Shining Threads

by Audrey Howard

  But they were indebted to her and to Mrs Greenwood as in increasing numbers young men and women, youths, adults who had never been to school in their lives, unemployed hands with time hanging heavy, were encouraged to attend the Working Men’s Institutes. There they were taught reading, writing and simple arithmetic for they needed an occupation of some sort to fill their empty days.

  Mr Will Broadbent, the largest stockholder in his own mill and therefore the worst hit, was struggling to keep open for a couple of days a week. On the days when the mill was closed, he used the silent and empty rooms to hold classes for his women operatives in sewing and the cooking of cheap and nourishing dishes, and an industrial class for his men in tailoring, boot-making and similar crafts, all of which would come in useful when the present crisis was over and they had returned to their spinning mules.

  But in other parts of Lancashire out-of-work millworkers fared a great deal worse. There was widespread bitterness over the ‘Labour Test’ where the poor who applied for relief had to show their willingness to work. The cotton operatives disliked being classed as ordinary paupers by the Guardians and felt that more lenient rules should govern the granting of relief to decent workmen who were only temporarily unemployed through no fault of their own. They objected to the manner in which the so-called Labour Test was enforced. Men who were indoor workers, badly clothed and close to starvation, were sent out in that first bitter winter on jobs such as stone-breaking, a task which was not only cruel, they said, but often fatal. A man who had worked in a cotton mill required delicacy of touch, and his hands were singularly soft from working in high temperatures and by continual contact with oil and cotton-wool. The stone hammer blistered his flesh and the oakum many were compelled to ‘pick’ galled his fingers. Flesh and fingers which would soon, please God and the good sense of the people of America, be back at work in the spinning mills and the weaving sheds of Lancashire.

  Discussion of the Public Works Bill began in quarters where the relief of the increasingly large numbers of the poor was of particular concern. The hot weather of that summer brought swarms of flies and rats into the alleyways and back streets which meandered through the old part of Crossfold. The cotton famine had caused whole families to move in with another in the same circumstances in order to save rent and, in the previous winter, economise on fuel. Windows had been boarded up and doors padded to retain what little heat there was. Bodies lay close together for warmth and even when the weather became kinder as spring and summer approached, they still squeezed together since they had no chance to do otherwise. Cleaning materials were low on their list of priorities as women watched their children starve and the filth, the mud and raw sewage which seeped through the uneven ground, the overflowing middens and foul pools of dung and rotting garbage became one huge, stinking cesspit. It was a breeding ground for the fevers, typhus, typhoid, scarletina and smallpox which the swarming flies and rats carried assiduously from one house to the next, from one street to the next, from one town to the next.

  So what better way, the Public Works Act wanted to know, to keep idle men employed and the fevers at bay, than to put these men to the vexed problem of main sewering? The distressed cotton operatives would be asked to volunteer to do the unskilled manual labour of building not only sewers and drains but reservoirs, good roads, public parks and recreation grounds at labourers’ rates of pay. The experience would strengthen their puny frames and improve their skills and without undue exertion they could earn themselves twelve shillings a week and at the same time relieve the Guardians of the task of supporting their families.

  ‘Tis said there’s sickness at back o’ Jagger Lane,’ Annie offered in the long silence which had fallen over the two women.

  ‘What kind of sickness?’ Tessa’s voice was sharp and she returned her cup to its saucer with a clatter.

  ‘They say tis nowt’. Doctor Salter fetched me from’t school this mornin’. ’E knew I were . . . well, that I’d ’ad some sort o’ fever when I were in Manchester. Reckoned as ’ow I’d survived it then I’d be in no danger now.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Nay, lass, don’t ask me. I’m no doctor.’

  ‘Has Doctor Salter no idea?’

  ‘’E ses as ’ow its bin a long time since there were an epidemic an’ ’im bein’ a youngish man, like, ’e’s never bin in one.’

  ‘An epidemic? Does he think . . . ?’

  ‘It’s bin nearly a year since most of ’em were in full work, Tessa, or ’ad a decent meal except what we give ’em. They’re all low, in poor ’ealth, an’ the first illness what comes along’ll ’ave ’em before thi can say ‘pickin’ stick’. They’ll not call’t doctor since they’ve no brass ter pay ’im. Will ses as ’ow . . .’

