A Time Like No Other

by Audrey Howard

  ‘Chocolate would be nice, Roly, if there is someone to provide it. I’m sure Harry must have some little person tucked away to see to his needs. Or would you prefer tea, Susan, perhaps coffee? And you, Biddy?’

  They both declared themselves to be satisfied with hot chocolate. Roly, still somewhat in a daze, rang a bell and the clerk came in at a run as if to say what the devil did those damn women want now!

  Roly gave his orders, then sank down into his chair behind the desk.

  Lally smiled serenely. ‘Perhaps I had better introduce you to my friends, Roly. My very good friends who are going to help with the mills while Harry is incapacitated. I know very little about the wool trade, I must admit, but Harry will tell me what to do, and Susan here, Mrs Susan Harper, has worked for many years on a loom in the weaving shed and knows a good “piece” when she sees it.’ Susan had told her to say that! She wondered what it meant. ‘And Mrs Stevens is my longstanding friend and companion. It was she who brought me up.’ Biddy bowed her head graciously.

  A little wisp of a woman timidly entered the room bearing a tray on which sat a tall silver chocolate pot and four dainty cups and saucers with matching milk jug and sugar bowl. Harry evidently liked to impress callers! The little woman hesitated, not awfully sure who was to be put in charge of pouring, Mr Harry’s brother or his wife, then something directed her to Mrs Sinclair and she placed the tray on the table beside her.

  Lally inclined her head to Roly who had as yet barely spoken, asking if he would care for hot chocolate and it seemed to bring him to his senses. He had been brooding on how beautiful his sister-in-law looked, on the meaning of her words about Harry and his incapacity and whether there was any chance that he might . . . well, that was for later. First he must deal with these three crazy women who seemed to be telling him, or at least Lally was, that they intended to help him to run his own business.

  ‘No chocolate for me, Lally, but you ladies, who seem to think I am open to morning calls, do get on with your drink.’ He grinned broadly, running his eyes quite offensively over Susan’s trim figure and pretty face. Her hair, showing beneath the brim of her bonnet, had a chestnut glow to its darkness and a pleasing wave. There was a scatter of freckles across her nose and her mouth was poppy red and full. She looked directly at him with the bluest eyes he had ever seen and though he stared quite rudely she did not drop them.

  ‘You know a good “piece” do you? Susan, is it, then perhaps—’

  ‘I am Mrs Harper, and yes, I do.’ She stood up and moved across the room, picking a sample of cloth from his desk. She took it to the window and examined it in the daylight. He watched her, a small smile playing round his mouth. ‘This has a “boardy” feel to it,’ she went on. ‘I believe it must be put right before you can send it out to your customer.’

  ‘God Almighty, has anyone else anything to say about this piece or the running of the mill? This is quite laughable, Lally, and I’m amazed that my brother allows you to run round unaccompanied—’

  ‘I am not unaccompanied, Roly. I have my friends and associates with me.’

  He hooted with laughter. ‘Associates! These two! A mill girl and a kitchen-maid. You must have taken leave of your senses.’ Then he became serious. ‘There are two ways of doing this. Harry can sell out to me or we can split the business. I have already told you how we shall do it.’

  ‘Will your financial resources run to it, Roly?’ she asked him mildly.

  Biddy watched the play between the two of them and though she was afraid for her lass, knowing that beneath his pleasant exterior Roly Sinclair was a hard and determined man, she sensed – no! not sensed, knew that he would eventually be beaten. He was standing on quaking ground was Roly Sinclair and she wondered how a man as clever as he was could imagine that Mr Harry would allow his mills to be swallowed up. Mr Harry was not quite himself as yet but soon he would be and then what a hullabaloo there would be.

  Roly smiled. ‘You have not perhaps heard the news. It has been a whirlwind romance. We decided to keep it secret until I was home and could give some attention to celebrations and so on. I have recently become engaged to Miss Anne Bracken. Yes, I see that surprises you’ – which it did since Anne Bracken was twenty-seven and as plain as a pikestaff. But very rich – ‘and I am pleased to say that her marriage portion and the allowance her father proposes to give her will set me up very nicely in whatever the arrangement is between Harry and myself. I want the Sinclair mills, Lally, and I shall do anything to get them. Now, if you ladies’ – smiling benignly round at them as he stood up – ‘have finished your chocolate, I beg you to excuse me.’

