Shining Threads

by Audrey Howard

  ‘I brought your shawl,’ she said awkwardly, standing on the doorstep. Her usual high-handed assumption that she was immediately welcome wherever she went was sadly lacking this day.

  ‘You’ve not come on yer own, not after what ’appened t’other day?’ Annie gasped, her disbelief in this girl’s daft and foolhardy ways taking her breath away. ‘I’ve never known ’owt like you, really I ’avent.’ She peered over Tessa’s shoulder as though fully expecting to see a complete battalion of soldiers guarding this feckless girl; when none appeared she ‘tcched-tcched’ angrily, reaching out to draw Tessa in before she was attacked by some dreadful mob which must have followed her across the moors. ‘And I ’ope that animal out theer won’t eat me daisies,’ she added crossly, referring to Tessa’s mare, ‘an’ them dogs ’ad better not mess me clean step, neither, or I’ll tek me broom to ’em. Look who’s ’ere, Mr Broadbent, an’ after all as we said to ’er.’

  She shook her head, shoving Tessa quite rudely into the chair opposite Will, taking the neatly wrapped, freshly laundered shawl from her and throwing it impatiently on to the table where she was evidently making blackberry pies.

  ‘Tha’d best pour thissen a cup o’ tea for I’ve no time ter bother, what with them childer ter see to an’ pies ter get in th’oven . . .’ Without further ado, just as though Tessa was the last person alive she could do with right now she continued, with a curiously delicate hand considering the noise she made with pots and rolling-pin and dishes which all got in her way, to roll out the pastry. But in her cheek was a touch of colour and her eyes were soft with pleasure.

  Tessa chanced a swift glance at Will and her insides turned right over in the most unusual way as he winked at her.

  6

  She sat on the round-topped stool in front of her dressing-table and stared at her own reflection in the mirror while Emma brushed her long, difficult hair. At each stroke her head snapped back on her neck and the maid watched her anxiously. Miss Tessa’s temper was always uncertain: she could be sweet-natured and generous, carelessly bestowing ribbons and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs on her maid when she was in the mood. Lately she had been somewhat softer, dreaming and seemingly unaware of Emma’s presence, allowing her hair to be brushed and brushed for the required five minutes without uttering a word of protest, her face absorbed, deep in some reverie. Emma was grateful for a moment’s respite in the drama that was often enacted in the dressing hour before dinner.

  It was almost dark now as autumn took hold. Emma had lit the lamps and stoked up the fire for as the nights drew in it was becoming colder up here in the harsh northern climate of the Lancashire Pennines.

  A great flock of blackbirds prepared to roost for the night in the depths of the rhododendron bushes which grew wild amongst the trees, making an enormous clatter as they imagined all kinds of danger menacing them. Sparrows squabbled over possession of a cosy niche in the ivy growing against the walls of the house and the noise of the birds seemed to bring back her mistress from the daydream in which she was enveloped. She jerked her head irritably and the maid sighed knowing the moment’s peace was over.

  ‘That will do, Emma. You’ll have it out by the roots if you go on much longer. Fix it up anyway and quickly, if you please. I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘There’s plenty of time, Miss Tessa. Dinner’s not for another hour yet.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve something to do before dinner so do hurry. Tie it up in a ribbon and then pass me my breeches.’

  ‘Your breeches! For dinner! Dear Lord, your mother will . . .’

  ‘I’ll be back in time to dress for dinner, Emma, but I’ve somewhere to go first. I hadn’t realised the time and you let me sit here daydreaming . . .’

  ‘Not me, Miss Tessa. I was only brushing your hair as I’ve been told to do each night and morning.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, girl, give me the brush and a bit of ribbon and I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘Oh, please, Miss Tessa dear, be a good girl. You know your mother likes to see you dressed nicely with your hair done properly,’ and not in the outfit of a bold lad with your hair hanging down your back like some gypsy. The unspoken words hung on the warm, scented air but Tessa did not appear to notice, or if she did was so accustomed to the maid’s silent accusations they no longer troubled her, if they ever had.