  ‘Will?’ Tessa felt her heart lurch sickeningly. ‘What was he doing there?’

  ‘Nay, Tessa. Tha knows Will, or should do by now. Wherever there’s trouble ’e’s in’t thick of it. Doctor Salter was talkin’ of puttin’ them what’s sick in one o’ them empty warehouses in Ashton Lane. Keep ’em apart from t’orthers until ’e knows what’s up wi’ ’em. Just ter be on’t safe side, like. I said I’d find some women ter nurse ’em. There’s a few o’ my pin-headin’ girls wi’ nowt ter do an’ they’d be glad of a bit of extra cash.’

  Tessa sprang up. ‘I’ll come and help.’

  ‘No, tha’ll not. Will wants yer kept out of it.’ Annie’s face was impassive, half-turned away and Tessa smiled at the very idea of being ‘kept out of it’. These were her operatives, some of them, and she was part of this working community now. Besides, Will had no control over her. If she wanted to go down and inspect the premises she damn well would. He ought to know her by now as well. She came and went as she pleased, or as much as she was able with Drew in the often violent moods which came over him. But certainly, despite their love for one another, Will had no authority over her.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Annie. If there is to be an epidemic of some sort in the town then those who are sick will need all the help they can get and I must see what is needed.’

  ‘I know what’s needed, lass, an’ there’s nowt you can do that I can’t’.

  ‘You mean because of who I am? Because I am Tessa Greenwood and not brought up to hardships as you and Will were?’

  ‘Aye, ’appen that, but most of all because Will wants yer kept out of it.’

  ‘Dear God, what has it to do with you or Will? I’m not a child . . .’

  ‘Then stop actin’ like one. Anyway, let’s see what’s to ’appen first. Get yer gone up to that ’usband o’ thine an’ see if there’s owt’ yer can be doin’ fer ’im. I ’eard as ’ow ’e caused summat of a disturbance, ’im an’ that merry band o’ gentlemen ’e rides about with, up at Five Pigeons t’other night.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, what over?’

  Annie looked uncomfortable, fiddling in a most unusual way with the enormous reticule she carried around with her and in which she kept all the many and varied items she might need in the course of her active day. No one was quite sure what they were but she could provide anything from a clean rag to wipe a child’s runny nose to a safety-pin for a torn hem, a pencil for making a quick note here and there, and even a screw of paper containing tea for some needy woman she visited and who might gain comfort from a brew.

  ‘Nay, don’t ask me. ’Tis nowt ter do wi’ me, Tessa.’ That meant, of course, that it had to do with some woman, or Annie would have told her.

  It was nearly three years now since Tessa had taken up the burden which she had unwillingly inherited from her mother and Charlie; more than three years since the fire in which Charlie had lost his life. She did her best to share her time between the mills and her husband, going only to Chapmans when it was absolutely necessary for a board meeting or when, as Drew’s proxy, her signature was needed on some document, but now the crisis caused by the cotton famine demanded more and more of her time. Secretly she admitted to herself that she found the time she spent there
increasingly absorbing and the hours passed in the company of Drew and his friends increasingly trivial.

  ‘We are off to Nicky’s for a game of croquet, my love,’ he had said to her at lunch-time. ‘Why not join us? Johnny and Alicia will be there and Nicky has persuaded Polly Arbuthnot to give that elderly husband of hers the slip. Afterwards we thought we’d ride into Oldham. There’s a new song and supper room just been opened, or perhaps the music hall. Who knows? That is the charm of being free, don’t you agree? Go wherever the fancy takes us, for that is what makes life exciting, Tessa. Come on, darling, leave those bloody awful figures. In fact, give them to me and I shall dispose of them where they belong. In the back of the fire . . .’ He had snatched a sheaf of notes and figures Will had made out for her to study on the variations in trading from month to month since the new mill had begun operating.

  ‘Don’t, Drew. A lot of work has gone into those notes. Please, put them back,’ she said urgently as he made a movement towards the fire. ‘I know you think they are not worth bothering one’s head about, any more than the mills and the operatives, but someone has to look after our interests at least until this crisis is over.’

