by Gracie Hart
‘Excuse me, I don’t need to hear this.’ Grace left the table, fighting back the tears though she looked in sympathy at her mother before leaving the room.
Edmund grunted. ‘And I suppose you are not to be found in your mistress’s bed over at the other side of town? Aye, I know about you and all. There’s nowt I don’t know about this family, so don’t look at me with such disdain.’
Edmund sat back in his chair and watched George leave his dinner uneaten, going to join his sister in the parlour.
William bent down and kissed his mother on her cheek. ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I’m not staying here to be insulted and I’m sorry if I have upset you. You deserve better than my father and myself, we all must be a huge disappointment to you.’ William glared at his father and walked out of the room, slamming the front door of Highfield House behind him.
Catherine tried to control her tears. ‘Well, another family meal spoilt by you, Edmund Ellershaw. My father was right, I never should have married you. You came from the gutter and you’ll end up back there, the way you behave. But you won’t take me and mine with you, we are better than that.’
‘Just be quiet, woman, you know nowt,’ Edmund growled. ‘It was time they heard the truth. They sit around this table like thieving crows, picking me clean of any money they can get out of me, and showing no respect. They and those they associate with can go to hell, as far as I’m concerned, especially that Eliza Wild and the brat she has raised as her own. Bloodsuckers, that’s all they are. They will bleed Grace and George dry if they have their way. As for our William, he always has thought himself better than the rest of us. Well, I don’t want to see his face again in this house, he’s not welcome. Now, you hear what I say, you wash your hands of him.’ Edmund pushed his empty plate back. ‘I’ve had enough of today, I’m away to my bed. I’ll sleep in the spare room tonight because no doubt you’ll not be showing me any affection tonight.’
Edmund got up from the table and belched loudly, leaving Catherine looking at the dinner table in disarray. What had she done to deserve such a family? She’d always been brought up to respect her elders, and there had been William, spouting forth about his father’s sins at the dinner table. If she could, she’d leave, but she had nowhere to go to. Edmund had spent all her money and Grace and George needed her. At least Grace had done something with her life and she could be proud of her. Catherine hung her head only to raise it when the butler came to clear the table. ‘Thank you, Jenkins, I’m afraid none of us were very hungry.’ The butler, full of tact, just smiled. At least someone has manners, she thought as she left the table to face the night on her own.
‘Father, Father, wake up. Can you not hear there’s trouble at the pit? I can hear the hooter being sounded, it carries on the wind.’ Grace shook her father awake and then turned to pull the heavy drapes back and open the window for him to hear the commotion outside.
‘Tell Banks to saddle my horse. I’ll have to get there quickly. That bloody Tom Thackeray will not know what to do.’
Grace left the room to do his bidding, and Edmund held his head in his hands. He knew exactly what was wrong. He’d been told in no uncertain terms yesterday that the props were not strong enough but he’d chosen to ignore Tom’s warnings. Bloody hell, this is all I need, he thought as he went downstairs, still buttoning up as he made his way past his wife who was flapping around him, and strode out into the late spring morning. He caught his breath once he was up and saddled in his horse. His heart beat fast and the blood surged through his veins as he urged his horse forward to the Rose Pit.
Tom Thackeray watched as the men from below in the smoke-filled mine were hoisted up in the metal cage that served as an intermediary between the dark world of the pit face and the world on top. Tom was thankful that the wheel and cage were still working; at least he could get the men out.
He had arrived just as the night shift came up from their long night of picking the black gold from the coalface, blinking in the sharp spring light as they left the cage that brought them back to the real world. Then the day’s workforce, shaking their work colleagues’ hands as they went down, had returned to the dark underworld they knew so well.
It was a few minutes after that they had heard, from far down in the bowels of the earth, a terrible rumble. Dust and smoke rose up through the mineshaft, which told everybody of the disaster that had unfolded below the earth. The fight was now on to save lives and tend to the injured as the cage lifted the miners to safety. Sweat ran off the cage operators’ faces and worry and despair soon filled the pit yard as they waited for the news from below. The wives of the miners huddled together at the pit gates, shawls wrapped around them, waiting for news of their menfolk and hoping to see the faces of their loved ones appear from out of the cage.
