the full moon, took some distant hope from it and looked down at the face of her child, asleep in her arms, wrapped in rags. She tucked the cloth tighter around her tiny baby, trying to protect it as best she could from the autumn chill. She could feel its bones. It was thin, too thin and too quiet. She had given her child every ounce of milk she could but it had dried up. She was too hungry herself to nourish her child. Weak and exhausted, she knew she could not go much further. With all of her will, she reached the centre of the bridge. The centrepiece stated the date it was built: 1779. Fifty-five years ago, just over a half century, since the town itself began to bloom alongside its namesake. Her master had been a boy then, a spoilt boy no doubt; that family always spoiled their children. It was why they all turned out that way, all turned out bad. She looked down at her babe in arms again.
‘Not you, little’un,’ she whispered, her throat hoarse from thirst. ‘You’ll be different. You’ll be sunlight, not moonlight.’
She kissed her child’s head and looked up at the imposing mansion, built on iron money, that loomed above the town, above the bridge, above them all. If only she could keep going. But her legs were now as heavy and immovable as stone. She had come to the limit of her endurance, the final shred of her strength gone. She heard footsteps. She looked up to see a man in a broad hat walking purposefully across the bridge. He was coming towards her and he was talking to her.
‘Good woman,’ he was saying, ‘can I assist ’ee?’
Good woman, she thought. I was a good girl, once. Her thighs were shaking. She felt her knees buckle. ‘Will you help me, sir?’ she croaked. ‘Please, hold my baby as I canna stand no longer.’
The man, who she now saw wore the simple, curious clothes of a Quaker, came to her quickly and took the child. The moment the weight of her warm bundle was lifted from her, it was as if her body knew before her mind did that it was time to rest. She felt her legs give way and the bridge came up quickly, the ground smacking her face with a hard, iron slap. She heard her child whimper in the kind man’s arms. It was the last sound she heard.
Chapter 1
Fire and smoke, suffocating and infernal, reached up into the sky, staining it red and black for miles around. A traveller approaching Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale would be met with the wonder of it and stop to stare. The blast furnace belched with heat and life all day and all night, the whole year round. Men fed its mouth with fuel, men like John Woodvine, furnace fillers who nourished the monster to try and meet its hunger, but it was never satisfied. Always, the furnace wanted more. They filled the barrows with coke, iron ore and limestone, pushed them out along a gangway and tipped the charge into the boiling throat of the furnace. Inside, the heat did its magical work and out came molten iron in the cast-house below. Around them, the fire, smoke and gas billowed and blinded them.
A shift at the furnace was twelve hours of hard labour and in the heat of this summer, it was hard indeed. John Woodvine thought to himself, and not for the first time, It’ll be summat like this in Hell. John would come home filthy with smut and ash and so exhausted of limb and heart, his wife Rachel and his daughter Anny barely had a word from him before he collapsed on their hard bed. Rachel would wake him to eat before he fell back into a dead sleep again till the birds about their cottage sang and day had come, then he would have to start it all again. Excepting Sundays, his one day of rest, when he could talk to Rachel and watch Anny grow and giggle, sweet child that she was.
‘Woodvine!’ shouted the foreman. ‘Stop your dreaming, mon!’
John shook his head to rid it of his daydreams. A moment of distraction in this awful, dangerous place could be fatal. Men were injured here; blinded, lost fingers, lost arms, received dreadful burns from fire, steam or hot metal, suffocated, bruised and battered, limbs crushed. Some never recovered to work again; some died. You had to have your wits about you. He looked about him, focused his eyes and forced himself to concentrate. But he had a bad feeling that something was amiss.
‘Look out, there!’ someone shouted and John whipped around, terrified of what terrible thing was coming this time.
*
Anny looked at her fingers. They were red raw from scrubbing clothes. They had welts from carrying the buckets back from the water pump, a third of a mile away. They were not even her clothes, or her parents’ clothes either. Her mother took in washing to make ends meet. Anny did not go to school. She had been working for three years now, since she was nine years old. She looked up at her mother, careworn and sweating in the heat of a hot June day, as she pushed a shirt through the mangle, huffing and puffing.
‘Let me do that for you, Mother,’ Anny said and went to her, but her mother shook her head.
‘I worry about your fingers,’ she said, and shooed her daughter away. ‘I canna have you losing your fingers.’
‘Dunna be daft, I’m turned twelve. I anna got little fingers anymore.’
Her mother looked up at her and smiled. ‘You’re right. I always think of you as my babby. But you’re a young lady now.’
Anny smiled then saw her mother’s face fall. What was she thinking about, that made her sad? ‘What is it?’
‘Just thinking that I wish I could give you more, Anny.’
‘But you give me everything. You give me all your love, every day. And you feed me and keep me warm.’ She wiped the sweat from her brow. ‘Leastways, too warm, sometimes!’
They laughed. But her mother was still frowning. ‘And you taught me to read and write when everyone said what’s the point of it, for a lass like me? But you did it anyway.’
