Shining Threads

by Audrey Howard

  ‘’Appen, but it teks some doin’ fer women like them ter come up ’ere.’

  ‘You will persuade them to it, if anyone can.’

  They talked at length on the progress of the small pin-heading and pin-sheeting factory and of the other employment which was being found, not all in the mills, for Annie’s workers. Some had been put into domestic work and indeed anywhere that offered a respectable life, their children admitted to the Chapman school and some, sadly, to a small grave in the churchyard. Annie was busy, her mourning for her own dead family done in private, and her new job with Mrs Drew Greenwood fulfilled some need in her which had shrivelled at Spicers. She was needed now and her gratitude to Tessa, though never voiced since that was not her way, was enormous.

  ‘I’ll be off then. I’m ter see a chap about some new fangled pin-headin’ machine.’

  Tessa was still smiling at Annie’s dignified acceptance of her own rise to a position of authority and her evident pleasure in the work she was doing, but when she had gone she left an empty silence, a void into which Tessa’s despairing thoughts slowly infiltrated. Though she tried hard to keep them centred on what Annie was doing they would keep returning to the increasingly hopeless situation between herself and Drew, between herself and this mill, and between herself and Will. She was like some favourite toy which a group of defiant children swears belongs exclusively to each one of them, played with and handled, torn and tossed from one to the other until she cared not who had her as long as she could settle peacefully somewhere. Drew was becoming harder to handle with each day, threatening unimaginable terrors if she did not stop going to that bloody mill. Yet the mill, though it had its board of directors, was claiming more of her time and, if she were honest, she was beginning to find it . . . well, a challenge, she supposed, interesting and even exciting at times.

  And Will. Where was her relationship with Will, so rapturously renewed, leading them both? He was on a tight rein, a self-imposed rein in his contempt and jealousy of Drew. How long before that rein snapped and when it did, what catastrophe would follow?

  She turned as someone tapped lightly on her office door, not even taking the trouble to replace her bonnet and veil. Dear God, what did it matter? The story would be all over the valley by now, how the half-deranged husband of Tessa Greenwood had knocked the living daylights out of her, and each screaming, violent word, carried by the servants’ grapevine, would be reported and gloated over in every household.

  The door opened and Will stood on the threshold. His cravat was disarranged and his short hair stood up in tousled disorder as though he had ridden hard and at speed.

  ‘I couldn’t . . .’ His eyes were haunted and his strong face worked with the depth of his emotion. ‘I got as far as . . . as Linthwaite but I couldn’t . . .’

  ‘Close the door, Will.’ Her voice was soft but commanding for there would be curious eyes in the outer office she was certain.

  ‘Yes.’ He closed the door behind him and lifted his arms to her. When she ran into them, pressing her poor, damaged face against his chest, he crushed her to him, groaning.

  ‘I can’t bear to lose you, my darling. I must accept what we have . . . what he has, because I love you. Christ, it tears me apart that . . . I have to share you, but . . .’

  ‘Yes, my love?’

  ‘I can’t promise not to . . . to protest,’ he laughed weakly, ‘if he hits you again, really I can’t . . .’

  ‘He won’t do it again, Will.’

  ‘How can you know that? He is violent . . .’

  ‘No, frightened. If I can . . . allay his fears he won’t . . .’

  ‘Dear God, oh, sweet Jesus . . .’ He knew exactly what she meant. They stood for several minutes, drawing strength from one another, then he put her gently from him.

  ‘Perhaps we had better make this look like a business call, lass. Those clerks out there were somewhat alarmed when I stormed past them just now. Call in that head chap of yours and ask him to fetch in the ledgers. Weekly accounting, wages books, order books for the months of August and September, oh, and some coffee. I’m going to give you a lesson in bookkeeping. Now, where is that report of Bradley’s?’

  When Mr Rigby brought in the ledgers Mrs Greenwood had asked for, she and Mr Broadbent were sitting a respectable three feet apart, one on each side of her desk, speculating politely on the possibility of the hostilities in America being averted.

