The Silk Factory

by Judith Allnatt

  A soldier knelt in the gutter drinking like a beast, lapping at the wine that flowed from the barrels broken in the road, the liquid mixing with the foul detritus of the street. Beside one of the barrels, the body of a French soldier lay bleeding into the pools and runnels from the barrel. In the dream, Jack tried to crawl away but the pain in his side pinned him down so that he too fell sprawling, his face against the wet cobbles.

  Then a woman’s face was before him, framed by a cornered headdress, her hands lifting him up, her voice imploring him in words he was unable to understand. There was something he must remember. He stared at her, looking for something familiar in her face, something he should know. This woman was not the one. She was hidden somewhere at the back of his mind: a softness, their two voices whispering, something yielding beneath their nakedness, a candle guttering and her dark hair falling around him. The stranger placed cool cloths upon his brow, her voice murmuring what sounded like a prayer.

  THIRTEEN

  On the Friday that the rent was due, Effie was hanging washing out on the line strung over the patch of ground behind the cottage. Although it was only mid-morning, the sun was already hot and being outside offered little respite from the discomfort of standing over a steaming tub. Effie had tied her hair up in a kerchief and pinned up the hem of her dress at the front, revealing her petticoat beneath, the better to move unhampered and to catch a breath of air at her ankles. Her sleeves were rolled up above the elbows and, with strings untied, her apron hung loosely in front, weighted by a pocketful of long split pegs. She paused as she felt a tightening under her ribs, across the top of the bowl of her belly. It gripped her for a few seconds and she stood quite still, knowing it would pass: ‘false labour’ the other women called it, or ‘early pangs’. Sometimes the tightenings would come three or four in a row, hot on each other’s heels, but then the ripples would die away leaving her calm again. There, it had passed and she could carry on.

  The rope washing line, which ran from a thorn tree in the hedge to a hook under the eaves of the cottage, was already half full and she hummed to herself as she pegged out a set of the Rectory’s pillow cases, smoothing out their fine broderie anglaise trim. Then, unexpectedly, for he was not due until evening, Hob came around the corner of the cottage, saying, ‘Good morrow! I thought I should find you here.’

  Effie wheeled round to face him, the wicker basket of washing abandoned at her feet. ‘Mr Talbot.’ She inclined her head. ‘I shall fetch the rent directly.’ She turned a little pink, annoyed by his intrusion on her privacy and the awareness that with neither Tobias nor Beulah at home they were alone, the lane as always being quite deserted.

  Hob, however, waving the matter of the rent away, leant his back against the warm stone wall of the cottage and said, ‘’Tis a beautiful day and I’m in no hurry.’ His gaze travelled over her and lingered at her petticoat so that she longed to unpin her skirts and put them straight again. His eyes flicked back to her face. ‘Pray – continue,’ he said. ‘Don’t let me inconvenience you.’ He tucked his thumbs into his weskit pockets as if settling down to watch her. ‘I trust you bear no grudge over our conversation the other week?’ he said pleasantly. ‘Ale loosens the tongue and perhaps makes a man more ardent than a young maid like yourself is used to.’

  Effie bent to her basket rather than meet his gaze, picking out the corner of a sheet and searching for its opposite among the tangle of shirts and underclothes. She put the corners together, picked up a peg, hauled the folded side of the sheet out and turned, side-on, back to the line. Hob’s voice deepened as he carried on: ‘… but they say in vino veritas, Effie, which means a man speaks the truth when he’s in his cups …’ She lifted her arms high to peg the sheet to the line and Hob stopped dead as the sun behind her showed her form in silhouette, turning her cotton apron to flimsy and outlining clearly the bulge of her belly. Effie, aware of the sudden silence, froze with her arms still outstretched, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling and a blush rising like a tide to flush her chest and face. She turned her head slowly towards him and froze as she saw his changed expression.

  ‘Whose is it?’ he said stonily, drawing himself up from his lounge against the wall.

  Warily, Effie pulled the sheet taut against the rope and pushed the next peg over it. ‘I’ll not say.’

