Shining Threads

by Audrey Howard

  Kit Greenwood turned to her husband, her own glossy hair slipping from the intricate chignon her maid had devised, as it had done for as long as Charlie could remember, and his brother put out a tender hand to tuck the straying tendril behind her ear. Her eyes, the same violet-blue as her two sons’, softened as they looked at Joss, as they did for no one else, and her silken gown, simple, stylish and extremely expensive, Charlie knew, matched their colour exactly. She had amethysts in her ears and at her throat and looked ten years younger than her actual age which Charlie knew to be forty-eight. Indeed, her own daughter, Laurel, who was Charlie’s wife and in her twenty-ninth year, they calculated, looked scarcely younger. Of course, she was still grieving the loss of their fifth child and could not be expected to be as sleek and glowing as her mother, who was not really her mother for Laurel had been adopted, as had his own sister, Jenny, as a child of four or five.

  Poor Laurel, though a stranger looking at Laurel Greenwood would be hard pressed to understand why Charlie should think that about his wife. She wore a gown which was fashionable and obviously expensive. There were pearls at her throat and in her ears, lustrous and costly, and in the room about her were the luxurious trappings bought by the wealth of which she was a part. But she was a part only by adoption, which was where the trouble lay. Until she was five years old or thereabouts she had laboured in the Chapman mills, abused and starved, and indelibly printed in her mind was the memory of those years though she did not consciously recognise it. She had longed all her life, from the day she had been old enough to shape the thought, to be as they were, to be them, if you like. She yearned to be as carelessly confident of the security which was theirs as were her brothers and cousin, to have a proper place in the order of things, not by gift but by right. She felt she had not and it had eaten into her so that she was tense and insecure, afflicted with the deadly and completely irrational fear of a return to the terror she had known as a child. It made her sour, envious and uncomfortable to live with. Charlie loved her, made allowances for her and wished his niece and nephews could do the same.

  What a labyrinth of relationships his family was, Charlie thought, as he watched his sister, who was not really his sister, lean forward into the candlelight, emphasising a point she was making with the flat of her hand on the polished table-top. Joss and himself were true brothers, but Jenny was a foundling and, like her daughter Tessa, whom he and Joss called niece, and Laurel, his wife, was no blood relation at all.

  But Drew and Pearce Greenwood were. They were true Greenwoods for all to see. Not quite seventeen years old and from the moment they were born they had been thorns in the flesh of everyone – as they had been today, he had been told – from the lowest scullery maid who had the continual scrubbing of the muddy tracks they made wherever they marched their imperious boots, to their own father who was as determined to make businessmen of them as they were to avoid it. Lusty, brawling babies they had been, terrifying their nursery maids with their devilment from the moment they had been able to get up on their sturdy, well-fed legs and strut like young lordlings doing whatever they wanted to do. Laurel had been eleven or so at the time, a quiet child as he remembered, made that way by her beginnings in life, at peace in the schoolroom with Miss Copeland and in the nursery with Flora who had once been her nurse. It had been as though a whirlwind had descended, since Tessa Harrison was born only a scant six months behind them. New nursery maids and a full-time nanny had been engaged to order them about, and Flora too, who had not cared for it after seven years with the placid Laurel, nor for the constant demands, arrogant and made with the utter certainty that they would be immediately attended to, of one wilful girl child and two rowdy boys who were as alike as two leaves on a branch. The noise and complete devastation had driven Laurel and Miss Copeland to shut themselves up, to lock themselves up in the schoolroom, but even there, a year or two later, her brothers and cousin were knocking on the door demanding to be let in, saying this was their schoolroom, their house, their pencil and ruler and book. What a trial they had been, the three of them, and still were to her, Charlie knew, as she did her best to run the household with the same precision he and Jenny ran the business.

  His sister, Jenny Harrison, was a widow now though to look at her one would not have thought so. Years ago when she was a spinner she had cut her hair short and it still swirled in loose curls about her head, dark and glossy and springing. A brazen girl, it had been said of her, who cared nought for convention, which perhaps explained her carelessness with her own daughter’s upbringing. She had ignored the observance of the standards of her own class, flaunting her beliefs that all men were equal in the radical cause.

