Wise Child

by Audrey Reimann

  Wise Child

  by

  Audrey Reimann

  Published by Audrey Reimann at Smashwords.

  Copyright Audrey Reimann

  Everyone knows me as Isobel now. I have not used the name I was born with for years, yet within half an hour of arriving in Macclesfield I passed my old enemy in the street and heard her say to the woman on her arm, 'My God! Lily Stanway! What's she come back for?"

  Silk mills and secrets. All of Lily's young life has been dominated by undercurrents among her elders that she could sense but not understand. The ties that bind the Stanways, Hammonds and Chancellors are never discussed, yet the younger generation are deeply aware of them. And when they grow up and fall for the very people they must not, cannot marry, it looks as if the delicate facade of inheritance, blood and property will collapse and draw the three families to ruin with it.

  Chapter One

  Macclesfield. May 1948

  Everyone knows me as Isobel now. I have not used the name I was born with for years, yet within half an hour of arriving in Macclesfield I passed my old enemy in Chestergate and heard her say to the woman on her arm, 'My God! It's Lily Stanway!'

  I jumped, hearing Doreen Grimshaw's flat tones, turned my head and caught the other girl's reply: 'Lily Stanway? What's she come back for?'

  They glared after me and I knew it again - the nervous leap of the pulse, the metallic taste of fear. I have long since settled old scores with Doreen, so why does it come back to me now - the childish dread that Doreen will uncover my deepest, most shameful secrets and, jeering and mocking, hold me up to ridicule for them?

  My old tormentor's face has set into hard lines. We're the same age, twenty-nine but she looks older than I with her brown hair cut short, permed and set in a parody of the 'bubble cut'. I keep my dark hair at shoulder length and wear very little make-up but Doreen is plastered in Max Factor. She is wearing a New Look dress that swirls about her thin legs, six inches' above clumsy white platform-sole shoes. I'm wearing a full-skirted tangerine suit with a nipped-in waist and flared peplum and black patent-leather high heels. My suit was made in Paris and Doreen's dress was clearly made here from a length of cotton print. Oh, God forgive me! I sound spiteful and I know I'm not. Dressing well and fashion have played a big part in my life.

  I really don't care tuppence for Doreen's opinion. But I care about Macclesfield. I belong to this ancient town. All that I am, all I aspired to be, was fashioned here. My youthful ambition was to marry a good man who would be a kind father to the dozens of children I wanted. We'd live in a big house in the hills and I'd be looked up to for what I was, not pitied for being Mam's daughter.

  I did it once. Can I do it again? Can I rise above my beginnings when I was little Lily Stanway, shunted back and forth between my grand- parents' farm in the hills and Mam's shop on Jordangate?

  Can I live here again? I am not homesick for Macclesfield, but an old unsatisfied curiosity might make me return. My new husband will join me here in two days' time. He will want an answer. It is ridiculous that at last I have a choice about my future and instead of being rational I'm shaking in my shoes because I passed Doreen in the street

  You'd imagine old fears and excitements were behind me, forgotten and buried as so much else ought to be. Yet I am here, reacting in the same way to Doreen and to Macclesfield, and knowing how much I've changed in the last three years I half expected Macclesfield to have changed in my absence.

  Nothing has changed.

  Absence should have made me see my home town objectively; from a distance as it were, for when you have your feet planted, rooted in a place you cannot see it all of a piece.

  Now if you were a migrating bird you'd see it all of a piece. You could spot Macclesfield easily from the air. The medieval town is set on an escarpment in the foothills of the Pennines, to the west of the mountain range where the hills fall away to the plains of Lancashire and Cheshire.

  You could live all your life here and not know this. You could live all your life here and only know that Macclesfield has scores of steep cobbled streets lined with red-brick cottages and that most of the streets slope down to the cotton and silk mills on the banks of the River Bollin. Over a hundred mills fill the air with their throat-catching fumes and fill the river, which in medieval times was called the River Jordan, with waste and stink.