  But Emma meant it this time and meant to have her own way. Usually she merely stepped aside and shut her mouth and allowed her young mistress to do exactly as she pleased. It was easier that way with less damage to her own nerves and to the many pretty ornaments in the bedroom. What did it matter anyway, for when her mother was at the mill no one questioned what Miss Tessa did or said or where she went, so why should Emma wear herself to a shadow trying to make her into an elegant young lady? That, of course, is what she had been employed to do. Emma saw that her mistress was clean and tidy; that her clothes – mostly shirts and breeches, for heaven’s sake – were neatly pressed and mended, and then sat back and enjoyed the peace and comfort of the pretty room without Miss Tessa Harrison in it.

  But Mr and Mrs Joss Greenwood were home again now that the House was no longer sitting, and would be at dinner and all three of them, Master Drew, Master Pearce and Miss Tessa, would need to be on their best behaviour. She had laid out her young mistress’s new dinner gown, a white muslin this time, pretty and trimmed about the sash with white satin rosebuds, slightly off the shoulder but with a modest sleeve. All of Miss Tessa’s gowns were quite lovely, in Emma’s opinion, and very expensive but she had a way of throwing them on hurriedly, irritably, since, her manner said, it would be so much easier simply to go down to dinner in her breeches, as her cousins were sometimes allowed to do when their parents were absent, with her hair tied back in a careless knot of ribbons.

  ‘No, Miss Tessa, no!’ the maid continued. ‘I am to do your hair and put you in your new dress, your mother said, otherwise your uncle will naturally be upset and questions will be asked, and you know what will happen then.’

  Tessa scowled and thrust back the flowing cape of her hair with both hands, knowing that her maid spoke only the truth. No one, not even her cousins, knew of her ‘brush’ as she casually called it now, with the tinker family. Should they find out – and might not her uncle do so if probing questions were asked? – her freedom would be severely curtailed. All her family were considered quite appallingly unconventional by the rest of the Penfold Valley and though her mother and Uncle Joss, as head of the family, were aware that she rode astride like a man, if they should discover that she had been in danger because of it, a vastly different attitude would be taken. They had all been rebels in one way and another, Jenny Greenwood, Joss Greenwood and his wife Kit, earning themselves reputations as troublemakers in their defence and support of the exploited operatives, the brutalised children, scandalising the Penfold Valley with their carryings-on. Perhaps because of that they had understood, and allowed her own fight for a measure of freedom but she was certain they had no idea of the jaunts on which she accompanied her cousins, or even that her cousins themselves participated in such activities, and she had no wish for them to become acquainted with the true picture of her life.

  ‘So we’ll brush your hair and dress it at the back of your head with your new tortoiseshell comb, Miss Tessa,’ her maid continued slyly, ‘and your mother will be so pleased with you. Now, sit you down again while I get the pins.’ Tessa had no choice but to grit her teeth and place herself before the mirror again.

  Emma brushed back the hair which was as rebellious in its disorder as her mistress. When it was as smooth and tangle-free as she could get it, she began to pin it up on each side of a centre parting, then brushed it into a huge and intricate coil at the back of Miss Tessa’s head. But it seemed the style was determined to be awkward tonight and the maid clucked her tongue irritably, pulling quite forcibly at her mistress’s head. The trouble was that the hair was so thick, so straight and slipping; no matter how she struggled, strands of it would keep escapin
g out of the coil and hanging down Miss Tessa’s back in the most wilful fashion. The maid’s face was red, her mouth full of pins as she patiently adjusted the tortoiseshell comb for the third time but the girl had had enough and she sprang up, scattering pins and combs and the hairbrush about the bedroom floor.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Emma, does it really matter what style you achieve as long as it’s tidy? Won’t a simple knot on the back of my neck do? You could put some rosebuds in it like you did the last time,’ she wheedled, genuinely trying to be helpful. She really did want to slip down to the stables, for a minute, no more, to join her cousins in what was happening there. She had never seen a foal born before, nor indeed any animal, not even one of the dozens of kittens which skittered about the stable yard. She knew she might be prevented, not by her family who, due no doubt to their working-class, down-to-earth, no-nonsense practical heritage would see no harm in it, but by the stable lads and grooms, the coachmen themselves who would be shocked to have a female amongst them on such an intimate, physical occasion. And if she told Emma where she was going there would be such a caterwauling the whole estate would hear of it.