  Charlie believed that the only reason Jenny married the man she did was that he was as weak as she was strong. Joseph Harrison was not a man who had it in him to command his wife to stay at home where she belonged, to mind his hearth and the girl child he gave her, and it was precisely this quality in him which made Jenny choose him. The son of a weaver the same age as herself he was the shadow who followed her footsteps wherever they led but without the spirit to challenge her will, let alone the congestion in his chest which carried him to his death. It was as though he had never existed, Charlie considered, if it were not for the vital daughter he left behind and who was cast, thankfully, in her mother’s image.

  Tessa Harrison. She wore the simple white tulle which was considered suitable for a young unmarried lady, chosen for her by Laurel, no doubt, since Tessa herself showed no concern for the gowns and ribbons, the embroidered fans and shawls, the frilled parasols and flowered bonnets which were considered to be the sole interest of young ladies. She was heiress to her mother’s fortune, made in service to the mills, a girl who, when it suited her, could be as docile as a kitten, as sweet as a gillyflower, but who, as everyone from the maidservants to Joss Greenwood himself knew, had the wildest temper, the most self-willed and obstinate disposition of any of them. The trouble was, of course, that her own mother was seldom at home and whilst she was absent, Miss Tessa Harrison, determined to follow the path along which her male cousins walked or ran shouting with high-spirited laughter, simply ran with them.

  The house in which they all lived was named Greenacres for obvious reasons. It stood in a splendid twenty acres of land some miles north-east of Oldham. When it was built almost eighty years ago by Kit Greenwood’s grandfather it had been surrounded by woodlands and, at its back, the magnificent hills of the South Pennine chain. Since then the industrial factories and chimney stacks, the dwellings built to house the millworkers had fanned out from the centre of Crossfold which had then been nothing but a cottage or two, a church, a forge and an ale house, until they reached almost to the high stone wall which surrounded the Greenwood estate.

  Greenacres was built of stone, mellowed now to a soft shade of silvered grey. The windows at ground level rose from floor to ceiling allowing in the luminous northern light. Some were flat to the wall, others had deep bays, the rooms they illuminated richly panelled and high. The roof was steeply sloped with two dozen tall chimneys and on the south-facing wall was a conservatory, burgeoning from glass wall to glass wall with gardenias, orchids, magnolias, camellias, all mixed with cascades of trailing ivy and tall ferns. There were hanging baskets of verbena, fragrant all year round, singing birds in cages and wicker chairs stuffed with fat cushions in which to sit and enjoy it all.

  The house was square and solid, with a look of permanence and steadfast reliability, but though it lacked the elegant lines of houses built in Georgian and Regency times, it had a pleasing symmetry overall. James Chapman had liked what he called a bit of ‘style’ about him and had commissioned delicate rosewood for his hallway and staircase, soft, glowing. Yet in comparison the fireplace was enormous, burning great logs on most days of the year for he also liked warmth and comfort. The drawing-room had not been changed since the day he and his son, Barker, had filled it with comfortable velvet sofas and chairs, rich, deep carpets of Axminster, oil p
aintings and water colours, porcelain of Sèvres and Meissen, Wedgwood and Spode, Chinese screens and grandfather clocks in lacquerwork cases. There was silk damask upon the walls and crystal chandeliers, and in every room in the house lovely furniture by Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite. There was a dining-room, a morning room, a ‘back’ parlour, a study and a library containing thousands of books. The bedrooms were large, airy, most warmed by fires in winter and summer for the northern climate was not known for its hospitality. On the first floor there was a gallery which ran round three sides of the house, filled with paintings of lovely women, handsome men and splendid horses, with sofas and armchairs, and flowers everywhere. Beyond it and entered from one end, seldom used now, was a ‘large salon’, furnished with spindle-legged chairs in blue velvet, inlaid rosewood tables and screens of delicate Chinese lacquer, all of which could be moved out so that the room could be used for a concert or a dance.

