Her mother, her Uncle Joss and even Aunt Kit who was not awfully sure that she wished her frail and precious husband to be troubled by the problems of the reorganisation, wrote her long letters of encouragement. Perhaps in her niece Kit Greenwood recognised herself as she had been over thirty years ago when she had taken up the role of ‘manufacturer’ on her own father’s death. Her words of support, of pleading, really, since she did not want to see all that her family had built up crumble away, did their best to let Tessa know she understood her frailty at this time.
‘You can do it, Tessa,’ she wrote, ‘and I promise you that when the challenge, for that is what it is, is taken up and overcome, there is no greater satisfaction to be had. Gentlemen have told us for so long that we are not made as they are, that our minds are not as theirs, that we are inferior to them in all but one thing, that our brains are incapable of dealing with anything more complicated than a menu, but you know that is not true, my dear. Your mother agrees . . .’
Jenny did, but her letters were softer, more tender, less pressing. She was the only one to know the desperate unhappiness Tessa had suffered through her love for Robby Atherton. No one’s fault, of course, but what mother can resist blaming herself for her children’s misery, dwelling interminably on what she might have done to prevent it? ‘Don’t allow yourself to lose hope, Tessa. Never lose hope for it is all we have to get us through the day. Always, always the strength to overcome life’s adversity is found and I know you to be a strong woman. Take hold, daughter, and you will win through. If there is anything I can do . . .’ But Tessa was aware that her mother was saying any help she gave would only be sent by letter from the soft, sun-filled world into which she herself had escaped.
She wrote back, letter after frantic letter, begging to be shown the way to ‘take hold’, to ‘meet the challenge’, to ‘overcome’, but though they always replied kindly, optimistically even, she knew that, at their age, they really could not provide the impossible support she begged of them. They had done it once, Kit Chapman, as she was then, and Jenny Harrison, and could not Tessa Greenwood do the same?
In every letter which passed between them not once was it suggested she should turn to her husband.
He grumbled languidly, petulantly the whole time Briggs was dressing him, protesting that his boots hurt his feet, his cravat was too tight, his shirt front far too stiff and how could he be expected to show himself in a business suit, for that was what it was, when he was not a businessman and had no intention of ever becoming one? His head ached abominably and what he needed was fresh air, not the stuffy confines of some damned office. She could see that he was genuinely nauseous, the requirement of being what he hated above anything else, turning his smooth brown face hollow-eyed and pallid. Should she have told him to change into riding breeches, to take up his crop and saddle his horse, to be off on the moorland and up to the tops and that she would go with him, he would immediately be as charming and lovable, as smiling and generous-hearted as he frequently was, sweet-tempered and terribly sorry he had been such a bad-tempered swine. He would be willing to do anything she asked, to go wherever she pleased if only it was not to the mill, which was what this meeting represented.
Mr Bradley and Mr Dalton were in the doorway of the bank waiting to welcome them, holding out their hands to be shaken by Mr Greenwood who complied reluctantly, quite startled, it seemed, by the novel idea.
‘The members of the board are waiting for you, Mrs Greenwood, if you would like to follow me,’ Mr Bradley told them officiously whilst Mr Dalton went ahead to ensure that doors were opened and a smooth passage was cleared for these important personages. Though neither he nor Mr Bradley would dream of cheating the owners of the Chapman mills since both they and the other members of the board which they were about to form to run the company were all honest, hard-working businessmen, there would be a great deal of advantage to be gained in being associated with such an undertaking. Particularly as Mr Drew Greenwood and his wife and, one supposed, the third member of the family who had a small share in it, Mrs Laurel Greenwood, were all totally inexperienced in the running of the mill and would therefore, one supposed, leave the whole concern to himself and the rest of the board.
‘What a delightful day it is, Mrs Greenwood,’ Mr Bradley murmured politely, ‘quite warm for the time of the year, though one should expect it in July, I suppose.’
