Illusions Of Change (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 6)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Cotton brocades, marcella, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, sir. In time we might consider buying up a dyers as well. The heaviest cloths are often patterned. At least five years before that can be, sir.”

  It was ambitious, but it made sense, and George had learned the trade thoroughly in his father’s mills, both spinning and weaving.

  Hollowell’s mill looked prosperous enough from the outside, the woodwork recently painted, the fence well-kept, the brick walls of the gatehouse lime-washed, all windows recently cleaned. Four men were waiting outside the gatehouse, three in a line, one a pace to the front. Very military in appearance.

  “Good morning, sir. Mr Star, is it? My name is Postlethwaite, sir, senior foreman under both Mr Hollowells, sir. The attorneys instructed me to remain here, sir, and I have presumed to keep the two gate guards and the handy-man in employment, sir, hoping that you would approve.”

  None would have been paid and it would be possible in law to repudiate them, leaving Postlethwaite to find any wages he might have promised them. Quick thought suggested to George that he would have lost everything portable in the mill without a presence at the gate, and the handy-man had obviously kept himself busy.

  “Wages will be paid on Friday, Mr Postlethwaite, if you would be so good as to submit a full tally of these men’s hours, and your own, obviously.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The foreman gave a small sigh of relief. His own tiny savings would have been wiped out had the new man refused the obligation.

  “What happened, Mr Postlethwaite?”

  “Young Mr Hollowell, sir, that’s what happened! He was used to come in one day a week when his father was alive, and must have kept his eyes and ears tight closed when he did, sir. I gave him the list every week, when he became Master, of jobs that needed doing, of money that must be spent on the looms and the loading bay and the leaks in the roof, and everything that needed seeing to, and he just nodded and smiled and said it would be seen to, and then did nowt, not a bloody thing, sir, if you will excuse me!”

  “Leaks in the roof? Have they been repaired?”

  The handy-man lifted a finger, requesting permission to speak. George raised an eyebrow, implying that he could interrupt, but needed be relevant – an answer not a set of excuses.

  “Beg pardon, sir. Which, I ‘ave done what I could wi’out spending out proper-like. They is all bin patched-like, and is dry for now, but come autumn when the winds do blow, well, sir, I ain’t goin’ to say what’ll ‘appen then, maybe.”

  Cotton did not survive being rained on. The mill must be kept dry.

  “By Friday, Mr Postlethwaite, I shall require, in writing, a statement of condition and a list of necessary works to the fabric of the building. I shall need to know whether we must bring in builders or attempt the work ourselves. If builders, then I must be informed of the best local firm to use. You will not be able to obtain a price for the works in the time available so I shall speak with the firm or firms you nominate myself.”

  “Yes, sir. There is more work needing to be done, sir, the flooring to the loading-bay especially. Should I give you the detailed reports, sir? I kept copies of all that I gave to young Mr Hollowell, sir.”

  George found the manager’s office, dusted the chair before he sat in it and opened the drawers in the large, new, leather topped desk.

  The drawers on his left were stuffed full of unanswered correspondence, reports and demands for payment.

  Those to the right contained neatly organised files relating to chapel and missions, rigorously up-to-date and, the few he read, showing evidence of clear and incisive thought on the issues dealt with.

  “Fool!” George had no tolerance for men who showed contempt for the business that made them their living. He emptied the right-hand drawers into the rubbish bin.

  The first and most urgent problem he faced was what to do with Postlethwaite, whether he should keep him or show him the door, there being strong arguments in favour of both courses.

  If George was to be master in his own mill then he must ensure that the existing foreman remained subservient. Without Postlethwaite there would be no mill; it was clear that he had fought a rearguard action that had prevented things becoming far worse than was already the case. Equally, if he remained then he would be likely to keep his habits of command. It would be the height of ingratitude to sack him, but it might be a damned nuisance to keep him.

  On balance, and with no commitment made absolutely, it would be convenient to continue to employ the man, to use his knowledge and discover whether he would transfer his loyalty.

  There was not a single clerk left in the offices and George had no idea where to find anything. He needed, for example, to know how much Postlethwaite was paid and would prefer not to ask him directly. He left the manager’s room, not bothering to lock the door, there was little of value to the firm in there.

  “Mr Postlethwaite!”

  The foreman came at the run, well aware that his future was uncertain.

  “We need clerks, as you will know. Are any of the original men without employment?”

  “Four of the five, sir. They were older men and have not found it easy to secure another place. The junior had saved a few pounds, sir, and I believe has gone foreign.”

  “Can you ask the four if they wish to return?”

  “Yes, sir. Wages, sir?”

  “Initially, at their old rate. Any arrears will be paid them, if they come back.”

  “They will certainly be happy to work again on those conditions, sir. Should I seek a junior, sir?”

  “Not until we return to production, and I have a young man in mind for his first job, will offer the post to him. What repairs need be made to the looms? How many could be put back to work tomorrow? What of the engine? Can we raise steam immediately? What of the steam man?”