  The house was set in what had once been nothing but woodland. Removing only enough trees to clear a space for it, and an acre or two of undulating lawn, the oak, the ash, sycamore, pine and yew stood all about the grounds, and flower beds, planted with dahlia, chrysanthemum, rose and fuchsia, glowed like jewels amongst them. Rhododendron and hydrangea grew, not formally but arranged to harmonise with the splendid backdrop of the hills and moorland. There was a driveway lined with plane trees, winding from the gateway to the entrance porch and then round the back of the house to the extensive yard and stables. There was a small lake on which swans glided and crocus, hyacinth, snowdrop and wild daffodils clustered thickly about it and starred the lawns in spring, and a heath garden lay at the base of the walls of the house. It had a quiet and informal beauty, which, at the back of the house, spread out into paddocks filled with splendid thoroughbreds, an orchard or two, vegetable gardens, until it reached the high wall which enclosed it.

  ‘Well, I’m for a stroll round the garden,’ Charlie declared suddenly. ‘It’s a lovely night and I reckon a bit of fresh air would be very welcome before we turn in. Will you take my arm, my love?’ he said to his wife.

  Instantly, like three lamps which have just had their wicks turned up, Drew, Pearce and Tessa came alive, and when Charlie and Laurel walked down the worn stone steps of the terrace and on to the dewed grass, his niece and nephews were already running like wild colts down the slope of the lawn, Tessa with her skirts bunched up high above her knees.

  2

  Charlie Greenwood walked between the rows of well-spaced machines which filled the enormous room, stopping every now and then to speak to a spinner or to watch the smooth movement of the spindles on the mules. Kit Chapman had installed ‘self-actors’ almost twenty-five years ago, the mechanised spinning frame replacing the old manual machine where the spinner had to move the carriage by turning a driving wheel. It had been a heavy and exhausting task, usually done by a man. Now the operative, without touching the fly, just turned a guide, a movement needing no more than the lightest pressure which instantly set in motion the spindles and took in the heavy carriage. It was so easy and light to use that a woman with the help of one ‘piecer’ could manage not one machine, but two.

  It was twenty years since the first effective Factory Act had come into force, with an Inspectorate which was legally empowered to enter any factory it so desired. Children under the age of nine were not to be employed, it stated, and those under the age of thirteen were to be at their machines for no more than twelve hours a day. Of course, these same children and young people had no way of proving their age, should they have wanted to, since the compulsory registration of births was not enforced until 1837. It was doubtful their own mothers, who bore a child regularly every year, knew the exact age of each of her offspring, having neither the strength nor inclination to be concerned. The employers had one yardstick: if the children were the right size they were considered fit to be employed in the mill, and one did not ask for sight of a birth certificate.

  The Act also declared that regular meal-times were required for the children who worked at their mules and looms and provision must be made for two hours’ schooling each day but when a ‘hand’, which is all they were to unscrupulous millowners, was at its desk and not ‘minding’ its machine, little profit is made, and besides, what does a man who is to spin or weave for the rest of his days want with reading and writing?

  Of course, Charlie Greenwood’s sister-in-law had attended to all these matters twenty years ago at the Chapman Spinning and Weaving Concerns, her new mill at Chapmanstown, and, as far as possible, at her four older mills which her grandfather had built in Crossfold. She had begun her enlightened, some said lunatic improvements in the conditions of her operatives’ lives with the renovation of her factories and the building of new houses on the land she purchased on the outskirts of the town. They were sturdy little dwellings with a parlour and a scullery, two or three bedrooms, a bit of yard at the back and a privy for each family. There was piped water from the clean, fast-flowing river and allotments, one to each man, so that he might grow his own vegetables. A church, an ale house, a school, a library were also built and a Mechanics Institute where sturdy young lads, eager to ‘get on’, were learning things which would surely lead to revolution among the lower orders. What would it be next, the stunned inhabitants of Crossfold and Edgeclough, and indeed the whole of the Penfold Valley had asked, and more to the point, where was the profit in it? But twenty years after the Act in many of the mills it was still the practice to employ children under the legal age, many of whom were worked until they fell asleep at their machines. Only last week, Charlie had heard, a little lass who swore she was nine years old but who could have been no more than six or seven was half-scalped at Jonathan Abbott’s mill when her long hair – which should have been tied up in any case – became entangled in the machine, still moving, which she was cleaning. She had been dragged clear by her demented mother for whom she was ‘piecing’ and taken to the infirmary in Edgeclough to be stitched up. It seemed it was of no concern to her employer when she had turned up for work the next day at the customary time of five thirty for her twelve-hour shift – in need of her wage one presumed – the bandage on her head already grey and stained with the filth with which she and her family were in daily contact.