‘Indeed,’ she answered, keeping one hand on the arm of her husband who was inclined to wince away from everything on which his eye fell, from the half a dozen clerks at their high desks who stared at him and his wife with a great deal of impolite interest, he was inclined to think, to the steep stairs he was forced to climb to reach the corridor which led into the board room.
‘Is this going to take long, Tessa?’ he was heard to say with no attempt to lower his voice, as he followed her up them, and as they moved along the corridor Mr Bradley exchanged glances with Mr Dalton since it was evident that this meeting was going to be even more trying than they had anticipated.
The board room appeared to be filled with gentlemen. They stood in pairs engaged in serious conversation, or sat engrossed in papers about a large, well-polished table, those who were seated springing to their feet as she entered. They were soberly dressed in dark business suits, all of them, important of expression and shrewd of eye, about a dozen of them she could see now, men of obvious worth and standing in the community, whose resolute expressions told her they would be well able to protect the interests of any business in which they had a hand.
Only one smiled and her heart lurched in her breast as she looked into the narrowed eyes of Will Broadbent. She could distinctly feel, and hear, her own breath quicken and the hand which still rested on Drew’s arm trembled slightly as the emotive picture of the last time they were together crept stealthily into her mind.
Mr Bradley was leading the way across the smooth Turkey carpet, doing his best to usher the reluctant owner of the Chapman mills towards the gentlemen who were to sit on his board. Mr Dalton, as Drew moved forward, had Tessa by the elbow, a gentleman paying her the respect a lady deserved despite the strangeness of having one where none had been before. His hand guided her and his voice soothed her since she seemed somewhat alarmed by the seriousness of this meeting and the overwhelming mass of commercial gentlemen to whom she would be unaccustomed. Indeed, he could feel the trembling of her arm as he placed her in her chair and he smiled to let her know she was in safe hands with Mr Bradley and himself.
The glance she and Will exchanged went unnoticed. She had not seen him since the morning in the mill yard, three months ago now, and though she had been expecting him to follow up and take advantage of the incident – for that was all it had been, she told herself, an incident – in the foreman’s hut, he had not done so. His embrace had been ardent and her own response to it surprising, but it had meant nothing to her, she had repeated time and time again to herself, and evidently nothing to him either. He had realised, she supposed, that she was happily married and was not the sort of woman to be treated as a convenient release for his own nasty lust. She had been relieved that he had finally accepted her refusal and the last few moments of their encounter, which she must have imagined, she told herself, when he had seemed to imply that there was more to this than the desires of the flesh, were pushed firmly to the back of her mind.
In the ensuing moments of introduction his eyes holding hers let her see quite openly. that it was not so. I told you you were not to fall, did I not? they seemed to say, warm and expressive with some deep-felt emotion. You are here with that diminished man you call a husband because of me; because I showed you the way to do it. A few words, no more, were all that were needed to put you on the right path since you are an intelligent woman. These men have been assembled at your command. Let no one tell you differently. They are here to do your bidding so show them from the start that you are as strong and forthright as other women in your family have been. Do it, Tessa. It is all yours
, so grasp it with both hands and let no man, no man pull you down.
‘. . . and this is Mr Will Broadbent, Mrs Greenwood. He is a millowner from Hepworth who has been invited to take a seat on the board.’ She smiled since she was well aware now that Will Broadbent would not have waited to be invited and the sardonic gleam of humour in his eyes confirmed it. ‘He is a man who knows cotton,’ Mr Bradley was saying, ‘is that not so, Mr Broadbent? . . . and will, I’m sure, be an asset to the newly formed Chapman Manufacturing Company Ltd.’
‘Mr Broadbent and I have already met, Mr Bradley.’
‘Is that so, Mrs Greenwood?’