  ‘Then the parish will get it out of you.’ He gave a strange laugh. ‘So … not so demure after all. For all your posturing, your downcast eyes, your holier than thou …’ He took a step towards her.

  ‘We are to be married,’ Effie said hurriedly.

  He caught her forearm and gripped it hard. Effie gave a gasp as he pulled the sheet from her hand and straightened out her fingers. ‘I see no ring,’ he said quietly. ‘So whatever randy lad has had you has tupped and gone.’ He dropped her hand and she placed it quickly upon her belly.

  ‘You’re out,’ he said abruptly. ‘There’s no room for your sort here.’

  ‘But I have the rent! You can’t just turn us out! What of Beulah? She’s just a child!’

  He raised his palm to stop the flow of words. ‘I’ll send my bailiff at midday. Leave the rent on the table. Be sure to be gone by then.’ He turned and began to walk away.

  Effie took a few steps after him. ‘But where will we go? Hob! I will not have my child born in the workhouse! I cannot!’

  ‘That’s a matter you should have considered before you started your whoring,’ he said over his shoulder as he walked away.

  Effie stood trembling as the slam of the garden gate died away. Half of the sheet trailed on the path. She lifted it and pegged it, beating at the streaks of reddish dust absentmindedly, and then continued automatically along the line, pegging out smocks and petticoats any old how, drips leaving dark dots on the baked earth. Surely Hob didn’t mean it? Surely he would change his mind? But she knew he was bull-headed and proud, used to getting his own way. Susannah Cleave, the dairymaid, had been sent away, cast out from the household, even though the child had been his own. Why would he care that she and Beulah had nowhere else to go and no one to take them in? He would not change his mind. She left the basket still half-full where it lay and went into the house.

  In a daze, she spread a grey blanket on the table and laid upon it their few belongings: clothes, an old chap book that had been her mother’s, the leather gloves, Beulah’s slate and chalks. She counted out the rent into a pile on the table, tipped the few remaining coins into a drawstring purse and tucked it into her pocket. She went to the mantel and lifted down the old wooden clock; she must take anything that could be sold. In the shard of mirror propped beside it, her face looked drawn, her skin with a wan, yellowish cast. She stared at herself. Homeless. Destitute. Pauper. The words sailed through her mind. Oh, where was Jack? His return was their only hope.

  She gripped the oak mantel with both hands and bowed her head. She had worked so hard to make a home. How was she to tell Beulah that they no longer had one? The mirror reflected the familiar room behind her: the green light from the garden in the casement window; the battered chairs with their rush seats that she’d mended over and over; the ladder to Tobias’s loft, the rungs polished by their feet and hands over years of use. She couldn’t bear to think of Beulah coming home work-weary to find her sitting on the step with their belongings at her feet. No, she would walk over to Weedon Royal and find her at the factory; they would set out together and she would try to explain the trouble she was in and endeavour to calm Beulah’s fears. She laid the broken mirror face down upon the mantel and then began, resolutely, to tie the ends of the blanket to make a bundle. A plan was forming in her mind. She draped the shawl that Jack had given her over her shoulders, thinking that not only would it help hide her condition but that the fine garment might help gain her an audience. There was something she must do at Weedon Royal before she went to find Beulah. It filled her with dread but she must steel herself to go to the barracks and enquire after Jack.

  Effie was directed to the ba
rracks, which stood on the northern slope of the valley directly above the arsenal and near the turnpike road, in readiness for the speedy departure of the Artillery Brigade’s horses and guns. A huge parade ground was enclosed on all four sides by a brick boundary wall and buildings: quarters for men and officers, cook-houses, stable blocks for three hundred horses, an exercise shed and gun-carriage buildings. Smaller sheds and buildings housed the shops of collar makers, wheelwrights and smiths, from which the noise of hammering issued, to mingle with the clop of hooves and the shouts of men.

