A Time Like No Other

by Audrey Howard

  Harry had been told, of course, of the disaster at the mill and had had to be forcibly restrained from climbing on to Piper’s back and galloping over there to see the scale of the calamity. He had been somewhat appeased by the man who came at once to the Priory when he was summoned by Lally. He was inclined to distrust Adam Elliott, since he didn’t know him or his qualifications, but the man’s quiet, dignified manner, his very obvious experience, his devotion to Lally and Susan, which showed in his determination to keep it all going despite neither lady being there, and his confidence in himself went a long way to calming Harry’s fears. After all, the man whom Lally and Susan trusted so implicity had been helping to keep the business going for some five months while he, Harry, had been . . . well, he was not sure how to describe his own condition: not in his right mind, he supposed and it was all still ticking over nicely, with, apparently, another chap selling their goods abroad, for heaven’s sake. He had been appalled not only by the loss of his mill but by the loss of life, but John Burton was a shrewd man who told no one what was in his mind although Biddy had her suspicions and thoroughly approved of them. He was well aware that these two needed the healing peace, not only of one another, but from the hurly-burly of commerce which the mills would throw at them and neither was ready for that yet, he was positive. So, drawing Harry aside, he told him that his wife needed at least a week of rest before she could even think of visiting the mills with him and that the only way to keep her at home was if Harry stayed there too. Though she was very calm, serene even, the experience with the Weaver brothers must have affected her and she needed time to recover.

  Privately, he did the same with Lally, not alluding to the brothers, of course, swearing that Harry could not be thrown in at the deep end, so to speak, despite having Adam Elliott to help. So, both believing that they were doing the best for the other, they had taken a week to recover, to regain their strength, to be at peace with one another and with the children who, seeing their mother and father walking down the lawn, shouted that they must go too.

  ‘Let them come,’ Harry told Dora and Philly, taking the little girl, his brother’s child, throwing her into the air and catching her, when he kissed her thoroughly, kissing Pinky as well when the soft toy was held up to him, pleasing the little girl enormously. She was not sure she cared for this stranger tossing her about but he made her laugh, and kissed her beloved Pinky and when he put her down on the grass and held out his hands to her she staggered from her mother to him, falling into his arms. He lifted her on to his shoulders where she clung to his hair as they all trooped down to the lake to feed the ducks. Lally held Boy’s hand, for he was still withdrawn and easily frightened but the others, meaning her two sons and Jack, had become used to him by now and sped away to the fascination of the lake, bags of crusts begged from Biddy clutched in their hands. They had fun with this big man Jamie and Alec vaguely remembered and, as children do, became accustomed to his presence with their mama.

  The men who had gone out to find the Weaver brothers, and there were a dozen of them, all ready to kill them with their bare hands, or at least the one their mistress had said was still alive, fell silent when they entered the cave, for the sight that met their eyes was pitiful. The brothers were there as their mistress had told them they would be. Ham leaned against the wall at the back of the cave which was filled with spring sunshine. He held the limp form of his dead brother lovingly in his arms, cradling him to his chest. The place stank and the men hung back, for it was obvious that the pathetic man who had clearly lost his mind, posed a threat to no one. He fought like a savage when they tried to take his brother from him, felling Carly and Denny McGinley with one sweep of his muscular arm and it was not until Bert Jackson and Ben from the stables clung to his arms and forced him to his knees that they managed to lift the body of Jed Weaver on to a stretcher.

  ‘Don’t let the master go with you,’ Biddy had whispered to Carly. ‘Wait till he’s down the front garden with Miss Lally. You never know what he might do, how it might affect him.’ And so Jed Weaver, with a blanket thrown over him, and his brother Ham, like a child now with his hands tied securely at his back, were taken to the police station in Halifax.

  Of Roly Sinclair there was no sign and Harry did not ask about him!

  It was a strange sight when the carriage drew up to the gates of what had once been High Clough and the men who were clearing the yard and removing the rubbish of the devastated mill asked one another what the hell was going on. They had heard, of course, that the master had recovered from his strange illness but when he and the mistress descended from the vehicle, the mistress helped not only by him but by the coachman they all fell silent and still. They were labourers who were employed by Albert Watson who was at this moment drawing up plans for a new mill at Penfold Meadow. Lally had sat in Susan’s room, Susan lying on a chaise-longue brought up for her from the drawing room, Lally in a deep and comfortable chair, so deep and comfortable she had serious doubts she would ever be able to heave herself out of it. They had discussed the possibility of building two mills, one on the site of High Clough once it was cleared and one at Penfold Meadow and now that Harry was recovered she meant to put it to him.

  He stood at the spot where the steps had once led up to the office, looking up to the empty blue sky that stretched serenely over what had been the building. The men watched them curiously, the man and the woman who were leaning against one another, the fascinated men not sure who was supporting who though the missus was big with child. It was April and it was rumoured the child was due in July. Three months to go but many of them who were fathers several times over and were familiar with the shape of a woman ‘up the spout’, as they called it in their class, shook their heads in disbelief. They were not even sure who had told them that Mrs Sinclair’s bairn was due in July, probably their foreman who had the ear of Albert Watson who employed them.

