‘Will it be like this all the time?’ asked Ruth, concerned that she might have to breathe in black smoke all day.
‘No, once they’ve stoked up you’ll be fine,’ said Susanna. ‘Anyway, the smoke will all get lost in that country air.’
‘Let’s get to the engine anyway,’ said Joshua.
They walked to the end of the platform as far as the engine.
‘Well, I thought it ’ud be bigger than that,’ said Joshua.
‘Well, it’s big enough,’ said Susanna. ‘This will take you at more than twenty miles an hour to Birmingham. That’s how you’ll be there in five and a half hours. Small it may be – fast it certainly is.’
An engine driver with a sooty face and broad grin leaned out of his cabin.
‘Coming with us, are you?’ he asked. ‘Well, you’d best get aboard or you’ll find every seat gone. Open or closed carriage?’
Marion looked at her ticket. ‘It says open,’ she said.
‘Well then, you’ll have a good blow.’ The driver withdrew inside his hatch.
Susanna and Marion walked a few yards in front of the children back down the platform.
‘Susanna,’ said Marion, ‘it’s been grand. You know so much. I never expected to meet anyone like you. In fact, I didn’t know people like you existed.’
‘Well, I have been writing to female Chartists in the north, but you’re the first I’ve really met. You must keep struggling, you know. Don’t let a good job with John Fielden put you off.’
‘Will you come and see us up there sometime?’
‘I’d love to – if Inge and Sons and the Female Chartists will ever let me get away. But I’ve never even heard you sing, Marion; and Ruth tells me that’s a treat in store. So I’ll come for that, I promise.’
‘We’d better get in ’ere,’ said Marion. ‘Come on, you two.’
She pointed to an open carriage with benches mounted on a wooden flat bed, with sideboards about a yard high.
‘It’ll not be so warm, but we ought to get there.’
Ruth and Joshua climbed onto the carriage and sat facing the column of smoke still billowing from the engine. Marion kissed Susanna on the cheek and looked at her through eyes full of tears:
‘We’ll ’ave you as Chartist leader one day, Susanna, think on.’
‘I don’t think Mr O’Connor’s quite ready to go yet,’ said Susanna. ‘But I know we’ll get there one day.’
By this time, the noise on the platform was intense as the engine blew its hooter and the carriages filled to bursting. Marion, like most other passengers, felt the train might leave without her if she did not get on board now. With a final wave to Susanna, she stepped onto the carriage, taking a seat between Ruth and Joshua and placing one of her arms round each of them. Susanna watched them as the train moved forward very gradually, and she waved goodbye as they pulled beyond the platform.
Ruth and Joshua waved back, but soon looked ahead to the space opening up before and around them. Within minutes they had recrossed the canal, which they had seen for the first time three days ago, and watched the buildings slip away as the train ran through the green fields surrounding Camden.
‘Well, it’s green all right, Joshua,’ said Ruth.
‘Green, but not green like a moor,’ said Joshua.
CHAPTER 10
BACK TO THE MOORS
It was Joshua who saw the green of the moors first.
‘Wake up Ruth; wake up, Marion,’ he cried as their canal barge, the Esmeralda, was pulled by its massive workhorse into the Warland Basin, where barges could tie up for a day or a night.
‘It’s the moors, our moors. We’re nearly ’ome.’
Ruth and Marion put their heads out from under the blankets which Mrs Oldcastle, the bargee’s wife, had given them when they left Manchester on the previous evening. It was November now, and it had become colder and colder as they had been drawn north of Birmingham on the Trent and Mersey Canal, eventually joining the Bridgewater for the link to Manchester. They had spent much of the five days of that journey huddled round the brazier which the bargee kept alight close to the tiller. Ruth and Joshua found that they could also keep warm by running along the canal bank ahead of the barge and waiting for it to catch up. Out of a desperate need to fight off the cold, Marion had finally joined them. Where there were locks to be opened and closed, the three of them had learned to do it by themselves. At night, Marion had kept the children and the bargee and his two children entranced as she sang every song she knew, and many twice over.
