‘Do you mean to tell me that we have committed ourselves to this new mill and the hundreds of people who work in it and now there could be difficulties in obtaining the raw cotton which keeps us trading?’
Tessa’s voice was bewildered but beneath it was a splinter of steel and Will felt his heart move with pride in her. She was no longer the uncaring, furiously riding, defiantly challenging girl with whom he had fallen in love seven years ago. She was no longer the restless, frighteningly high-spirited young woman looking for adventure anywhere it could be found, who had casually thrown his love aside for something her vigorous nature had told her was more exciting, more to the taste of Miss Tessa Harrison. Nor was she the high-flying, imprudently pleasure-seeking woman who had married Drew Greenwood when all else had failed her. Slowly, in the two years since the death of her uncle, she had lifted her head and looked about her; looked beyond her own thrill-seeking world which made fun of those who were sober and hard-working, and had been changed irrevocably by what she had seen. She had not liked what she had been forced to do, forced by some element in her nature inherited, no doubt, from her own positive mother, but by God she was doing it. And she had something else in her, though perhaps she was not fully aware of it yet: it was that she cared. She had carried her unstable husband around for years, guided him, distracted him from his obvious frailties, not shrinking from the responsibility he laid on her. She had defended him, become everything he needed to sustain his tenuous hold on reason. Enough for any woman, most would have thought, since he was scarcely fit to be let out alone, but now she had to take on another burden and judging by her steely manner was not to shirk its difficulties.
Mr Bradley put out a placatory hand, then withdrew it hastily since it did not do to pat the arm of the woman who was, after all, his employer.
‘Mrs Greenwood, a civil war in America is foreseen by no one, at least not in this country, and even if it were, would you have told us not to re-build the mill?’
Will sat up, straightening out his long, indolent body, waiting for her answer, ready to support her should she need it.
‘I really cannot answer that, Mr Bradley, but I certainly would have considered deeply the effect it might have on my operatives.’
Her operatives! Will almost smiled.
‘As we have, Mrs Greenwood,’ Mr Entwhistle, who brewed the finest ale in Lancashire, or so his signs said, put in, ‘and I can assure you that in our opinion there is no cause for alarm.’
‘You know about such things then, Mr Entwhistle?’ she asked sharply. ‘I believe you are a brewer.’
‘That is so, Mrs Greenwood, but I am also a man who knows business and the world markets and therefore I am certainly in a position to know when I am, or when I am not to make a profit.’
‘Of course you are, Mr Entwhistle, and I hope you will forgive my ignorance. I apologise if I appeared to be questioning your ability.’
By God, she knows how to handle them, Will exulted. First she puts their backs up with questions they are convinced she would not even understand, let alone ask, then, just as they realise the sharpness of her and are about to bristle, she smoothes them down with a soft word and a smile.
‘Nevertheless, I think we should consider that we may have to go on short time, Mrs Greenwood.’
Mrs Greenwood turned politely to Mr Broadbent who had spoken. Her cool, silvery-grey eyes met his through her veil with nothing in them, should they have been seen plainly, but the concerned interest one business associate gives another, nothing in them or her manner – nor his – to reveal that the last time they had been together he had made love to her naked body on his greatcoat in an abandoned hut high on Saddleworth Moor.
‘At my own mill,’ he continued smoothly, ‘which, of course, is smaller than Chapman’s and without its resources, we are already running for only four days a week. Temporarily, I hope, but rather than turn anyone off I recommended this policy. Perhaps we may discuss doing the same here, should it be necessary.’
‘Indeed, Mr Broadbent, but for the moment we must endeavour to find our cotton wherever we can and perhaps by the next meeting Mr Bradley will be able to report any new market where it can be obtained. And let us hope this war in America will come to nothing though the headlines are that the Union is to be dissolved.’
‘I read that report too, Mrs Greenwood.’ They smiled politely at one another before turning back to other matters for discussion and for two hours Tessa Greenwood said little as she listened intently to what each member of the board had to report.