  ‘And then what excuse will you give, my pet? What reason will you dream up so that you might give your undivided attention to the business and not to your husband? Will it be that another catastrophe of desperate proportions will spring up to claim you, d’you think? Or will it be the fascination of making money which seems to have afflicted every member of my family, except myself and Pearce, of course? Really, Tessa, your commercial heritage is beginning to show quite dreadfully. I was only saying to Nicky last week that one can hardly believe that you are the same dashing girl who once rode out with us on more than one escapade. Adventure, that is what we were after, the three of us, you and I and Pearce . . . No . . . I mean . . . Drew. Don’t I?’

  His voice became uncertain and his eyes narrowed as he looked at something in the far distance of his memory. The papers dropped from his hand and she quickly retrieved them from the carpet where they fell before turning back to him. His taunting manner had disappeared. His shoulders slumped and in his face was the lost and desperate expression he had brought back from the Crimea. He shook his head wonderingly and his voice was soft when he spoke.

  ‘Where has he gone, Tessa?’ he said, in much the same way Emma had done only that morning. ‘I seem to have lost him somehow.’

  ‘Pearce?’ She put her hand to him, her own face as gentle as his.

  ‘No, not Pearce, not Pearce. But . . . both of us . . . myself . . . I cannot seem to function these days now that both of you have left me. I know I do dangerous things but I seem to have no control . . .’

  She moved quickly to his side, taking his hand in hers, but he turned away to look into the fire. She lifted it, a hard, horseman’s hand, brown and strong, to her lips.

  ‘You have not lost yourself, Drew, nor me. I am always here.’

  ‘No, you are not, Tessa, and I’m afraid that . . .’

  ‘What, my darling?’ In her voice was the depth of her love for him.

  ‘That one day, when I really need you, when Johnny is with his Alicia and Nicky off on some private jaunt with a lady and I have no one, you will not be here when I look round.’

  ‘I shall always be here, Drew, always. You know that.’

  ‘Do I, Tessa? Do I? You were not here this morning when I awoke and called out to you.’

  ‘No, I had to . . .’

  ‘I know. Go to the mill, or the school with that woman, or to the soup kitchen . . .’

  ‘There are so many of them, Drew, and all needing . . .’

  ‘None need you as I do, Tessa. Please come with me this afternoon. Show me . . .’

  ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘That you mean what you say. That you love me still. That you are here for me now. Prove it by coming with me.’

  And so she had gone dressed in her outrageous black riding coat and cream breeches, her white waistcoat and tall top hat, her boots polished and her mare beneath her. She and Drew raced one another along the wild stretch of track between Greenacres and Longworth Hall and the solitary figure of the horseman who rode quietly, tiredly in the direction of Crossfold was noticed by neither of them as they shouted with delighted laughter in one another’s company.

  32

  ‘I thought you said Will was coming with you. I wanted to speak to him about . . .’

  ‘’E couldn’t manage it. ’E sends ’is apologies.’

  ‘Apologies? What on earth does that mean? You and he had your meeting with Doctor Salter, I suppose?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Annie, for God’s sake stop playing games with me. Has the good doctor decided what is wrong with these people in the vicinity of Jagger Lane?’

  ‘It’s come so sudden, like, an’ ’e’s still not sure. Give it a week or two . . .’

  ‘A week or two? But I thought it was urgent.’

  ‘It could be ’owt, Tessa. Doctor Salter ses as ’ow ’e wants a second opinion so ’e’s asked old Doctor Ellison to come an’ look ’em over. Not that Doctor Ellison was too pleased ter poke ’is ’ead in them alleys at back of Jagger Lane. But ’e’s ’ad more experience than Doctor Salter seein’ as ’ow ’e’s worked in London where such fevers are rife, they say.’

  ‘But what form does it take?’ Tessa sat back in her chair and studied Annie’s averted face. There was something about her reluctance to meet Tessa’s eyes which was most alarming since Annie never flinched away from anyone’s gaze. Just the opposite for sometimes her steady eyes seemed to probe right inside Tessa’s head just where she didn’t want her to see. Now she was staring out of the office window, this time at the busy yard for the cotton Tessa had purchased was at this moment being unloaded and carried swiftly to the warehouse where the bales would be opened in readiness for blending.

  ‘Well, naturally, none of ’em are what yer might call fit. Scrawny and pale from a poor diet . . .’

