The Runaway

by Audrey Reimann

  Oliver walked to his mill two days after the funeral. It was his first visit as the new owner and he savoured every moment of the walk, ignoring the clamour and clangour of Rivergate, concentrating his mind on his future plans. He would keep the stalls until the output of the mills was such that the income from the market was insignificant. Albert and the lads would take care of the selling for the present.

  He’d spent the day before in serious thought. There were opportunities for increasing the yardage. The weavers would be glad of a chance to earn more money if he started a system of longer hours of work and of staggering the shifts. Rosie would help with the details. If everything went according to his plans then within six months he could look for bigger premises, take on more looms.

  Other questions had still to be answered. He’d puzzled long and hard, well into the nights that had followed his meeting with Florence when he’d known again the longing that the sight of her, over three years ago, had roused in him. She’d looked at him as if she too were overwhelmed by their meeting. The Oldfield family would keep them from meeting again, come hell or high water. His chances of seeing her alone were naught.

  Oliver also knew now that he would never find it easy, as Albert did, to take his pleasures where they were offered. He was a complicated creature, even to himself, and he wondered how it was that a man could see the heart-stopping beauty of a girl like Florence and want to hold her sweetness to himself, and at the same time feel the powerful desire of a man for a woman that he felt when he was near Rosie Hadfield.

  How could he be attracted to the two women he could never hope to marry? He must put these thoughts behind him. He went through the narrow lane that separated Hollin Mill from the cotton-spinners next door and stood in front of his mill, enjoying a moment of pride. Then he opened the outer door and ran up the dusty stairs to the office where Rosie waited for him, brown eyes glowing and a blush on the creamy skin of her face as she held out her hands to him.

  ‘Did you know that the mill is mine, Rosie?’ he asked when the door was closed. He’d seen the heads of the weavers turn all the way along the lines of looms and knew, of course, that she knew.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m glad, Oliver. I’m glad it hasn’t gone to anyone else. Did you know that Mr Grandison left me fifty pounds?’

  ‘Yes. I was at the will-reading. What will you do with it?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’ll try to find a better house to rent. One where the damp won’t go for Jim’s chest,’ she said. ‘Are you going to make changes?’

  ‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘I want to put up the production. I’ll start the system the bigger mills use, of longer hours, staggered shifts. There’s plenty of demand for our cloth.’

  He was still holding one of her hands and felt her pull it gently from his grasp. ‘I’ll tell the weavers,’ she said, ‘when you’ve told me how we’ll operate the new system.’

  ‘Help me with the details, Rosie.’ Oliver placed two chairs side by side at the desk and motioned her to sit. ‘There’s more I want to do. The property’s leased from a Manchester trading company. I only own the looms. I mean to find a bigger place, get more looms and make us the biggest weavers in Middlefield.’

  ‘There’s bigger places going up further along the river, Oliver. One of those would do you proud,’ she said. ‘Will you keep us all on?’ she laughed. ‘When you get to be a man of means?’

  She had a low, throaty laugh. Oliver had never heard her laugh out loud before. Again, he had the sense that the noise of the weaving shed faded and only he and this warm, inviting woman existed. ‘I’ll need you, Rosie,’ he replied, and there was no answering jest in his voice. ‘I’ll need you more than ever.’

  She stopped laughing. She appeared to have taken fright at the intensity of his words. ‘I’ll help you with this work,’ she said quietly. ‘Then I must get back to the weavers.’

  She turned her attention to the papers he’d brought, working silently, averting her eyes from his when she asked for an explanation of the new proposals. Oliver felt, as he always did, near her, an almost irresistible urge to take hold of her, so he forced his attention away from her to the record cards and the pile of letters that had arrived for the new mill-owner.

  Rosie returned to the looms as soon as her work was done. Once or twice he stopped work to look through the dust-clouded glass of the office window, to the weavers and the reverberating clatter of the looms and to Rosie as she walked the lines and at the lengthening rolls of his cloth. He left, for the braid workshop, at twelve.

