‘Get me up, Emma, or fetch someone who can. I appear to be dreadfully weak.’
‘Oh Miss Tessa, oh, lass, if you knew how we’ve prayed for this moment. We thought we’d lost you . . .’
‘Lost me? What the devil are you talking about, girl?’ Her voice was irritable and she seemed unable to manage more than a hoarse whisper.
‘Miss Tessa, if you only knew . . .’
‘Knew what, Emma? For heaven’s sake, don’t stand there blubbering. Go and fetch my husband. Oh, and I’ll have some hot buttered muffins, I think, Emma. For some reason I have an enormous appetite.’
They came to tell her then that her husband was dead and had taken his sister, Laurel Greenwood, to the grave with him.
34
‘I cannot see him, Annie, and that is an end to it. We have nothing to say to one another.’
‘Will’s got plenty ter say ter thee, lass, an’ ’e’ll not rest while ’e’s said it. Thi’ can’t treat ’im like this, Tessa, an’ I thought thi was fair-minded enough ter see it. It’s not Will’s fault what ’appened.’
‘No, but it’s mine and I cannot just take up our . . . our relationship as though nothing had occurred. I brought the cholera from Will to Drew and it killed him and not only him, but Laurel. I have made five children motherless and I will never forgive myself. Do you think I can simply go back to being the woman I was before it happened? I know it was not Will’s fault that he passed the fever through me to Drew and Laurel, any more than it was the fault of the man or woman who brought it to Crossfold in the first place, but it was me, Tessa Greenwood, who carried it into this house. It was my . . . my connection with Will which brought my husband to your cottage and to his ultimate death . . . and . . . and Laurel to hers. I am not blaming Will, nor punishing him as you seem to think. I am saying, and you must tell him, that I am no longer the woman he loved. I have nothing to give him. I want nothing from him only his acceptance of it. We are two different people now, Annie. I must look after the welfare of my nieces and nephews, I have the mills to run and the people in them who have been thrown out of work by the cotton famine need my support. They need what I can give them. I have nothing left for Will.’
The words were spoken dispassionately but with a firmness and strength which left no doubt that Tessa believed exactly what she was saying. She was dressed in the deepest black of mourning, severe and unadorned. Even her hair, heavy and sliding with glossy health, was strained back from her pale face and confined in a black chenille net. She was thin still from her recent illness, her breasts, once so full and womanly, reduced to the slender proportions of an immature girl. Her grey eyes were shadowed and almost colourless, without expression as she looked out of her study window to the autumn garden beyond.
It was almost the end of October and a cold and early winter was forecast. Gone was the sullen heat of the late summer and with it the illness which had so swiftly struck the town of Crossfold. Two weeks had passed and no new cases had been reported, Annie had told her, and Doctor Salter was to close up the temporary hospital in Ashton lane since there was no further need of it. Laurel Greenwood and, strangely, several members of the Abbott family had been the last cholera victims to die.
The trees were almost bare now. The late October sun was very bright on the magnificent gold, copper and bronze of the leaves some of which still clung to their branches. Others fell in bright, twisting spirals, covering the grass in a multi-coloured carpet. A couple of gardeners raked them vigorously and continuously, collecting them in piles ready for burning. From beyond the kitchen garden a fine thread of woodsmoke rose into the clear air and the lovely but poignant smell, proclaiming the end of summer and bleakness of winter to come, drifted through the partly opened study window.
In the far distance, way beyond the boundary wall of Greenacres, stretched the endless grandeur of the moorland. The deepest green of summer was changing to the brown of autumn. The heather which was a dense purple in July was taking on its November shades of umber, puce and sienna and above it all the pale, transparent blue of the sky reached out its loveliness as though calling to the woman who stood impassively at the window and who once would have answered with a whoop of joy. Once she would have called for her mare who now stood sadly in the stable and ridden out to meet the beauty which lay all around her.