  Despite the open windows, the long room with its rows of clattering machinery was fearfully hot. Scores of women and older children attended me mules whilst others ran from machine to machine piecing the broken yarns, sweeping up the cotton waste, the smallest clambering beneath dangerously moving straps and pulleys, chains and wheels, all fenced off, to get at the oil-coated waste which collected there. Some carried empty roving bobbins, taking them to the machines and bringing away the full bobbins of spun yarn which were placed in a huge basket and dragged away by a sturdy and cheerfully whistling lad. The air was thick with ‘fly’, specks of cotton fibre and dust which, despite all efforts to dispel it, still hung in a mist about the workers’ heads.

  Charlie did not expect to find anything amiss in his spinning room. Nevertheless, it did no harm to let the overlooker see that he was on the alert for any infringement of those rules made to protect, not exploit the operatives. This was part of his daily round and though today’s took place as usual it was at a quicker pace than he would normally proceed. As soon as he had finished his inspection he was off to Crossfold’s new railway station to join his brother and nephews, ready to take his seat on Crossfold’s first train, by invitation only, and ride the exciting ten or so miles from Crossfold to Rochdale. His carriage was even now waiting in the mill yard, the horses’ hooves striking sparks on the cobbles in their eagerness to be off.

  A young boy of ten or eleven drowsed over a snarling machine, his head drooping since it was almost the end of his twelve-hour shift, and Charlie tapped him lightly on the shoulder. The overlooker, who walked at Charlie’s heels, snapped his malacca cane angrily against his own leg, his expression revealing that left to himself he would have used it on the boy. He reg
retted the loss of the customary ‘tackler’s’ thong, several straps of leather six inches long, but which Mr Greenwood, as daft as his sister and the rest of the Greenwood family, would not allow in his mill. Edwards was a good overlooker with many years’ experience as a spinner until he had been ‘made up’, and knew as much about the machines as the engineer in whose charge they were. He could get more yarn out of his ‘girls’ than any other tackler in the factory but he did regret the reducing of his own authority by the . . . well, he could only call it the softness of the Greenwood family with their refusal to allow him to discipline his young charges. Children were beaten in factories. They were beaten on farms, in mines and indeed everywhere they were employed, but the floggings, the dousing in cold water and all the other necessary punishments which kept children up to the mark were frowned upon here.

  Mr Greenwood stopped at the end of the row of machines, smiling at a cheeky-faced young boy who had just emerged from his ‘scavenging’ chores beneath a machine. The child was far from plump but his bones were straight, his flesh firm and his eyes were bright. He was dressed in the usual fine cotton drawers and sleeveless shirt with no shoes on his dirty feet but his grin was impudent and carefree.

  ‘’Ow do, Mr Greenwood,’ he said.

  ‘How do, lad.’ Charlie grinned down at him.

  ‘Grand day, Mr Greenwood.’

  ‘It is that.’

  ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ the overlooker said through gritted teeth, feeling in some way that his authority had been again undermined by the child’s cheek in addressing one of the managers of the mill, but Charlie shook his head smilingly.

  ‘It’s all right, Edwards. I like to see a child with a bit of spirit.’ He took out his wrap-reel and began to study the ‘wrapping’ of the yarn as the carriage on the machine was drawn out. At his back the overlooker fumed silently. It was like this every day when Mr Greenwood inspected the spinning room and but for the splendid wage he earned and, as an overlooker, the neat little villa he rented so cheaply from his employer, he wouldn’t take it. Interfering in what he considered to be his duties. The supervision of the spinners, the piecers and scavengers, and their chastisement if he felt they needed it, was his job. Of course, he had heard of the family’s squeamishness before he took up employment with them but sometimes when he saw the, to his mind, free way in which their workers were allowed to approach them if they considered they had a grievance, it was almost more than he could take. What was the world coming to when a lad could address the owner’s brother, for God’s sake, and get no more than a friendly greeting in return? Naturally, when Mr Greenwood or Mrs Harrison weren’t about he’d fetch a lad, or a lass if it came to that, a clout or two, not hard like, for it would be more than his job was worth, since it had been known for a ‘rough’ overlooker to be dismissed on the spot.