  Effie, having been told where to go by the gatekeeper at the arsenal, stood bareheaded in the midday sun, her bundle at her feet, the heat pouring back from the high redbrick wall and shimmering over the flagstones of the parade ground. At length the guard took pity on her, thinking that the girl looked fair exhausted, pale and with sweat on her upper lip. He had no wish to be dealing with a swooning woman and arranged for her to be escorted inside and told to wait. There, she sat in an anteroom waiting her turn to see Captain Harris. His hours for dealing with civilian business were between two and three and she had been at the barracks since noon. Others gradually joined her and sat on the rough wooden forms against the walls, discussing their grievances: a publican suing for recompense for drunken soldiers damaging his premises; a stone sawyer whose tools had been stolen; tradesmen claiming that they had not been paid. When a clerk arrived and opened up a ledger to record the business of the day, Effie had boldly stated hers as a complaint regarding the trampling of corn by cavalry horses and the clerk had merely inclined his head and passed on to the next complainant.

  At length, having collected all the pleas, the clerk took the book into the office beyond and then emerged and called Effie’s name. Effie, still feeling light-headed and a little nauseous, despite the relative coolness of the interior, surmised that she had a touch of the sun and steadied herself against the wall as she rose, feeling again the hardening of her belly as the muscles clenched and tightened. Glad to have found a way to gain an audience but still not knowing quite what she would say, she entered a wholly wood-panelled room, decorated with sporting prints and battle scenes. The sounds of soldiers drilling in the parade ground outside drifted through the half-open sash: the clump of many feet and the staccato commands of the drill sergeant.

  Behind a wide leather-topped desk, a man with a grave face and grizzled hair and whiskers sat with the ledger open in front of him. ‘You have a complaint against the army?’ He glanced down at the book. ‘Miss … Fiddement?’

  Effie took a deep breath. ‘Only in so far as it has taken Lieutenant Jack Stamford away, sir, and left me in a most difficult situation.’

  Captain Harris looked up sharply at Stamford’s name. The young woman before him had a delicate beauty, for all that her face was a little thin and her eyes shadowed with fatigue. And she was so young – maybe eighteen or nineteen – little older than his own daughter.

  Effie rushed on before he could object. ‘I apologise for my misrepresentation of the case to the clerk,’ she said urgently, ‘but I had to see you, sir. Jack … Lieutenant Stamford and I are betrothed yet I’ve received no letter from him for months. Since his posting abroad I’ve found myself in difficulties with insufficient funds to pay my rent and with a sister to support.’ Effie felt her cheeks colour at her careful omission of Tobias.

  ‘I can give you no money,’ Captain Harris broke in sternly.

  Effie was affronted. ‘I didn’t come for money but to ask for your good offices in enquiring after Jack! And though ’tis true there’s nothing now for us but the poorhouse, I’m from a respectable family, a carpenter’s daughter, and I would have you know that anyone can fall upon hard times!’

  Captain Harris sighed and placed his fingertips together as if giving the case his consideration. He knew the pattern too well by now; every month some girl arrived, sickening for her army sweetheart, loitering anxiously at the gates, hoping to catch their errant lover unawares. Mostly a case of ‘love ’em and leave ’em’, sometimes with a child on the way. He looked more closely at the girl, the transparent appearance of her skin, the shawl, worn even in this heat, its long triangular folds worn draped down in front … He hadn’t realised that matters had progressed so far. ‘You understand that even if he could be returned to duty here it would take some weeks – that you would have to make your own arrangements meanwhile.’

  The girl stood before him, her eyes downcast. He felt a pang of conscience that he had told Stamford to forget her. The girl had said that Stamford had written at first so he had been keen enough on her to ignore his superior’s advice. Leaving aside Stamford’s error of judgement that had forced him to send the lieutenant abroad, Harris thought highly of him and did not believe he was the type to shirk his responsibilities. His heart misgave; of course there was one obvious reason why his letters might have stopped: Badajoz, a sizeable action with terrible losses. ‘I will enquire,’ he said more softly.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘I make no promises.’

  She nodded quickly.

  ‘That will be all.’