Tom swore under his breath. This should not have happened, it was Ellershaw’s doing. He should have closed the pit yesterday when he had told him the props were weak. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t put profit before lives. Tom rolled up his sleeves and took hold of Bill Parker as he clambered out of the cage filled with wounded men.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks. None of the day shift had got to the coalface when the ceiling down there gave way. I don’t think we’ve lost anybody,’ Bill Parker shouted across the din of the moaning men and the noise of the cage being lowered back down to the men still trapped at the bottom of the shaft. ‘But if you’d done something earlier, there needn’t have been any of this.’ Bill gestured at the men being helped with broken arms and legs and those in shock, thankful that they were above ground and breathing fresh air. ‘Both you and Ellershaw are bloody useless. You think nowt of us, we are dispensable, there’s always some poor bugger willing to take our place if we die or get maimed. Look at the bastard, he’s only just getting his arse here. It’s his doing, him and his bloody cheap wood, he should be hung, drawn and quartered.’ Edmund Ellershaw was pushing his horse through the crowds of women at the pit gate. Bill Parker turned away abruptly to help a miner with a broken leg away from the hordes around the pit head.
‘Thackeray, what the hell’s going on here?’ Edmund Ellershaw strode over to Tom and surveyed the mayhem that came with a pitfall.
‘The props have given way on level two. The men had not quite reached the pit head, so Bill Parker has said he doesn’t think we have any fatalities, just a lot of injuries.’
‘This is all I bloody needed. It’ll put us back weeks, and it’ll bankrupt me.’ Edmund swore.
‘Perhaps if the props, like I said yesterday, had been replaced, we would not have been facing this disaster. Some of your best men are coming out injured, but if Bill is right at least no one will have a funeral this day. That is something to be thankful for.’
‘Perhaps if you were a better manager and did a better job it wouldn’t have happened either. You had every chance to inspect those woods before they were put in, so we are as much to blame as one another. So don’t be so condescending, Thackeray. These injured men are just as much your doing as mine, and don’t you forget that when you’re trying to earn your next crust. Because as of now, you are not working for me. Get your stuff and bugger off. Don’t show your face to me again and don’t expect this week’s wages because there won’t be any for the likes of you.’
Edmund Ellershaw knew that Tom would not stand by him if there was to be an inquest into the pit disaster. It was better that he should get rid of the would-be troublemaker before he was to speak the truth.
‘I couldn’t stay another minute longer anyway. You’d kill all of your men for sake of a few guineas. It’s like working for Old Nick himself. Keep your pit and your money, my day will come shortly.’
Tom Thackeray stalked away from Edmund Ellershaw. Bankruptcy was too good for him. No, a man like Ellershaw would be better off dead and buried. One day he would have his own pit, and he would be a better employer than Edmund Ellershaw could ever be. He picked up his belongings and pushed his way through the wailing wives. Hi
s days at the Rose were over for now, but he knew that wasn’t the last time he’d stand in the pit’s yard. The only difference was that the next time he stood there he planned to own it.
Chapter 16
William sat at his desk on the third floor of Aire Valley woollen mill and thought about his father’s lecture to his family. He was nothing but a bloody hypocrite. How many whores had he slept with in his life and how many people had he used to get what he wanted? The old bastard.
He was in no mood for work. He leaned back in his chair. On the wall across from him hung a picture of his mother’s father, his grandfather, who had once owned the mill, his severe image the very picture of sobriety. Yet another hypocrite, William thought to himself. Everyone knew how he had taken advantage of many his workers. But at least he had kept a secret, and not flaunted his sexual appetite, unlike his father whose reputation was no better than that of a pig in a gutter. Damn the man. How could someone with his foul manners, language and lascivious behaviour have the gall to tell him what to do?