Will took her hand and bowed over it but his eyes continued to smile audaciously into hers. They were a lovely pale brown, flecked with amber and gold, the colour they had been, she remembered, when they had made love in his small overlooker’s cottage, the colour of love. And she knew, suddenly, as he held her hand just a shade too long, that everything that had happened in the last three months had been his doing: the miraculous suddenness with which the building plans had been re-designed and completed; the increasingly smooth growth of the building itself, the absence of hitches, the wondrous removal of the obstacles and snags which had plagued her in the beginning. Every man on the site from the master builder himself right down to the lowest hod-carrying labourer had worked hard and fast, and in unison, to get her mill up in record time – why did she now think of it as her mill, she wondered curiously – and now it was complete and within weeks would be manufacturing the cotton which her family had manufactured for almost a century. Engineers had been employed, sent ostensibly by Mr Bradley or Mr Dalton who had vouched for them. Managers and overlookers found who had been connected with the old mill, all eager and willing to work with, and for, Mrs Drew Greenwood.
And it was all thanks to Will Broadbent who was turning away now to take the reluctant hand her husband held out to him.
The tiny flame of quite giddy joy burned deep within her as the meeting began and she was afraid to look at him. Drew sat beside her, refusing the chair at the head of the table as though the seat might prove to be red hot. On his face was an expression of ill-mannered boredom which she knew hid his painful fear that somehow, while he was not looking, so to speak, he might find himself embroiled in the machinations of the mill again. He barely listened as Mr Bradley began to speak of the advantage in terms of the future development of Chapmans’ to be found in the forming of a limited company. He showed some interest when the words ‘chairman’ and ‘managing director’ were mentioned for did they not imply that someone, not himself, naturally, nor his wife, was to take over the running of the business? He voted with the rest, as Tessa had told him to, staring quite openly at Will Broadbent who came, of course, from the lower classes, despite his expensive, well-tailored suit, when he was put forward as managing director. It was incomprehensible to him that such a man, a man who had once worked, so he had been told, in one of his own family’s spinning rooms, should hold such a position of authority. Still, if the rest of them thought he could do the job who was he to argue? As long as he had enough money in his pocket to continue his own pleasant life with his wife he didn’t give a damn who earned that money for him. A Mr Entwhistle, whose wealth came from breweries, Mr Bradley whispered in his ear, as if it made any difference to Drew Greenwood, seconded the motion, and Drew’s brief interest flagged. Mr Dalton was proposed as company secretary, seconded by Mr Bradley and Drew put up a languid hand to indicate that he agreed. It was not until his wife’s name was mentioned that his unfocused gaze which had wandered to the patch of streaked blue sky beyond the window, swung sharply back to the proceedings.
‘What was that?’ His arrogant, well-bred voice brought the vote taking place to a halt.
Mr Bradley smiled smoothly though it was evident from the expression in his eyes that he had been hoping young Mr Greenwood would remain in the imperceptive doze into which he appeared to have fallen in the last half-hour. He was far less trouble that way. It was necessary for him to be here at this first meeting of the board for appearances’ sake if nothing else, and when Mrs Greenwood was made chairman, with the signed agreement of the biggest shareholder, Mr Drew Greenwood himself, giving her the right to chair the proceedings and vote in his place, there was no need for him to attend a board meeting again. And with Mrs Greenwood under the . . . ah . . . wing, if one could call it that, of that astute businessman, Mr Will Broadbent, Chapmans could once again be the thriving concern it had been under the direction and guidance of Mrs Jenny Harrison and Mr Charles Greenwood. Dear God, the lengths he had had to resort to, the secrecy to which he had been sworn by Mr Broadbent, of course, in order to get this far in the business dealings. He and Mr Dalton, both as close-mouthed and discreet as men of their respective professions had to be, had worked closely with Mr Broadbent on Mr and Mrs Greenwood’s behalf and it was not up to him or Mr Dalton to ask why. This was a business transaction; a helping hand to get a thriving business over a sticky patch and to find the means to keep it the profit-making concern it had always been, and for which, naturally, he and Mr Dalton would be suitably rewarded.
‘What is what, Mr Greenwood?’ he asked patiently, somewhat alarmed by the wild cast in Drew Greenwood’s eye.
‘You mentioned my wife’s name in connection with . . . what was it?’
