The Runaway

by Audrey Reimann

  ‘Mister Wainwright!’ she raised her voice and tapped the patchwork counterpane above his shoulder. ‘Wake up. Mr Wainwright!’ She shook his shoulder firmly.

  James’s hand darted out from beneath the covers and he snatched her slender wrist. The girl lost her balance and pitched on to the bed. James opened his eyes and looked into the blue, startled gaze of the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

  For all her pale skin and hair her eyes were fringed with dark lashes and she had finely arched eyebrows above eyes of cornflower blue. Her nose had the faintest bump in it, adding, in James’s opinion, to her charm, and her mouth, when she opened it to catch her shocked breath, was small and firm.

  Her teeth were white and even, so level that he could have ruled a line under them and not one would have been out of true, save where the eye teeth turned very slightly outwards, revealing their edges. And her mouth was inches from his own, her breath sweet and warm. He could kiss her if he dared. James saw all this in the seconds after he had pulled her down onto the bed.

  The girl sprang back on to her feet, twisted her arm from his grasp and delivered a stinging slap across his cheek. He grinned up at her from the pillow.

  ‘Breakfast in five minutes,’ she told him. ‘First left at the foot of the stairs.’ She rubbed her reddened wrist and was gone, snapping the door to behind her and he heard her, sure-footed and quick, skipping down the wooden stair.

  ‘Oh, hell! I wonder if I’ll be thrown out of here as well,’ he muttered. But he was fairly certain that the young woman would take it in her stride. She probably had to slap a good few faces, working in a lodging house.

  He had slept soundly and he stretched before he slipped his feet out of bed onto the cold boards and reached for the clothes he had worn the day before. It was still dark outside and when he opened the curtains he saw that the window was frosted prettily on its inside. He placed the palms of his hands against the glass until the warm imprint melted the ice but there was a film of grime on the outside of the window from the belching railway smoke and the foggy pall which often lay over this part of the town.

  He cupped his hands around the melted space and pressed his eyes to them, obliterating the reflected light from inside the room. He could make out the chimneys of the mills, already disgorging smoke into the heavy air and saw faintly the alleys where clogged feet rumbled downhill towards the mills.

  A mirror above a plain washstand reflected his image back at him and he tried to assess his looks and his attractiveness to girls. He had dark hair, and some girls liked tall, dark-haired men, he had heard, and often blonde girls preferred them to fairer men. That was a good start – he liked blonde girls. His eyes were grey, like his mother’s, and he had what he thought of as pretty ordinary features – a straight, long nose and a plain, biggish mouth. He did not know whether or not he was handsome. Nobody had ever mentioned his looks.

  Girls had long had a fascination for him but he had had little opportunity, so far, to test his charms on them. There were young maids at Suttonford, of course, but Mother made a point of knowing them all by name, having overseen their progress at the village Sunday school. They would have been sure to report to her if he’d laid a hand on them.

  School was a masculine environment and though the boys there experimented with town girls when they got the chance, and with one another when they didn’t, that kind of public sexual activity did not appeal to James. He was not averse to using the boys’ weaknesses against them though, and many a boy had prayed to God that James Wainwright would not discover his dreadful secrets.

  He washed his face, using a new piece of yellow common soap the girl had left on the soap dish, dressed quickly and went downstairs, remembering that she’d said, ‘first left …’

  Three men were at the breakfast table when he took his seat. Two, merchants of some kind he guessed, were much older than himself, the other was a hearty-looking young man of around eighteen. A newly lit fire crackled in the grate and a place was set for him.

  ‘Good morning!’ James greeted the seated men. ‘I’m James Wainwright. Please introduce yourselves.’

  The young man reached a hand out to him. ‘Nathaniel Cooper. Pleased to meet yer, James. This is Mr Brocklebank, an auctioneer from Chester. He’ll be selling cattle in the market this morning.’

  The man had a grip of iron. ‘And this ’ere is Mr Sefton, his partner. It is him as’ll be taking the money.’ Nathaniel laughed heartily at his own joke. ‘I am just a farmer’s lad. Looking for a few good cows.’