  The girl bobbed a curtsey and left. He took paper from the drawer and wrote a note to remind himself to make enquiries of his friend Captain Quilter. The more he considered the matter the more he felt convinced that Stamford would not act in an unprincipled manner. Unlike that shifty blackguard, Clay. He remembered Clay’s unpleasant expression when he had told him that Stamford had been accorded the honour of serving in the Peninsula. The same night Clay had picked a fight at the Bull with a local whip maker. A drunken brawl had ensued and after a period cooling his heels in a darkened cell, he had had Clay transferred to duties in the stores. Showing no gratitude for his second chance, there he’d been caught running a nice little sideline selling provisions to a local publican, and was currently in a military prison in Warwickshire. Harris felt well shot of him.

  No, Stamford was of quite a different ilk. This sudden silence made him fear the worst. With a sigh, he picked up the brass hand bell from his desk and rang for the clerk to bring in the next complainant.

  FOURTEEN

  Effie made her way down the hill in the glaring heat, feeling dizzy and sick. The tightenings in her belly, which had started while she waited in the anteroom, had not gone away and as another came she stopped and put out her hand to lean against the wall. Beulah would not be free for many hours: in the summer months the factory didn’t turn out until the light began to fail. She thought of going down to the centre of the village to seek peace and coolness in the church but was prevented by her awareness of her graceless state. If the parson found her there she would not be able to lie to him about her trouble and he would surely say that she was not fit for the House of God.

  She crossed the swing bridge over the canal, walked on past the corner of the arsenal and turned into the water meadows that divided it from the village, to find shade by the river. The pasture was full of cowpats and thistles, the infant river meandering through it in a channel that cut deep into the sandy banks in places but widened at the bends, where shallower water ran trickling over weed and stones, and muddy flats were churned by hoof prints where cattle had gathered to drink.

  She took shelter in a copse beside the stream, the trees dwarfed by the massive arsenal wall on the slope above them, which stretched westward, unbroken as far as the eye could see. She spread her shawl on the bank, at the roots of a crooked wild cherry tree that overhung the stream. She sat down and watched the pale midges dancing in the shade beside her. It had been a long time since she’d eaten so she unwrapped her bundle to find the bread she’d packed, but when she looked upon it she found she had no appetite and left it where it was. How pitiful the jumble of objects seemed, spread out on the blanket: the clock face out of place as it looked up into the branches of the tree; the tangle of clothes a paltry covering against the strength of the elements; the beautiful gloves with their slim fingers and leather-covered buttons a ridiculous vanity.r />
  She folded the shawl carefully, and put it behind her against the tree so that she could lean back and maybe doze. There was a dull ache in her back and pelvis, like the cramps she used to get each month when she bled, and she couldn’t get comfortable. The tightening came again, this time all around her middle, front to back, making her draw in her breath. She tried sitting up straight and then subsided again, leaning back on her elbows, but it made no difference; the pain gripped her until it was ready to let go and then melted away regardless of the position she adopted. Letting out a long breath, she scrambled to her feet, no longer wanting to be still. She paced restlessly along the thin beaten path that ran alongside the river, only stopping when she reached the cattle ford with its mud and mess, then fast back again, not knowing what to do with herself or which way to turn. She stood stock still as another pain engulfed her, holding her belly with her arms folded across it; this time the pain encircled her like a girdle pulled too tight and it left her dizzy and breathless as it faded away. She shook her head as if to free herself from it and knelt beside the blanket, refolding the clothes, pairing the gloves and setting all back neatly to rights. The clock, which had read three o’clock, read only ten minutes past the hour. Yet she had suffered two pains in that time, two deep, cramping pains. She felt faint and put her hands down on to the grassy bank and her head down, a sweaty chill coming over her. She crawled to the edge and vomited into the flowing water. Frightened now, she made a whimpering sound. She wanted to go home. She would get Beulah to take her. Passing her forearm over her mouth, she sat back upon her heels. Tears stung her eyes as she remembered she could not go home; the cottage would be barred against her.