A Time Like No Other

by Audrey Howard

  ‘Dear Christ, philanthropists, is it, you and my dear brother,’ he sneered. ‘Well, I wish you well of it. Now I really must get home to my wife. We are also to build but it is to be a house, a mansion, so what Harry means to do with Mill House I don’t know, or care.’

  He was about to turn away but Lally stopped him with her next words.

  ‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Roly, for it will not go to waste. Mr Elliott and Mrs Harper are to be married as soon as she is able to walk up the aisle and Harry is to give it to them as a wedding present.’

  It was a good job Roly was looking at her and not Adam or he would have seen the look of amazement on Adam’s face.

  ‘We’ll say “good morning” then, Roly,’ Lally added cheerfully, putting a hand on Adam’s sleeve and drawing him away towards the gateway and the carriage that stood there. Waiting until they were both in it Adam burst out with the words he had been holding in.

  ‘Now look here, Lally . . . er, Mrs Sinclair. What on earth possessed you to tell that idiot that Susan and I are to be married? No one knew and now it will be all over Moorend and—’

  Lally laughed and on the seat where he had the reins in his hands Carly smiled.

  ‘Oh, Adam, everyone knows how you feel about Susan and that she returns your feelings. You are waiting only—’

  ‘But . . .’ Adam’s face was a picture.

  ‘Is it not true, then?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘Well then. Mill House is empty and you and Susan and Jack will need somewhere to live so what could be more logical than that you should take it over? You will need, as the mill manager, somewhere suitable.’

  ‘Mill manager . . .’ he spluttered.

  ‘Of course. Now then, let us talk of the need to get the operatives who worked at High Clough back in employment. Susan and I have discussed it, as I am sure she has with you, and we propose to run West Heath and South Royd round the clock. Twenty-three hours a day. Shift work, in fact. Two shifts until Penfold Meadow is in production. That way we will produce twice the goods and lose none of our operatives who will lose none of their jobs.’

  ‘Susan did say you had that in mind,’ he told her wryly but she interrupted him.

  ‘It means more hours of work for you, Adam, with a higher wage, of course, and with Brice selling whatever comes off our looms we should keep our heads above water. I was wondering if, among your university friends, you might know of a good man to be under-manager. I . . . er . . .’ she paused delicately, ‘I shall not be able to . . . work for much longer and you cannot do everything and with Susan laid up for the time being it all falls on your shoulders. One day Harry will be recovered,’ she went on bravely, her mind returning as it frequently did to the quiet figure by the window of the bedroom. He was beginning to put on weight and though Biddy strenuously argued against it, Doctor John had put him on a diet. Martin walked him down the lawn every day but it was not the vigorous exercise to which he was accustomed.

  Adam grinned boyishly. ‘And we thought we had kept it quiet . . .’

  ‘How could you with you at the infirmary every day? Now, with Susan back home soon I suggest you move into Mill House right away. Mrs Cannon will be surprised but she doesn’t care who lives there as long as she gets her wages. Now, shall we get on to West Heath.’

  To their astonishment and delight orders began to come from established customers, one of whom remarked on the efficiency of young Mr Heaton with whom he had dined several days ago. It came from New York where Brice Heaton had approached several of their customers and had been so charming, so persuasive, so free with his entertaining, not to mention the excellence of the samples he produced, it seemed they would be hard pressed to keep up with him. The plan to run the two mills round the clock had been received with great thankfulness by the operatives put out of work by the disaster at High Clough, and, with a young man of impeccable credentials come from the same university as Adam and Brice, a young man by the name of Frank Schofield, at his side, Adam had every spinning frame and loom working night and day. They needed extra care from the two men and a great deal of watching, for the machines carried an extra load in the way of producing yarn, each one examined and maintained so that no breakdowns or accidents occurred.