  In November 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States of America but by February of the following year eleven of the southern states had seceded from the Union and Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the President of the Confederate States of America. Fort Sumter, an island off Charleston, South Carolina and in Union hands was fired on by the new Confederate troops, President Lincoln called for the mobilisation of Union forces and a state of war was declared between the northern and southern states of America. The ‘Brothers War’ had begun.

  31

  Chapman Manufacturing Company Ltd put all its operatives on short time in December 1861 and its largest shareholder, Mr Drew Greenwood, who had come home drunk for the third night in succession that week, was heard to remark to his wife that she could close the bloody mills for good, it was all the same to him.

  In the previous month forty-nine mills in the cotton industry had closed down completely and 119 went on short time so that the wages of the millhands fell dramatically or disappeared altogether. The scarcity of cotton, which was after all the life-blood of the industry, had become critical and it was estimated that stocks of raw cotton could last only until the middle of December. There had been a skirmish, it was reported in the newspapers, at a place called Leesburg in Virginia where the northern states of America were defeated, and at Frederickstown in Missouri where this time the South was defeated. What was the cotton manufacturer of Lancashire to make of that? he asked himself as he despaired over the prospect of ever obtaining his bales of raw cotton from America again. How was he to keep his spinners and his weavers at their mules and looms? He stared hard times in the face, and if cotton was not to be shipped from America, where might he obtain it and, in the meanwhile, were his hands to starve?

  ‘There is a rumour that Prince Albert is dead, Tessa,’ her husband remarked later in the month, quite cheerfully, since it made no difference to his life, as the war in America made no difference to his life, as the short supply for cotton to his mills made no difference to his life. Tessa was disinclined to believe the report. All kinds of stories circulated among the gossip-mongering society in which Drew moved, of the nobility and their goings-on and even of royal misdemeanours, but this was surely a bad joke on someone’s part? The Prince Consort was a young man of only forty-two and in the prime of his life.

  But the rumour proved to be true and the nation was plunged into mourning as the bell of St Paul’s began its death toll. Grief was universal, pervading every household as if each had lost a dear and respected relative. The funeral was held a week later and the whole of the country came to a halt. Shops and factories were closed, blinds were drawn and flags were flown at half-mast. The Queen, it was said, was out of her mind with grief and shock, and what was to become of them all if Her Majesty did not recover?

  January 1862 came in on a wild gale of snow and wind which scarcely abated for three days leaving snow drifts of six feet and more through towns and villages and turning the Pennine moorland into an incredibly hostile stretch of unmarred beauty.

  Starvation began to stare into the faces of those who had, over the last few years, come to believe that they were at least adequately provided for. Out of work and having spent what savings they had, those operatives who had been employed as spinners and weavers and in trades allied to cotton pawned their furniture, their Sunday clothes, since they could be done without, and even their bedding in order to feed themselves. By now the shortage of cotton was becoming desperate for the industry, and the Illustrated London News printed headlines and pictures of the plight of t
he Lancashire cotton towns and the great suffering of the people. Men and women were prepared to do anything rather than go on relief. One man advertised that he would shave other men, four for a halfpenny. Another took to ‘chair-bottoming’ and many sold newspapers, religious tracts or back numbers of penny periodicals. Groups of young girls could be seen gathered on street corners singing, some with musical instruments. They appeared shamefaced, sad and awkward, but their efforts could not last and by the end of April, just a year since the American Civil War had begun, most were thrown entirely upon the Guardian and Relief Committees.

  Scenes which had once been commonplace in Crossfold and which were thought to have gone forever, scenes going back to the days when the power loom took over from the domestic hand loom, throwing thousands of men from their ancient profession, returned and multiplied. Sallow-faced, half-naked women lounged about in doorways listlessly watching sickly children in half-hearted play, the two shillings per head or less each family was allowed from relief failing completely to keep them in anything but the poorest of health. They lived on bread, oatmeal and potatoes and had it not been for the tireless work of Mrs Tessa Greenwood and her equally tireless helper, Miss Beale, it was doubtful, so it was said, that they would get through this crisis.

