‘That’s Cyril’s voice. That’s my brother.’
Anny watched Margaret, who was now shaking, her hands and bottom lip trembling. Her friend so rarely talked about her family; sometimes it seemed they talked about everything else, but the mere mention of her family seemed to steal Margaret’s voice.
‘Is he calling you?’ said Anny in a hoarse whisper.
They stood and listened, then heard more sounds, followed by movement through the undergrowth. They instinctively hid behind the tree with the hollow. Through the trees, they saw Cyril pass by. He was not alone. He was pulling behind him the servant girl Anny had seen him bullying once.
‘It’s Lucy,’ whispered Margaret.
They both watched as the two passed by, the servant girl saying things quietly to Cyril. Anny caught the odd word, mostly ‘please’ and ‘Master’. But his grip on her wrist was strong and she could not get away. Then he stopped. Anny and Margaret froze. He pulled Lucy towards him, then shoved her up against the nearest tree. His face was very close to hers and he was saying something in her ear. She was twisting away from him. He held her against the tree with his left arm, as his right hand went down, found the bottom of her hem and thrust up under her skirts. He was fumbling around for something. Margaret turned away and sobbed, then covered her mouth with terror that he might hear her.
Anny turned to Margaret. She whispered, ‘We mun help her.’
‘No!’ replied Margaret, full of panic. ‘We cannot. We must pretend we never saw a thing.’
‘That inna right.’
‘You don’t know my brother like I do. He will find a way to punish us, you more than me. He has a hatred of . . . others less . . .’
‘Poor folk,’ said Anny.
‘Yes. He will punish you. You’ll lose your post. And he’ll beat me.’
The two girls stared at each other, then turned back to gaze upon the scene unfolding before them. The boy’s hand reaching up under the servant girl’s dress, the sobs of the girl, his cruel sneer, his coarse whisperings of who knows what in her ear.
Anny said, ‘This is wrong. All wrong.’ She turned away and looked about on the forest floor.
‘What are you doing?’ whispered Margaret.
‘Something. Something is better than nothing.’ Anny found what she was looking for. A sizeable stone. She picked it up.
Margaret gasped. ‘What on earth are you going to do with that?’
Anny aimed and threw it at a tree ten feet or so away from the struggling pair. It hit the trunk full square and bounced into the bracken. Cyril turned at the sound. The moment he was distracted, Lucy seemed to find a hidden strength and shoved Cyril hard. He stumbled back and cried out. Lucy dashed away through the woods towards the house.
‘Anny, you are marvellous!’ whispered Margaret.
‘You’d have done the same, if you’d thought of it.’
‘No, I would not. I’m not like you, Anny. I wish I were.’
They both turned and crouched lower as they heard Cyril swearing. Puffed and red-faced, he dusted himself down, then began to walk back in a leisurely way. Anny guessed he knew he could do this whenever he chose. There was no rush. It was all part of some horrible game. Once he was gone, the girls looked at each other nervously.
‘I have to go,’ said Margaret. ‘I am so sorry about . . . all this.’ Anny could sense shame in Margaret.
‘It inna your fault. He inna your fault.’ Anny thought, He’s a proper monster. She looked at her friend Margaret, for that is what she had become. ‘You’re not like your family, you’re good and kind . . .’
‘Oh, Anny, there are times I wish I weren’t a King. That I could be someone else, anybody else.’
‘It’ll be all right, Margaret. You inna just a King, you’re my best friend. With me you can be just Margaret. Even better, you can be Peggy. Yes, that’d be perfect. To me you’ll be Peggy, not Miss King or even Margaret.’
Margaret grinned from ear to ear. ‘I’ve never had a pet name! Oh, yes please, Anny! Thank you!’
‘Ta-ta for now, Peggy.’
‘Good day, Anny.’
The two girls solemnly shook hands, then laughed. They turned in opposite directions and both went off, making their way home.
Dusk was approaching and an evening wind whistled through the forest. Anny pulled her shawl about her as she walked thoughtfully, thinking of her friend, her job and interesting times ahead. Yet slicing through the warm glow of a friendship with Peggy was the cold fact of Cyril. Above, the sky seemed to mirror her thoughts, as a rash of dark clouds swept in and the woodland ahead was cast in deep shadow as she moved through it, homewards.
Chapter 4
Dear Anny,
I am so heartened to have found a true friend such as yourself, and I find in writing that I can tell you things I somehow could never say aloud. My life to this point has been a struggle. My family are difficult people. My father is hard and unyielding. I believe he sees me as a disappointment because I find it difficult to talk to people in social situations such as balls and even tea parties and so forth. My stepmother is a silly woman who is only a few years older than I and adores her nasty little lapdog more than life itself. She thinks she is beautiful because she has big eyes and thick hair but her mouth is always in a turned-down position above a pointed chin, which gives her a most disagreeable and witching air always and, I believe, is the revelation of her true nature. My brother is a fiend. I do not need to explain more to you of this, as you have witnessed it yourself with your own eyes. I could not believe how brave you were when you threw that rock. I wish I were more like you!
My grandmother is the nicest of all my close family, in that I do not believe she hates me. She does talk to me at times. However, she does say odd things from time to time and I wonder if she is a little touched.