  The month rolled on and though Lally had been struggling on with the accounts, the wages books, the work records relative to the manufacture of woollen goods, they now found that Hawkins, who had once been awkward and inclined to resent what he considered their intrusion into a man’s world, was surprisingly helpful. It seemed he knew which side his bread was buttered, thankful that he was given an office at West Heath and retained his job. Lally, without Susan but with Hawkins’s rather old-maidish advice, was helped to read a balance sheet, with ledgers, contracts and copies of negotiations with suppliers and customers. Adam, with Frank Scho-field on the mill floor, often worked beside her, reading the weekly reports, audits and the invoices delivered at regular intervals from Albert Watson regarding the slow building of the mill at Penfold Meadow, called now by the one name, Penfold. From somewhere Hawkins, who had worked for the Sinclairs since he left school and could not bear to throw anything away, produced records that were extremely advantageous to Lally and Adam and she was heard to say that she wondered why the hell he had not shown them to her from the start!

  Every evening she returned home to dine with Harry, sitting with him before their fireside, and in the hope that the familiar facts and figures – familiar to him that is – that she poured into his ears might awaken his dormant brain she talked to him of her day, and every morning she visited the infirmary to see Susan and do the same. Adam rode over to the infirmary every evening, his expression ardent, and instructing her severely to name a day for their wedding. He was living at Mill House and Mrs Cannon had proved most obliging. Susan would have nothing to do but give orders and be waited on hand and foot, he told her. No, she was not to return to the office at the mills since they were being run most efficiently by Lally and Mr Hawkins, forgetting in his ardour that Lally would soon not be able to be at the office.

  She was getting heavy now in her body and she found she had to make a great effort not to allow her senses and her emotions to become lulled, her identity as a woman submerged in her role as breeding female, fighting to take over.

  ‘I wish you could see what has been accomplished, Harry, and in such a short time. A Mr Grassmann called today and quite took over the place, looking at every sample. He had come all the way from London, staying at the Golden Plough in Halifax. He was quite amazed at the sight of me and Adam but really Adam is a marvel. He took over and talked him through the weaving of what he wanted and before half an hour he had him eating out of his hand. They were talking of warp and weft, delivery dates, profit and loss as though Adam had been in the woollen trade all his life. I, very circumspectly’ – putting a hand to her swollen belly – ‘stayed behind my desk. Adam took him to the sheds and carefully showed him several pieces still on the loom.’

  She leaned towards him and took his hands, then clumsily knelt at his feet, looking up into his face. Since the weather had begun to turn warmer Martin and he not only took short walks down the sloping lawn but sat on the garden seat by the lake and his face had taken on a healthier colour.

  ‘Darling, darling Harry, though we are managing to keep things ticking over we need you. We all need you. What am I to do when the baby comes?’

  She put her face on their clasped hands which lay in his lap and as she spoke the word ‘baby’ his glance fell on her but she did not see it. She sighed and her breath moved the fine hairs on the back of his hands and the expression on his face, which was really no expression at all, changed in some way but again she did not see it. She got heavily to her feet, her swollen body barely registering that in some way Harry was helping her to rise.

  ‘Oh well, I’d better go and have a word with Dora. That lad Susan saved, not to mention Jack, should be in their beds by now. Honestly,
Harry, the nursery is becoming very full and with this one soon to be added to it we shall have to think about extending the rooms. And Dora really needs some assistance though she does very well. Of course, Philly is a great help and plays nursery maid as much as governess. She is even attempting to teach Boy his letters, poor little lad. I wonder where his family is, or even if he had one.’

  She kissed Harry, her hand smoothing the thick riot of his dark hair, her mind registering that it really did need cutting, then with another loving kiss she left him.