‘Yes, well, maybe they were right. What can you do with your book learning here? I was learnt to do it by my mother. But what could I ever do with mine, in this house, with these piles of washing ever biding for me and never seeming to lessen?’
‘It’s good we have plenty of washing. Because washing means money and that means we’ll be all right.’
Her mother smiled proudly at her. ‘Always the sharp one. Oh, but I wish you could be a lady, Anny. A proper lady like that Margaret King. You were born in the same month, in the same year. I wish I coulda given you everything she had.’
Anny wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘Oh, I wouldna want her life. Not all that curts
eying and how-do-you-do. I wanna be here with you and Father.’
‘Oh, your father! Your father’s bait!’ cried her mother. ‘His slice of pie is there on the side. He forgot it this morning. Run and take it to him. He’ll be clemmed without it.’
Anny grabbed the cloth-wrapped slice of fidget pie, his favourite. Her mother lovingly made a portable dinner for her father six days a week. It might be a slab of rabbit or pigeon pie, or if times were hard it would be filled with crow or sparrow. Or it might only be a Dawley doorstep, simply a hunk of bread spread with butter or sometimes cheese. Or if a pig they had shares in had been butchered, it might be his favourite: a thick wedge of the gammon, apple, tatties and onion pie he loved so much.
‘You’d best hurry, lass!’ cried her mother, but Anny wanted to do one thing before she went. She grabbed a stubby pencil from the stool beside the hearth where she would sit and write stories and poems of an evening. Taking a scrap of paper her parents saved up to purchase for her, she scribbled a quick note: I love you more than anything, even more than cake! She slipped the note inside the cloth and sped from the room.
Anny was thrilled to be away from the endless washing and the heat inside their tiny house. She ran across the dusty yard, their home flanked by six other dwellings shoved up against each other. She thought, It’s as if those builders wanted us poor folk to take up as little room in the world as we can. Some of the neighbourhood wives outside their tiny houses looked up and saw her whisk by. One neighbour, Mary Malone, taking the scraps out for the pig, called to her, ‘Lucky littl’un!’ ribbing her for escaping work. ‘Where are you heading, lass?’
‘There and back to see how far it is!’ cried Anny, and ran off. It was a bit bold, but folk didn’t seem to mind her kind of cheek. They liked her clever replies. And people liked to smile at her. Her father always said she was a laughing lass, a kind one and sweet-natured. She knew she was not overly pretty, but she had an open, friendly face dotted with freckles. Her beauty was all in her thick red hair, as her mother would say, the colour of a fox’s coat. She was clever like a fox too, though never sly. Some said that Woodvine girl was too clever for her own good.
Her mother had taught her to read and write. She had some ambition for Anny, but often said she could not see how any of them could escape the narrow confines of their situation as poor ironworkers. Her parents told Anny she was a ray of sunshine in that dark world of iron ore and coal dust and endless toil. Despite the hard work at home, Anny was always cheerful and took her greatest pleasure in anything that used her mind.
‘Dear heart,’ her mother would call her sometimes. ‘One day you’ll escape this place for good.’ But Anny didn’t want to escape it. Despite everything, she loved her life here by the river. As she moved through the trees towards the water, the air buzzed with summer heat and insect life. Butterflies fluttered along the banks of yellow and pink weeds blooming haphazardly along the riverbanks. On the river itself, a variety of craft passed by, barges, trows and wherries carrying people and produce and the odd circular coracle paddled by a fisherman apiece. The shouts of watermen and the clangour of the forges downstream rang along the banks, muffled only slightly in the thicker parts of the wood. The water flowed smugly along, lazy and warm that day. It seemed proud of itself, how it made life here possible for every living thing – water voles, rats, otters, ducks, moorhen, snipe, chub, shad and elvers – as well as the people who needed it to survive. For the mighty River Severn provided folk with water to drink and wash with, also transporting the goods and materials that industry swallowed and vomited out into the world from this leafy, deep-wooded part of Shropshire.
Anny trotted along the river path, enjoying her burst of freedom from the toil of washing. But her fun was short-lived, for the air grew thicker as she approached the furnace, filled with heat and the stink of industry. Soon she saw the blast furnace, set up above the riverbank, belching out cruel fire into the already sticky warmth of the summer afternoon, and the racket of the ironworks was roaring over her.
Anny climbed up the bank to gasp at the furnace. It never ceased to amaze her. She thought it awful, in the true sense of the word: a thing of awe. She was proud her father worked there. His seemed an important job, a vital one, sending iron out into the world to make pots and pans, railings and boot scrapers, hearths and grates, benches and balusters, window frames and sills, eaves and gutters, even bridges and boats. She clutched her father’s lunch and stared at the crimson flames, felt the blast of heat in her face, before looking down to scan the figures around and about, searching for her father. But there was a big group of men all bent over something in the yard before the furnace, some shaking their heads, some waving their hands in distress, calling out to others who came running. Something was wrong. Something had happened.