  ‘Dear Lord, I hope we can keep our own people working, Annie, and if we can’t we must not allow them to fall into the state these are in. Are they all from the Moorhouse mill?’

  ‘No, some are Abbotts. Jenkinsons’ve turned off ’undreds an’ there’s some from every mill in’t valley?’

  ‘And Jonathan Abbott refused to donate a penny last week when I cornered him at the Cloth Hall.’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s as mebbee, but them at back o’ Jagger Lane’ll need more’n a penny ter see ’em through. There’s women wi’ babies they can’t feed. No milk, tha’ knows. There’s others’ve never got over the bronchitis and pneumonia they took last winter. They’ll be’t first ter go, Doctor Salter ses.’

  ‘Is there nothing we can do to stop it?’

  ‘We’re doin’ all we can, lass, but ’appen it’ll come ter nowt though Doctor ses the symptoms are . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, tha’ll not want to ’ear what they are.’

  ‘Annie, really. I am no genteel lady who is about to faint away at the thought of sickness, nor am I to shirk the responsibility of doing what must be done.’

  ‘Do thi know, lass, sometimes I can’t get over the change in thi’?’ Annie smiled and her eyes, so pale and cool more often than not, had a softness in them, a warmth which spoke of her deep affection for this woman. ‘Wheer did that ’oity-toity young madam go, the one what used ter come ter my ’ouse an’ treat it as though it was ’er own? I’ll ’ave a cup o’ tea, Annie, if yer please, tha’ used ter say, expecting’ me ter stop whatever I were doin’ an’ brew up for thi’. Yer’d sit in’t best chair an’ keep me from me work, jawin’ on about nowt, then, off yer’d go, ridin’ like the divil on that animal o’ thine, off on some foolish, wasteful jaunt wi’ thy scapegrace cousins . . .’ She stopped suddenly, aware that she was speaking of Tessa’s husband, then her face hardened. ‘Nay, I’m not sorry I said that
even though one is dead . . .’

  ‘Please, Annie.’

  ‘. . . an t’other’s no more than a . . .’

  ‘Annie!’

  ‘Right, lass, I hear thi’. I’ll say no more except that tha’ve turned out champion, Tessa Greenwood. Now, where was I?’

  ‘About to tell me the symptoms of this illness, you fraud, you!’

  ‘Aye, ’appen I am. Well, they start wi’ vomitin’ an’ a loosenin’ of the bowels. They shake, Will ses, an’ can’t stop, an’ no one really knows what it is. They say as ’ow it comes from abroad somewhere, India an’ such places. It seems ter live in muck an’ wi’ all them stinkin’ sewers an’ drains at the back o’ Jagger Lane it’s a right breedin’ ground. Them as is took can’t keep owt’ down, an’ it’s a quick death, Doctor Salter says.’

  ‘There have been deaths already?’ Tessa’s voice was sharp.

  ‘Aye, a few.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Well, Will reckons . . .’

  Tessa felt the first dreadful thrill of fear skim along the surface of her flesh and her stomach lurched for no accountable reason. She sprang up from her chair and reached for the parasol Emma had persuaded her to bring this morning.

  ‘I’m going up to Ashton Lane,’ she said abruptly, heading towards the door, her every instinct telling her that for some reason she must hurry. Annie stood up too and followed her, her face becoming even paler than usual, her hands reaching out and swiftly capturing Tessa’s arm.

  ‘Nay, tha’ musn’t, lass. Not until Doctor Salter ses tha’ might.’

  ‘So it’s Doctor Salter who is keeping me away now, is it? I thought it was Will who was giving the orders on where I may or I may not go. What’s going on here, Annie?’ She threw off Annie’s restraining hands, barely stopping in her stride, turning heads in the counting house as she stalked by the clerks at their tall desks, Annie at her heels. Neither of them had taken the time to put on a bonnet and as they reached the yard the sweltering sun struck savagely on their uncovered heads. Tessa called to the stable boy to tell Thomas to fetch round the carriage and all the while Annie was reaching for her, shouting above the clamour of the yard that she was not to go, that Will would be furious, that Doctor Salter would blame her if she brought Mrs Greenwood where it really wasn’t necessary for her to go. There were a dozen other good reasons why Tessa should stop right here, or better yet, get on home to her husband.