  ‘You must be fashionable, Miss Tessa,’ the maid said sternly, quite enjoying this momentary power she had over her young mistress. ‘This style is right up to the minute and your aunt is bound to notice coming straight from London as she has.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Tessa moaned, sitting down again obediently, but before Emma could lift the brush to begin all over again, she turned and smiled. The maid’s heart sank for she knew that smile so well: it meant mischief, there was no doubt of it, and the often wicked temper which followed if she was not allowed her way.

  ‘Why do we not cut it, Emma?’ she asked vividly, her eyes joyous in her expressive face, an expression which said she wondered why she had not thought of that before. It was such a simple solution to a tangled problem since Emma would have no further need of pins and combs and she would really have no further need of Emma.

  ‘Cut it?’ the maid gasped.

  ‘Yes. Why not? Mother has short hair and she is not thought to be unattractive. Aunt Kit and Uncle Joss are used to seeing her as she is, as we all are ever since I can remember, and they find nothing strange in it. Uncle Joss wouldn’t mind at all, nor Mother since I have heard her remark a number of times on how easy it is to manage.’

  ‘Oh no, Miss Tessa, oh, no, I cannot allow it.’

  ‘You cannot allow it? And what has it to do with you, pray?’

  Tessa’s face had turned truculent and she stood up, a head taller than her maid and not at all sure she might not strike her for her insolence.

  ‘Please, Miss Tessa, don’t, don’t, I beg you. Your beautiful hair . . .’

  ‘Mother’s hair is quite beautiful, in my opinion.’

  ‘Maybe it is, Miss Tessa, but your mother is an elderly lady and a widow. She is allowed to be . . . to be eccentric and no one notices any more but if you were to do it, a young, marriageable lady, how will you ever attract the attention of a husband . . .’

  Tessa turned away in disgust, her still-maturing body somewhat brittle and vulnerable and yet eager, for though she had no intention of marrying, not for years yet, she wanted to live life to the full, its joys and triumphs, even its disasters should they come, and how could she if she was perpetually harassed by those who would stop her getting at them?

  ‘Where are the scissors, Emma?’

  ‘Oh, please, Miss Tessa dear, don’t, I beg you . . .’ Emma was almost in tears now and wishing in her heart, as she had done a hundred times in the last couple of years, that she had been given any job other than this in the great house of Greenacres. It was simply impossible to mould Miss Tessa into a young lady of fashion. She had been allowed to run wild for too long, you see, making it extremely trying not to say downright punishing for those who had her in their charge. As Emma was fond of telling her own mother who had once been in the service of the Chapman family but was now pensioned off in one of the Chapman alm-houses, she felt she had aged ten years in the two she had served Miss Tessa.

  This house had once belonged to the great Barker Chapman who, with his father, had begun the Chapman Spinning and Weaving Concerns. When he had died, murdered it was said by a group of rioting men calling themselves the ‘Onwardsmen’ who had fought for better conditions and wages for themselves and others in the textile trade, the great wealth he had left, his mills and weaving sheds and many other business concerns, this house, had all come to his daughter, this girl’s aunt. Emma’s mother, who had been parlourmaid then, had often spoken of the scandal which had set the Penfold Valley aflame when Miss Chapman had married the man some said had been involved in her own father’s murder: Joss Greenwood, no more than a working man himself, a hand-loom weaver, a radical and a revolutionary and now a Member of Parliament. He and his wife spent most of their time up at Westminster, coming home only when the House was not sitting.

  Firebrands, both of them, and so was this girl who was no blood kin, which was strange. She was stamping about the bedroom now with every appearance of darting off to the kitchen to fetch a bread knife to her hair if the scissors did not immediately come to hand. Dear God in heaven, what was she to do? Doubtless she would be the one to get the blame should Miss Tessa arrive at the dinner table with her hair cut like that of a child from the poor house.

