‘There, there, my pet,’ Mary soothed and in a moment Bridie was sucking noisily. Then, quite calmly, Mary said, ‘Well, read it out then.’
‘It doesn’t say much,’ Eveleen looked down at the untidy scrawl. Schoolwork and her brother had never really been good companions. ‘Just “Dear Mam and Evie, I am well. Hope you are. I’m seeing the world. Love, Jimmy”.’
‘Not a word of apology, I suppose?’ Mary asked.
Eveleen shook her head and smiled. ‘I can’t ever remember Jimmy saying he was sorry for anything. Can you?’
‘No,’ Mary said tartly. ‘But it wouldn’t have hurt him. Just once. He owes you that much, Evie, at the very least.’
For a long moment mother and daughter stared at each other. Then to Eveleen’s surprise, tears filled Mary’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Evie, I’m so sorry. So very sorry. I don’t know how you’ve put up with me.’
Eveleen hurried to her side and put her arms about her mother. Quietly Josh took the baby from Mary, who now clung to Evie and sobbed against her shoulder. ‘I’ve treated you so badly, even when your poor father was alive.’
Stroking her hair, Eveleen soothed, ‘It’s all over, Mam. All forgotten.’
Mary pulled back a little and smiled through her tears. She patted Eveleen’s shoulder. ‘You’re a good lass, Evie. And I do love you – very much.’
Now it was Eveleen’s turn to feel the tears spilling down her face. Then suddenly they were laughing and crying and hugging each other, until at last Mary said, ‘Go on, love. You go for a walk with Helen.’ Her smile widened and her words included Josh and the baby. ‘We’re fine here.’
As Eveleen propped the card on the dresser, she murmured, ‘I am glad we’ve heard from him. At least we know he’s well.’
Again she and her mother exchanged a look. Eveleen knew that the arrival of news from Jimmy had completed Mary’s contented world.
‘It’s like something out of a picture book.’ Helen was ecstatic in her praise. ‘Blue sky, green fields, even a stream and trees. Oh I’ve never seen so many trees.’
They were walking alongside the beck towards the bridge, where they sat on the parapet and watched the water bubbling over the pebbles.
‘Just look at the colours in that water,’ Helen marvelled. ‘Brown against the rocks but there’s blue and green. Even purple.’
Fascinated, she sat watching the rushing water.
‘You make it sound idyllic,’ Eveleen teased. ‘It’s not so lovely in winter, when there’s snow and ice and—’
Helen clapped her hands, ‘Oh, I bet it is. Everywhere covered in white. How pretty it must look.’
‘Pretty pictures, maybe, but not when you have to milk the cows with fingers you can’t feel and trudge through two foot of snow to feed the pigs and—’
‘Stop, stop. You’ll have me crying in a minute.’ They laughed, leaning against each other.
‘Oh it’s good to see you.’ For Eveleen the sight of her friend had brought the touch of the city again: the pavements seething with life, the lighted shops, the bustle and the noise. She felt a sudden surge of excitement. ‘Tell me,’ she demanded eagerly, ‘what’s been happening?’
‘Well,’ Helen began slowly, with a coy glance. ‘All the women in the workrooms have had a rise in their wages and we’ve been promised a little extra at Christmas. Oh, he’s so good to us. Any suggestions we want to make for improving our working conditions, he said, we’re to go straight to him.’
Eveleen swallowed and her voice was husky as she asked, ‘Who? Who is this “he” who’s doing such wonderful things?’
Before Helen spoke, Eveleen already knew the answer.
‘Why, Mr Richard, of course. He’s taken on the management of the warehouse now, while his father manages the factory side of things. But even he’s making improvements, they say.’
So, Eveleen thought, another young man who had been given power over other people’s lives. And yet, from what Helen was telling her . . .
There was the sound of hoofbeats in the lane coming closer and, intrigued, Helen twisted round to watch the horseman approach.
Eveleen kept her gaze fixed steadfastly on the beck, her back turned towards the lane. The rider reined in and Eveleen heard him speak.
‘Good afternoon, ladies. I trust I find you well.’
She heard Helen’s soft chuckle at her side and almost laughed aloud as in a very haughty tone Helen said, ‘You do indeed, sir.’
‘And you, Miss Hardcastle?’
She felt Helen’s sharp elbow in her ribs and her whispered, ‘Evie?’
Slowly Eveleen turned round and looked up into the face of the man on horseback. With a grand gesture she inclined her head and said quietly, ‘I am very well, sir. Thank you.’
Stephen Dunsmore raised his hat and bowed his head towards them. He smiled his most charming smile and said, ‘I bid you good-day, ladies.’ Replacing his hat, he urged his horse forward. They watched him canter along the lane and turn in at the gates of Fairfield House.
‘What a pompous, stuck-up little prig!’ Helen said.
Eveleen gasped and stared at her friend until Helen laughed and said, ‘Oh I know I’ve only just met him, but I’m pretty good at summing folks up. ’Specially fellers. I wouldn’t want anything to do with him if he was the last man on earth.’ Her merry laughter echoed across the fields as she spluttered, ‘Mind you, whenever I say that me mam always says, “Don’t worry, you’d be killed in the rush”.’
