‘I can get no decent cotton, Annie,’ she said quietly to the woman who sat across the desk from her. ‘How am I to keep them in work? How are they to live? Less than two shillings a head from the Relief Committee . . .’
‘An’ what tha gives ’em from tha own pocket, lass.’
‘Little enough, Annie.’
‘Tha’s a generous woman, Tessa. To them, an’ to anyone that come to thi for ’elp, so why not Will Broadbent? ’E’s given thi time ter come ter terms wi’ thy grief. ’E’s stayed away from thi though it’s caused ’im pain. Will tha not see ’im, lass? Talk to ’im?’
Tessa bent her head.
‘I can’t Annie.’
‘Why? In the name o’ God, why?’
‘We have been through this so often and really I do not think I can stand much more. What is there to say to him that you have not passed on? I cannot go on trying to explain how I feel, what I know I must do, so you must just take my word for it that I know I am right. What sort of woman would I be to . . . to . . . consort with a man who, unknowingly I admit, killed my husband and sister-in-law? Through me, through me, Annie, and we cannot continue as we were before. It would be . . . indecent. No, he must get on with his life in whatever way he thinks fit and allow me to do the same.’
Her face was like a pale, translucent mask, a mask carved from pure, white marble, the lovely bone structure prominently displayed in the fineness of her skin. Her dark eyebrows slanted upwards in stark contrast like blackbird’s wings, and beneath them her eyes were the silver streaked grey of the winter lake which was set in the garden at Greenacres. Only her poppy-red mouth had colour, startling and full, the mouth of a sensual woman who knows well the meaning of love. Now it was firm, her jaw clenched challengingly, her expression telling Annie that she was no longer prepared to discuss the man who had once been everything in life to her. She had gambled with the lives of others, not only her own. She had recklessly chanced her reputation, her marriage, her husband’s reason, the safety of her family with what she knew to be a killing disease in her love for Will Broadbent. She had given no thought to the danger to others in her own arrogant determination to be with him, to nurse him when she had known that Annie could have done it just as well. And devastation had overtaken her. Now she must pay the price.
‘This is the last time I wish to hear his name mentioned, Annie. I will not change my mind. I will not see him and you must tell him so.’
‘Tha mun tell ’im thaself, lass.’
‘Annie, once and for all . . .’
‘’E’s in t’other room.’ Annie nodded her head towards the closed door of Tessa’s office, her own face as pale and resolute as her friend’s. Then she stood up abruptly pushing back her chair.
Tessa’s face lost even its pearly whiteness, becoming ashen, almost grey, and her eyes turned to brilliant, enraged diamonds. She narrowed them like a cat which is ready to attack and her voice was no more than a sibilant hiss.
‘How dare you? How dare you interfere in something which has nothing whatsoever to do with you? Who gave you the right to play God in my affairs, Annie Beale? Who gave you the right to meddle, to take it upon yourself to change, or attempt to, the direction in which my life must now go? I cannot forgive this, Annie, and I cannot forgive you. You go too far this time.’
‘Tha mun see ’im. ’E needs to ’ear it from . . .’
‘Annie . . . Dear God, Annie, what about my needs and those of my family? I thought you were my friend, that I could trust you . . .’
‘Always, lass, always, so trust me in this.’
‘No, no. How did he get in? I gave orders that . . .’
‘I fetched ’im.’
‘You had no right, no right . . .’ For the first time since they told her her husband was dead Tessa’s face lost its white, expressionless mask and became distorted with her despair. She turned this way and that, lifting her hands to her head and gripping it savagely. She was like an animal caught in a trap which she had avoided for weeks but from which she could now find no escape. There was pain in her, desperation, fear, and yet a tiny bubble of joy formed which she did her best to quench. This would not do, it simply would not do. She must not see him. She must not. Annie was watching her compassionately, understanding, she realised it now, what it was that terrified her. She held out her hands to her beseechingly.
‘Annie, please, Annie, ask him to go.’
‘Nay lass, tha mun do that, not I.’