William rose from his seat and opened his office door that led out to a balcony and stairs that overlooked the carding room. The machines below him cleaned and combed the rough woollen fleeces, the noise from them making it nearly impossible to speak to your fellow worker, and the air was filled with the smell of lanolin and grease that was being extracted from the fleeces. He watched the mill workers go about their jobs. He reached for his pocket watch. Another thirty minutes and then the mill hooter would blow to release the workers from their daily toil, and the machines would fall silent until they arrived at work at six the next morning. Unlike him, most of his employees would going back to homes where they were loved and welcomed. All he returned to was a big house, beautiful but heartless, with a wife more lunatic than sane. He had nowhere to go to seek love and affection, apart from if he paid for it with Ruby Bell, as his father had so sordidly pointed out.
A flash of auburn hair caught his eye as one of his workers adjusted her mop cap, quickly putting it back on again in fear of entrapping her long hair in the machinery. The flash of auburn reminded him of what Priscilla had told him: Mary-Anne Wild was back. And now she had money and a new name, perhaps he should visit her, she had always taken his eye. She had been more beautiful than any of the women of distinction in the area. How stupid he had been, abusing his position, thinking that she would give herself to him. Just because he had thought she should have been impressed at him even looking at her. Besides, it was a good job that he was rejected by her as she must have been carrying the child that her sister had been left rearing. He could have been named as the father if he she had succumbed to his advances. Now that would have given his father something to growl about, with his unjust hatred of the Wild family.
In fact, William mused, nothing would hurt his father more than if he re-kindled a relationship with Mary-Anne Vasey. If that was not reason enough to knock on her door, nothing was. He’d pay her a visit and make himself known to her, despite her rebuke of him all those years ago. He smiled to himself. All he could wish for now was for George to come clean about his own inclinations, and then his father would well and truly upset. But George would not be so stupid as to tell him the truth. He was such a strutting peacock and, if William was not mistaken, more interested in the male of the species than any fair lady. Although he was trying hard to hide it, as his father would more than certainly disinherit him without a second thought – not that his father would have much to leave anyone at this rate. William smiled. ‘Father, dear, you don’t know anything about your family,’ he whispered to himself as he closed his office door behind him.
Mary-Anne sat down, exhausted but satisfied. ‘Well, we’ve had a bit of a day,’ she told Ma Fletcher, but will sleep better tonight in a proper bed.’
She took a mouthful of her supper of bread and dripping and smiled at the old woman. She was such determined old bugger but behind the hard exterior beat a heart of gold.
‘Aye, I must thank you for that. I should have got someone to bring that bed from the spare room down before I went off my legs, it will be a lot better than sleeping on that day bed. And the curtain across the room means you don’t have to look at my backside as you set the fire.’ Ma Fletcher grinned and bit into her bread and dripping.
‘You know you could have been more private if you’d put your bed in the front parlour, because I don’t think we will ever use it.’ Mary-Anne looked across at the curtained off part of the large room that the both of them lived in for most of the day and then took a drink of her tea.
‘Nay, it would mean lighting the fire through there, money spent and work that we could do without. It’s a good job you’ve done so far, lass, my old home is beginning to shine again. I could never have done it without you.’ Ma Fletcher looked around her at her newly washed ornaments and the scrubbed clean floor. It was a partnership that was working well but they had yet to put their main plan into place.
‘I’m grateful for a roof over my head and some privacy. Eliza has made a new life for herself and Victoria and I’d only be in the way. Victoria, I fear, is a little disappointed in me. I’m not what she had hoped to find, I can tell by the disapproving look on her face. It is best that I leave her with my sister until she gets used to me. I must admit, I thought she would have called to visit us by now.’ Mary-Anne played with the piece of crust that she had left and stared into the fire.
‘She’ll be along soon. Give her time. Eliza will talk her around.’ Ma Fletcher noticed Mary-Anne’s hurt expression and felt sorry for her. ‘I’ll away to my bed now, it’ll be a real luxury. Some nights I thought I’d end up on the floor, balancing on that old sofa. But I couldn’t do anything else until you arrived.
