The Girl from the Mill

by Chrissie Walsh

  ‘Can I say somethin’, your worship,’ interrupted Bill Johnson, the fourth and oldest member of the gang.

  The magistrate glared at him. ‘Well, speak up.’

  Bill gave Jimmy a pitying glance. ‘What young Jimmy says is true. Arty wa’ always threatenin’ to hurt Lacey Barraclough. Jimmy din’t want to go robbin’ but he wa’ scared o’ what Arty might do. I’m only sayin’ this ‘cos I don’t like violence against women, an’ what he did to Fred Sykes wasn’t right either. I’ve nowt to say in me own defence but I’ll not stand by an’ see a young ’un like Jimmy go down for summat as wasn’t his fault.’

  Lacey’s heart pounded and she held her breath as she waited for the magistrate’s response.

  ‘Is this true; remember you are under oath.’

  ‘Aye, it is,’ Tom Jagger growled. Jimmy threw Bill and Tom grateful glances. Then he looked over at Lacey, his eyes full of love.

  After some private discussion with police and court officials the magistrate announced his verdict, sentencing Jagger and Johnson to two years in gaol. Arty, guilty of committing robbery with grievous bodily harm, was given five years with a further two for coercion, confinement to run consecutively. As the magistrate outlined the terms and conditions, Arty’s shoulders slumped and his cocky expression faded. However, he did manage a final glare in Lacey’s direction before he was taken down.

  Then Jimmy, Lacey, Edith and Matt anxiously awaited Jimmy’s fate. The magistrate adjusted his cuffs, a stern expression on his face. Lacey held her breath.

  ‘James Barraclough, in view of your tender years and previous good conduct I am prepared to be lenient with you. It is obvious to me that you were subject to undue coercion by Arthur Bincliffe, therefore, provided you are of good behaviour for the next three years, I will release you into the care of your parents. You are free to go.’

  Matt waved a triumphant fist; Edith’s tears wetting Lacey’s shoulder as they clung to each other.

  Outside the court, hugging Jimmy tight, Lacey praised him for his courage. ‘You really were doing it for me,’ she marvelled.

  ‘I’d do owt for you, Lacey, even though I didn’t take any notice when you told me to keep away from Arty.’ Jimmy flushed to the roots of his hair. ‘At first it wa’ a bit of fun. I wa’ tryin’ to be a big fellow, then Arty started fillin’ me head wi’ the awful things he wa’ gonna do to you. I wa’ scared he’d get you one night an’ really hurt you.’

  ‘Why din’t you tell me?’ Matt demanded. ‘I’d a soon sorted the bugger.’

  Jimmy looked shamefaced. ‘I daren’t. He said if I said owt to you he’d make sure Lacey ‘ud get it ‘cos if he didn’t do it himself he’d get somebody to do it for him.’

  Edith gasped. ‘The evil swine!’ She pulled Jimmy round to face her, gazing intently at him. ‘And whatever made you take up with him in the first place, our Jimmy, I’ll never understand.’ She started to cry.

  Jimmy’s eyes brimmed. ‘I’m sorry, Mam.’ He threw his arms round Edith, pressing his face into her chest, their mutual tears absolving any blame. When they broke apart, Matt took Edith on one arm and Jimmy on the other. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said gruffly, ‘put this behind us.’

  But Matt wasn’t finished. As the Barracloughs waited for the bus that would take them back to Garsthwaite, he addressed Jimmy angrily. ‘You still haven’t told us why you didn’t say owt afore it got to this?’

  Jimmy looked to Lacey for understanding. ‘I daren’t say owt at first in case they let him off an’ he came after you. It wasn’t until I realised we’d all get gaol that I knew Lacey ‘ud be safe.’ He turned to her. ‘I’d a gone down for you, Lacey; honest.’

  ‘It’s a bloody good job Arty didn’t try owt on wi’ our Lacey. He’d a got his come-uppance if he had. She’s like a hell-cat if you cross her. I’d say Arty had a lucky escape,’ joked Matt, not wishing to dwell on the awfulness of the past few hours.

  Later that night in bed, Lacey hugged herself for joy. Jimmy, her protector, was free and innocent. She wondered what Nathan would say when he heard the facts. She wanted to run and blurt out the truth in his face but Nathan was still in Northumberland and she didn’t know when she would see him again.