  ‘We have to have some kind of organisation, Annie, and the only way to achieve it, I think, is for you to devote your time to setting up a committee to make sure that those who are in need get at least one decent meal a day. Our own operatives are still able to manage, even on two-thirds of their usual income though how long that will last remains to be seen. They say there are a quarter of a million unemployed, and the cotton which is coming from India is of a poor quality – mixed with an even poorer! They have not the machines to clean away the filth which it contains. Will tells me they are forming a cotton company in Manchester with the intention of raising a million pounds to buy such machinery and send it out there but whether anything will come of it is pure speculation. And even then the price will be exorbitant. They say in Manchester it will be no more than a stopgap measure until the war in America is over but in the meanwhile we must do what we can to alleviate the hardships of those who have depended on us. D’you know, when I was visiting some spinners who were thrown out by the Moorhouse mill there was a woman living in the most appalling conditions in one of those awful courts at the back of Jagger Lane. Everything in the house had been sold except the bed and one cooking pot. Her five children were in the last stages of malnutrition and her husband was in gaol. He had obtained some provisions for them on credit, no more than four and elevenpence halfpenny but when he was unable to pay the debt they took him away . . .’

  ‘An’ tha’ got ’im out?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and provided them with bedding, clothing, coal, flour, I believe, and other items of food to see them through until you could get round to them. Here is their name and address.’

  ‘An, what of Chapman mills? ’Ow much longer can tha’ keep on four days?’

  ‘I bought up a cargo of cotton last week through an agent in Liverpool. It had got by the blockade out of New Orleans, don’t ask me how for they say that only two out of six ships get through. The Union navy has a blockading squadron stationed off each port to prevent ships taking cotton out of the South and returning with essential supplies. Last year we imported 1,261 million pounds of cotton and this year it has fallen to less than half. Eighty per cent of it was from America, Annie, and now we shall be forced to accept the Indian, despite its poor quality.’

  The two friends were sitting in Tessa’s office, both gazing out on to the strange and empty silence of the Chapmanstown mill yard. It was Friday and last night the machines and engines had been turned off and the boilers allowed to go out. They would not be switched on again until the bales of raw cotton Tessa had purchased arrived at the Chapman warehouses. Only a fifth of those employed in the cotton industry were fully employed, the rest were on short time or with no work at all, and the exact figures were stamped indelibly in the mind of Tessa Greenwood. Once she had been concerned with nothing more complicated than the number of shots it took to bring down fifty birds on the Squire’s moor, with how many gowns she should order for the season’s hunt balls and how many sovereigns Drew gambled away in one evening, none of which mattered in the least.

  Annie seemed to find nothing unusual in the conversation and it was evident that this different aspect of Tessa Greenwood was nothing new to her. Tessa had been chairman of the board of directors of the Chapman mills for two years now, perhaps the most difficult in the history of the company since it was begun so long ago by her husband’s great-grandfather. In the last year she had seen so many businesses falter and fall, but not once had she turned her back on her own to return to the pleasures her husband seemingly enjoyed without her.

  ‘I called on Mrs Poynton yesterday,’ Annie said, sipping her coffee, her straight back an inch from the back of the chair on which she sat, unlike Tessa who lounged carelessly with the wide skirts of her muslin gown, a lovely shade of soft rose, in a circle about her feet. She wore no bonnet and her hair was piled haphazardly into an untidy coil on the top of her head. She had tied it up herself with a wide velvet ribbon in the same colour as her dress that morning, ignoring Emma’s pleas to be allowed to arrange it for her.

  ‘I’ve no time, Emma, and no, I cannot stop to choose a bonnet. I must be in Crossfold by nine to meet Mr Bradley and then Miss Beale and I are to inspect that old mill in Hardacre Street to see if it is suitable for a school and a kitchen for . . . Stop fussing, Emma. No, I can’t be bothered with a parasol. If the sun comes out I shall ask Thomas to put up the hood on the carriage. Oh, and Emma . . .’