‘I cannot see him. I will not. You are cruel . . .’
The door opened then and he was there. Will. Older than she remembered him, the pain and desolation he had known etched in deep lines from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. His eyes, so clear an amber as to be almost transparent, were steady as they rested gravely on her and his mouth was clenched firmly, rigidly, as though he was desperately afraid he might speak the wrong words. This was his only chance, his expression admitted and he must make no mistake. He swallowed and she saw his Adam’s apple rise convulsively in his throat. Someone, probably himself, had cut his hair and it was short and shaggy across his strong brow. He was still thin and drawn but his jacket no longer hung from his broad shoulders in awkward folds as it had done the last time she had seen him at the funeral.
‘Tessa?’ He spoke her name, then cleared his throat and she knew he was as afraid as she was but for a different reason. He was afraid that she would not surrender to him and she was afraid that she would.
Neither of them saw Annie slip from the room.
Her fear made her harsh.
‘What is it?’
‘May we not speak to one another?’
‘About what?’
‘Surely we have things to . . . to discuss?’
‘What things?’
He moved further into the room, awkward and stiff as she had never seen him before. Will Broadbent, good humoured, positive, easy with himself and the rest of his world, was replaced by a man who was unsure, doubtful of his own wisdom in coming, afraid to alarm her with his desperate need to know that she still loved him. She must not let him see what was in her or he would not let her go.
She stepped back from him, knowing that if he touched her she would be incapable of resisting him, but he took it for a sign of rejection and his face hardened.
‘Tessa, you cannot simply mean to . . . to go on as you have done since your husband died? Ignoring the past and what you and I . . .’
‘Naturally,’ she interrupted harshly, ‘and why should I not? There are the mills and my dead sister-in-law’s children who take up a great deal of my time.’ She had a frail grip on herself now but it almost slipped away as she saw him wince.
‘I know that. Jesus, do you think I don’t know . . .’ He passed a hand over his face. ‘But soon . . . or sometime in the future . . . surely, when . . . when . . . Oh, sweet Christ, help me, Tessa, don’t let me flounder out here all alone. You know what I’m saying, what I’m asking. I love you so much . . . don’t . . . please don’t turn away from me . . . let me see your face, your eyes . . .’
She had her back to him now, unable to bear any more. She stared, blinded and tortured at the wood panelling of the wall, reeling with the pain of him, holding herself steady, forcing herself inch by slow inch away from the dreadful need to turn back to him, to run into his arms, to hold him, soothe him, comfort and calm his agony with a great outpouring of the love she had for him, but she knew she could not. This man was not for her. Not now. Not ever. She had killed her own husband and her husband’s sister for this man and could she live with him knowing that? Could she forget it? Could she ever forgive herself? Did she want to?
‘Go home, Will. There is nothing for you here.’ Her voice was flat and devoid of all emotion. ‘I have nothing for you and I can be nothing to you. I have work to do and have no time for . . . diversions.’
She heard him gasp, then there was silence for a long while. She knew he was still there but she dared not turn to face him. She f
elt the great sorrowing beat of his heart inside her own breast, the pain in his head drumming into hers, the tired and weary ache of his body which was not yet returned to its full strength. Everything he suffered, she experienced too, and she prayed, again to a faceless, nameless god, for the resolution to remain where she was until he had gone. And in her heart a tiny voice, bewildered, angered, persistent, begged to know why she was doing this when all she had to do was turn about to claim the love he was offering her and which she so badly needed. But her heart could not reason. Her heart was warm and unthinking, longing to ignore the cold logic of her mind which told her she and Will Broadbent could never be the same to each other again.
‘Diversion, Tessa?’ he whispered at last. ‘We were more than that to each other. Don’t dishonour me or yourself by pretending otherwise. I have loved you truly for the past nine years and I believe you had come to love me in the same way. I came today, as I have tried to come for the past six weeks to offer you whatever you might need at this time of . . . grief in your life. I came as a friend as well as the man who loves you You are free now – let us be truthful with one another – and when a decent interval had passed I wanted to ask you to become my wife. I can give you so much, my lass. We can give one another . . . all that we have . . . all that a man and woman . . .’