  When he returned to The Pheasant at six o’clock in the evening Oliver found three letters on his window desk. One, he knew, was from Mr Lloyd. He knew the lawyer’s handwriting and was not surprised that the man wanted him to call into the office at his earliest opportunity. The other two he saved until Lloyd’s had been read. He studied the envelopes carefully, delaying the moment when he would open them. They were both written in feminine handwriting and he chose first the one in a careful copperplate, which, he suspected was from Florence.

  He slit the envelope and took out a single sheet of pretty, deckle-edged vellum with Florence’s signature at the foot of the page.

  Dear Oliver, Mama has asked me to invite you to take tea with us, a week from Wednesday. Please come to twenty-three, Churchgate at three o’clock when we will renew our acquaintance. Florence Mawdesley

  Oliver read it through twice, incredulously. He knew without doubt that Mrs Mawdesley hoped never again to offend her eyes with the sight of him. And yet she had invited him to tea? No, of course she hadn’t! Florence had asked him on her own account.

  He had not been mistaken then, in thinking that she wanted to know him. A great rush of pleasure swept over him at the thought. He grinned and pocketed the letter. He’d certainly go to Churchgate next Wednesday, but he did not believe for a minute that he’d be met at the door by Mrs Mawdesley.

  The second letter was from Lucy Grandison, asking him to call in two weeks’ time. Oliver wrote an acceptance at once.

  The next morning, Thursday, he walked to the lawyer’s office. ‘You wanted to see me, Mr Lloyd?’ he asked as the man came forward to usher him into his inner office.

  ‘Be seated, please.’ Lloyd pointed to the only chair in the overcrowded room that was not taken up with heaps of papers.

  Oliver saw that the man was trying to be pleasant, trying to ingratiate himself. His smile was far worse than the normal dry, humourless cast of his face. Oliver wondered, not for the first time, how the old man had been able to do business, to trust Mr Lloyd.

  ‘I have a client, Mr Wainwright, who approached me recently with an offer to buy Hollin Mill,’ he began.

  ‘It’s not for sale,’ Oliver interrupted.

  ‘Quite. Er – quite.’ The smile went from Lloyd’s face. He leaned across the desk and spoke earnestly. ‘It was an excellent offer. Almost a foolish one, you might say. The man would pay five thousand.’ He said the words slowly, with an air of conspiracy.

  Oliver pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Who made this offer? Sir Philip Oldfield?’

  ‘No! Heavens, no!’ Lloyd replied. ‘I am, however, obliged to withhold the name of the purchaser.’

  ‘The prospective purchaser, don’t you mean?’ Oliver said coldly. He reached the office door and turned to face Lloyd. ‘Tell your man that I’ll not sell. Ever.’

  This encounter with Lloyd had angered Oliver more than he had shown to the lawyer. The man was underhanded. There was only one man who would want the mill and that was Sir Philip. The offer had Oldfield’s stamp all over it.

  Oliver fumed as he covered the half-mile to Hollin Mill. If Sir Philip couldn’t get the property by fair means, then he’d have no scruples about using foul ones.

  Rosie, too, did not seem to be her normal, calm self. She seemed harassed but relieved to see him. ‘Anything wrong?’ he asked after she closed the office door to cut down the level of noise. ‘You look worried.’

  ‘F
our men haven’t come in, Oliver,’ she said. ‘It looks like trouble.’

  ‘What sort of trouble? Anything suspicious about four absentees?’ he asked. ‘They could be ill.’

  ‘We never have four ill at once,’ Rosie replied. ‘They can’t afford to be off work. They’re all married men.’

  ‘Has it happened before?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘Once. Four came out on the first day, six the second and ten the next. They were union men. They demanded more money.’

  ‘What did Bill Grandison do about it?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘He sat it out. He said if he paid up whenever they demanded it, they’d do it again a year later.’

  ‘How long were they out?’

  ‘Four months.’

  ‘Well I can’t afford to lose four months’ production. We must take on replacements. If they don’t come back tomorrow we’ll sack them.’

  ‘If you sack them you’ll have more out.’

  ‘We’ll get others,’ Oliver declared angrily. ‘I’ll not be dictated to by my own workers.’