  Medieval Macclesfield had only the four streets which radiate from the Market Place. Chestergate, crowded with shops and taverns, joins the old coach roads to Manchester and Chester. Mill Street runs south and descends, cobbled and steep, to the mills and the river. Jordangate and Old Cockshutte Lane ran down to the River Jordan. Old Cockshutte Lane now is Hibel Road. The River Jordan is the River Bollin, but the street where Mam and I lived has retained its ancient name of Jordangate. Elsie Stanway's, Mam's dressmaker and haberdasher's shop, was at the poor end of Jordangate.

  Doreen Grimshaw lived nearby. Like me she was an only child but she had one supreme advantage of me. Doreen had a dad. All I had was a photograph and a Mons Star medal. Tommy Stanway, Mam's first cousin, was killed at Ypres only weeks before I was born. I also had a memory. Mam later denied ever saying it, but I did not imagine it - my paternal grandmother's name was Lily. I was very young when I overheard Mam saying to one of her customers, 'We named her after both grandmothers, Lily and IsobeL'

  It's a bright spring day, the sun is warm on my back and there is a soft, gorse-scented breeze blowing fresh from the hills, lifting my spirits, awakening memories of the golden years of childhood spent with my grandparents at Lindow hill farm. I'm standing in Sparrow Park - a small square of stone setts, grass and trees - looking down into the valley, over the Hundred-and-Eight Steps and the tortuously steep Churchwallgate which link the high Market Place to Waters Green below;

  The Waters, as it is known, is on the poorer side of town where the Bollin runs underground beneath the square. The Waters is always noisy with chatter, shrieks and the cobble-striking clatter of mill-workers' clogs. The mill girls, with arms linked, at the sounding of hooters and sirens stream in and out of Hammond's and Chancellor's factories.

  Macclesfield is a woman's town; the women are the workers. Because of wars and a lack of men's work women outnumber the men by almost two to one. There is competition for the available men for not every girl can realise her heart's desire for marriage, a home and the married woman's status. Macclesfield man recites, 'Cheshire born and Cheshire bred. Strong in th'arm and weak in th'head,' but if every Macclesfield man can count on the flattering attentions of at least two women, when he marries he will expect his wife to earn her living and think it his due that a woman will fall over herself to keep him.

  I see very clearly now how it was for Mam. Mam had to live here to earn our living. Mam, indoctrinated from childhood with her parents' repressive religion had to survive as a widow in the competitive women's marketplace that was Macclesfield.

  The Market Place is the centre of 'Macc' - the diminutive pet name for my town. At its centre, the Town Hall with its great sandstone columns, is flanked by the old parish church of St Michael and All Angels. The square is encircled with shops and banks and dotted about with inns, alehouses and wine vaults. Macclesfield has hundreds of taverns and public houses. Grandpa detested them.

  Grandpa, my dear Grandpa Stanway, was sixty-eight when I was born. He had been a workhouse child, as had his old partner, Enoch Hammond, who was always referred to as Old Man Hammond. Charley Stanway and Enoch Hammond ran away from a Staffordshire workhouse when they were twelve years old to become silk weavers' apprentices in Macclesfield. They seized every chance that came their way and built up from nothing what has become one of Macclesfield's largest mills, Hammond Silks. No weaver could do that today. Today there are few hand-
weavers of silk. But unlike the increase in profit and output of cotton manufacturing, the silk trade was volatile for silk has always been a luxury cloth and expensive to produce. Fortunes and factories came and went in the repeated ups and downs of silk-weaving in the 1860s.

  The two young men were hard workers. Grandpa was a good man who, even after he started working, bought books and continued to learn at the big Sunday School. He listened to the great preachers of his day and learned to speak well; he could quote long passages from the Bible and Shakespeare. He became a lay preacher in the chapel but Grandpa's ambition was not for riches but for land, a wife and a family.