  ‘Was the office building destroyed with the sheds, my love?’ Harry asked musingly.

  ‘No, but Mr Watson thought that while he was building a new mill, a large mill, the office might as well be incorporated in the same building so, after consulting with Adam and myself, the office building was pulled down with the rest. Adam suggested a new wool carding mill which would house the process of carding and slubbing under one roof. Condensers would draw off the wool in continuous rolls and would then wind them straight on to large bobbins ready to be taken over to West Heath for spinning.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it, my darling,’ he said smilingly. ‘You will have to take me in hand to catch up.’

  She put her hand to her mouth in dismay. ‘Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I have become so used to . . . to doing things, making decisions with Susan and Adam I quite forgot. Dearest, you must, of course, order everything as you would wish it. This is all yours and has been for . . . for . . .’

  ‘Sixteen years. Ever since the death of my father but how can I deny that you have kept it all in order, made decisions that were the right ones and coped admirably with . . . Dear sweet Christ . . .’ He dragged her into his arms under the awed gaze of the men, kissing her with such tenderness they all, without exception, looked away. They were rough working men, labourers, most of them accustomed to taking their wives, or any female who was handy to them, every Saturday night and would not dream of showing affection, especially in public, but these two, the master and his missus, seemed oblivious to them all.

  ‘After what you have been through it is only a marvel that you are not in the local lunatic asylum.’

  ‘I nearly was a couple of times, Harry. Only Susan, and Biddy, of course, kept me sane.’

  ‘Those two bloody men . . .’ His face became strained and his eyes bleak but she pulled away from him and took his hands in hers.

  ‘Harry, darling, it’s all over. You are back with us, with me and the children and soon you will be returned to your desk at . . . well, wherever you feel is the best place to run things but first I want to s
how you something.’

  ‘Show me something?’

  ‘Yes.’ She took his hand and under the silent gaze of the men in the yard who were doing their best to make a halfhearted attempt to resume work, for even the foreman had stopped to gape at the man and woman, led him to the carriage where Carly was waiting. They both lifted her tenderly into the carriage, Harry fussing with rugs and cushions until she told him briskly to climb in and, as Susan would say, ‘give over’. She felt that she should be the one fussing over Harry for she was having a baby which was a natural thing to do while he had been desperately ill for five months.

  John had seen him only yesterday. ‘Have you a headache, Harry?’ he had asked casually, noting the way Harry kept his face turned from the window. At once Lally threw a worried look at her husband, for surely John was not telling them there could be further cause for anxiety?

  ‘Yes, I have as a matter of fact. They came on me suddenly, just this last week, but what’s that got to do with my returning to work as you know I am eager to do?’ Harry began to look irritable, for he was not a man to sit about while there was work to be seen to, a lot of work, a lot of catching up. He was at home for one reason only and she sat beside him. Had it not been for the doctor and what he had said to Harry about Lally, he would have yelled for his horse and gone thundering up to his destroyed mill and started the process of putting it together again the moment he was in his right senses.

  Dear God, his head began to throb so badly he had put his hand to his forehead but suddenly she was behind him, one hand soothing his brow, her cheek resting on top of his head, one arm about his shoulders and, wonder of wonders, the child in her belly, his child, kicked against his shoulder blades with such vigour it was as though it were speaking to him, reassuring him, telling him it would soon be with him and not to despair.

  ‘Dearest Harry,’ Lally murmured into the tumble of his dark hair, ‘I’m sure John would tell us if there was something . . . something wrong. John?’ She turned to John, her gaze steady as though to say whatever it might be she was strong enough, they were both strong enough to go on.

  ‘There is nothing, Lally. It is only to be expected after the blow to his head that he would have some after-effects. He must be careful not to overdo things. Oh, I know you well enough, Harry, and the minute—’

  ‘No, I will not let him do anything that might . . . might take him away from me again. I am here, Harry, we are all here to tell you how much we love you and need you. We, Susan, Adam and Brice have held it together for you, awaiting your return ready for you to pick up again. We love you, Harry. I love you, your children upstairs love you and here’ – turning him towards her and putting his hand on her swollen belly – ‘is your son or daughter waiting to be born and love you too. We thought we had lost you but you’re back again . . . oh, thank God, thank God.’

  Inside them both something had lurched rapturously as, for the first time Harry and Lally looked into each other’s eyes with equal love. Neither of them could say with any certainty when it had begun. Harry first, of course, but she had been another man’s wife and he had pushed the ridiculous notion to the back of his busy mind. When Chris was killed he had begun to hope that perhaps this time, when the mourning period was over, he would approach her. But he had waited too long and she had turned to his brother, becoming pregnant with Roly’s child. But it was not from Roly that she had sought refuge in her despair but Harry Sinclair. She had agreed to become his wife. She had not loved him but they had made a pleasant enough life for themselves and the children. But even Lally could not tell him with any accuracy when it was that the fondness she had always felt for the rather forbidding Harry Sinclair had stealthily crept, like sunshine breaking through the early morning mist, into love. The love a woman has for one special man. Not pity when he was hurt, nor compassion as she had first thought it to be when he lay wounded in his bed, but a possessive, passionate love, a tender love, a closeness she had never known before, an understanding of who he really was, what he really was and what he meant to her.