  Though Lally was flabbergasted she did not show it, nor did she stand up. ‘Well, allow me to congratulate you, Roly. You will certainly have plenty of funds at your disposal since George Bracken is one of the wealthiest mill-owners in Yorkshire. He’s in “shoddy”, isn’t he? I could never understand how rags could create such wealth. I drove past his mill with Harry on our way to . . . well, I can’t remember our destination but in the yard were great bales chock full of filthy tatters with wagons arriving all the time to add to the heap. The walls of the mill were covered with thick, clinging dust and fibre which rose in volumes from the open doors and glassless windows and poured from the chimneys. Shall you like working in such a place, Roly, for I dare say George Bracken will expect something from you?’

  ‘I shall do whatever is necessary to gain full control of the Sinclair mills.’

  ‘Not if you’re to produce cloth like that on the table, Mr Sinclair,’ Susan told him quietly. ‘I dare say it suited them in the weaving shed but it’d not suit Mr Harry, nor those he sells his cloth to. I’ve been in the trade since I was ten years old and I reckon to know a bit about wool. Oh, not the selling side or even the financial but I know a proper woven piece.’

  ‘Is that so!’ Roly was in a towering rage. To be spoken to by some working-class woman was bad enough, but to be told she knew as much or more about working a loom and the results of it than he did was outrageous. ‘Well, let me tell you—’

  ‘Are we to discuss this situation in a calm and reasonable manner, Roly, or are we to sit here and listen to you—’

  ‘You’ll bloody well do as you’re told, madam,’ he snarled at Lally. ‘I presume these friends of yours know that the baby in your nursery was fathered by me.’ He waited for some explosion, perhaps gasps of horror but when none came he continued. ‘Ah, I see they do but do they know that I will spread the story round Moorend and even as far as Halifax unless you go along with my plans. I will not be thwarted on this, Lally.’

  ‘Perhaps the lady you are to marry and her wealthy father will not be too pleased to hear that you seduced your best friend’s widow only months after his death, or perhaps you would prefer to hear from my lawyer on the matter of slander. Harry and I, even if we were forced to go to court and have our names whispered all over Yorkshire, would swear that we were having an affair months before we were married. Perhaps even before the death of my first husband. We might be pilloried but I don’t imagine it would be for long. Harry is a person of enormous influence, well respected and with more wealth than any man in these parts. There are very few who would care to be in his bad books. We would both fight dirty to save our marriage, Roly, our life together, our children, one of whom happens to be called Caterina Sinclair.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this garbage,’ Roly said savagely, reaching for his caped overcoat and hat which hung on the stand by the office door. ‘I shall ride over and see Harry and if my visit harms his health, which seems very delicate at the moment, then that will be laid at your door. If you cannot keep out of my way and remain where gentlewomen are supposed to be, which is in their own homes, then anything that results from your unwomanliness is your own affair.’

  Lally stood up and so did Biddy and Susan and it seemed to him, though he knew he was being foolish, that they posed some sort of threat to him. The other two were tall, standing protectively on eit
her side of Lally who was not. Their faces were impassive and though he hadn’t the slightest idea what they could do, if anything, to stand in his way, he found himself taking a step back.

  ‘I mean everything I say, Roly. I will not let you take what Harry has built up over all these years. I know you have had a hand in building it so surely you could be satisfied with the excellent lifestyle you enjoy. He will not sell any part of it to you, nor will he agree to splitting it. He has told me so’ – which was, of course, a lie – ‘and I am only repeating what he said.’

  ‘Why isn’t he here then, fighting as a man should for what is his?’

  ‘He cannot sit a horse.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Roly began to pull on his overcoat. ‘I shall ride over this minute . . .’