Her pride in her father’s work replaced with terror, she ran across to the huddle of ironworkers and tried to peer through the gaps between their backs. Someone was on the ground. She could see a man’s legs poking out. They were still, very still.
‘Who is it?’ she said, but nobody could hear her little, high voice behind them. So there was nothing for it but to thump on the backs of the men closest to her. She simply had to get through this wall of men to see who was on the ground. Her fists pummelled them as she cried out, ‘Let me through!’ The bodies parted and she heard gruff shouts of ‘What’s this?’ and ‘Oi!’ but she didn’t care. She simply must know. She saw the man’s naked chest, slicked with sweat, smut and matted hair and then, with a horrible shock, saw the bloody mess of his arm, burned and crushed. His arm was destroyed. But she had no time to be horrified, no time to feel sick or look away. She peered at his face, turned away from her, covered with black. They often joked that all ironworkers looked the same, their features disguised by filth when they worked. She bent over the man’s face and felt her heart leap into her mouth. Was it him? Was it Father?
Chapter 2
Slap! Hard and swift, right across Margaret’s cheek, catching a tooth against her lip, so she knew it would bleed afterwards.
‘You will go to Grandfather’s wake, you little wretch. And if you tell Papa I hit you, I will deny it and you know he always believes me over you.’
Margaret dabbed her fingers against her mouth and there it was: blood. She looked at her elder brother Cyril who saw the blood too and smirked proudly. He took pride in his ability to maim and wound, to hurt others in any way he saw fit.
‘Now clean yourself up and present yourself downstairs forthwith. You’re an embarrassment to this family.’
Cyril turned on his heel and left the room, leaving the door open, as even door-shutting was beneath him. Margaret stood up from her bed and closed the door, catching a glimpse of a maid, Lucy, who gave her a quick, sad but understanding smile. She wanted to run to Lucy, even though she did not really know the girl. Lucy had a nice face and she felt Lucy would understand her and sympathise with her. Margaret had seen Cyril shout at Lucy, too, so she knew the girl must feel the same. But it was forbidden by her father to converse beyond what was strictly necessary with the servants. As an ironmaster, Mr King would not countenance fraternisation between his daughter and that other breed of person, a lowly servant. Even the ironworkers were beneath him. He conducted all his business with them through his estate manager, Mr Brotherton, a chatty man with red cheeks whose booming voice frightened Margaret a little, though he was friendly. Lots of things frightened her. Margaret knew what a bitter disappointment she was to her father, knew she had caused great harm to the family, killing her mother in childbirth and thus was born cursed. She carried the weight of that daily.
‘Now then,’ she tried to comfort herself, inspecting her cheek in the dressing table mirror. She could powder it to cover the red mark. The bloody lip would be impossible to hide. She’d have to invent another clumsy fall, all too easily believed by her father. Her face powdered, she said aloud, ‘That’ll have to do.’ She talked to herself from time to time, mostly because
there was nobody else to talk to.
She left her bedroom and crept down the stairs, the hubbub of her grandfather’s wake drifting up to her, filling her with her usual dread of social occasions. She liked gentle people, talking quietly to quiet folk. But her family’s gatherings were always noisy, full of loud-mouthed relatives, sharp-faced and unforgiving. She knew she wasn’t like them and she knew she was a disappointment. As she approached the door to the drawing room, she steeled herself and turned the handle. As usual, nobody noted her entrance and she was able to slink over to a chair in the corner without incident. The room was populated by a crowd of relatives all dressed in black, holding cups and saucers or tiny plates of cucumber sandwiches and thin slices of fruit cake. Her father – Mr Ralph King – was holding forth about his father – Mr Ralph King senior – who had been buried that morning. Margaret had not loved her grandfather. He was a bullying man. A few months ago he had had a funny turn and since then had been bedbound and wordless, with staring, accusing green eyes that disturbed her. Her father was saying what a great man he was, a pillar of the community. ‘Beloved of nobleman and commoner alike,’ said Mr King.
‘Beloved? Stuff and nonsense. Not even I liked him. And I was his wife!’
An embarrassed silence fell over the room and Margaret stared at her grandmother, Alice King, the matriarch of the family and now its oldest member.
‘After all, I only told him yesterday that he was a cold man, an iceberg of a man. He had no feelings. Like stone. Like ice. I told him that. Only yesterday.’
Nobody spoke. Awkward glances were swapped. Her husband had died over a week before. Grandmother could be sharp and cutting. But Margaret admired her for her straight-talking, no-nonsense approach to life. She wished so much that she was more like her. They said that when she married into the King family, she ruled it so imperiously that she earned the nickname Queenie, and it had stayed with her ever since. Margaret was a little afraid of her grandmother’s moods, but Queenie was the only member of her family she could talk to. Their conversations were often brief, but at least her grandmother made time for her every now and then. At least Queenie did not seem so very disappointed in her shyness – she did not indulge it – but she seemed content to let Margaret be watchful and quiet, without punishing her for it, as her father and brother did.
The Daughters of Ironbridge Page 1