  *

  In the days following Jimmy’s release, Lacey’s emotions fluctuated from joy to despair. In daylight hours she managed to focus her thoughts on things that made her happy; Jimmy saved from gaol, and Joan’s recently revealed pregnancy.

  She also gloried in the marvellous weather they were experiencing, taking long walks over the moor lost in her thoughts; Joshua’s prediction that this was going to be one of the longest, hottest summers in living memory holding true.

  Nights however were a different matter. Sitting at her machine or lying in bed, the futility of her love for Nathan invaded every thought. She, who had once been so carefree, had never imagined love could be so painful. Neither could she have envisioned the events that were about to unfold; events so dynamically catastrophic they would change the lives of every man, woman and child in the British Isles.

  13

  ‘Stanley says there’s going to be a war,’ said Joan, when she met Lacey at the Mill gate one morning in early August. ‘Do you think there is, Lacey?’ she asked.

  ‘He could very well be right. There’s a lot of trouble in Germany; the newspapers are full of it.’ Lacey’s response sounded distinctly lacklustre. Compared to her own misery the death of some Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo had made little impact; awake or asleep she was consumed by her own loss.

  ‘What’s it got to do with us?’ Joan persisted, as they crossed the Mill yard.

  ‘It’s to do with a treaty we have with Russia and France. The Germans are rampaging through Europe and we’ll have to help defend the countries that are our friends.’

  ‘Will our soldiers have to fight the Germans?’

  ‘Something like that, Joanie.’

  Lacey’s simplification of the machinations of war satisfying Joan, she followed Lacey into the shed, the heat of a glorious summer’s morning already thickening the air. Joan wiped perspiration from her face and then put on her overall, the cross-over cotton flaps stretched over her burgeoning bump. ‘This baby doesn’t like it when I start to sweat. It gets too hot for it in there.’ She patted her abdomen. ‘I hope it’s a boy. Stanley wants a son.’

  ‘So you keep saying, Joanie.’

  The hooter’s blast had them scurrying to their looms, and throughout the day the women talked of little else other than how they might be affected should the country go to war.

  ‘I can’t see it happenin’ meself,’ asserted May Skinner, ‘it’s got nowt to do wi’ us.’

  ‘It will ‘ave if them bloody Germans come here.’ Gertie Earnshaw sounded as though she wished they would.

  ‘Do you think t’Mill’ll close down?’ Maggie Clegg sounded horrified.

  ‘Will it hell, you daft clout-head,’ scoffed Flo Backhouse, ‘folk’s still need cloth no matter what.’

  ‘They do,’ agreed Lacey, ‘but if the Germans block trade routes we’ll soon run out of raw wool, an’ then there’ll be no business between us an’ Europe.’

  ‘There’ll be no men either,’ said Mary Collier, ‘they’ll all be off fightin’.’

  At clocking off time Slimy Syd, full of his own importance, strutted in between the looms waving the evening edition of the Huddersfield Examiner.

  ‘Herbert Asquith’s given t’Germans till midnight to pull their troops back. If they don’t, we’ll be going to war, lasses.’

  ‘Hey, Syd, if you go I hope them bloody Germans shoot you,’ shouted Maggie Collier. Laughing uproariously, the women trooped out of the shed.

  They returned the following morning in a sombre mood for they now knew England was at war.

  By mid-afternoon, the temperature in the weaving shed was unbearable, Lacey’s breath catching in her parched throat as dust and fluff from the thrashing looms clouded the fetid air. Earlier that day she had
stripped down to her petticoat, the neckline of her loose overall exposing her cleavage. As perspiration wormed its way down her face and neck to settle in the hollow between her breasts, the thrum of the beaters, the flashing shuttles and the dancing dust motes began to make her feel nauseous. She stopped her looms and, mouthing her intentions to Lizzie, she tottered out of the shed and across the yard to the lavatory.

  Inside the filthy closet, the stench exacerbated her nausea. Lacey vomited. Clammy with sweat, her head throbbing, she staggered outside and leaned against the wall, gulping deep breaths of soot laden air into her lungs and waiting for the churning in her stomach to calm itself.

  A door across the yard slammed shut. Sydney Sugden came into view. Instantly, Lacey prised herself from the wall, but Syd had seen her. Dashing over the cobbles he closed in on her, pushing her towards the closet’s open door. Lacey lashed out but Syd persisted. ‘Come on, Lacey,’ he panted, ogling her bare cleavage, ‘I’ve waited long enough.’