  ‘If you come within a foot of the entrance gates to the Priory I shall send Carly for the constables and have you arrested. Now, get on with running the Sinclair mills, Roly, if you can, and I promise that as soon as Harry is well enough he will be up here to discuss your grievances. Oh, and give my very best wishes to your fiance’e. I wish you both happy!’

  22

  ‘What will you do now, my clever lass?’ Biddy was the first to speak as they sat in the carriage on their way back to the Priory. She had had nothing to say while the three of them were at High Clough and it was not because she was overawed by Roly Sinclair, nor that she felt out of place, but that she was a strong woman who had learned the hard way how to stand up to anything life could throw at her and Roly Sinclair, in her opinion, was nowt a pound. Biddy Stevens, from a working-class background, came from Halifax and was twelve when her mother died and her father began to pester her, and she had left home for a life in some sort of decent work, perhaps as a domestic, a scullery maid, she didn’t care as long as it was decent. Unfortunately she had discovered that even the most lowly housewife would not take on a girl who knocked at her back door without references asking for work. She did a stint in a mill that manufactured ‘shoddy’, working on a machine with revolving teeth called a ‘devil’ which tore the rags already sorted to pieces. She had to wear a bandage to prevent the inhalation of the foul dust from infecting her lungs, which was bad enough, but when she was raped by the overlooker and she made a fuss, an unnecessary fuss in his opinion, for it was a regular occurrence among the girls at their machines, she was put off. She took to the streets. If she was going to be abused, she decided, by any man who fancied it, she might as well get paid for it! She became friends with an ageing prostitute who took her under her wing, showing her how to protect herself, not only against aggressive men, but against becoming pregnant.

  But the day when the old prostitute’s training let her down and the man she had thought looked agreeable proved to be just the opposite was when her life had changed dramatically. The man, silent and menacing, would have raped her had not Delphine Atkins’s carriage passed by. Delphine’s coachman was an ex-prize-fighter and with a shriek from his mistress to stop the carriage, he had soon seen off the pervert and Biddy was bundled into the carriage with nothing more than a black eye and the marks of the man’s hands about her throat.

  She had served Delphine devotedly until she died. She had brought up Lally, who had been no more than a scrap of white lace, a short cap of dark curls and eyes the colour of aquamarine when Biddy first saw her. She was as pretty as a picture and Biddy had loved her from the start which was just as well, for Delphine, well meaning but not maternally inclined, lived a strange life among what were known in Halifax as ‘arty types’! They met in Delphine’s drawing room where they quoted Balzac to one another and read out loud passages from Dostoyevsky. They discussed the merits of one painter against another while Biddy and the child sat comfortably in the warm kitchen and went through their letters from a child’s reader. For several years after Delphine sadly passed away she and Lally lived with Aunt Jane, a distant relative who took them in until Miss Lally became Mrs Christopher Fraser of the Priory.

  When Miss Lally had married Mr Chris, Biddy was ready to go down on her knees and thank the Being in whom she had never believed, for even then she had had her doubts about the other one, the dashing, charming, handsome sprig of a youth with whom her lamb and Mr Chris had shared their wild ways. Roly Sinclair, son of a rich mill-owner, spoiled rotten in Biddy’s opinion, but likeable all the same.

  But he had showed his true colours today and Biddy needed time to marshall her thoughts before she conferred with Miss Lally on what Miss Lally’s next step was to be.

  ‘I don’t know, Biddy, but you can be certain Roly Sinclair is not going to get his hands on Harry’s mills. He is a partner and I suppose he will have to remain so but I know Harry wouldn’t sell out to him nor would he split the business to give Roly half. When we get home you and I and Susan will discuss what we think our next step should be.’

