It was not enough. Both Luke Thackray and his mother, Sairellen, had stood in the rain and heard Oastler say so. And they had cheered him as loudly as they had cheered in the Castle Yard at York, continuing the struggle, at his direction, against fresh forces of oppression, the New Poor Law which by then had started to creep north, having – without too much trouble – already filled the southern half of England with large new workhouses into which the poor were herded, graded, separated into groups labelled ‘sick’, ‘insane’, ‘male’, ‘female’, and locked away in their separate categories.
For ever, in most cases, following the New Poor Law policy of making conditions in the workhouses so horrible so shameful, that people would – it was hoped – become industrious, hard-working, give up strong drink, or starve to death, before making an application to enter.
But what the quieter agricultural populations of the south had accepted would not do for the harder, more turbulent masses of the industrial North. The North would not have it. Oastler and his Short Time Committees said it over and over, loud and clear, and the North agreed with them. Poverty was not a crime to be punished with imprisonment. Nor was it the result of laziness, inflamed sexual appetites or natural inferiority, as the Poor Law Commissioners seemed to think, but of social oppression. Luke Thackray had carried that message back to Frizingley, one sweltering August day, with Richard Oastler’s blessing. And so thoroughly did the North respond that when an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner arrived in Huddersfield to meet the local Board of Guardians, the Riot Act had had to be read to save his skin from the angry crowds. No Huddersfield inn would give him room and board. Effigies of the Poor Law Officers were burned in the market place. And when a meeting of the Workhouse Board was finally held the Oastlerites broke down the door and cancelled all the Board’s decisions.
The North would not, and did not, have it. But the North did not keep its Factory King for much longer either, Squire Thornhill intervening at this moment to claim back the money which Oastler had long since given away to the needy, the unfortunate, the Short Time Committees, the Anti-Poor Law Campaign. Causes which no longer found favour with the Squire who had come to feel that his steward, instead of saving the world, would have been better employed in looking after his estate.
Oastler went to prison. Chartism blazed out suddenly, fiercely, and then seemed to flicker although not to fade. The world outside the prison walls moved on, perhaps only an inch or two, while Oastler remained motionless inside. And even now, as he was escorted all the way home to Huddersfield by cheering crowds and stridently triumphant brass bands, there were some – Daniel Carey among them – who wondered how he would take up his work again within the wider movement of Chartism which catered by no means exclusively for factory reform.
With the ten hour working day still to fight for, still looming large in his mind, could he really make the adjustment? Or would he remain on the fringes of the new agitation to carry out his own reforms in his own fashion, the Factory King unwilling to accept that the quickest road to his ten hour day was through the Charter?
It was the subject of much discussion later that day between Daniel and Luke Thackray who, having spotted each other in the crowd, had quenched their thirst in the same ale-house, shared a meal of pork pies and pickled onions and then, as the early winter dark began to fall, made their way, in no great hurry, back to Frizingley.
There had been speeches, declarations, pledges of loyalty brother to brother, much back-slapping and laughter, a few tears. Daniel, never averse to airing his views, particularly after a jug or two of ale and a drop of malt whisky, had stood, most of the convivial evening, leaning against a bar-counter, speaking at length on the Rights of Man as they concerned his listeners, both enthusing and amusing them with his verbal blueprints for at least a dozen perfect societies. Luke, his pipe in his hand, had told, by request only, the tale of his pilgrimage to York and had given, to the older men, such details as he remembered of the massacre of Peterloo and his martyred father.
It had been a long day but even so, with a three hour walk over rough, uphill ground before them, they felt no need to pace themselves, leaving Huddersfield behind and striding out in the general direction of Frizingley with no apparent regard for either the dark or the cold. Neither one of them possessed an overcoat. They simply turned up their collars and went on their way, Luke taller, much more loosely put together, his legs in their Sunday-best moleskin trousers much longer, Daniel a more compact, far more flamboyant figure with his scarlet neck-cloth and his jacket of Chartist green, his hands in his pockets, whistling snatches of English marching songs and Irish ballads, still setting the world to rights, talking easily, rapidly, while Luke, drawing on his pipe, dropped no more than an occasional accurate word into the conversational pool, each one a well-aimed stone causing its share of ripples.