  “Johnny Twist, the steam engineer, a good man, sir, except when he takes a holiday, which is what he’s doing at the moment.”

  George was able to translate the meaning of that statement.

  “Drunk, is he?”

  “Has been for a sennight, sir.”

  “Then leave him in his gutter to ferment. I have no use for that sort. I will make arrangements for a young man to come in his place. What is our engine, who made it?”

  “Boulton and Watt, sir, down in Birmingham, at the Soho Works, one of the best, sir.”

  “Well maintained?”

  “Johnny Twist worked an apprenticeship as a boiler man, sir. He is very good with machinery of all sorts.”

  “A pity he is a bottle hound then. Drink and steam do not mix, Mr Postlethwaite. It requires very little of carelessness to blow a boiler and kill a large number of men. It will not happen here, sir.”

  “Am I to tell all of the men that drink is forbidden, sir?”

  “On the premises, most definitely. And any man who comes through the gate smelling of alcohol will go straight out of it again, never to return. I will have quality from this mill, Mr Postlethwaite, and that means sober, hard-working men and women. As soon as the mill comes into profit I will raise wages, and will devise a bonus system as well, but from the very start I will want seven hundred and twenty minutes of work from every twelve hour shift, quality work as well!”

  They would make more money, but it would seem they would work for it.

  The bulk of the older hands, men who had only worked in the one mill in the whole of their lives and could not conceive of doing anything else, came back. Most of them were grateful for the opportunity. A month out of work had frightened them, had left them close to eviction from their terraces, had already forced them to the pawn shop with precious little family treasures. Men with large families had gone hungry to feed their children and had been facing the prospect of having no food at all in the house within a few days. It was not their fault that their jobs had been destroyed, they had worked their best up until the last minute, had watched helpless as a feckless fool ha
d ruined himself and them. Now they had to rebuild their lives, dependant on a new and unknown master, and all they could offer was obedience.

  George was aware of the men’s plight, and was grateful for the docile workforce it created. It would make it far easier to change their habits of work if they remained in a state of trepidation. He went back to his father and borrowed his engineer for a month and visited Matthew to beg a bright young man of him to become his steam artificer. A week and there was a plume of black smoke rising above the mill and a day later the clattering of the looms announced the return of prosperity to the local streets.

  Tom and Frances arrived in London for the season, reaching Town a few days before the eagerly anticipated public execution of the Cato Street Conspirators. Public interest was particularly high because it was to be an old-fashioned, heads-off treason display. The original sentence had been hanging, drawing and quartering, but there was a strong feeling that those days were past, together with a belief on the part of most judges and legislators that the legal provision for such a process no longer existed. As a result the most violent of the group were to be hanged and then decapitated after death so that the heads of the traitors could be displayed to the crowd.

  Opinion in Society was that the conspirators had probably been unwise to state in writing and again at their trial that they planned to put the heads of Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth on show outside the offices of the Committee of Public Safety they intended to form. Retaliation was fairly much inevitable after such a provocation.

  The Conspirators had resisted arrest and had killed one of the men from Bow Street as they were taken up. Consequently there was less public unease about their trial, despite the admission by the Crown that there had been at least one Home Office informer amongst their ranks. With an actual murder that could easily be proved against them there was less need to dwell on the political elements of their offences and the trial was able to proceed quite tidily. Most of the press was prepared to accept that the main conspirators had been caught in the process of planning violent treason – they had, after all, freely admitted to the intention to kill the Prime Minister and all of his cabinet – but there were still doubts about the extent of entrapment involved.

  Lord Liverpool himself was commonly thought to be uneasy that he had been offered as a target to encourage Thistlewood and his confederates to bring matters to a violent head. He had doubts about the efficiency of the Home Office agents and had been heard to ask just how sure they had been of making their arrests before the atrocity rather than after.

  Mr Smith had no doubts at all – they had triumphed, yet again, had been so successful that there was now a shortage of active Reds in the country. It was a significant difficulty, in fact, because there would be no alternative to disbanding the intelligence network he had created if it could find nothing to do, and, obviously, he believed, if one once did away with counter-revolutionaries then one gave a free hand to the Reds to re-establish themselves. Viewed dispassionately, he admitted, it seemed that his department needed to create Reds in order to have some to destroy, but that ignored the reality that there were actual Reds out there, just awaiting their opportunity, hiding away until they had a free hand. Still, he consoled himself, there were always Irish troublemakers in plenty, they could make do with them for the while.

  “I presume you do not wish to attend at the hangings, my dear?”

  “You presume rightly, Thomas. Shall you go?”

  “No. I have seen a sufficiency of dead men in my time, and have never taken any great pleasure in so doing. Robert informs me that some of his acquaintance are making up a party of a dozen, having hired a large bow-window for the purpose. Thirty guineas for the day, he informs me, they have paid. They could have bought the house for less than two hundred, so it seems an expensive pleasure to me. Not to worry, the event will be a great money-maker for almost all. Line-drawings of all five are already on sale for a penny apiece, though they say that the depiction of the black man is causing the printers some problems. Against that, of course, the aficionados tell me that a mulatto on the scaffold is a very rare event in London, thus adding to the entertainment.”