  As Lacey struggled to escape Syd’s clutches, Nathan walked out of the office, a sheaf of Jacquard patterns in his hand. As he crossed the yard to the weaving shed he heard a woman’s high pitched cry and, recognising the voice, he dropped the patterns and ran towards it.

  Lacey swiped Syd’s face, a slap so forceful she lost her balance. Syd’s grip loosened. Lacey fell flat on her back on the flagstones. Stunned by the fall, she was vaguely aware of scuffling feet and shouting.

  Slowly, she rolled over onto her side, regained her feet and then stared in amazement. Syd and Nathan were locked in combat, fists and feet flying. Like a man possessed, Nathan punched Syd’s jaw, Syd sprawled on the cobbles, defeated. Ignoring his pleas, Nathan dragged him upright, shaking him and shouting, ‘If you ever go near her again I’ll kill you, you filthy scum.’

  Nathan tossed Syd aside then clasped Lacey to his chest, oblivious to the mill hands spilling from the sheds at word of the rumpus.

  ‘Thanks,’ Lacey said, her voice initially unsteady, then breaking into a relieved chuckle. ‘By, Nathan Brearley; when you decide to make a stand you don’t do it by halves.’ She glanced at Syd, prostrate on the cobbles.

  Nathan gazed into her eyes, his own so full of love that Lacey’s breath caught in her throat. She knew people were watching, their voices drifting in and out of her hearing, but she seemed to be caught in a bubble where only she and Nathan existed. She rested her head against his chest and he wrapped his arms around her.

  Cheers from the crowd brought them back to reality and they broke apart. Nathan nudged Syd with the toe of his boot. ‘Get your cards, you filthy swine; you’re fired.’

  ‘We’ll all be grateful for that, Master Nathan. He’s been a bloody nuisance for far too long.’ As Lizzie Isherwood championed Nathan, the women looking on roared their approval.

  ‘I’d best get back to me looms,’ Lacey said quietly. ‘Will I see you at Cuckoo Hill after clocking off time?’

  *

  He was there at the cairn as Lacey topped the brow of the hill, watching anxiously for her approach. She ran to him, Nathan enveloping her in his arms as though he would never let her go again. Returning kiss for kiss, Lacey felt all the pain and disillusion of the past few weeks easing away, leaving her rapturously lightheaded.

  ‘You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you,’ Nathan said, his voice shaking with emotion.

  ‘I can,’ Lacey replied solemnly, ‘for I’ve missed you twice as much. We were foolish to quarrel when we should have stayed strong for one another. Our Jimmy—’

  Nathan gently placed his finger on Lacey’s lips. ‘I heard all the details in the Mill office the moment I arrived back this morning. Let’s not talk about it. We’ve more important things to discuss; like how much I love you and how I never want to be parted from you again.’

  14

  Constance sat facing Nathan over the breakfast table at Fenay Hall, her expression a mixture of disgust and dismay. It was a week or so after the fight at the Mill, Jonas was still in bed and Felicity was in London for a few days.

  ‘Is it true you have resumed your relationship with that mill girl?’

  Nathan’s spirits drooped. As he lifted the cover on a serving dish containing rashers of grilled bacon, he wondered who his mother’s informants were. Although she would deny it, Constance was always conversant with village gossip.

  ‘It will ruin your reputation. We’ll be the talk of the valley,’ she persisted. She would have said more had Nathan not slammed down the cover with a resounding clash. Constance’s cutlery clattered on her plate, her shocked expression egging Nathan on.

  ‘Yes, I have, and furthermore I intend to marry her. I don’t care a jot for what you and your high minded friends in the valley think.’

  Constance blinked fat tears down her cheeks and clutched at her chest. ‘See what this is doing to me, Nathan, and to you,’ she sobbed, ‘you never used to take that tone with me.’

  Nathan stood, determination making him appear taller and stronger. ‘I do so because you have no regard for my feelings, Mother. I love Lacey Barraclough regardless of her status in society and you had best get used to the idea.’ He made to walk away, saying, ‘I’ll bring her to meet you again. You will, I hope, make her welcome and treat her with respect.’

  Constance pushed back her chair, tears forgotten. ‘Indeed I will not. I forbid you to marry that trollop. Do you hear me, Nathan?’