  ‘You don’t live here then?’ James’s voice, with its cultured tones, used normally to great effect when dealing with people he considered to be of a lower order than himself, did not command more than a quick glance from the two older men. They looked at him with barely concealed impatience before returning to study the sheaves of papers they had laid out on the tablecloth.

  ‘No. Me father farms seventy acres up at the Clough and I work with him. I allus come ’ere for me breakfast. You get a good plateful and it’s clean and cheap.’

  It was the first time that James had not had the trappings of wealth to indicate his social position and he was surprised to find himself being judged simply as another lodger.

  ‘I’m the son of Oliver Wainwright. Wainwright and Billington, the cotton weavers,’ he ventured. This drew another glance from the auctioneers but Nathaniel appeared to have lost interest in James’s family history at the sound of a footfall outside the room.

  ‘Mornin’, Mrs Smallwood.’ Nathaniel leaped from the table and held open the door to the woman James had seen the night before. She carried a steaming tureen of porridge to the table. ‘Is your Alice late for school this morning? She allus fetches us breakfasts.’

  ‘No. She’s not late. Something’s annoyed her this morning. It wasn’t you, was it, Nat?’ Mrs Smallwood asked. ‘There’s ham and eggs to follow. Our Sarah’s fetchin’ the teapot.’

  ‘It weren’t me. Eeh, your Alice is a grand lass,’ Nathaniel beamed as he ladled porridge into his bowl. ‘Is she still set on her education then?’

  ‘Yes. She wants to be a teacher. Dad and I encourage her,’ the woman answered with a trace of defiance in her voice. ‘It’s bad enough that Sam and I have to fight for Alice’s education without having to justify it to all and sundry.’

  She took a big brown teapot from her daughter and set it in the centre of the table. ‘You’d better eat up as quick as you can, Mr Wainwright. Your father said he’s sending someone for you at seven o’clock sharp.’

  James curled his lip at the mention of his father’s orders. ‘I’m sure they’ll wait, Mrs Smallwood, until I’m ready.’ He was hungry. The ham and eggs were just as he liked them and he had barely finished before she returned to announce that, ‘A Mister Hunt is waiting for you.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll join him in about half an hour.’ James would not be rushed. If the wretched woman insisted on chivvying him, he decided, he’d put her in her place. He smiled expansively round at his companions but they were busily spreading Dundee marmalade on crusty bread and noisily drinking sweet tea.

  James sat at the table after the three men had finished, drinking tea slowly. He waved flamboyantly at the auctioneers as they left the table for the kitchen, to pay Mrs Smallwood, and he smiled when he heard their lowered voices, believing them to be discussing him. Well, he’d show them as well as his father that James Wainwright would not be ordered around.

  He studied the long case clock and made a mental note of the time of the next full moon from the movements of the heavens across its face and turned his attentions to the painting of a young girl who drooped beside a lily pond.

  He would make it clear, right from the start, that he had no intention of soiling his hands or of spending the whole day in a filthy factory. If it turned out as insufferable as he thought it would he’d take the next train to Suttonford and complain to Mother about it. If it were not for the look of disgust that would spread across his father’s f
ace, and the prospect of an even worse fate, he’d go now.

  ‘Wainwright?’ A purple-faced man of about thirty years pushed open the door, apparently not in the mood to wait any longer for his charge. ‘Coom on! You were meant to be at work half an hour since. You’ll lose money for bad timekeeping. Are yer coming like that?’

  James gave him a withering look. ‘When I am ready, my man, we’ll leave for your dismal little workplace.’ He pulled on his alpaca overcoat and kid gloves. ‘Lead the way,’ he commanded.

  Through the crowded back alley behind Rivergate they had to push against the crush of workers who jostled and elbowed James, forcing him to hurry to keep pace with Mr Hunt. He had begun to feel rather foolish and a little apprehensive when they reached the mill and the gatekeeper’s iron gates clashed together behind them.

  ‘We was expecting you a while back. See as yer get here on time tomorrer,’ a wheezy old man told him sharply. James took off his coat and held it out to the old man. The man wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, threw the coat over a dusty chair and nodded towards a door at the top of a flight of stairs.