  Enoch, on the contrary was an angry man who wanted wealth and power. His ambition was for the small mill he and CharIey Stanway owned to be amalgamated with Pilkington Printers. With all their hard work it took Grandpa and Enoch Hammond twenty-five years to build up their mill. They were on the brink of prosperity when Old Man Hammond married an immensely rich widow and the men's partnership ended.

  Old Man Hammond, with his wife's money, became a director of a bank which he renamed Hammond's Bank, and from there he bought the two thousand-acre Archerfield estate to build his house upon. His repeated offers for Pilkington Printers were turned down but he bought Grandpa out. And instead of paying Grandpa his half-share, Old Man Hammond gave him an annuity and Lindow Farm, a hundred acres of unproductive hill grazing with fifteen acres of hay meadow and no arable land.

  A few years after Old Man Hammond's marriage and the birth of John Hammond, their only son, the rich widow died. Enoch did not wed again. But his old partner married. Grandpa was forty-three when he fell in love with a girl twenty years younger than himself. lsobel Mary, my darling Nanna, was a farmer's daughter. Mam was their only child.

  Mam used to say, 'Your Grandpa was done out of a fortune by Old Man Hammond.' But I think such things are said in every family to account for the lower social ranking that's bound to result from the unequal division of property. Whatever Mam might say, there was no ill-will between Grandpa and his former partner. They remained friends to the end of their lives. Grandpa was content, saying, 'I have everything a man needs. Nobody could ask for more.'

  When Mam was a young girl she was in awe of her father but I knew Grandpa as a gentle man and a fine preacher. Grandpa's was a fiery, nonconformist religion. He and Nanna did only essential work on the Lord's Day. Nanna's hens and Grandpa's horses were attended to and unless the roads were thick with mud or snow, when we used the trap, we walked morning and evening to chapel, I in the middle holding a hand of each of them.

  When Grandpa preached, the chapel congregation was hushed and enthralled as he told Bible stories and parables to illustrate the commandments. One I particularly remember was told on a winter Sunday evening. Grandpa told the story of David's sin with Bathsheba to illustrate the breaking of the seventh commandment. I can close my eyes and picture it now. It is impressed indelibly upon my mind. It was the last time Mam went to chapel.

  The chapel which seated sixty was full. Candles in wall niches above dark oak pews flickered in the draught from the high, vaulted windows. Grandpa climbed into the carved wooden pulpit, raised his arms, and after calling for the light of the Lord's countenance he began…

  '"A good understanding have all they that do his commandments. Thou shalt not commit adultery." The seventh commandment.'

  The congregation fell silent. Mam sat on one side of me, eyes fixed on her father. Nanna held my hand in case I was afraid but I had no fear. I had never heard of this adult sin, adultery.

  '"And it came to pass, at the times when kings go forth to do battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem.

  '"And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David walked upon the roof and from the roof saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and enquired after the woman who was called Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite. And David sent messengers who took her and brought her unto David. And he lay with her…

  Mam started to fiddle in her handbag for a handkerchief, trying not to make a disturbance. Nanna passed her hankie to me and I slipped it into Mam's hand as quietly as I could.

  '"And the woman returned to her house. And Bathsheba conceived and told David, 'I am with child.' And David sent to Joab saying: Send me Uriah, the Hittite. And when Uriah came to his call David made him drunk: and at evening Uriah went not down to his own house. "

  '"And it came to pass in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah the Hittite. And he wrote in the letter saying: Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die. And in the battle there fell some of the servants of David; and Uriah the Hittite died also.'

  ''When the mourning was past David fetched Bathsheba to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. '"

  I held fast to Nanna's hand. Mam seemed not to be breathing, she was so still. The congregation was silent, so I dared not whisper to ask why the Lord was displeased. Nanna gave my hand a gentle squeeze while Grandpa told of how the Lord caused David to be his own judge. The Lord sent Nathan to David to tell the parable of the rich man who took the poor man's own ewe lamb.

  '''And David's anger was greatly kindled against the rich man who took the poor man's one ewe lamb. And David said to Nathan, 'As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die.' And Nathan said to David, 'Thou art the man. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord? Thou has killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword and taken his wife to be thy wife.'