And having settled without the least animosity that Luke would probably support first Oastler and the localized issues of factory reform and then the Charter, Daniel the Charter alone, they talked on for the pleasure of talking, of morals and music and manners, poets and philosophers and preachers, a classically-educated and a self-educated man each with his own brand of knowledge, so intent on sharing and comparing that they were both equally startled by the figure which seemed to come upon them as if it had risen from the ground.
‘I reckon you’ll not be wanting me alongside you, Luke Thackray.’
Daniel saw a thin, crook-shouldered lad in his early twenties, he supposed, pasty-faced and sharp featured as a rodent with his red-rimmed eyes and furtive manner, his clothing by no means shabby, a very decent broadcloth coat, in fact, when one really looked at it through the impression of unwholesomeness he somehow created. Daniel knew, at once, that he did not like him. He saw too that the stranger did not like Luke Thackray and that Luke, although fully aware of it, seemed disinclined to make a fuss.
‘Why not, Oliver? If we’re going in the same direction. You’ll know the face of our Chartist candidate I reckon. Daniel – this is Oliver Rattrie, who used to be a neighbour of mine.’
‘Yes. I know Mr Daniel Carey all right.’
Unable to return the compliment Daniel said a brief ‘Good evening’, puzzled by the degree of emotion in the young man’s face.
‘You’ll have been to Huddersfield, Luke,’ he said, his thin mouth working strangely. ‘To see Oastler?’
‘You know I have, Oliver.’
Luke’s voice sounded perfectly steady, so natural and matter-of-fact that Daniel could find nothing in it to cause, in this strange young Oliver, such a jittering of what looked like temper and nerves. Yet – whatever it was – the boy was shaking with it, his emaciated body in disjointed turmoil beneath his incongruously smart new jacket.
Luke had evidently noticed the jacket too.
‘You’re looking well, Oliver.’
‘I can’t complain. I do the best I can, Luke.’
‘Aye. You’ll have been to see Oastler yourself, I expect.’
‘I have. A fine man. And a crowd of fine men around him.’
Luke drew on his pipe and then grinned suddenly, not unkindly. ‘Very fine, Oliver. Will you be able to remember all of their names tomorrow?’
At once Daniel understood, accepting Luke’s comment as a warning to himself to guard his tongue, to say nothing in the presence of an informer – and, God knew, there were plenty of them – that might harm himself or others. Filthy little brat. Daniel glared at him, conveying contempt and then experiencing a moment of shock as Oliver Rattrie’s sore, red-rimmed eyes darted at him a glance of pure and almost comically savage hate. What had he done to merit that? He had never seen the lad before in his life. Or, at least, had never noticed him. Was the boy half-witted as well as treacherous? Certainly he looked it, standing there with his bones rattling like a demented skeleton, his eyes spitting venom at a stranger. Unbalanced, certainly. An opinion confirmed by the manner in which, after keeping pace with them for a quarter of an hour, he s
uddenly broke away on a path of his own, muttering about ‘friends to meet’as he disappeared into the dark.
‘I wonder what friends he’ll find up there,’ said Luke calmly, his eyes on the high, stony track Oliver had taken.
‘Where does it lead?’
‘The main road if he climbs far enough. But if he takes to the road he’ll have to walk a good few miles farther than us to get to the same place. Maybe he’s scared to be on the moor alone. Aye – very likely. He could meet a lot of men tonight, coming back from Huddersfield, with no reason to wish him well.’
‘An informer?’
‘Yes. Not a good one to begin with. He sold the names of the Plug Rioters to his master back in 1842 and nearly got himself drowned by their wives for his trouble. But he works for somebody else now who seems to have taught him his trade. I never caught a glimpse of him today and I had my eyes open.’
‘Would it be a bad thing if somebody did catch him alone on the moor?’
‘Maybe not. But I couldn’t do it, Daniel. Could you?’
Daniel hesitated, and then sighed. ‘No. I’d even like to. But when it came to it … No. More’s the pity.’