  27

  Spring came in with such surprising vigour Barty was to say again and again to Froglet he didn’t know how the devil they were to keep up with the jobs that were ready for doing. You only had to look at the massed heads of the wild daffodils, which normally at this time of the year would just be thrusting their spears through the grass and were already flaunting their magnificent golden trumpets, to realise that winter had truly gone. And would you look at them wallflowers, like a flame they were against the front wall of the house. A proper picture, didn’t Froglet agree and he couldn’t remember ever having seen a finer show of honesty in the corner of the stable yard with their white and purple flowers already attracting early butterflies. The geraniums he and the lad had planted in pots along the terrace were almost in flower. The magnolia trees were that lovely he wished they would flower all year round. The sweet bay needed a good pruning and the grass already needed mowing. Aye, this was the busiest month of the year. Straw was needed to protect the magnolias, delicate roses and hardy plants growing up the walls, but the later in the season the tender plants could be kept in a dormant state the better, he explained to his acolyte. The gladioli must be planted along with the chrysanthemums, lupins and other annuals. The dahlias should be increased by cutting and the rhododendron beds should be dressed with cow dung brought from the farms, and with leaf mould. The sweeping and rolling of turf and gravel must be seen to and all this before they started on the kitchen garden. And everything was so far forward would they ever catch up? he asked gloomily. Froglet shook his head as though in despair.

  Together they had inspected the woodland where the children played on fine days, with Dora in charge, of course, and found the floor beneath the trees an azure carpet of massed bluebells. It fair took your breath away. Talk about early, but what a glorious picture they made beneath the branches and round the trunks of the budding oak trees. As they stepped through their delicate loveliness, careful of where they put their heavy boots, he remarked sadly to Froglet that he’d best get the master to give them some extra help or they’d be at sixes and sevens for the rest of the gardening year. Then he and Froglet would exchange glances, for the mistress was master of this estate and had been for the last five months or so and any orders to be given came from her. And hadn’t she enough to contend with without them plaguing her? Not only was she doing her best to run Mr Harry’s mills with the help of that gentleman she employed, which was not the same as Mr Harry, was it, she was getting heavy with the babby. And that there tragedy up at the mill hadn’t helped, neither.

  They all admired what she was trying to do. Them lads, along with Mrs Harper’s Jack and the strange little scrap Mrs Harper had rescued from the mill, were settled in to what was called the schoolroom next to the nursery. Never too young to start learning their letters, their governess had been heard to say. The whole top floor of the Priory was now made over to the children and their needs, and Mrs Harper and her Jack still had their own private room. With the governess the bairns called Philly, they scampered outside on every fine day across the lawn, down to the lake, across the park ending up, as always, over at the paddock where the horses sauntered over to greet them and take the apples Dora had in her basket. Mrs Harper’s lad, Jack, at eighteen months got into all sorts of mischief but then so did they all except the one they called Boy who clung to the hand of either Dora or Miss Philly. Mrs Sinclair’s little lass who would be in her perambulator, Caterina, called Cat by everyone, was doted on by Dora who had turned out to be a champion nursemaid, while Master Jamie and Master Alec, with the boy, learned their ABCs with Miss Philly and good luck to her they all said for those lads were . . . well, what you might call spirited without a pa to discipline them. Mrs Harper, when she first came to the Priory, had given them a good start, the servants heard, and now they were on their way to being clever lads like their pa.

  They had pause to reflect that Mr Sinclair was not really their pa though they called him Father and that Master Chris, God rest him, their real father, had not been endowed with a sharp brain but he’d been a lovely lad, ready for a laugh or a chat with any of them. No side to him at all. Perhaps his sons had inherited their brightness from their ma, for she had certainly picked up the rudiments of worsted manufacturing and was hanging on to her husband’s business by the skin of her teeth, helped by those chaps she had employed, not to mention Mrs Harper before her accident. Eeh, said Barty to Froglet as they bent over their task, what a to-do-ment life was. Froglet, not always sure what Barty meant, saying what he did right out of the blue, nodded amiably.

  The pair of them were in the kitchen garden sowing cabbage seeds of the quick-hearted sort which would be ready for harvesting in July when the door opened and their mistress stepped out. She raised her pretty face to the sun which shone in spring-like warmth from a cloudless blue sky and smiled with pleasure. Her dark hair gleamed with a touch of chestnut in its depths and her rounded cheeks were flushed and smooth as a child’s. A voice from the back of her admonished her not to go far and where was her bonnet, but she set off towards the gate that led to the paddock.