They had arrived in Manchester early one Saturday morning, coming into the Castlefield Basin, close to Deansgate, where massive warehouses towered above them on all sides, and a good hundred barges lay ready to take in or unload cargo. Some of them were offloading in tunnels under the warehouses where lifting gear carried the cargo up to five storeys above the water level. There were several public houses on the quays, which were doing good business even at this time of the morning. Groups of the bargees’ children were playing on the quayside.
The Castlefield Basin provided a junction between the Bridgewater and Rochdale Canals: from here nearly fifty barges a day set out for Rochdale, Todmorden and Hebden Bridge. The bargees were glad enough to carry extra passengers: they were paid by the tonnage moved, and passengers were extra unrecorded income. But there was no room below the deck; and when barges travelled by night, passengers had to sleep as best they could on the deck.
So Marion, Ruth and Joshua had been only too glad when Mrs Oldcastle, who had come down to the basin to see her husband leave, had liked them enough to lend them three blankets for the overnight journey.
‘Them childer’ll be shot through wi’ cold in them jerkins, if that’s what you call ’em,’ she had said to Marion on the canal bank. ‘An’ I don’t think much o’ that shawl o’ yours. Just tell that lad to follow me and I’ll get tha’ summut that’ll warm thee.’
Joshua had followed her a few hundred yards down the towpath and had picked up the blankets that had kept the cold at bay as they travelled through open country into Rochdale and on to the Pennines. The barge’s load was booked for Todmorden and so they had only stopped once – after midnight – at Rochdale for the horse to be watered and fed. Ruth had stayed awake to make sure that the horse was as well fed as he deserved, and had then fallen into a deep and dreamy sleep. It was the companions of the journey that came back to her in her dreams that night: Davey and Jack, who had tried to steal their cheese but had turned into friends; Enoch and Shep, who had guided them over Kinder Scout and then tried to slip away unnoticed in Matlock; Ellie and Mick in Nottingham, who had kept them out of danger; Joe and Danny, who they had left in a London prison; and Susanna, who had shown her a new way of thinking.
‘Joshua! I were dreaming, lad,’ she cried. ‘Did you ’ave to wake us?’ But then she looked about more carefully. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We’re ’ome. Marion, we’re ’ome. I don’t believe it. We’ll see mam today.’
Marion too raised the corner of her blanket and looked out to see the dry stone walls running up the fields that rose steeply from the canal bank. Looking to the horizon beyond the fields, she could just see the gnarled and worn shape of a rock about six feet high.
‘Aye, that’s grand, and, look, there’s the Basin Stone,’ said Marion. ‘I’ve been there many a time of a Sunday. Once I even sung there. We’ll go there together soon. ’Ere’s a lock. Joshua – tha’d best get out and give ’and to Mr Oldcastle.’
Joshua took the lock key from Mr Oldcastle, jumped onto the bank and ran ahead to open the lock gate. The level of the canal fell rapidly here, and there were eight more locks to be opened before they arrived at the one closest to the centre of Todmorden. Joshua, Ruth and Marion took turns to open the locks for the bargee. In the case of more than half the locks, there were barges travelling in the opposite direction, a
nd the Esmeralda was obliged to wait for them while moored to a capstan well clear of the lock gates. The children found it almost impossible to be patient as the barge crawled fitfully at a snail’s pace on their passage home. They pressed Marion to let them run ahead and abandon the Esmeralda, but she was in less of a hurry and wanted more time to think about Jim.
Jim had come to Susanna Inge’s house in London the night before Marion and the children left by train. He and Marion had walked out into Soho Square and he had told her that he had decided to go with Jess Midgeley and the rest of the Todmorden marchers to join the Chartists in Birmingham.
‘But Jim, lad, ’aven’t you, we, all of us, done enough now?’ Marion had said. ‘What more can we do? Nowt’ll come out of going to Birmingham. Government’ll just forget about Charter. Tha’ can see it ’ere. London’s not Manchester. It’s different, but it’s where we’re ruled from. Besides, I’ll miss tha’, Jim.’
‘Will tha’, lass?’ he said, looking at her and pretending to be surprised. ‘Well then, I’ll not be long. Gi’ us a month more an’ I promise you tha’ll not miss us again.’