Annie sat straight-backed in the leather chair beside the glowing fire, the comfort of it in no way tempting her to lean back and relax. It was a pleasant room, completely masculine for it had been designed over eight decades ago for James Chapman, the great-grandfather of the man who had recently been buried. Since those early days two generations of the same family had sat at the splendid desk and now it belonged to Tessa Greenwood whose husband, the fourth generation, had never entered the room unless forced to it. This was the Tessa Greenwood in whose veins no Chapman blood ran; the Tessa Greenwood whose mother had been a ‘pauper brat’ come from some unknown workhouse with a cartload of others nearly sixty years ago.
It was a snug and intimate room, comfortable with a log fire, the walls lined with books and sporting prints. There were rods and guns, with a chest for fishing flies and a herbarium cupboard for though neither James nor his son Barker Chapman had been sportsmen they had liked the notion of adorning their study as though they were. But mainly it was a working room with functional furniture for the keeping of papers relating to the running of Greenacres and the estate. There were several oil lamps, a drum table, a fine inkstand, winged leather chairs and beside the fire a round table with several of the latest newspapers scattered on it.
Tessa turned away from the window and moved slowly across the room, seating herself on the opposite side of the fire. Her face was expressionless. It was as though the life, the fire, the warmth had been extinguished inside her, leaving behind a passive, unfeeling shell. Still lovely, she possessed an ethereal fragility which was the direct opposite of the tempestuous, undisciplined, carelessly warm-hearted girl she once had been and inside Annie Beale something ached for the loss of that girl.
‘Tis no good ’iding, lass. ’E’ll get in ter see thi one way or t’other, choose how. Tha knows Will, or should by now. ’E reckons thi owes ’im at least a chance ter say ’is piece an’ no matter ’ow many times ’e’s turned away by them footmen o’ yours, or that chap you ’ave on’t gate at Chapmanstown, ’e’ll find a way ter do it. ’Appen tha don’t want ter see ’im again. That’s thy affair an’ nowt ter do wi’ me but yer mun tell ’im so to ’is face.’
‘I cannot see him, Annie.’
‘Then tha’s a coward.’
‘Maybe. Does it matter?’
‘It does ter Will.’
‘I’m sorry but I cannot help the way I feel. What Will and I had . . . did . . . was wrong. And now . . . I am paying for it, not with my own loss though that was grievous enough for I loved Drew dearly, but through what I have done to Laurel and Charlie’s children. Good God, if I spend the rest of my days trying to be to them what Laurel and Charlie were, it would not be enough. I cannot forget that it was what I . . .’
‘Give over, Tess. Can thi not see it couldn’t be thee, or if it was tha could have fetched it from anyone in’t mill, or from Ashton Lane . . . ?’
‘But I didn’t. It was from Will that Drew and Laurel, and myself, contracted the fever. And I was the only one to survive.’
‘Dammit, lass . . .’ The oath on Annie’s lips was so completely out of character that Tessa turned her head sharply, tearing her haunted gaze away from the burning logs in the fireplace. Her lips parted in surprise, then the corners of her mouth lifted in a half-smile though the unequivocal expression in her eyes did not alter.
‘Annie, really, whatever next! I have never heard you swear before.’
‘Never mind that, my lass. Tha’s enough ter make a saint swear. Can yer not see what tha’s doing ter thissen? Tha’s tekkin’ on the blame fer summat that’s not tha fault. An’ not only that, tha’s relishing it. Oh, aye, thi are.
It meks tha feel better ter blame thissen, though God only knows why. An’ yer can tekk that hoity-toity look off thi face an’ listen ter me fer a minute fer I mean to ’ave me say.’
Tessa stood up without warning, ready to turn away, to ring the bell for Briggs to show her visitor out, but Annie gripped her arm fiercely.
‘What’s up, lass? Are thi afraid o’t truth? No? Then sit thi down an’ ’ear what I have ter say.’
‘Very well, but I can assure you it will make no difference.’
‘Right, then it’ll do no ’arm ter listen.’ Annie leaned forward earnestly, her plain and awkward face lit with the strength of her sincerity.
‘I bin ’elpin’ Doctor Salter clear up the ’ospital in Ashton Lane . . .’
‘Dear Lord, Annie! Don’t you have enough to do with the Relief Committee?’