Thus, my home is not a place one might call particularly happy. I am fortunate that I have fine clothes, a warm bed and good food to eat. My family is rich, after all. But if my family were judged on its good company alone, I might well be the poorest girl in Shropshire.
Please tell me about your family, Anny, and how they are with you.
Fondest regards,
Margaret (Peggy)
Post Scriptum: please be aware that if my family ever saw these words I have written about them, or if this letter were ever to fall into public hands, I would be in the direst of straits. Perhaps I am foolish to write these thoughts down. However, this is the first time in my life I have had a true confidante, and I am emboldened by this to speak the truth. It is a great weight lifted from me that I can speak openly to a friend of my woes. Thank you for being that friend, Anny. I believe I can trust you, as you seem to have a kind, open nature. So please keep my letters very safe and secret. Thank you again.
Anny found Margaret’s letter the very next day, in the hollow in the tree which they had agreed would be their postmaster. There were some parts of the letter she had to read again – despite being a good little reader – as she was not accustomed to reading such high-flown sentiments. It was a thrill to receive a letter, as this was Anny’s very first. She decided she’d have to try her best to write in ‘proper’ English. She was delighted to have a confidante, but was ashamed that a worm of annoyance was wriggling inside her about some of the contents of Peggy’s letter. This girl had everything a person could wish for, while so many people she knew had nothing, and still she was not happy. Anny had always thought if she had all the King’s wealth, she’d never complain again. But even as she thought it, Anny knew she was wrong about that. She wouldn’t trade her family for a room full of nice dresses, if it meant Mr King were her father and Cyril were her brother. She shuddered at the thought. Who’d ha’ thought that you could pity a rich girl?
Dear Peggy,
Course I will keep your letters secret. I will keep all your secrets safe. That is what friends do. We should make a solemn pact never to tell our secrets to any living soul. What do you say
to that? I think it is a sure way of friendship. Also I am thinking that we should make another pact and that is against boys. I know lots of boys round here where I live and I can tell you that they are not to trust. With secrets or any other important matters. It sounds to me that your brother is another like this. We should make a pact that boys never come between us. You have asked about my family and I could write all night about how good they are to me, as they surely, surely are. There is only one of me which is not usual as much of our neighbours have bundles of children but my mother had me and nearly died and something went wrong inside after and then she could not bring any more children into the world. I used to weep for this, as I wanted a sister for many years but now I am thinking it is a blessing as there are not many mouths to feed in our home and I can get some peace for my reading and writing which is my true joy. God is mysterious in his ways.
In your next letter, tell me what you eat for your meals. In every particular detail.
Yours sincerely,
Anny Woodvine
Post Scriptum: please explain what Post Scriptum means.
Also you are right about your brother. I do not like to speak ill of others but he is a nasty piece of work. I was at Mr Brotherton’s office this morning and saw Master Cyril kick a dog. Only because it was there. And because he could. Mr Brotherton sighed and shook his head. The dog crawled away under a tree and Master Cyril laughed his fill at this. I do wonder what makes a person lungeous like this. If you do not know that word, it is proper useful. It means spiteful.
Anny read over her last paragraph and nearly struck it out. Should she be more cautious? What if her letter were found and read by the Kings? She would lose her new position at the estate office for certain. It might even endanger her father’s position at the furnace. But something in Peggy’s honesty was infectious and she wanted to match it. She wanted a friend to have secrets with, someone clever like herself, who she could share her deep thoughts with in a way no local girl had ever been able to match. And there was something thrilling about being friends with Miss King, the daughter of the big house, the daughter of not only her own boss but her father’s boss. It was lucky and golden, somehow. Maybe it might even come in useful one day. As excited as she was by the prospect, something told her that she must continue to keep the whole fact of it secret. She mustn’t tell her mother or her father. She knew they would not approve and they would warn her against it. She could not clearly work out their reasons for it, but she just knew they would. Something obscure stirred in her that it could mean strife, somewhere along the twisting path of time. But she was a girl, a child entering young adulthood, and whisperings of trouble served only to make the whole thing more thrilling still. She folded up the letter and, evading her mother’s keen eye, slipped out unnoticed to the woods and made her way to the fairy tree, whistling as she went.
*
With nothing to do that day beyond terrorising dogs and servants, Cyril King decided to walk the circuit of his family’s dominion. He wanted to see everything that the Kings owned. He strolled down through the woods towards the ironworks, his face beginning to prickle with heat. He wished he could remove his cap and so-called summer coat, though it was still infernally hot. He wished at times he had the life of a river waif, running about barefoot and shirtless. Only in the summer, though. He muttered to himself grumpily as he approached the furnace, great wafts of heat assaulting him the closer he came. Industry produced heat and heat transformed into money, he realised. He did not think of the manpower slaving away to create that heat in the first place. He thought only of his place astride it all.