The whole room held its breath as the lovely Mrs Greenwood turned to her husband, her expression one of concern. She smiled at him, a brilliant smile and yet softly reassuring, and there was not one man there who did not envy Drew Greenwood that look. They watched him with expressionless faces but their indignation and impatience could be quite plainly felt. Had it not been for the esteem in which they had held his aunt and uncle and the presence of Will Broadbent who had assured them that there was a profit to be made, it was doubtful if any of them would have agreed to sit on this board. They had expected nothing less, of course, from this young gentleman whose concern it was, since his inflammable nature was well known in the Penfold Valley, but Tessa could see in their cold eyes that in their opinion the quicker the proceedings were got through the better they would like it.
‘Mr Bradley is asking for the agreement of the board to . . . well, myself as chairman of the board.’ Her voice was patient and the room held its breath.
‘You?’ His face was comical in its amazement.
‘Someone has to . . . to chair the board, is that not the correct expression, Mr Bradley?’ She turned her charming smile on the bank manager who assured her that it was.
‘I don’t give a damn about the correct expression, Tessa, nor who the hell does the job as long as it is not you nor myself. Let one of these . . . these gentlemen see to it, for God’s sake. That’s the whole idea of this arrangement, surely, so let’s get the . . . the positions allocated and get out of here.’ He turned to Mr Bradley, making a decent attempt to be civil she could see, yet letting it be known nevertheless that he was not accustomed to dealing with tradesmen, which these gentlemen were. ‘Can we not just appoint someone, sign a paper or something, Mr . . . er . . . You will know how these things are done, I’m sure, since that is what I pay you for.’ His rudeness was inexcusable but only his wife knew that it was caused by fear. ‘My wife and I have an important engagement and really cannot remain any longer.’
‘Drew . . .’
‘No, Tessa, this has nothing to do with us, really it hasn’t. A chairman must be employed . . .’
‘That is what we are trying to do, darling.’
‘Then let it be done.’
‘It must be the major shareholder, Drew. That is how Mr Dalton has arranged it, legally, I mean . . .’
The gentlemen about the table, except for Will Broadbent who looked as though he might, for some reason known only to himself, spring from his chair at any moment, were grim-faced, clinging, Tessa could see, to their equanimity with the greatest difficulty. And all the while Drew was becoming more restless, his face showing his absolute disdain for th
ese trumpery business dealings. After all, he had only come because Tessa had promised him that it would be just this once, to appoint members to the board and would soon be done with. Now they were taking the liberty of begging his own wife to be employed on it. How dare they even suggest it when it was well known that she was Mrs Drew Greenwood, a lady, and though she had been forced to move amongst them for the past few months, the purpose of this bloody meeting was to ensure that she need do it no longer?
‘Don’t talk nonsense, Tessa. Any of these fellows could do it. They are all qualified, I’m sure . . .’
‘No, we are not, Mr Greenwood, or we would have no need of you at all.’ The quiet voice from the end of the table was Will Broadbent’s. Tessa could see the dangerous gleam in his now-darkened eyes and she put out an instinctively protective hand to her husband. Will’s jaw clenched perilously when he saw it and she knew she must get Drew away from here at once.
‘I think it’s time we left, darling, or we shall be late for our engagement.’ Her voice was light and airy. ‘I think our business here is concluded but I believe Mr Bradley has some papers you are to sign, and myself too, is that not so, Mr Bradley? In fact, I think it might be appropriate if we dealt with that now, if it is convenient, then we can take our leave. There is no other immediate business, is there, gentlemen? We have a managing director . . .’ She dare not look at Will lest they see the tiny glow which shone not only in her eyes, but in his, ‘. . . and a chairman . . .’ Without revealing to Drew the chairman’s name but letting them know that she would be taking the position herself, she turned to Mr Bradley and smiled.
Drew signed his name carelessly to every paper put before him, ignorant of the fact that, witnessed by a dozen of the valley’s leading businessmen, he had just signed away his inheritance to his equally ignorant wife.
Shining Threads Page 43