  ‘Yes, Mother, I hear you; I’ll invite her to call on you on Saturday afternoon, and if you have any love for me at all you will welcome her with the respect she deserves.’ And with that he stalked out of the room.

  *

  For the third time Lacey sat in the opulent drawing room at Fenay Hall, this time with only Constance for company. Before leaving her there, Nathan told Lacey that Constance had met his announcement that he intended to marry her with reservations and that it was now up to Lacey to persuade her to give them her approval. Speak with Mother, woman to woman, he had said, so with these words in mind, Lacey now faced Constance with outward calm and inner foreboding.

  Constance sat ramrod straight, her mouth a grim line of dissatisfaction, her statuesque bulk filling the leather armchair directly opposite the one in which Lacey sat. For several minutes she didn’t speak, her eyes flicking from Lacey’s face to her shoes and back again as though she was measuring her for the oven. Lacey didn’t flinch.

  Constance broke the silence, her tone harshly imperious. ‘It appears Nathan has some foolish notion regarding you. He says he intends to marry you.’

  ‘That’s correct, Mrs Brearley. Nathan and I have been friends for more than a year. We enjoyed one another’s company from the start, and now we’ve fallen in love. It’s only natural we should want to marry. I think we’re well matched; we have a lot in common.’

  Constance glowered. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The only thing common is you, girl: a common mill hand. What on earth can you offer Nathan, a boy privately educated; the son of an esteemed factory owner?’

  Lacey ignored the insult. ‘I would love and respect him, share his interests and make him happy,’ she said firmly. ‘He loves me, Mrs Brearley.’

  ‘Pshaw! Nathan has no experience of love. He’s simply bewitched by a pretty face and the pleasure he takes in raising you above your station. Poor Nathan is given to flights of fancy. He has a romantic view of the world.’ Constance gave Lacey a withering glare. ‘You can’t expect him to present you to our circle of acquaintances. He’d be a laughing stock, the heir to a mill married to a weaver.’

  Determined not to be drawn into an inflammatory exchange no matter how rude Constance was, Lacey suppressed an angry retort and said, ‘Weaving’s a worthwhile and necessary occupation, Mrs Brearley. I might not have had the benefit of a private education but I’m as well read and equally as intelligent as many another young woman of your acquaintance.’

  Constance sneered. ‘Those women you refer to are ladies, something you will never be, regardless of your readi
ng.’ She waved her hand dismissively and then sighed heavily. ‘If you’re as intelligent as you would have me believe, you’ll appreciate how preposterous his suggestion of marriage is. You no doubt impress him with your hoity-toity, outspoken manner, but he’s simply playing with you, the foolish boy.’

  Lacey’s eyes blazed. ‘He’s not a boy; he’s a man. A man who knows what he wants from life. Your opinion of him is demeaning, to say the least.’ She leaned forward and looked directly at Constance, her tone softer but no less intense. ‘I might not be the right class of girl in your opinion, but I’m as well reared as anybody. My father’s a respected farmer and yes, he isn’t prosperous, but he earns his living honestly.’

  Constance’s eyes glittered. ‘Talking of honesty, wasn’t your brother involved in the robbery at the Mill.’

  Lacey’s heart plummeted and some of the fire went out of her. ‘He was, but only out of loyalty to me. He’s not a bad person.’

  ‘Bad enough to associate with criminals.’ Constance smirked. ‘Now, if you take my advice you’ll stop playing on Nathan’s sensitivities and allow this stupid romance to fizzle out, as I’m sure it will if you would desist from pestering him.’

  Her patience tried too far, Lacey readily abandoned her resolution to stay calm at all costs. ‘Mrs Brearley, just because you’re the daughter of a mine owner and wife of a mill owner doesn’t give you the right to dictate what I do. I’m a woman with a mind of her own. I won’t always be in servitude to you and your kind.’

  ‘And you think to better yourself by inveigling my son into marrying you,’ Constance spat back, ‘is that your plan?’

  Lacey jumped up, standing tall and proud. ‘Nothing could be further from my mind,’ she said vehemently, ‘I’m not marrying Nathan to climb the social ladder; I’d marry him even if he were a pauper. As for bettering myself, I can do that without him. It might surprise you to know that women can improve their standing in society without doing it on the coat tails of a man.’