‘And that’s just what it is, isn’t it. Pity.’ Luke’s voice was completely without sentimentality. ‘A lad who’s lived worse than a stray dog. Never enough to eat. Barefoot until he learned how to steal himself a pair of clogs – and then, I reckon, he’d never manage to get the right size. Verminous and lousy too, as I remember him, since the house he lived in was crawling with bed-bugs and lice and a rare assortment of fleas. Everybody knew about the Rattrie brand of fleas in St Jude’s, I can tell you, so nobody would ever have anything to do with him. And St Jude’s isn’t very particular. A lad has to be really dirty, really scabby and mangy and mucky to stand out in that neighbourhood. Oliver stood out. Now he has a new coat and real leather boots, I notice, and smells of strong soap – maybe a mite too strongly. So he’s come up in the world, by his standards, I reckon …’
‘He doesn’t like you, does he.’
‘Ah well –’ Luke’s wide, strong mouth smiled, just a little, its movement crinkling the fair skin at his eye corners. ‘No. I suppose he doesn’t.’
And for a moment that was all he said, his eyes seeing through the winter dark to some warm memory which evidently gave him pleasure and which – it seemed – he intended keeping to himself.
‘Does he have a reason? To dislike you, I mean?’ Daniel was unashamedly curious, his interest in this tall, craggy, quiet man increasing with his liking and respect. Already he considered Luke Thackray to be a friend – friendship springing up rapidly between travelling men – and one had a right, surely, to know the hearts and minds, and possibly the loves, of one’s friends.
Although he was far from certain that Luke would tell him.
He did.
‘Yes.’ He was speaking slowly, still smiling very slightly. Could it even be tenderly? ‘There’s a reason. A girl. He certainly can’t have her. But then – neither can I.’
‘Do you want her?’
‘Oh yes.’ There was no hesitation. No doubt. No self-pity. ‘I want her all right.’
‘Could you get her?’
Luke hesitated again but only briefly this time. ‘Oliver Rattrie seems to think so,’ he said. ‘And – yes – I reckon I’d have a chance. But it wouldn’t do. There’d be no happiness in it, you see. Not for long. Like needs like, they say. I reckon I agree.’
Was that a sufficient reason? Abruptly, shockingly, the memory of Cara Adeane shot into Daniel’s mind and lodged there like a poisonous, precious dart, causing him pain.
Once it had been sufficient for her.
Never quite, it seemed, for him.
‘If you want her, Luke, then – for God’s sake – take her. I know what I’m saying.’
‘Aye. I reckon you do.’
‘Take her, Luke, and worry about the rights and wrongs and the common sense of it later. I’m telling you. If you let her go you’ll regret it.’
‘I know.’
‘But you’ll let her go just the same.’
It was neither a question nor a rebuke, simply a statement of cold, not always sweet, reason. So people left each other every day, because a career or a conscience might suffer. Because mamma or papa – or a husband – would not like it. Because it would not do. Not for long. His hands clenching into fists he was conscious of only one violent thought, thudding against his head like a hammer-blow. Why could he not forget her? Why – every now and again – did this desire for her come clawing its way inside him. Unbidden. Unwelcome.
The February wind was very cold and now, as the day’s elation faded, he knew he was tired. The last few miles would be long.
They passed. And then, as he stood at the top of St Jude’s Street, in the place where Cara Adeane used to live, refusing Luke Thackray’s invitation to step inside and sample his mother’s ginger parkin and her strong tea, the shadow that was Oliver Rattrie slipped past them going down the hill towards Market Square.
How, when they had left him so far behind them, had he arrived so fast? Daniel asked the question. Luke, a shade wearily thought Daniel, shrugged his shoulders.
‘He was heading for the road to meet a friend. Maybe the friend had a carriage.’
‘His paymaster?’
‘Very likely.’
‘How much harm can he do you, Luke?’
Once again the eye corners crinkled with his smile and – once again – there was a hint of weariness in his shoulders as they lifted in a shrug. The gesture not of a man who no longer cared but who had perhaps had enough.
‘There were ten thousand men around Oastler today. The millmasters can hardly sack us all.’
‘They can make examples of a few, though – to encourage the others.’
‘So they can.’