He could not go on. The tears ran silently down her face and dripped just as silently on to the black silk of her mourning gown. The absolute quiet moved on and still he stood there but she did not turn to him.
‘I came to beg you, Tessa,’ he said at last. ‘Annie told me how you felt . . . the guilt . . . but I can see you are not to be moved.’ He sounded surprised as though he had expected more of her. ‘I was ready to shout and bluster. I was angry, you see, that you had not turned to me. Then I was convinced that I could . . . sweep you off your feet, I believe the expression is, that our love would overcome all obstacles. But it doesn’t, does it, lass?’
‘No, Will, it doesn’t.’ Her voice was firm and her back which was still turned to him was the same.
‘Well, then, I’ll not bother you again, Tessa Greenwood. I’ve waited long enough, I reckon. More than any man should wait for a woman. I’ll do what you suggest and make a new life for myself. You see, I want to settle, have sons, a family, and I’ll not get it from you, that’s clear.’
He was gone when she turned round. Only Annie was there ready to catch her as she fell in a storm of weeping into her strong arms.
35
They said in the Penfold Valley that they had never seen a woman mourn the death of her husband as Tessa Greenwood mourned but then the pair of them had been close since childhood, hadn’t they, along with that other cousin of hers, Drew Greenwood’s twin brother, and was it not to be expected that the loss of the one she married would affect her more than most? And then her sister-in-law going like that at the same time and them children to be seen to was enough to undermine the strongest constitution.
She’d gone a bit crazy, everyone agreed, going at all times of the day, and night too, most likely, high on the moors of Saddleworth, not always riding as one would expect but sometimes tramping in her stout boots with a weaver’s shawl thrown about her head as though she had reverted to being the mill girl her own mother had once been. The gleaming stretch of Hollingworth Lake which was actually a reservoir, called the ‘weavers’ seaport’ because it was a place where the millworkers strolled on their day off, seemed to draw her. None knew why for in the days her cousins were alive the three of them had favoured Badger’s Edge and Friar’s Mere. Sometimes she was seen on the little paddle-steamer which moved across the shining surface of the lake. Mr Talbot, who had designed her new mill four years back and whose wife was particularly fond of a sail on the lake, had seen her, he told Mr Bradley, standing like a figurehead in the bow of the steamer, her shawl slipping about her shoulders, her white face straining upwards to the moorland peaks which surrounded the lake and which contained, though Mr Talbot did not know it being a newcomer to the district, Badger’s Edge and Friar’s Mere. He had seen her lips move as though she addressed some unseen companion. It was all most spine-chilling really, his wife had remarked, not at all sure she believed him when he told her that this plainly dressed, working-clad woman was the wealthy Mrs Tessa Greenwood.
But worst of all, rumour had it, she had walked into the Five Pigeons, an inn on the moor where the Lancashire and Yorkshire roads met and where radical agitators like her own uncle had gathered in the old days, and asked the landlord for a glass of ale. Bold as you please, she had been, staring round her at the stunned and silent working men, sipping her ale as though she had as much right to be there as they. Going back to her roots, one fool said, but would a woman as rich and powerful as she want to step into the past, they derided him.
‘Is there anyone here who knew Joss and Charlie Greenwood?’ she had asked, sensibly enough. No one answered for forty years had gone by since they’d been there and she had laughed, shaken her head and made some remark about short memories before striding off again into the autumn afternoon.
Despite her loss and her strangeness she was tireless in her work for the relief of the Lancashire operatives and in her struggle to obtain cotton for her own millhands to spin and weave but during the spring and summer of 1863 she was often to be seen riding her dead husband’s bay on the tops of the South Lancashire Pennines. Great wild thing it was and far too much for a woman to handle, they told one another. Those children of whom she was now guardian would be left completely alone if she did not take more care.