All this will one day be mine, Cyril thought. This puffed his chest with pride, but he was also plagued with doubt. Was he up to the job? All these massive piles of matter to be dug from the ground, melted, moulded, refined, rolled, flattened, transported and sold. It was daunting, to say the least. And something he would never admit to his father, he hated industry. He hated the filth and the stink of it, the noise and intrusion of it. Luckily, an ironmaster could afford to hire help to deal with the worst of it and stay behind the scenes in a much more civilised situation of an office or up at Southover. Mr Brotherton came to see Papa daily in his study to speak of business matters. Other fellows – probably some sort of lowly manager – from the furnace, the forge and the mill would sometimes appear, cap in hand, at the estate office yet rarely, if ever, managed an audience with his father. It was the men that worried Cyril most. How did one talk to such rascals? Even Mr Brotherton unsettled him, with his twinkling eyes, something knowing behind them, as if he knew Cyril’s secret doubts of his own worth. Mr Brotherton always spoke to him in that way too, that half-mocking way, overly polite but somehow undermined by wry humour. You’re not up to this, his voice and those eyes seemed to say. Neither is your father, just as your grandmother and grandfather knew. We run this place. You lot are not needed. Just your money. Run along.
Cyril hawked up a good load of phlegm and spat on the ground in a fit of pique. The more he thought about it, the more he was determined to prove himself to these damned fellows. How dare Brotherton and the like mock him? A small part of him knew that there was no evidence whatsoever that any of his father’s men mocked him, spoke of him or even registered his existence in their busy, difficult lives. But it was a small part, easily silenced. He marched down to the yard in front of the furnace and spotted a group of men drinking from large tankards, in what must have been a few minutes out of their back-breaking shift. But it riled him, these people guzzling his father’s ale. He knew it was their daily ration, but at this moment Cyril did not care to acknowledge that fact.
‘You there,’ he called, waving his hand dismissively. Nobody turned. Nobody heard him. This annoyed him further. He stomped harder towards the men. ‘I said, you there, damn you!’
This got their attention. The wall of backs broke and a row of black-smudged faces turned sharply, their white eyes alarmed, their red mouths open. Then their faces changed as they saw whose voice it was and yes, there, a smirk, he was sure of it. That blackguard was laughing at him, wasn’t he?
‘What do you think you are doing?’ Cyril shouted and stood his ground, arms folded, as he’d seen his father do when telling him off for his own laziness or stupidity. But the men just stood there, gawping at him. ‘What the devil is wrong with you? Answer me, damn you!’
Others had turned to watch, all frozen in place, yet one or two now were taking draughts from their beer again, which seemed the height of rudeness. One of the men stepped forward, a large man, built like a Shire horse, with arms as thick as thighs and hands like hams. Cyril shuddered at the size of him and steeled himself. He wouldn’t be intimidated by such a thundering idiot as this mountain of a man.
‘Can I be of help to you, Master King?’ said the man. This took Cyril aback, who was expecting some garbled labourer’s nonsense to come from his wide mouth.
Cyril cleared his throat and squared up to him. ‘I said, what do you think you are doing?’
The men shuffled awkwardly, one holding up his beer and looking at it, as if to answer. Why wouldn’t they speak? They must be fools. He turned back to the big man.
‘Will you not answer your betters?’
Some of the men shuffled and looked to the ground. One even shook his head, Cyril was sure of it.
‘You there. How dare you shake your head at me! I am your superior.’
The big man took another step towards him and Cyril took a stumbling half-step backwards and someone sniggered.
‘Master King, what can we do for you?’ said the big man. ‘We are supping our beer that your father provides for us. It is only for a short time, and then we mun be back at our work again, no danger.’
Cyril looked up at the man’s eyes. The man’s daughter and wife would have seen kindness and goodness there; the foreman Pritchard would have seen his hardest-working, strongest and most loyal man at the furnace. But Cyril King saw only his own smallness and pathetic
misplaced anger reflected back at him.
‘How dare you speak to me,’ he uttered low and guttural, clearing his throat.
‘But you addressed us, young sir,’ continued the man. The downright bloody cheek of these lower orders!
‘How dare you presume to speak to me!’ shouted Cyril, but it came out as a kind of squawk, like a parakeet he’d seen at the fairground once. ‘What . . . what is your name?’
The man glanced sidelong, unwilling to respond.
‘Answer me, damn you!’
Then another man came forward. He was less dirty than the rest, perhaps less of an idiot than the others.
‘I’m the furnace clerk, Master King. My name’s Pritchard. I’m the foreman and I’m in charge here. What can I do for you?’
‘What is this man’s name? He was insolent.’
The man and Pritchard looked at each other. Something passed between them in their look, something too adult for Cyril to grasp, which annoyed him further.
‘Tell me your name, or you shall hang for it, by God!’ shrieked Cyril. That shut them up. He knew he did not have such power, but it gave him the feel of it, just to say it. He realised he could say anything he liked to these people. Anything at all. It gave him a thrill.
Pritchard was about to speak but the big man interrupted him. ‘My name is John Woodvine, sir. I have worked at your father’s furnace these past score years, man and boy. If I have offended you, I am sorely sorry for it. Please accept my apology, most sincere like.’
Woodvine looked at the ground, Pritchard looked at him and the men stood with their chins up staring at Cyril.
Cyril had no idea what to say.
The Daughters of Ironbridge Page 4