‘And you’d be the right man to choose, wouldn’t you with your radical connections? Your father killed at Peterloo, I mean …’
‘Aye.’ Luke grinned. ‘And my mother giving free board and lodging to the Chartist candidate.’
‘I’m sorry, Luke. Will he turn you in?’
‘I should think so. Me and as many of the others as he can remember. But we all knew that when we set off for Huddersfield this morning.’
‘If you lose your job can you get another?’
‘Not in Frizingley.’
‘It’s not the only place in the world.’
‘I reckon I agree with that.’
They shook hands.
‘It won’t happen tomorrow,’ Luke said. ‘And whether it happens at all will depend on who really pulls Oliver’s strings. If it’s Ben Braithwaite then he might not want to lose a hard-working overlooker like me, even if it does come out that I’m a founder member of Frizingley’s Short Time Committee. But if Oliver’s master is somebody else, then my skill as a loom-tuner and my twenty-two years service at Braithwaite’s mill may not cut much ice.’
Twenty-two years. Daniel was horrified.
‘I’m thirty,’ said Luke, reading the question in his face.
‘And I’ve never stayed in one place,’ said Daniel, ‘for more than a year or two in my life.’
Suddenly, and very urgently, Frizingley was beginning to seem far too familiar to Daniel, to close in around him like the cage he had spent his life avoiding.
Luke smiled and nodded his head.
‘Come and talk to our Short Time Committee before you leave. We meet every Thursday night at the Dog and Gun. Come and see Oastler again too, while you can. It’s going to be a fine sight watching him raise the North again. High time, I reckon.’
‘High time,’ said Daniel. But it was not of Richard Oastler or the raising of the North that he was thinking.
Chapter Seventeen
For Cara the start of the New Year of 1844 was a time of assessment, most of it pleasurable. Her order books were full and Miss Ernestine Baker’s – as she knew from further desertions among Miss Baker’s staff
– most lamentably empty. Her reputation, both for originality and reliability, was growing, Miss Baker’s foundering, among rumours – discreetly fanned by Cara herself – of that good lady’s immiment retirement due to the failure of her eyesight, her nerve and her temperament.
‘Selling up? Oh – no doubt it is only gossip,’ Cara would reply innocently to an enquiry from Mrs Colclough or Mrs Lord. ‘Although – well – she is not young, of course – it might be true. Oh dear – I suppose I shall have to glance at her stock as a matter of charity – although what I shall do with such a mound of parlourmaid’s calico and those miles of purple satin, I can’t imagine.’
‘What a wicked girl you are,’ murmured Marie Moon who came fairly often – whenever the mood took her and no one else would have her – to sip her red wine, her champagne or, at times of particular stress, her gin in Cara’s back room where, always exquisitely dressed and slightly dishevelled, always with a bite mark of passion or a bruise of anger somewhere about her body, she would talk of her new lover, the wild-eyed, weak-chinned young Lark whose brand of cruelty she now infinitely preferred to Christie Goldsborough’s.
‘It is the feeling of having a dear little Persian kitten on one’s lap, purring one moment and flexing tiger-claws the next. It is the feeling of giving everything one has – everything one is. A total offering of oneself – a gift – without expectations or conditions –’
Cara nodded and smiled and did not listen having heard the same declaration several times before, continuing – as Marie wildly enthused – with her own immaculate bookkeeping, the neat columns of figures which told her that for the first time in her life she was free from the basic, primitive and all too familiar anxiety of how to get through the winter. For this year, no matter how cold the wind blew, no matter how keen the frost or how deep the snow she was assured, not only of the wherewithal to keep body and soul together, but of plenty. Of a surplus even so that the formerly all-absorbing matters of heat and light and food, of new boots and warm clothing and ready money to pay a doctor for Liam should he require one no longer concerned her. She knew she could have all these things. They presented no problems, had removed themselves from the persistent ache they had once occupied at the back of her mind. Now it was no longer a stark matter of enduring the winter but of enjoying it, of daring – for the first time – to look ahead with confidence and anticipation, with a fine sense of getting her teeth into this brand new era of expansion, this local goldfield of opportunity which – according to Christie Goldsborough, and she had no reason to doubt him – would surely bring the railway, before long, to Frizingley.
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