‘A month and no more,’ Marion said. ‘Or you’ll be sorry you ever ran off from Arkwright’s mill.’
‘No, I’d never regret that, even if it was only to ’ear you sing once.’
He had left her to join the other marchers, who were camping close to Copenhagen Fields, but not before they had kissed each other under the gas flares of the square. As Marion thought about him now, she wondered whether he would be back just as he had promised, or would the wanderlust which had taken him from Derbyshire, to Manchester and on to Todmorden, keep him away from her? Deep down she felt he would be back – but that she wouldn’t mention him to her mother when she saw her.
By the time the barge had pulled within sight of the Fielden Brothers’ five-storey mill at Waterside, Marion was able to put her thoughts of Jim on one side. She needed work and wondered if Mr Fielden had written to his brother James, as he had promised. She would go round to Fielden Brothers’ mill on the next morning and see if she could speak to Mr James. Now it was Sunday and she could enjoy her homecoming.
She looked at Mr Oldcastle as he walked beside the boat, holding the horse’s rein.
‘I don’t think I can ’old ’em back any longer,’ she said with a smile.
‘Oh, that’s reet enough, lass,’ said Oldcastle. ‘I can see it too. I’ll not charge thee more for leaving us ’ere, tha’ knows. It’ll be fair do’s and tha’ can leave right enough. I’ve opened a few lock gates in me time,’ he said with a twinkle.
After a few hundred yards, the canal ran on along the back of a series of mills with fields stretching steeply upwards to the moors on the other side. After a mile there was a lock with a pathway to the cottages at Oldroyd where Ruth and Joshua lived.
‘Race you ’ome?’ said Joshua to Ruth.
‘What about it, Marion?’ said Ruth.
‘Not for me, lass,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’ll be dropping out before you, close t’Corn Mill. You go on. I’ll see tha’ soon enough.’
‘Right then,’ said Ruth. ‘This is t’biggest ’ug tha’s ever ’ad. I’d die for you, Marion. I really would.’
‘An’ what about thee, Joshua?’ said Marion, laughing. ‘Would t’a go that far?’
Joshua looked uncertain. ‘Come ’ere, lad,’ said Marion. ‘If tha’ll not gi’us ’an ’ug, I’ll do it missel.’ Freeing herself from the arms which Ruth clasped round her neck, she leaned forward and drew Joshua to her, holding him for a good minute. All they could hear were the church bells of St Mary’s.
‘You’ve done grand, both o’ you,’ she said. ‘I’ll be proud o’ you till I die. Tha’ can race ’ome now. I’ll find thee next week.’
The two children broke free and ran as fast as their legs would carry them, along the canal, past the mills, barely seeing barges, knocking into horses, annoying men loading bales even on a Sunday. It took them just over five minutes to reach the footbridge and look up across the field as it rose towards their line of cottages with the moor beyond.
‘Stop, Joshua, stop. I’ve ’ad enough,’ said Ruth.
‘Aye, let’s walk from ’ere,’ said Joshua. ‘An’ let’s just look.’
They walked now up the path to Oldroyd, suddenly noticing beauty where they had seen none before: in the cows grazing on either side, in the old well with a crack running through the stonework, in the oak tree under which the cows stood in summer, and in the three damson trees at the top of the field whose harvest would now be over. And coming down towards them now were three women with dark shawls pulled round their shoulders against the cold of the morning, each wearing a black dress, with clogs on their feet and a book in their hand.
Suddenly the woman in the middle started to walk faster so that she could see the children climbing up the path more clearly.
‘What is it, Ellen?’ said her neighbour.
‘Why, it’s them two, an’ without their dad. ’Ow dare ’e let ’em come back like that, trailing by themselves to ’ouse?’
‘Mam, Mam,’ cried Ruth, now seeing her mother clearly. ‘We’re back, back ’ome.’
‘Aye, ’ere we are, Mam,’ said Joshua. ‘Just as we said.’
‘I can see that, an’ where’s tha’ dad?’