  ‘You off to feed them ’orses, Miss Lally?’ Barty called out to her.

  ‘I am, Barty. You know how they love their apples,’ indicating the basket on her arm. She had on a light woollen cloak under which could be seen the gleam of silk the colour of bluebells.

  ‘Well, don’t you go too fast, ma’m,’ Barty answered with the familiarity of an old and trusted retainer. He smiled a warning. ‘And don’t go too far neither, now think on.’

  ‘I won’t, Barty.’

  ‘’Ow’s the new lass gerrin’ on wi’ them bairns? Governess, is it?’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s got them sitting at their books at the schoolroom table then she and Dora will take them for their walk. Well, I must be off or it will be dark before I get to the paddock.’

  They watched her for a moment or two until she had crossed the yard and, opening the gate, disappeared in the direction of the paddock.

  The animals all plodded over to her, pushing and shoving against one another to get to the juicy apples she held out to them, slobbering greedily, then following her as she moved along the fence line. What a wonderful day it was. The sun was warm on her bare head and though she had a dozen things to do, going over papers that she had brought from the mill office, she felt a great need to remain for a precious moment in the peace of the outdoors. Perhaps a short walk towards the greening of the woods. It was quite safe now that the Weavers had vanished and it would be grand to empty her head of accounts, figures, profits, yardage for a blessed half-hour.

  Sighing with pleasure, she began to saunter along the narrow path that cut right through the wood, enjoying the freedom and the soft warmth of the sun. She was in an ancient oak wood, the enormous trunks of the trees standing in a glorious sea of bluebells. Since Barty and Froglet had inspected it the wild flowers had become even more thickly spread and Lally could not help but stop and gloat over the beauty of it all. She threw back the folds of her cloak to compare the colour of her gown with the bluebells, smiling, for they were the same shade. A shaft of dappled sunlight fell on her hair and touched the silk of her skirt but Lally saw no more as a rough bag made from sacking came down over her head and strong arms lifted her from her feet.

  The Weaver brothers had wintered quite comfortably in their concealed cave deep in the wood. Even the smoke from their fire, had it been seen, would have gone unremarked, since
Barty, Froglet and Mr Cameron, the steward, often burned old wood and fallen leaves as the forest was cleared. Not all the leaves, naturally, since as the trees shed them they were needed, as they rotted, to feed and enrich the ground and the plants that grew there.

  The brothers were clever with traps and fishing lines and never went hungry. The elder, the one with the more cunning, sometimes slipped to one of the many villages away from the area, where they were not known, to buy tobacco, bread, tea, stuff they could not glean from the woods that they roamed. They poached on Lord Billington’s estate and fished his trout stream, avoiding his gamekeepers, slipping like shadows through the dense undergrowth, and to make a few bob they sold what they caught to butchers and fishmongers in different villages. A haunch of venison, rabbits, grouse in season, trout or anything they could not eat themselves. They had lived on the Priory estate all their lives and were reluctant to leave what was familiar but one day they would be forced to, for this life they led and the need for concealment could not go unnoticed for ever. But the main reason they stayed, at least in Jed’s mind, must be completed first.

  Today it seemed it was. Lally was as still as an animal caught in an open glade by a predator. She was so paralysed with terror, not only for herself but for the child in her womb, she made no sound. When she was placed on her feet and the hood removed she backed away from the men as far as she could until her shoulder blades pressed against the wall at the back of the cave and vaguely wondered why, if they wanted to keep her in ignorance of who they were, they had removed the hood. She was not to know that Jed, despite the danger to himself and his brother, needed to see the fear in her eyes, the dread on her face and so threw all caution to the wind. Her face was like putty and her eyes, enormous in her face, were wide and unfocused. Tears poured from them and dripped from her chin to her cloak. The two men were dirty, unshaven, their beards reaching across their broad chests and their wild, uncombed hair fell below their shoulders, but she knew them at once.