‘What I do wi’ me time is my business. Now listen, lass. I ’ad a word wi’t doctor an’ though there’s not a lot known about the cholera, from what ’e’s seen this last couple o’ months ’e reckons thy ’usband couldn’t ’ave tekken it from Will. Tha did for thi were with ’im when the fever were at its worst but ’e ses Mr Greenwood must ’ave ’ad it when ’e come to’t cottage. There were no way ’e could’ve developed it so fast and died so soon. Now I know it comes swift an’ tekks ’em off swift . . . I’m sorry, lass,’ she sighed as Tessa’s face spasmed in pain, ‘but I mun mekk yer see the sense of it.’
‘And what about Laurel? Who gave it to her?’
Annie sat back uncertainly and studied the cold, unbelieving face of Tessa Greenwood and it was clear from the expression in her own eyes that she did not know how to answer the question. Laurel Greenwood was the last person on God’s earth to put herself in a position which might bring her into contact with the persons who inhabited the abominable hovels at the back of Jagger Lane. As far as Annie knew she had not stirred beyond the confines of her own home ever since the dread word ‘fever’ had been mentioned in the town. Greenacres was situated some distance from Crossfold and though she had still received callers they too lived out of town and only mixed with their own kind.
‘So you see, Annie, you don’t have the answers, do you?’ Tessa continued sadly. ‘Someone brought the fever to this house and killed my husband and sister-in-law and who could it have been but myself?’
Her days were full for which she thanked, not God – for how could she possibly believe in Him after what had happened to Drew, to Pearce, to Laurel and to Charlie? – but the fates which, through these very deaths, filled her days from five in the morning until midnight with the demands of her business and her new family. Though less than half of the cotton imported at the start of 1861 was now coming into the country, barely enough to keep her operatives at their machines for more than a day or so a week and sometimes not even that, yet she was at the mill on most days before the factory bell rang and did not leave until the last worker had gone. She was in constant touch with her agent in Liverpool but all that was available was low-grade cotton from India, Chile and the West Indies and every other cotton manufacturer in Lancashire was after that.
Many of her competitors had already given up, preferring to escape whilst they still had a sovereign or two in their pockets rather than lose even those. All the major ports in the southern states in America were stoppered up tighter than a cork in a bottle by squadrons of the Union navy and the flow of raw cotton which escaped the blockade had become no more than a trickle. The distress in the cotton towns was appalling. In Preston, Blackburn, Crossfold, Manchester, whole families were starving and men to whom the word ‘relief’ was the foulest imaginable, seeing their wives and children reduced to skin and bone, went cap in hand to claim it. Towns once filled with the cheerful clangour of clogs on cobbles, the factory bell and the bustle and noise of steam engines, became populated by wraiths who slipped along quiet, empty streets without a sound as they searched for nourishment for their empty bellies.
In an effort to draw attention to their plight, spinners and weavers, carders and piecers from all over Lancashire somehow gained the strength to march from Stalybridge to London and even, on arrival, to entertain the sympathetic London folk to a concert of brass-band music. Best brass bands in the country, the northerner proudly reckoned he had, and if it gave them at Westminster summat to think on, then the arduous march had not been wasted.
Tessa grew thinner as she shared herself amongst these people who, though they had done their best to be self-sufficient and proudly, fiercely independent, could no longer feed their own children. She and Annie bullied committees into giving further help, if not with money then in relief tickets which could be exchanged for bread and flour, for clothing and bedding, rent and firing for the weather was becoming increasingly colder. They went to every businessman in towns as far apart as Lancaster in the North to Northwich in Cheshire; from Liverpool in the west to Leeds in Yorkshire, to beg help, financial help for distressed operatives. Lord Derby, at the Lancashire County Meetings spoke of the estimated £200,000 distributed by private charities. The landed gentry had rallied to help those in need, even Squire Longworth himself, who had been much affected by the death of his son’s close friend and the bravery of his tragic widow, the once magnificent Mrs Tessa Greenwood.