Eveleen, her gaze still on the empty lane where Stephen had disappeared, said tentatively, ‘How – how can you tell?’
‘Tell what? What he’s like, you mean?’
‘Mm.’
‘He’s got cold eyes and a weak chin. I bet he can be a right charmer when he wants to be, but turn nasty if he didn’t get his own way.’
Suddenly Eveleen was laughing and crying all at the same time. She put her arms around Helen and hugged her close. ‘Oh, Helen, you’re wonderful. I do love you so.’
‘What did I say?’ asked the mystified girl in astonishment.
But Eveleen couldn’t tell her that when she had looked up into Stephen Dunsmore’s face she had felt neither love nor hatred. No swift beating of the heart or trembling at the knees. No wanting to rush into his embrace or feeling the urge to scratch her nails down his petulant face.
At last she had been able to look at Stephen Dunsmore and feel absolutely nothing.
‘So, when are you going back to Nottingham for good?’ Mary, sitting contentedly by the fire with her pillow lace on her lap, her fingers deftly twisting and weaving the threads, asked her daughter.
‘Trying to get rid of me, are you?’ Eveleen smiled fondly at her mother and winked at Josh sitting in Walter’s chair reading the newspaper. It didn’t hurt her to see him in her father’s place. He was a good, kind man – just as Walter had been – and she felt sure that her father would approve of Josh.
‘Of course we are,’ Mary said, laughing. ‘What do I want with a nineteen-year-old daughter around when I’m about to become a blushing bride myself?’
Eveleen gasped and looked from one to the other and back again. Then she leapt to her feet and flung her arms wide, trying to embrace them both at once.
‘Oh when? Have you fixed a date?’
‘We thought next Easter.’
The conversation turned to their plans; plans, Eveleen noticed with a pang, which did not seem to include her.
Her own thoughts drifted. She thought about the city that she had grown to love and the friendly people there. Win and Fred and Helen in particular, but there were others too. She loved Lincolnshire, the place of her birth, she always would, but she had seen something else now. She had witnessed another kind of life and it had twisted its way into her heart.
Her mother was home where she belonged and she had a good man to care for her once more. What did it matter how that had been achieved? That it had been accomplished was what mattered.
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br /> ‘Of course if you do decide to go back, we . . .’ Mary hesitated and looked towards Josh who took up her words, ‘We want you to leave Bridie with us, love.’
In that instant Eveleen felt the burden slip from her shoulders. She was free. Free to live her own life.
And, now, she was free to love again.
‘Yes,’ Eveleen murmured and began to smile. ‘You’re right, Mam. My life is back in Nottingham.’
‘Right, that’s settled then,’ Josh said and added, mildly, ‘Give my regards to Mr Richard when you see him.’
From behind his newspaper, he winked across the hearth at his bride-to-be.
Tangled Threads
Born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Margaret Dickinson moved to the coast at the age of seven and so began her love for the sea and the Lincolnshire landscape.
Her ambition to be a writer began early and she had her first novel published at the age of twenty-five. This was followed by eighteen further titles, including Plough the Furrow, Sow the Seed and Reap the Harvest, which made up her Lincolnshire Fleethaven trilogy, Twisted Strands, which continues the story begun in Tangled Threads, and her latest novel, Red Sky in the Morning.
ALSO BY MARGARET DICKINSON
Plough the Furrow
Sow the Seed
Reap the Harvest
The Miller’s Daughter
Chaff Upon the Wind
The Fisher Lass
The Tulip Girl
The River Folk
Twisted Strands
Red Sky in the Morning
This book is a work of fiction and is entirely a product of the author’s imagination. All the characters are fictitious and any similarity to real persons is purely coincidental.
For Dennis
Acknowledgements
The area to the west of Grantham around Barrowby and Casthorpe, the village of Ruddington and, of course, Nottingham are the places of inspiration for the settings in this novel although the story and all the characters are entirely fictitious. The siting of a factory and warehouse on Canal Street in Nottingham and the homes of all the characters within the city in 1900 are also my own invention.
I am deeply grateful to Mr Jack Smirfitt, Miller and all their colleagues at the Ruddington Framework Knitters’ Museum for all their wonderful help. I also wish to thank the staff at the Lace Market Centre, Nottingham, for answering my questions and, in particular, Peter Mee, a former twist-hand in the lace industry, who so kindly and generously shared his knowledge and experience with me.
My love and thanks as always to my family and friends for their constant support and encouragement especially those who read and comment on the script in its early stages; my sister and brother-in-law, Robena and Fred Hill; my brother and sister-in-law, David and Una Dickinson; my friends Linda and Terry Allaway and Pauline Griggs. Thank you all so much.
First published 2002 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-330-52707-1 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-52705-7 EPUB
Copyright © Margaret Dickinson 2002
The right of Margaret Dickinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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