  “Only rare in London, Thomas?”

  “It would seem that men of colour are less common in London. They are more to be seen in Liverpool and Bristol, and quite a few in South Wales. Portsmouth as well, of course, the navy having discharged a good few at the end of the wars.”

  She realised that the Severn and the Mersey had been home to the main slaving ports, asked if that was the reason.

  “Very much so! For two centuries or thereabouts it was the habit to offer bright young slaves the chance to join the crew as interpreter for, normally, three voyages, they to be discharged as free men thereafter. Any youngster with a few words of English and the willingness to learn more could find a way off of the slave deck and, if he survived his voyages, be put ashore with a hundred or more pounds in his pocket. Some signed on again and tried to make their way home; many more found that a man with one hundred pounds could marry a small farmer’s daughter and be welcome on the land, so there is a population of some thousands of brownish folk to be found in those areas.”

  It made sense. She knew that quite a number of Canadians had married women from the Indian tribes there and some had returned to England with their families. There was bound to be a mix of all sorts of people in a sea-going country such as England, now that she considered the matter.

  “Will there be more of these plots, Thomas?”

  “A few always. There will be malcontents, and idealists, who see the simplest way forward as over the bodies of their enemies. But, they will have little support while the great mass of the people have full bellies. Let the bad times return and the ideas of the Reds will be far more appealing; for the while men have too much to lose to go into revolution. We have a number of quiet years coming, which is fortunate, bearing in mind the idiocy of our politicians and rulers. This damned divorce!”

  The Bill of Pains and Penalties was being presented to the House of Lords first, which was not uncommon for bills which were controversial but not directly a matter of party politics. The Lords were felt to be able to give a less biased view than the Commons and to give a lead to the country as a whole on difficult questions. In this case the Lords were less than thankful for the honour done them.

  Those who voted against the Bill knew that the King would remember their names whilst those who stood in favour doubted His Majesty would bother to reward them. ‘Heads I lose, tails nobody wins’ seemed to be the general opinion.

  Book Six: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Seven

  “To the tailors, Brown?”

  “Yeth, my lord. Anno domini, my lord. We do not become younger, I regret to thay, my lord, and middle age exactth itth penalty upon the figure, my lord. At least two incheth, my lord, on the waistline. Hith Majesty the King habitually wearth a Cumberland Corthet, my lord; loyalty might applaud an imitation of such practiceth.”

  “I will not wear a bloody corset, Brown! Our dearly beloved monarch may choose to make an idiot of himself – indeed, it may well not be a matter of choice – but I shall not!”

  Brown concealed his snigger, his revenge complete. His lordship had become less attentive to his dress and person in the past year, had tended to ignore his valet’s words, had on one much to be regretted occasion made a local purchase of footwear. It had been time to remind him of his obligations to society and the wider world of elegance.

  “I presume you wish me to visit the haberdashers and hatters as well, Brown.”

  Brown bowed his agreement, suggested that a more fashionable bootmaker might have much to recommend as well. The local man in Kettering produced a very comfortable boot, but…

  “Hoby, I presume?”

  “He ith still, I believe, the best, my lord.”

  “You have no particular maker in mind for my shirts, Brown?”

  �
��No, my lord. Whoever might take your measurements, my lord, the work will still be put out to the women in a garret at a penny an hour!”

  “No better than slave labour at that pay, Brown.”

  “Far worse, my lord. A man who hath paid for a slave will feed him enough to keep him alive.”

  Sweated labour in the clothing industry was a public scandal, but it was generally accepted that nothing could be done about it, starvation wages being better than no wages at all, or so it was said.

  “Your hair, my lord, must be cut by a fashionable hairdresser. My own expertise in the tonsorial field is, I fear, no longer adequate. A stylish crop ith the only way to conceal the pink element that hath begun to obtrude.”

  “Scalp?”

  “Only at the rear, my lord. Though the forehead hath, shall we thay, begun to grow more pronounced.”

  “I am allowed to grow bald at my age!”

  “How fortunate, my lord.”

  Tom retired to Frances’ dressing room, demanded to know whether he was truly going bald.

  “Only a little, my love.”

  He left wondering just how tactful she was being. He told Brown to summon a hairdresser.

  “Are we to be very busy for the next month, Frances?”

  “We have invitations for every night, often more than one, and most of them we should accept for considerations of politics and courtesy; where choice is necessary then it may be possible to dispatch James to one, ourselves to the other. James is invited with us in almost every case, so that is possible. Only a few hostesses have given him a separate card, acknowledging him as his own man, and these are almost all exclusively politically motivated, I believe. I gain the impression that the bulk of the ladies wish to size him up, to determine whether the disability of the leg affects him as a matrimonial prospect and that may the more discreetly be done in his parents’ company.”