  He was in a long room with lines of close-packed looms. It was deafening, the huge machines clattering and groaning and over all the choking air from hot metal and cotton dust. James winced as he took in the scene before him.

  The women, young and old, who tended the machines were staring at him in open curiosity. They wore scarves, tied tightly over their hair to keep it away from the machinery. They wore drab dresses and pinafores but they were neither drab nor dowdy by nature. Rather, they displayed a coarse liveliness James had not come across before.

  ‘Here,’ an old woman called out to him. She had no teeth and her mouth sank in alarmingly at every word she spoke. ‘I’ll show you how to do it.’ She dragged him, unwilling, to her side and placed her large red hands over his, guiding them on to the front bar of the machine. The vibrations throbbed through him, making his teeth chatter until he clenched his jaws and pulled himself free.

  ‘Let go of me, you disgusting old devil!’ He spat the words at her.

  His words and the outraged expression on his face, far from reducing her to tears as he had hoped, sent her into near convulsions. She placed her hands on her great belly and laughed so loudly that two more women left their machines in the charge of apprentices and came over, begging her to tell them what she had found so funny. The old woman could hardly speak for cackling.

  ‘I’ve half a mind to have you sent home. I’m not one of your common mill workers.’ James was so angry that he found he was shouting. He brushed one hand against the other, to remove the feel of the hateful creature’s hand on his. How dared these low women ridicule him?

  ‘Ooh. Look at ’im! Arf parst me garter and twice round me leg!’ the younger woman teased, pointing her nose to the ceiling, a finger outstretched beneath her nostrils. The others began to giggle.

  ‘Be quiet, you stupid girl,’ James snarled at her as she pirouetted before him, tears of laughter pouring down her thin cheeks.

  Her clogs enabled her to whirl fast and she lifted the hem of her skirt, showing a grimy petticoat, black-edged from the dusty floor. Beneath the petticoat her thin legs in wrinkled and darned grey stockings were poked into heavy wooden-soled clogs.

  ‘Mister Wainwright is it?’ Another woman had joined the group. This one was hard-faced and had a nasty set to her mouth. ‘Not “The Mister-bloody-Wainwright” of Wainwright and Billington’s? Surely not?’ Her spittle hit him. It was unintentional; she always sprayed as she spoke but it was the action that inflamed him. He grabbed her about the shoulders and pushed her to the floor but the girl was a match for him. ‘Gerrim, girls,’ she yelled, ‘before he tries his bloody nonsense!’

  At least six women had joined the original three and one pulled at his sleeve. She had thin, mousy hair, wispy over her forehead with rats’ tails hanging limply under her headscarf.

  ‘Good lookin’, inn’t he?’ she jeered. ‘Coom on, girls. Let’s show ’im that he can’t push Mavis about even if he is Mister Wainwright.’

  Before James could run for his life he was on the floor, one girl astride his chest while two others held his arms outstretched and another tugged at his trousers. He kicked and heaved but the odds were too heavily against him. A minute later they smeared his naked flesh with thick brown grease from a deep tin, each girl rubbing it in gleefully when her turn came. Then they pulled up his trousers but kept him pinned to the floor and he felt the horrible mess sliding inside his clothes while his nostrils were filled with the grey, clogging dust of the floor.

  ‘You bloody wretches!’ he yelled, but his words were drowned in the hilarity.

  ‘Give ’im a kiss, Polly,’ one of the girls screeched as the toothless creature he had first spoken to knelt clumsily beside him, saliva dripping from her sucked-in bottom lip.

  ‘Oh, God. No!’ he shouted.

  ‘I don’t care for him. He’s too thin for me,’ the old woman said, wrinkling her bulbous nose and reaching out for the skinny girl who crouched beside her. ‘Here. You ’ave him.’

  One by one they approached and knelt over him. Some kissed him, urged on by the encouraging shrieks from the crowd of girls around him, others merely puckering their lips before collapsing into peals of giggles and when they had all had their turn they left him alone.