Coffee was served at eleven but Mrs Greenwood declined to drink a cup. When they stood up at the end of the meeting she reached for the bank manager’s report on the financial trading of the company.
‘I will take this with me if I may, Mr Bradley, to study more thoroughly.’
‘Of course, Mrs Greenwood. Perhaps your . . . husband might care to peruse it. I am only sorry that he was not able to attend.’
‘It is the twelfth of August, Mr Bradley.’
‘Has that some significance?’
‘Come, Mr Bradley. Grouse shooting starts today and it being such a short season my husband was eager to take advantage of it. Now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have one or two things to attend to in my office.’
Will bowed with the rest of them, then, as she was about to leave the room and move along the richly carpeted hallway to her own suite of offices, his voice cut across the polite farewells.
‘If I may beg a moment of your time, Mrs Greenwood?’
She turned her head a fraction, speaking over her shoulder.
‘I’m afraid I cannot spare even that, Mr Broadbent. I have an employee coming to see me in five minutes regarding a matter which I intend to bring up at the next board meeting. Perhaps in a day or so, if you would care to make an appointment.’
‘It really will take no more than thirty seconds, Mrs Greenwood.’
‘Mr Broadbent, I . . .’
Will smiled urbanely and the gentlemen who still stood in groups about the table, looked round, surprised by the sudden tension in the room.
‘I would be immensely obliged, ma’am.’
‘Very well, but no more than . . .’
‘Oh, indeed.’
The moment they were in her office with the door shut firmly at his back, she did her best to avoid him but his left arm held her tightly whilst his right hand lifted her veil. Across her face was a livid red weal and her right eye had a small cut in a raised bruise at its swollen corner.
‘I thought so,’ he hissed perilously. ‘I thought there was some reason why you were wearing that bloody silly hat and veil. He did this, didn’t he? That . . . that thing who calls himself a man. He hit you, the bastard, but by God he’ll not do it again.’
‘Will, please . . . I hit him back,’ she lied.
‘And is that supposed to make this more acceptable?’
‘He was provoked . . .’
‘Provoked! By what? Your refusal to go with him to shoot bloody grouse, I suppose, or was it your ability to take over and do what he is incapable of doing himself?’
He flung himself away from her, turning about the room in a snapping and uncontrollable spasm of torment. He was beside himself with red-hot anger, and with his own impotence at not having the right to prevent what had been done to her. And yet at the same time he was cold, forcing out each word distinctly, dangerously. His face had gone quite blank and his eyes were empty and bitter. It was as though what had happened had been her fault, something she could have prevented, by distancing herself, she supposed numbly, from what threatened her.
‘He was . . . he had . . . I had led him to believe that I would . . . that there was no need for either of us to attend another board meeting . . . and then . . . we had been . . . we were guests at . . . I taunted him . . . I have been at the mill on many occasions recently, to see Annie . . . and others, which he had allowed . . .’
‘Dear Christ, allowed?’
&
nbsp; ‘It is not as it seems, Will. I should not have said . . . what I did.’
‘So he struck you across the face?’
‘Believe me, Will, I did not . . . I should not have . . .’
‘Do you think I care about that? Do you think that because you say you . . . what was it? . . . provoked him, I can accept this as though . . . ?’
‘You must.’
‘Must!’
‘It has nothing to do with you. It is between my husband and myself.’ She made herself hold back from the comfort she longed to find in his arms, the comfort of having him hold her, his sympathy, his kisses and the tender concern she badly needed. She had dreaded this. She had hoped at best she could get through the meeting with no one questioning too deeply the strangeness of the dense veil she wore but she might have known that Will would see through not only the veil but her reason for wearing it. He was too aware of her, too deeply involved with Tessa Greenwood and too well acquainted with every inch of her body which only last week he had explored minutely from her hair-line to her toe-nails.