‘’E’ll be back, Mam, ’e’ll be back,’ said Ruth. ‘Don’t you see we did it? We delivered t’Charter.’
‘You might ’ave delivered it, but when will your dad deliver ’isself back ’ere, that’s what I’d like to know.’
‘It’ll be nobbut a month, Mam. Nobbut a month. They’ll all be back: dad, Jim Knotts, Jethro, Eric, Judd. Marion’s back already, came wi’us, tha’ll see ’er tomorrow like as not.’
‘But not Ralph,’ said Joshua. ‘Ralph Murphy’s not back. He was a kind of… who was that bloke… Judas.’
Emily Suttcliffe, Ellen’s neighbour, was an observant woman: she could see how much the children had been through, and she knew that talk of a Judas always meant there had been a struggle.
Reaching Home
‘Ellen, tha’ll want to tak ’em in,’ she said. ‘We’ll go on to t’chapel. Welcome back, you two. We’ll give thanks to God for your safe return this morning.’
Emily turned away from the children and Ellen, knowing that Ellen would never show her real feelings, even to her closest friends. Her companion, Jenny Ashworth, followed her down the hill, saying simply:
‘Praise God, and never leave your mother again.’
Ellen took both children by the hand and walked with them up to the gate. She dropped their hands as they each passed in single file through the style. Turning left to the cottages, she drew a key from the pocket of her black dress and opened the door. It was getting brighter and daylight flooded in through the front window, framing Cross Stone Church on the far side of the valley. She shut the door and drew the children to her for the first time, and wept for them and for Jess and for herself.
‘I prayed for you,’ she said, ‘but I never dreamed you’d be back.’
***
It was mid-January and Christmas was over, but the sound of singing from the tap room of the White Hart public house was unmistakable.
‘I think I recognise that voice,’ said Jess Midgeley, as he walked towards the open front door of the White Hart, with Ellen, Ruth and Joshua close by him.
‘You think!’ said Ruth. ‘You know that’s Marion. I could make ’er out a mile away.’
‘Well, folk don’t usually sing at their own wedding,’ said Jess.
‘I should ’ope not. I certainly didn’t, but then it wouldn’t ’ave been the same,’ said Ellen, with a rare flash of humour.
They crossed the threshold of the inn to find a room which was brightly lit with powerful oil lamps, with a strong smell of tobacco and beer and a good forty men and women crow
ded round the bar. Marion was standing behind a chair on the right-hand side of the room, leading the singing of ‘Britannia’s Sons, Though Slaves Ye Be’. Jim Knotts was to her left with his arm round her shoulder.
As Joshua peered through the smoke, he could make out the figure of Jethro beating time to the music with his crutch. Rushing over to him, he cried out:
‘Jethro, Jethro, you’re back.’
‘Aye, I am that, lad. Back from t’wars again. An’ you can see a few other of your old comrades ’ere too. There’s Eric and Judd.’
‘So we all got back bar one,’ said Joshua.
‘Aye, bar one, that’s right enough,’ said Jethro. ‘An’ mark my words, when tha’s got nine men in a corner, it’s often enough there’s one of ’em’s a traitor.’
‘Well, Jethro, you weren’t nine men in a corner,’ said Ruth. ‘You were seven men and two women.’
‘Right enough, lass, right enough,’ said Jethro, puzzling over the truth of this.
Judd and Eric came over to join them.
‘Well, well, you two; ready for the road again?’ asked Judd.
‘No, thanks, we’re just trying to find work ’ere, Judd,’ said Joshua. ‘Stansfield wouldn’t tak us back, and we’ve found nowt else yet.’
‘Oh, not so lucky as Marion then,’ said Eric. ‘She’s been takken on at Fieldens’. Five bob a week n’all. She’ll be able to keep Jim in style,’ he said, winking at Judd.
Suddenly Ruth and Joshua heard their names being called by Marion.
‘Ruth, Joshua, I want you two over ’ere,’ she said. ‘I don’t get married every day, and I want you with me.’
The children walked over to where Marion and Jim were standing, as Jim moved up another chair. They took their place in front of them as Marion led with the chorus that had filled the air at Ancoats as their column had marched into Manchester:
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