  It was all there, the strength of that love, for anyone to see, a love that silenced them both, that filled them with wonder, that glowed and flamed with passion, a passion that took their breath away in its sudden spontaneity.

  Cupping his face in her hands she had placed her mouth carefully on his and breathed his name and said something so quietly only he heard her.

  ‘Harry, my love for you is endless.’

  And so here they were, sitting close together in the carriage on their way to what she told him was to be a surprise. It was spring and the hawthorn hedges exploded with blossom, the meadows beyond the hedges were vivid with the brightness of new grass and the yellow of cowslips. There were marsh marigolds and lady’s-smock hanging over the small trickles of water that ran in the ditch beside the lane. They both lifted their heads to listen to the sound of a cuckoo, their hands clasped in shared delight just as though they had never heard nor seen such things before.

  It was not far from High Clough, in fact the land was slightly nearer to Halifax than to Moorend, a perfect square bordered on four sides by country lanes, with good, unpolluted water from a river close by. There was a railway station within half a mile at Craven Edge which ran directly in to Halifax where it connected with lines to Keighley, Manchester, Bradford, Rochdale, and in the east joined up with lines to Sheffield and on to ports on the coast. Not only would their goods be transported at a far greater speed than they were at present but the raw fleeces and the coal from the Lancashire collieries would be more readily available. Lally was excited about her project, not for a moment suspecting that her husband had already had ideas along the same lines as herself before his illness. She would have been amazed if she had known; that what she thought of as a brilliant and new idea had been in Harry’s head long before she had heard of Titus Salt, including the new opportunities held out by the growth of the railway. He did not tell her so since he knew she was enchanted with what she thought of as hers!

  Penfold Meadow. The foundations for the mill had been laid months ago until Roly put a stop to it, the massive mill which, like Titus Salt’s mill at the village he had named Saltaire, would employ 3,000 workers, ready, as his was, to produce eighteen miles of worsted cloth each day. They would have a celebration, as Salt had done, in the mill’s combing shed, on the day the mill opened, a celebration for the 3,000 people they would employ. No children under the age of twelve and they to work for only four hours a day. There would be a community of housing, the architect telling her that if adjoining fields were purchased there was room for at least 700 houses, well-built houses in which those who were stuffed together in St Margaret’s Passage and similar alleyways would live decently.

  Helped by Carly and Harry, she alighted from the carriage. She wanted to tell them both that she was perfectly able to get down by herself; this constant cherishing of her was not needed. She was a healthy young woman who had already given birth to three children but they seemed to feel that she could barely move from one place to another without someone constantly at her elbow.

  Opening the gate that led into the enormous meadow; they both ushered her through. She gritted her teeth and let them, then asked Carly sweetly to wait by the carriage, for he seemed intent on carrying her, along with her husband, across the scrubby grass in the direction of a hut that stood to one side, a hut that sported a hefty lock and, without waiting for help from either her husband or Carly who still stood by the gate, she moved towards it, the hem of her full skirt trailing in the dust.

  ‘Lally . . . Madam . . .’ the men said at the same time, their faces showing their masculine disapproval. Lally was fumbling in her reticule from which she produced a key and without waiting for either of them she unlocked the door of the hut and flung it open, slipping inside. There was a table littered with dusty drawings and plans at which Harry, standing behind her, stared in bewilderment. It was evident from his expression that he had no idea that things h
ad progressed so far.

  ‘Besides the site of the new mill, this is what I wanted to show you,’ Lally declared. ‘I want to pull down all the terrible hovels in which our people now live, operatives from the three mills, two now that High Clough has gone. The houses will have two or three bedrooms. Do you know, according to that doctor I was telling you about, that in Union Street there are twelve persons occupying three beds consisting of two stumps and a shakedown. The family consists of six boys aged eighteen, sixteen, thirteen, eleven, eight and five, three girls aged fifteen, thirteen, nine and the youngest child of seventeen weeks. In a cellar he found a widow and her eight children, three girls aged twenty-four, sixteen and seven and five boys aged twenty-two, nineteen, sixteen, eleven and eight and in the street there was one privy for 221 persons. It cannot go on, Harry.’ Her voice was passionate. ‘It is said that the . . . the older boys interfere with . . . with their sisters. With three bedrooms, a dry cellar, decent sculleries, a privy to each house, not back to back but with a back passage wide enough to drive the night soil cart through, this could all be stopped. A bit of land to grow their own vegetables. It’s no more than five minutes’ walk to the mill if we buy this other land,’ with a sweeping gesture of her arm. ‘As you can see the foundations are laid out but . . . well, when Roly became aware of . . .’

  ‘He put a stop to it.’ His voice was like ice and for a moment, since it was the first time his brother’s name had been mentioned, she thought she had gone too far, then he smiled down at her and her heart rose in relief. ‘But what I want to know is where the money came from for this.’