‘Is it now, and so I am to stand aside and see the woman I love, a woman whose boots he is not fit to polish, take a beating which would not look amiss on a bloody prizefighter?’
‘Don’t exaggerate, Will,’ she said coldly, and was alarmed when he made a violent movement towards the door, his fists clenched tightly, his face ominous and snarling. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Up to the bloody Hall, where else? That’s where I’ll find him, isn’t it?’ he wrenched at the door handle just as she reached him.
‘Will, you can’t, you can’t. I won’t let you. Can’t you see it will destroy him?’
He turned, his chest heaving, his eyes bloodshot, his fists clenching and unclenching. His face was soaked with his own maddened sweat and she knew it was taking every ounce of his control not to strike her, as Drew had done, in sheer, full-blooded frustration. He breathed heavily as the agony of her last words almost felled him.
‘Destroy him?’ he whispered. ‘Destroy him? What in hell’s name do you think it’s doing to me?’
‘You are strong . . .’
‘And better able to bear your cruelty, is that it, my lass? To see you defend a man who . . . goddammit . . . you so obviously love more than me.’ He turned away and crashed his fist against the sturdy frame of the door, then leaned slowly, heavily, against it, defeated, his face pressed close to the dark wood.
‘Darling, please, try to understand . . .’ Her voice was gentle, begging for his sympathy.
‘Understand what? That I must allow him to do just whatever he pleases to you and then have you defend him for it? Jesus Christ, Tessa, what d’you think I am? Other men have suffered far worse than he has and not become the weak and irrational misfit he is. Why must you give your life, and mine, to keep him from killing himself? That is what he will do one day in his mad ride to destruction and if he does not do it himself, I swear I will do it for him.’
He turned then and with the utmost gentleness put up a hand to her face, almost touching the livid weal which marred it. He smiled so lovingly her heart ached for him and tears blurred her eyes as he placed soft lips on her swollen cheek.
‘I love you, Tessa, and despite what I said I know you love me. But he will not hurt you again. It will be the last time if he does.’
Annie found her ten minutes later staring from her window across the cheerful bustle of the mill yard, out to the high moorland which led from the outskirts of Crossfold up to the sky.
‘Nay, what ’appened to thi, lass? Yer’ve not come off that animal o’ thine, ’ave thi’?’ She studied Tessa’s closed face intently. ‘I’ve summat at’ome, a potion I mek that’ll tek that swellin’ down in a minute. Yer can tek me ower ter Edgeclough in yer carriage an’ I’ll give thi’ a jar.’
‘Thanks, Annie.’ But Annie knew Tessa had not heard what she said.
‘What’s up?’ she said after several minutes of silence.
‘Nothing.’
‘’Ow did yer come by that black eye?’
‘I . . . fell off my mare, as you said.’
‘Oh, aye, an’ what did Will ’ave ter say about it?’
Tessa turned sharply, wincing as the flesh about her eyes was stretched by the movement. ‘What has Will to do with it?’
‘I saw ’im comin’ out of ’ere no more an’ ten minutes since lookin’ as though ’e’d like nothin’ better than to thrash the livin’ daylights out o’ someone. Your ’usband perhaps?’
Tessa’s shoulders drooped and she sighed deeply.
‘Annie, what am I to do? What the hell am I to do? I can hide nothing from you so you are bound to know that Will and I are . . . well, you will know what I mean. But Drew is . . . he needs me so badly. If he should learn of our friendship, it would be the end of him and yet I can’t give Will up, I can’t. Dear God, what can I do?’
‘Eeh, ’tis nowt ter do wi’ me, lass, an’ there’s nowt I can say to ’elp thi’. Yer mun walk the road tha’s chosen, Tessa Greenwood, an’ take consequences an’ all. Tha’ knows that an’ thi’ don’t need me ter tell thi’.’
Tessa sighed again then turned to smile painfully. ‘You’re a big help to me, Annie. I know exactly where I stand with you, if no one else.’