  ‘Oliver,’ Rose said reasonably, ‘don’t you see? It’s not that easy to get good weavers. They’re skilled people. If it was a spinning mill or a dye works, it’d be different.’

  ‘What do you suggest, then?’ he replied.

  ‘Let’s wait and see. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.’ She opened the door to go back to the weaving shed. ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to do the Middlefield market on Saturdays with my partner but after that I’ll be giving all my time to the mills.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy is it?’ Rosie smiled her gentle smile at him.

  ‘No. But I learn fast. I’m not going to lose my first battle,’ he told her. ‘I was offered a lot of money for the mill this morning. But I’m not selling. And I’m not going to be tricked into giving up.’

  Rosie went back to the looms and left him to sit at the desk and ponder on the turn that events had taken. His money would come from constant, profitable running of the mill. He could not afford to fund a strike from his own savings. He could afford to lose one week’s production and no more. After a week he would be asking the goodwill of suppliers with whom he had never as yet had dealings on his own account. He’d also have to let down the customers he supplied. And that was unthinkable. He must get the weavers back.

  He returned to The Pheasant again at six o’clock. Leonard Billington nodded to him as he entered through the tavern. ‘There’s a visitor to see you, Oliver,’ he said. ‘He’s in the parlour.’

  Oliver went through to the back of the tavern and pushed open the parlour door. There, his back to the fire, an impudent look on his face, stood Tommy.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘I left home, our Oliver. Yer said yer’d coom for me when you got a place,’ he said accusingly. ‘They say in the village that you’ve got a lot of money.’

  ‘Do they?’ Oliver grinned at his brother and put an arm around his shoulder. ‘They have too much to say in the village, then, don’t they?’

  ‘Don’t send me back. I won’t go. I’m fifteen. I can work. Let me work for you, Oliver. Please!’

  There was a lot Oliver wanted to know before he could decide what to do with Tommy. ‘Have you been working on the farm?’

  ‘Aye. I did the same as you did. I worked with the horses and in the fields,’ Tommy said. ‘I’ve been working for Old Jessop an’ all. Doing a bit of labouring, but he can’t put me and Wilf together so that weren’t much use.’ Tommy was trying to look knowing and wise but was succeeding only in grimacing.

  ‘Tell me everything that’s happened since I left,’ Oliver said. He sat down with Tommy at the supper table and asked Mrs Billington to bring them food. Albert had eaten and gone to The Crown so there would be no interruptions. ‘Is Wilf a good husband to your ma?’ he asked.

  ‘No. He knocks her about something awful. He gave her a black eye last week and when I hit him he told me to leave. It was worth it though. I nearly broke his nose.’ Tommy’s attractive smile broke through when he delivered this piece of information.

  Mrs Billington brought steaming bowls of chicken broth with bread, roast beef and pickles. Tommy ate ravenously. ‘He’s got another woman an’ all. Him and Ma fight about her.’

  Oliver could have told Dolly all about Wilf’s other woman. He still felt angry at the thought of Wilf in his dad’s shoes. He studied his half-brother while the boy was talking. Tommy was thin. His bony wrists stuck out of the tight sleeves of his high-buttoned brown jacket. He wore old boots, too small for his feet that made him stand awkwardly. He had grown, almost as tall as himself, Oliver saw, and he had a wily manner he’d not had before, constantly looking over his shoulder as if he were afraid of being caught.

  ‘Isn’t Leach in charge of the farm?’

  ‘No. He’s in charge of a gang of Irishmen. Sir Philip owns ships, Wilf says. He sends Wilf to Liverpool to get them unloaded proper. Wilf helps himself to a lot and sells it about the place. It’s a wonder Sir Philip hasn’t caught him at it. Ma says if he doesn’t stop seeing that woman she’ll tell Sir Philip. Then they fight again. Real fighting, Oliver. With fists.’

  They talked far into the night, after asking Leonard if Tommy could have the job as stable lad. Finally, Oliver walked him down to his old quarters, his arm about Tommy’s shoulders. ‘You’ll be all right here, Tommy. Good night, lad. It’s good to have you with me at last.’