She was like a person split in two. She moved about Crossfold and Chapmanstown, watching over her own workers quite fiercely. Sitting on endless committees with that working-class friend of hers from Edgeclough she was the picture of lady-like gentility, her black mourning gown correct in every detail, stark and elegant, her black bonnet discreet and hiding the glossy darkness of her hair. She spoke quietly but her voice was heard and no one starved that she knew about. When there was cotton to be had and her mills were open she was there in her office, dealing with orders and accounts in consultation with her counting-house clerk, her managers and overlookers.
She took an interest in her factory school, even reading aloud for an heroic half-hour or so from the books which she borrowed from the Greenacres schoolroom. In the winter months she brought great cans of hot soup from the Greenacres kitchen and watched with quiet pleasure as eager mouths sipped the tasty nourishment and big eyes, round and attentive over the rims of their mugs, became clouded with satisfaction, minds fed and bellies fed. She sat in on classes where women who were mothers of half a dozen or more spelled out ‘cat’ and ‘mat’, their own eyes as gratified as those of their children. They were shown too how to gain the maximum nourishment from the cheapest food, how to sew, not a fine seam or delicate embroidery but sensible, decent garments to keep the children warm in winter.
But there were times when she was doing none of these things, when she could find no man, no woman or child who needed her, no cotton to be carded and spun and woven, when her heart was like an empty, echoing cavern with nothing to fill it but the words she and Will Broadbent had spoken to each other. Then she would fling on her breeches and boots and jacket, tie up her hair with a scrap of ribbon and stride from the house as though the ghosts of all her past were at her heels.
‘Let me saddle tha mare, Miss Tessa,’ Walter begged her that first time she ordered him to get ready her husband’s tall bay. ‘Tha cannot mean ter ride Jupiter. ’E be too strong for thi. It tekks a man to ’andle ’im. Anyroad, ’e’s not bin out of’t stable since . . . well, only wi’ me for exercise an’ ’e’s full o’ mischief Miss Tessa. I reckon ’e misses . . .’ Walter’s eyes took on a sad and musing expression for though Mr Drew had been a bugger at times Jupiter was not the only one who missed him. He shook his head and turned back to Miss Tessa who stood waiting, not as imperious and as high-handed as once she had been but determined on her own way just th
e same.
He took her over that first time, her dead husband’s bay, tearing away like a wild beast from a cage. She could do no more than hang on and let him, praying that his hooves would not find a rabbit hole or a loose rock in the dips and folds of the rough terrain; that he would not falter as he leaped across fast-flowing streams and raced along the old trackways which had been there since medieval times, constructed to carry the materials of the booming textile trade to and from manufacturers and markets. Up, up he sped, on to the crest of Saddleworth Moor which had derived its name from the saddle-shaped hill which formed it, crossing the railway line which ran from Manchester to Huddersfield. It was as though the bay, like herself, was searching for something or someone in his mad race into the middle of nowhere with the dogs she and Drew had trained to instance obedience close by his heels.
He swerved suddenly, almost unseating her. It appeared to her that he had heard a call in his own noble head for she could hear nothing but the thunder of his hooves, her own harsh breath in her throat and the high wind in her ears. She thought he would stop then for his lungs laboured and the breath from his nostrils mixed with the steam from his sweating coat, but he went on, almost tearing her arms from her shoulders. North he turned then, back across the railway track, beyond the quarry at Delph until at last they stood, gloriously free both of them, and temporarily at peace in the place known as Badger’s Edge.
She was slow to dismount for it seemed the stand of rocks was too emotionally peopled by the men she had loved in the past. They were all there, tall, strong, handsome, laughing up at her in the soft spring sunshine, calling to her to come and join them, to sit and dream with them as they looked out over the softly wooded valley from which no factory smoke rose today, Pearce was there, young as he had been when he had died on the battlefield of the Crimea eight years ago, and his brother, her husband Drew, older but just as merry as he and Pearce skylarked like the young colts they had once been.
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