  But when they got home the house was in uproar and for a dreadful moment Lally’s heart leaped painfully in her chest, for she thought it was something to do with Harry but it turned out that Pinky had been mislaid and her daughter was refusing to be comforted. At eight months old Cat was a lovely child with her mother’s colouring, her dark hair in fat, shining curls about her head, her eyes a brilliant blue-green, her cheeks round and soft with a tint of peach in them. She had her parents’ strong will and at six months had been crawling, following the patient dogs and hauling herself across their smoothly brushed black and white backs. Even now, as she shrieked her displeasure at the non-appearance of her beloved Pinky she was doing her best to stand, pulling herself up against Dora’s neat skirt. Dora was pathetically pleased to see them, declaring that even the master was at this moment searching his own room for the missing toy. For ten minutes Biddy, Lally and Susan joined the search until Pinky was found, of all places under the curled-up kitten in the kitchen who had taken a liking to its softness. The kitten, now five months old, was the only one left of the three from Folly Farm. The other two had been taken discreetly to live in the stable since they were both male and as Fluffy was female Susan said firmly she wanted no addition to the nursery which was already overflowing with animals.

  Cat was overjoyed, hugging the threadbare toy to her chest, kissing it passionately and though Biddy, who was not a particular lover of animals, decreed that the toy should be washed before the child should be allowed it, none was prepared to separate baby and toy.

  Harry was still out of bed when Lally entered the bedroom, in fact he was half under it looking for Pinky, his expression anxious and Lally was made to realise how much Cat meant to her husband even though she was not naturally his. He often sat with her on his knee in the chair by his bed, the pair of them half asleep, his face peaceful and loving, for the first recognisable word she had spoken had been ‘Papa’!

  He grinned now and shrugged when Lally told him the toy was found, standing up and holding out his arms to her and in their new closeness she moved into them, a closeness that seemed to have grown stealthily but naturally and she had not been displeased. He lifted her chin and gently placed a kiss on her lips.

  ‘And where have you been while this drama was taking place? I was just about to call for Piper and ride into Moorend to see if any suitable replacement for Pinky might be had.’

  It was the perfect opportunity to tell Harry what was happening at his mills. He had already been told that Roly was out to make trouble, since she had spoken to him about it before the incident with the Weavers but at that time they had no idea what it was Roly was after. The beating Harry had taken from the Weaver brothers had knocked all remembrance of it from his mind.

  ‘Harry.’ She took his hand and led him to the sofa which was placed to one side of the fire so that in the evenings they might sit side by side. ‘I think it is time we talked about . . . about what happened before the . . . before you were attacked. It is a month now and you are so much better. You are getting about the house and Carly tells me you have even ventured into the yard. I wouldn’t be surprised to see you on Piper’s
back before long and so perhaps it is time to talk of the future.’

  In the back of Lally’s mind there was a slight but growing suspicion that Harry’s subconscious spirit was doing its best to hide from something it did not care to remember. Nothing to do with the mills or his life as a businessman but her and the child who was not his but whom he had grown to love as though she were. He was beginning to move about the world of the household, stronger and seemingly physically recovered from his attack but something held him back from total recall. Should she chance sending him spiralling away beyond her reach? John advised waiting, saying let him come back to himself when his mind was ready for it, but quite honestly she did not know what to do about Roly’s threat. Oh, she was prepared to suffer the scandal that would ripple through the community should Roly tell the world that Cat was his, for she could bluff it out, but could Harry? In his right mind, the strong and tenacious mind he had possessed before the Weavers attacked him, he would fight beside her to protect the children and their rightful inheritance and not only that but their place in their own society. But he was not in his right mind and might not the truth damage him even further? She knew if she was honest with herself, that if Roly refused to run the business, let it come to a standstill, walked away from it and started up on his own with Anne Bracken’s wealth behind him, there was no way on God’s earth that she could step into Harry’s shoes. She knew nothing about the worsted trade, not only the actual manufacture of the miles of worsted yarn the mills turned out each year but the financial side, the accounting, the buying of fleeces, the selling of the finished goods. Susan knew the inside of a weaving shed, for she had worked in the loom gate, ‘minding’ more than one machine at a time. She had known how to describe the piece Roly had been studying when they entered his office; ‘boardy’ she had called it, which had impressed Roly, but there was more to it than that. Biddy was staunch in her loyalty and resolution to help in any way she could, even to standing at a power loom herself since she knew the inside of a mill, Lally had no doubt, but without the knowledge that was in Harry’s head and his years of experience, where were they to start?