  There were signs of spring on Friday. The sun was weakly warm and the soft wind fresh and sweet. It brought a scent into town of the clean mountain air blowing down from the Pennine Hills. It was a day of promise, of new life and fresh starts.

  Yet there were ten men out at Hollin Mill. Rosie told Oliver that she had asked every weaver in the place if they knew the reason behind their absences but for once the workers kept the answer to themselves.

  ‘All I can discover,’ she said when he arrived early at Hollin Mill, ‘is that a man has been talking to them, talking about the new arrangements. They don’t like it. I can see they’re worried.’

  Oliver was unconvinced. ‘How can a man have talked about it?’ he replied. ‘I only mentioned it to you yesterday, yet they were out.’

  ‘I know,’ Rosie said. ‘Who can it be?’ I’ve said nothing to anyone.’

  ‘Keep asking. Someone will tell you before the day’s out,’ Oliver said. He was angry and anxious and found himself speaking roughly to her. ‘If you can’t get anything from them then at least make a list of the men who are out. Get their addresses and I’ll talk to them at their homes.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Oliver,’ she said, ‘but they don’t like it if the boss comes to the door. It’s something you can’t do.’

  He saw that she was upset at his tone of voice. Her face, normally pale, had two bright spots of colour on her cheeks and her lips were pressed together tightly. He was annoyed with himself for losing his temper with her but was unable to stop. ‘It may be one of the things nobody else does, but I’ll damn well do it. I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’m going to the braid shop. Have the list ready for me on Monday.’

  He left the mill in a hurry, angry because he was powerless to find the cause of this sudden reversal. He’d wait only until Monday before taking action himself, no matter what Rosie advised. She might know all there was to know about running a mill from the inside but when outside forces threatened he would have to deal with things in his way.

  And all the time, a warning voice was telling him that this was, indeed, the first move of Sir Philip Oldfield’s against him. But he knew that the baronet would not stoop to coming out in the open and speaking to his weavers in person. There had to be another, or others, involved.

  There was no insurrection at the braid shop. The braid shop brought a steady income for little effort but here the materials were expensive, and skill and a high degree of supervision were necessary. Oliver preferred the fast, noisy world of cotton weaving to th
e more artistic one of colour and pattern that was the lifeblood of the braid shop. Still, the business here could do more. He determined to look for bigger contracts for the braid and expand here too.

  He spent the afternoon at The Pheasant, preparing rolls of cloth for Middlefield market for the following day and overseeing Tommy in his new position as groom and stable lad. His mind was not entirely occupied with worries about the future of the mill. There were other, sweet, exciting thoughts that intruded throughout the day and again on the Saturday when he and Albert took the stall in Middlefield market.

  Oliver’s eyes searched the crowd, finding a tiny waist that brought Florence to mind, a pert figure, a laugh here, a head of blonde hair there and all the time wondering if she really was as lovely as he remembered her. For, since they had met, Oliver had felt a strange weakness – a weakness of affection that even the imagining of Florence brought. Her face swam before his eyes when he closed them.

  Albert told him to stop daydreaming and attend to the customers. Still he found himself unable to concentrate, letting his mind wander to the prospect of seeing her again on Wednesday at three.

  He had already spent a good deal of time since the funeral studying the windows of the drapers’ shops. He had visited a tailor and bought himself two fine silk shirts. His clothes now seemed to be nothing but serviceable and he began to set about making himself, as he thought, into a more acceptable suitor.

  ‘Pay attention, Oliver!’ Albert was saying. ‘You’ve just sold two yards of twill at half price.’

  Oliver brought himself out of his reverie and apologised. ‘Sorry! I don’t know what I’m doing. My mind’s on other things.’ He smiled at Albert. ‘I don’t know how you manage it. Albert,’ he said wryly, almost to himself so that the women around the stall wouldn’t hear him.

  ‘Manage what?’

  ‘Keeping yourself above it all. You can like a girl and not get tangled up with her,’ he replied.