‘What did tha’ want me ter say? Thee an’ Will are . . . dear ter me but I can do nowt ter ’elp either of thi’. Yer both welcome at my ’ome any time yer care ter call an’ thi’ll always find me there, ’appen thi’ needs summat. Tha’ knows that. I can say no more.’
‘I know, Annie, thank you. Now then, how are you getting on with the project?’
Annie sat down in the chair opposite Tessa and shuffled the papers she held, edging them into a careful pile.
‘This is’t list so far. There’s dozens of ’em still turnin’ up at factory gates askin’ fer me even after all this time. Word’s got round. I’ve fixed ’em up wi’ decent lodgin’s. Mind, some of ’em ’ave children wi’ ’em, but ’appen they can go ter’t school while their mams are workin’.’ She pulled a face irritably. ‘Eeh, Tessa, I can’t get mesen set in that there . . . office. It’s right awkward ter me what wi’ that daft beggar as calls ’imself ’ead clerk lookin’ down ’is nose. Pompous devil!’
Annie had regained the flesh which she had lost in Manchester but she was still gaunt. Though she was Tessa’s age she looked ten years older, craggy as the granite which sprouted on the moorland, and as indefatigable. There was a grimness about her which said that though she had been dealt some of life’s severest blows she was still upright and always would be. She looked even more drab and colourless than previously, an over-all impression of grey, in her skin tone, in her pale eyes and her hair which was scraped back into a tiny, uncompromising knot at the back of her narrow head. Her skirt and long-sleeved bodice were also grey, charcoal-grey relieved by nothing but a narrow snow-white collar. Yet despite her austere appearance there was something in her eyes, in the way she looked directly into those of the person she addressed, which gave her hearers a feeling they could not have described. Trust perhaps. A manner which said she would never let them down. A steadfast reliability and strength on which anyone who wished could lean.
For the past eighteen months she had been what Tessa called her ‘administrator’ – a fancy name for ‘overlooker’, Annie said bluntly – in the plan which had come to her in the pin-heading factory in Earnshaw Street. At that moment when Annie had refused to leave without the other hopeless and derelict women and children with whom she had worked, the scheme had sprung, completely formed, into her mind. Annie had been compelling her, applying pressure, using their friendship which would not allow Tessa simply to leave her to her fate, to make her see what was happening in the industrial world of which she was now a part. There were thousands upon thousands still suffering the degradation and poverty, the dreadful conditions of their lives in the cotton industry. Most of the cotton manufacturers took little interest in their operatives an
d made no attempt to improve or ease their plight. They bent their energies and capital to investment and improvement in their mills, not seeing, or if they did, not caring about the squalor around them, nor the men and women who lived and died in it to achieve the profit the masters required. Annie was realistic enough to know that Tessa could do no more than help a few of the multitude who suffered, but by God, her attitude had said on that dreadful day, Annie would make sure she did help those few she could.
Now those same women together with others who had heard of the ‘plan’ the great lady in Crossfold had set up to relieve women like themselves, were making their slow and often hopeless way – since some of them did not reach it – to the mill where, it was said, decent work and lodgings would be found for those in need. It was not like the poor house, they had been told. All their lives they had fought to stay out of that since a woman might be parted from her children there and never see them again. A clean bed was available, nourishing food, a doctor where needed. But what about payment? No, the ‘lady’ would help there and, providing you genuinely wanted work and a decent way of life, she would not see you starve, nor your children. Mind, she knew a malingerer – and there were those, of course – when she saw one and soon sent them packing, but any woman with no man and with children to support was made welcome. She was one of them, it was said, since she had worked in a factory all her life, and had suffered as they did.
Tessa smiled, wincing again at the pain in her swollen face. ‘You can deal with old Rigby, Annie, you know that, so don’t complain to me about him. And you must have your own office. These strays of yours must have somewhere to find you.’
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