  '''Nathan departed and the Lord struck the child that Bathsheba bore unto David, and it was very sick. David therefore besought God for the child; and fasted and lay all night upon the earth and would not rise. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. "

  'The seventh day. The seventh sin. Thou shalt not commit adultery.' Grandpa leaned out a little way and the candlelight flickered in his breath as he said in the deep, sonorous voice that he used for sermons, 'If we break the Lord's commandments the Lord will avenge and the sins of the fathers shall be upon the children ...’

  I knew how the quotation ended, '... unto the third and fourth generation', but I was crying and could not listen to the rest of the sermon because I didn't want to hear about God striking down a baby to punish King David. I cried louder and stuttered through my tears to Nanna, 'Why didn't God strike King David down?' I wanted to ask, 'Why did God strike down my Dad in battle?' but I knew I must not speak about my dead father. Nanna cuddled me and wiped my eyes.

  '''And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; in the very act. Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground; and said unto them, He that is without sin among· you, let him first cast a stone at her. "

  Grandpa's sermon was done. The congregation rose to their feet. Grandpa lifted his hands and prayed, 'Brothers and sisters. Let us pray. Let us pray that the strength of God is with us as we renounce, in His name, lust and villainy, brazen behaviour, adultery, drunkenness and devilry!'

  I looked up and, eyes shining with conquered tears, my infant heart swelled with pride as I forswore these and all the other unnameable wickednesses that the breaking of commandments entailed. Mam had tears in her eyes too. But it was the last time she went to chapel.

  Mam, twenty-six when I was born, was always dressed in the fashion of the day. She had a slender waist, a full-busted figure, bobbed dark hair that fell into waves, a wide mouth and sapphire blue eyes. Mam had the loveliest face I have ever seen. She also had a way of attracting attention to herself. Mam liked 'a bit of life'.

  When Man came home with her bottles of sherry or port wine hidden deep in her cloth bag she would wave a slender arm in the direction of our shabby living kitchen and sa
y, 'One day we'll rise above all this, our Lil. We'll get out of it one day.' Then she'd laugh, open the sherry, fetch a glass and say, 'All I want is a little drop of sherry. A little bit of life. Don't tell Grandpa.'

  But that was later. Until the age of five I lived with my wonderful grandparents at Lindow, their farm in the hills. I loved it as much as a grand palace but Lindow was a small house. Unlike Mam's house in Macclesfield, where the unused rooms were dusty and neglected everything here was spotless for Nanna was tireless and happily houseproud. In the kitchen the shelves had paper linings, the range gleamed and on a hook halfway down the cellar steps hung a zinc bath which Mam used after me every Saturday evening, cleanliness being next to godliness, acording to Nanna and Saturday being next to Sunday made the Saturday-night baths right and fitting in my young mind. We were clean and godly, Mam and I.

  One Sunday afternoon, I remember sitting in the garden at Lindow on Mam's knee and looking into her eyes, while Nanna and Grandpa sat side by side on the garden seat. Mam was seated on a kitchen chair. She said, 'I have to go soon, Lil. I'll be back on Wednesday and take you for a picnic at White Nancy.'

  White Nancy was the whited stone monument on Kerridge Hill; a windowless picnic house with an iron door.

  'Don't go away, Mam. Stay with me. Please.' I had on my Sunday best dress, and my dark hair, brushed and shiny, fell in ringlets about my shoulders. 'Why do you have to go?’

  Mam said patiently, 'I have to earn our living.'

  Grandpa grunted a protest. 'Your place is here, with our Lil. Why lower yourself trading in Macclesfield? Anyway, it's Barnaby. All the shops are closed.' Barnaby, the feast of St Barnabas, the patron saint of Macclesfield, was the June holiday, when the mills and most of the shops closed down.

  Mam said, 'I'm staying open. I need the money.'

  'I know!' I had a marvellous idea. 'We can both live here. We haven't got a dad in Macclesfield. Grandpa's our dad, here.'