  James sat on the floor of the hateful room with his head in his hands, wondering how he would avenge himself. The women probably did this to every new man who came into the mill. He knew all about humiliation; he was not in the least embarrassed by an initiation ceremony that was no worse than he had suffered or meted out at school but he saw that if he were to survive in the mills he would have to have things running his way. He could not go home to Suttonford and tell his father that the girls had frightened him. He even managed a wry smile at the thought.

  He stood up and went to one of the looms where the old woman stood. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  The work was tiring and much more difficult than he thought it would be. The old crone showed him how to ‘set up’, then pronounced on his poor attempt, pulled his work apart and made him practise over and over again until he got the feel of the machine.

  ‘Didn’t yer bring no food?’ the skinny girl asked at twelve o’clock.

  ‘I thought I’d be given something here,’ James replied in as neutral a tone as he could muster.

  ‘You should’ve asked yer landlady to make yer up some butties,’ she said kindly. ‘Have one of mine.’

  She handed him a thick slice of bread and margarine and he ate gratefully before putting his head under the tap in the corner of the room and gulping the ice-cold water to quench his thirst.

  At seven o’clock when he returned to his lodgings he was tired and dirty and it had grown dark again without his once having been aware of the light of day. His shoulders sagged and he appeared to have become one of the crowd. The skinny girl tucked her arm into his for a few minutes before their ways parted.

  ‘Mind and don’t forget to bring yer food tomorrer!’ she called after him as he went up into Rivergate and the lodging house.

  Mr Smallwood brought hot water to his room. Sam Smallwood looked a kindly man; fatherly but not a man to be disobeyed. ‘Had a rough day, young Wainwright?’ he asked. ‘You look done in.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ James replied.

  ‘Supper’s nearly ready. You can eat with us at night when there’s no one else staying,’ Mr Smallwood told him. ‘A parcel of clothes came for you this morning. I’ll bring them up.’

  James had to ask for a second lot of hot water before he was clean, then he cut his chin while trying to shave. He had only done it once for himself. There were barbers at school for the older boys and Father’s valet obliged at Suttonford.

  Finally he bundled his greasy clothes up and pushed them beneath the bedstead where, he supposed, they would be collected.

  There was a big coal fire
in the homely living room, chairs before it and a table laid for the family. In a corner sat the girl who had come to his room that morning. She was reading her schoolbooks. She looked up and smiled at him. ‘Hello, Mr Wainwright. I’m Alice Smallwood. Did you have an enjoyable day at work?’

  James gave her a startled look. Had she heard? No. The look on her face told him that it was just a polite question. There was laughter in her eyes but that was because of their little tussle this morning, he guessed.

  ‘It was interesting. Hard work but interesting,’ he told her pompously. ‘How was school? You must be the little bluestocking.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I was a bluestocking, but it’s important for me to do well at school,’ she said, pursing her lips in amusement. ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’

  The aroma of cooking wafted through the half-open door of the kitchen and Ellen Smallwood and Sarah followed the kitchen maid into the room, carrying and helping her to load dishes on to the table. They placed a rib of beef for Mr Smallwood to carve and they set down plates and dishes of roast potatoes, boiled carrots mashed with turnip, chopped and peppered green cabbage and a small mountain of light-as-air batter puddings.

  James had a healthy appetite and he ate everything they put before him and as he ate he felt himself to be quite at home with these people. He was overwhelmed with the amount of talk at the table. Everyone had something to tell and they pronounced seriously and volubly on every topic, interrupting one another at will. This was so different from Suttonford, where conversation, he had been taught, never disturbed, was kept on a light and polite level and where, had he dared to interrupt or venture a different opinion from his parents, he would have been banished from their company until he had learned better manners.

  At Suttonford, Mother was always in control at the table. Mother, so tiny and pretty, held them all in check. Mother, who would not allow contentious talk; Mother, who could change the subject adroitly if it were leading in a direction she did not wish to follow; Mother, who appeared not to notice the gross drunkenness of grandmother Mawdesley; Mother who went her own sweet way, loving and adoring everybody, refusing to acknowledge problems in the lives of those around her; Mother would be shocked and distressed at the way the Smallwoods lived, James believed.