And in the ever-increasing claims on her day she must find some time for the children who had fallen, with the death of their mother, into her care. She discovered that she scarcely knew them. Though they had lived together under the same roof with her ever since the eldest, Robert, was born fourteen years ago, they had been no more than diminutive figures seen walking sedately in the garden in the care of their nanny, well scrubbed and starched little ladies and gentlemen who presented themselves to their mother for an hour each evening in the drawing-room. She dimly remembered a shriek or two of natural childish laughter when their father had been alive but since then it was as though they were small ghosts, misted and silent, moving on the periphery of her disinterested mind, for what had they to do with her?
Robert and eleven-year-old Henry both attended the local grammar school, taken there each morning in the carriage by Thomas and returned the same way in the late afternoon. They were polite, respectful and serious, determined, it seemed, not to allow this tall lady in black who, amazingly, turned out to be their Aunt Tessa whom both remembered as rather fun, to see their confusion. Anne and Jane who came between the boys were small replicas of their mother with her fine, red-gold hair and dainty prettiness. Even at twelve and thirteen years of age they were too taken up with their own destiny in life which, of course, was to be the wives of well-to-do and important husbands, to be much concerned with the woman who had just lost hers.
Only Joel at six years old seemed inclined to be tearful, glad of her interest in him and willing to be her friend. Nanny stood in their midst, the one totally unchanging fixture in their young lives, getting old now and not really needed but still ruling the nursery and the schoolroom where the girls and Joel spent their day.
Tessa, in those first weeks after the funeral, did her best, if not to take her place, at least to stand as substitute for Laurel but she was herself too deep in shock and despair at her loss and too overcome by guilt to do more than visit the schoolroom in the evening before dinner, to smile painfully and ask them how they were. One day, she promised herself, she would take them riding, up on to the high tops where she and her cousins had been as children, teach them to love the rich moorland as she and Pearce and Drew had done. One day when she was . . . recovered – would she ever be that? – when she had put her disintegrated life together again, she would do it. Until then she did all she could to give them a sense of continuity and shelter in their shaken world.
Her grieving in private was terrible and tearing and she knew, deep inside her where no one but herself could see, that it was not for Drew that she mourned but for Will Broadbent. It was six weeks now since she had tom herself from his arms, climbing into her carriage and frantically urging Thomas to take h
er back to Greenacres. Six weeks since his bloodshot eyes had stared out from the waxen pallor of his face and his bruised throat had worked convulsively as he tried to speak her name.
But he was dead to her now, just as Drew was dead and she must put him away from her, put away his memory as the memory of all those who, though cherished in the heart, are gently laid to rest. She loved him still, that she admitted to herself, but that too would die and in the meanwhile she would wear her widow’s weeds, for him as much as for Drew. Somehow she would survive. Somehow.
She became even thinner, like a stick she was, or a black and graceful wand and so withdrawn when she was not at her mills that it was hard to get a word from her, Emma reported tearfully to the rest of the sympathetic servants. She did not weep, not even at the double funeral to which everyone, high and low, in the county came. The Squire and his lady – how gratified Laurel would have been, she had thought – held her hand and begged her to consider their home as hers, and that as soon as her period of mourning was over she was to come and be amongst her friends again. She was an extremely rich and childless widow, the Squire said later to his wife, and might she not now be considered for their Nicky who seemed disinclined ever to settle for one of the lovely young things who had been discreetly put in his line of vision. Perhaps an older, more sophisticated woman might appeal to him. He had always been fond of Tessa and she was most presentable, mixing easily with those of their own class.
She had seen Will that day. Like an emaciated old man, his large frame was gaunt and somehow disjointed inside his loose flesh, his haunted eyes searching her out, his arm trembling in Annie’s. He had tried to tell her something with those eyes, or ask her something perhaps, but she had nothing for him, then or now.
She had spent her days in her office at the mill. There had been no cotton for a week now beyond some Indian from Surat, a district in the presidency of Bombay. It was badly packed so that it was dirty, knotty, full of seeds and leaves as well as being short in staple with fibres which broke easily. Carding and spinning machinery had been damaged and at best it was suitable only for coarse cloth and not the fine quality velveteen woven in the Chapman weaving shed.
Shining Threads Page 55