  Emma looked desperately about the room as though searching for something which might distract her young mistress from the course she was set on, but there was nothing forthcoming.

  It was a lovely room situated on the first floor of the house, on the corner with windows on two sides facing south. The furnishing of it was completely feminine, expressing not Miss Tessa’s taste but that of her aunt’s mother who had, years ago, decorated and furnished it for her own sixteen-year-old daughter. The furniture was of glowing rosewood; slim-legged tables, a rococo desk, though Emma had never once seen Miss Tessa so much as write a note at it in the two years she had been with her; low, rosewood-framed chairs, armless and with the backs and seats embroidered in delicate pinks and creams. There was a dressing-table softly swathed in white muslin, a rosewood chest and the walls of the room were lined with blush-pink silk. Ornaments were grouped tastefully on tables and shelves; ivory combs and silver-handled brushes, a manicure set of mother-of-pearl, a jewel box of engraved gilt with a Sèvres china plaque set into the lid, cut-glass toilet bottles and jars with silver-gilt tops.

  The stuffily draped four-poster of the beginning of the century had been replaced by the half-canopied bed with a high, prettily draped canopy and curtains at its head only. There was a feather quilt and a silken counterpane and enormous white pillows edged with lace. At the windows behind pelmets trimmed with ball-fringes hung lavishly draped damask curtains matching the colour of the walls, and the light from the windows was further softened by swathes of white muslin. The predominant colours, even of the huge carpet which covered the whole floor were cream, white and blush-pink, delicately lovely as Mrs Hannah Chapman, now dead, had once been, restful and dainty and not at all suited to the temperament of Miss Tessa Harrison who was neither.

  Emma tried again.

  ‘Come now, Miss Tessa dear, sit down and I’ll dress your hair in a simple knot.’ Her voice was coaxing for anything was better than a shorn head. ‘And when you see your mother tonight you can ask her permission to cut your hair like hers. See, it won’t take but a minute . . .’

  ‘But it will all be over if I don’t go soon.’

  ‘Only a minute and I promise you you’ll be off to wherever it is you’re going.’ And the sooner she went the better in Emma’s exasperated and nerve-torn opinion. ‘Your dress is laid out and Polly will be up in a minute to lend a hand with your stays and it will take no more than a second or two to get you into it. Now, will you have the white rosebuds in your hair, or the satin ribbons?’

  ‘Dear Lord, will you stop babbling and pass me my breeches and boots. Surely even you will agree
that white muslin is hardly fit attire for the stables and . . .’

  ‘The stables! Merciful heaven, what d’you want in the stables, Miss Tessa?’ Emma was immediately suspicious since it was not unknown for her young mistress to say she would be only a second or two, promising to be back in time for dinner and then simply to disappear, and them lads with her. It was rumoured she had been seen at a cock-fight, wearing her cousin’s jacket and top hat with her hair pushed up inside it, but Emma, even knowing Miss Tessa as she did, found that hard to believe since their father would have skinned them lads alive if it was true.

  ‘Oh, damnation, I had not meant to . . .’

  Enlightenment dawned on Emma’s face. ‘It’s that new animal, isn’t it? The one that’s in foal. Percy told me it was ready . . . You’re not going there, my girl, you can take my word for it.’ In her agitation Emma went so far as to forget her place and the respect she had been taught to show her betters. She had an ‘understanding’ with Percy, the head stable lad at Greenacres, who had told her in a discreet way, of course, for even servants, particularly of the superior kind like Emma, were treated with a bit of common decency, of the foal’s imminent arrival.

  She began to flutter about the room, wringing her hands. Tessa hesitated for though she knew she was a trial and a tribulation to her maid and had seen her near to tears a time or two, she had never seen her quite so badly distressed.

  ‘Look, Emma,’ she said irritably for really the girl was a damned nuisance and time was pressing if she was to get to the stables and back before the dinner gong sounded. ‘Why don’t I just tie my hair up for now as the girls in the mill do, and then when I get back you can dress . . .’