‘Come on, take my hand and let’s get you to your bed.’ Mary-Anne walked over to Ma Fletcher and held her arm out for her to take.
‘It’s no fun getting old, lass, you’d be better off putting me out of my misery.’ Leaning on Mary-Anne, Ma Fletcher shuffled her way to sit on her bed. Mary-Anne peeled the many layers of clothes from her and helped her pull her nightdress on over her head.
‘You’ll be all right, I’m here now.’ Mary-Anne lifted her legs into bed and tucked the clean sheets and blankets up around her.
‘Aye, but for how long? You’ll soon have men running after you. If you can’t snare William Ellershaw, somebody will be soon sniffing at your door.’
‘Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet. I’m here and that’s all that matters. You enjoy a good night’s sleep and tomorrow we will take in our stride.’
The old woman closed her eyes, and Mary-Anne pulled the newly erected curtain behind her, leaving Ma Fletcher to sleep and hopefully forget her worries.
She sat next to the fire and took up a pair of scissors and needle and cotton to alter a dress she had found upstairs. She knew she could make it look stunning if she spent some time on altering and mending the delicate fabric. She soon became engrossed in her mending but was disturbed by a soft knock on the door of her home. The clock on the tall sandstone mantelpiece said it was ten o’clock. Who on earth would be calling on her at that time of night? She placed her sewing down on the arm of her chair and hoped that the knocking had not disturbed Ma Fletcher. She opened the door a crack.
‘Hello, Mary-Anne. So I’ve finally tracked you down.’ John Vasey’s familiar voice filled her with fear. He stepped forward and wedged his foot.
‘John! What are you doing here? How did you get here? I thought you were still in jail!’ Mary-Anne exclaimed.
‘I bet you did. You couldn’t get away from me fast enough could you, my lovely wee bonny girl. I’ve pawned everything we owned to find you, that’s how much I love you, woman.’ John pushed the door open and slammed it closed behind him as he pushed Mary-Anne into the room.
‘I’d had enough. I was sick and tired of listening to you fighting everybody else’s corner but ours, and the drink was getting the better of you. I’m not a woman that will
keep taking a beating. I saw my mother take too many so I left you when I saw my chance. I can’t live like that any more, John. I need stability in my life and I owe more to my daughter than what I’ve been giving her.’
‘I’m sorry the drink has got the better of me. But you broke my heart when you left. And it is for the likes of you and us that I make a stand for the downtrodden of the world; someone needs a voice that everyone can hear. I love you, Mary-Anne, I’ll always love you. Come back with me to where you belong. Victoria can join us, we’ll manage somehow. We can go anywhere, even back to New York, although your boss sent the police around when he realised what you had done.’ John took Mary-Anne by her arms and looked into her tear-filled eyes. ‘For sure, I can’t live without you. If you won’t come with me, then I’ll have nothing in the world. I love you, woman, do I have to spell it out?’
‘I’m sorry, John, I didn’t mean to hurt you. But you’ve hurt me once too often. I’ve had enough of my life in America, it’s no better than the one I left here, and at least here I’m near to my daughter and you know how much she means to me.’ Mary-Anne looked away, not wanting to see the hurt in John’s eyes. He was sober now but after a drink or two his tune would be different.
‘And me, do you not love me any more? I thought we lived for one another. I risked everything for you. You’ve stolen money from your employers and I was thrown out of our apartment. To be sure, you’ve left me with nothing, Mary-Anne, except the hope that you’ll give me a chance to mend my ways.’
‘Then all hope is dead, John. I don’t love you any more and I won’t be returning back to New York with you.’ Mary-Anne stood her ground. ‘I’ve had enough. I’m back where I belong, with my family, and I have a good home here. I hope to gain a secure future for both Victoria and myself without you.’ Mary-Anne breathed in deeply. She had loved John once and hadn’t wanted to hurt him further. Why had he followed her and how had he found out where she was living? She trusted Eliza not to tell him about her new home with Ma Fletcher.