  Her voice dropped and Emma leaned forward to hear what her mistress was saying. ‘Don’t . . . don’t disturb the master. He is still sleeping and . . . well, there is no need to wake him so early.’

  Emma nodded respectfully, then turned to look in the direction of the closed door of the dressing-room where Mr Drew slept on most nights now. You could hear him snoring, even through the solid wood of the door. They were the snores of a man who had come home in the early hours of the morning so drunk he really should not have been in charge of that fancy cabriolet he drove. Right across the lawn, Percy said he had ploughed, and through Miss Laurel’s roses, leaving a trail of destruction six feet wide and singing so loudly the whole household, including the children in the nursery, had been awakened. Laughing at nothing, he’d been, his horse and vehicle left to droop at the front step and Mr Briggs and Hibberson compelled to carry him up to his bed whilst he begged them to join in some bawdy song he and his wild friends had heard at a music hall in Manchester. He’d sleep the best part of the day, coming down to the small back parlour to sprawl before the fire, avoiding Miss Laurel and her callers in the drawing-room, his lovely blue eyes narrowed to increasingly puffy slits, his mouth hard and ill-humoured, his temper short and unpredictable and, if Miss Tessa was not there, his voice hoarse and his words offensively rude.

  Where had he gone, Emma mused as she watched her mistress climb into her carriage, that handsome, good-natured, recklessly laughing young man they had once known? Him and his brother, both of them up to all kinds of pranks but with good hearts and no malice in them, merry as larks providing no one tried to harness them. And now one was dead and the other killing himself, they said, in his search for something even his wife couldn’t seem to provide. All his time was spent riding to hounds, shooting grouse and pheasant, drinking brandy and claret until he could hardly see to play cards in the often-dubious company he and his friends kept.

  And Miss Tessa toiling all the hours God sent in an effort to keep not only her own mills working and her own operatives from the poor house, but taking in the down-and-outs from the whole of Lancashire, it was rumoured. Her and that Annie Beale.

  ‘Oh, and what was the outcome?’ Tessa questioned Annie. ‘Will she sit on our committee?’

  ‘Aye, an’ that Mrs Bayly an’ al
l. They’ve promised ter speak to as many ladies as they can about the soup kitchen an’ Mrs Bayly knows a Miss Gaunt as she reckoned’d teach school fer nowt. Not just childer but any man or woman as wants ter learn. I’ve bin round most o’t manufacturers an’ though some were ready ter show me’t door, I managed ter persuade ’em ter remit rents on’t workers’ cottages. I told ’em if you could do it so could they. Mrs Poynton says as ’ow she knows t’parson at parish church an’ all them as goes ter’t Sunday school, an’ believe me it’ll be every bairn in Crossfold an’ Chapmanstown by’t time I’ve done wi’ em, will be given petticoats an’ shirts, blankets an’ such fer their mams, an’ a bit o’ brass ’as bin set aside fer the mendin’ of boots. An’ Doctor Salter ses as ’ow ’e’ll give ’is services free to them what needs ’em.’

  ‘Heavens, Annie, you have been busy.’

  ‘I’ve nowt else ter do wi’ me time.’

  ‘No.’ Tessa put a compassionate hand on her friend’s arm, then smiled when it was snatched away from her. Annie would never change. As long as she had breath in her body she would use it to help anyone she thought to be in need of it. Many of the ladies of the town moved amongst the destitute cotton workers helping those they called the ‘deserving poor’, those they considered worthy of assistance by the measure of the respectful gratitude they displayed.

  But there were others in utter poverty who were proud, who would not bow their heads for charity and they showed these same ladies the door saying they wanted no busybodies interfering in their household arrangements. And there were others, in order to get more than their entitlement of relief, who included children recently dead in their list of the needy, or who ‘borrowed’ children to make up their family numbers and so ‘diddled’ another two shillings per head for each one. There were husbands who were found drunk in bed and starving children in the gutter. Annie saw them all, helped them all, sorted them into some kind of order and intended keeping them there, choose how, until the mills were opened again and woe betide any who fell by the wayside when she was in charge!