The Iron Master

by Jean Stubbs

  She had never spoken to him so naturally and so much before, and he had always been slightly in awe of her, so these simple confidences came like revelations upon him. He had identified her with her tasks: Hannah the whitster, pounding his linen in the dolly tub, heating her flat-irons on the hob: Hannah the cook, beating up a batter pudding, pressing out cakes of gingerbread: Hannah the housekeeper, keeping a stern eye on dirty feet and clean floors. Now he saw Hannah the woman, and she was a mystery and a delight.

  It was her air of authority, her dignified reserve, that made her seem plain. When she spoke of her husband she was alive, shining like the girl she must have been when she upped and left her family in Charndale and became a foreigner in Flawnes Green. Her eyes were very clear and beautiful, meditating on the past. She sat as upright and gracefully as his mother did, nursing her cup in both hands. Her weekday dress had been changed for a black linsey-wolsey gown; her worsted hose and dogs for black stockings and shoes, her checkered apron for starched white, and a fine muslin kerchief (possibly handed down by Mrs Boulton, since it was quite elegant) completed her Sunday attire. And though her hands were not the hands of a lady, as Dorcas’s were, Hannah had cared for them in between her tasks, and they were smooth and small and capable, not the usual red and roughened hands of a working woman.

  ‘Who were your family, Hannah?’ he asked curiously.

  She pursed her lips in mockery of their grandeur.

  ‘Oh, summat and nowt as folk say! My father was a weaver and earned good money, and my mother saw to our manners and wanted us to marry well. We were all girls, Mr Howarth. Six girls! The others, they did the right thing according to my mam. Susan married a baker. Prue a farmer. Tabby married an undertaker. You see what I mean? A jobbing carpenter don’t compare to them!’

  ‘Tell me,’ said William, stirring his tea thoughtfully, ‘did you grieve very much when he died? I mean, like Stephen’s mother for her husband?’

  He had wiped the joy from her face and she answered soberly.

  ‘I never took it that way. I was never much for tears. But when Abel died there was a part of me went with him. I’ve heard women say, when they’ve lost a child, as they felt the loss of it in their bellies. But I didn’t take Abel’s death that way, neither. But for a long while I couldn’t get warm. It was a lovely summer, the summer Abel died. And yet I just couldn’t get warm … ’

  She put down her cup and wound her arms about herself, remembering. Her sadness had penetrated to her clothes, and they lost their Sunday lustre, becoming mere widow’s weeds.

  ‘Then I worked here. Aaron was always good to women, though he never had one of his own. It seemed proper, when he had nobody, to help out. And I was glad of the money. And it kept me busy.’

  So she and her husband had lain together in love and warmth, the warmth Abel had taken with him, and yet their union had not been blessed. Her story was unfinished. She should have borne many children. He could imagine her in their midst, prodigal with giving.

  ‘And do you know what hurts me most?’ said Hannah, looking into the fire, holding out her hands to the blaze. ‘I canna see Abel like I used to. Six year we were wed, and I knew every change in his face and every move of his body. And now I canna remember what he looked like. As if time was robbing me.’

  He could not bear that she should change back into that sad withdrawn woman. He wanted her to smile again, to be young again. He wanted to be a part of her mystery, to share those thoughts she now told to no one else. He leaned forward and clasped her two cold hands, and looked into eyes the colour of sea on a winter’s day.

  ‘Nay, don’t be sad, Hannah,’ he said, coaxing her.

  She answered very quietly, in that tone which held him at a distance.

  ‘If I’d known you’d be home, Mr Howarth, I’d have made a pudding. But I never bother when I’m by myself.’

  He let go of her as though she had struck him across the face, bent his head to ask her pardon, and walked over to the window not knowing what to say or do. She put on her shawl, picked up the basin, looked at his bowed shoulders.

  ‘There’s cold meat in the larder, Mr Howarth, as’ll do for your supper. I shan’t be coming back today. There’s another meeting at my home this evening. I’ll see you tomorrow. As usual.’

  He said, beseeching her, not looking at her, ‘Hannah, should I build thee an oven to bake bread? I could do. Then you needn’t be always begging a bit of space from the baker.’

  ‘That’d be handy,’ she answered, cool and firm. ‘You could have a pie whenever you fancied, then.’

  He dared glance at her, to see if she had forgiven him.

  ‘I could make thee a salamander to brown the pastry, Hannah.’

  ‘That’d be grand, Mr Howarth.’

  ‘And I’ll get thee a box-iron, all the way from Birmingham, to smooth the clothes. Then you needn’t be forever lifting heavy flat-irons, Hannah.’

  ‘Nay, one treat’s enough at a time,’ she said, light and friendly. ‘I don’t have to be marred, Mr Howarth. I’m used to the baker, and my old irons.’

  ‘But I should count it an honour,’ said William, very low. She flushed up quickly, for he had spoken to her as he would speak to a lady, and she was not prepared for that. ‘Good-day, Mr Howarth,’ she said, turning to the door. The latch clacked into place. She was gone, hurrying across the field by the hedge, shawled head bent against the driving wind and snow.

  William strode into the smithy and smashed his fist down hard upon the anvil, to drive out the devil in himself. And all afternoon and evening he was sorely puzzled, wondering how it was that he could live side by side with a woman for over a year and then discover that he never knew her, and now wanted to find her out. No room would contain his restlessness. The snow kept him indoors, the day forbade him to work. He revolved round that fateful half-hour or so they had sat and talked together, re-worded and re-made it. The night wrapped its shawl about him and still he had not found an answer.

  Building Hannah’s oven was one of the hardest and sweetest tasks he had ever undertaken. There had been a patent for an enclosed grate and oven as far back as the mid-seventeenth century, but in recent years a man called Thomas Robinson had invented a kitchen range suitable for the modern household. Bartholomew Scholes, with his network of connections and information, was among the first to install one, and William would have liked to present Hannah with such a complex iron monster as his. But the modest inglenook and kitchen could not sustain such a thing, and in the end he wrote and asked advice from his old master, and laid out a portion of his hundred guineas to buy a smaller novelty.

  The metal was his metal, but the trade was not his trade. A village blacksmith does not possess a blast furnace. But he could assemble and fix it for her, build it in and make it trim, to please her. To please her. To make her smile and speak again as she had done.

  The neighbours wondered what Hannah had done to deserve such a tribute. And though they came in one by one, to admire the basket grate and moulded hood with its fancy trim, and spy William’s dinner cooking in the neat oven, there was much speculation. For William was a bachelor, and as such could not be expected to care how his food was cooked, provided some woman served it up hot and tasty at noon. Surely he could not be courting a widow on the wrong side of her twenties? Hints and rumours distressed Hannah, and she withdrew into a silence he could not break. Wretched, he neglected the ladies of Thornton House, and hardly went near Kit’s Hill, so that Hannah might come to him on Sundays. While she, aware of all his stratagems, fearful that either Miss Wilde or Dorcas might hear something or make enquiries, cooked enough for both days on the Saturday, and steadfastly avoided every opportunity of being alone with him again.

  So winter turned to spring, and spring to summer. William’s homilies to Stephen ceased. He no longer took pleasure in his work, but found every task unwelcome. The ringing of his anvil became noise instead of music. A smiling customer meant mockery rather than friendship. Enquirie
s were veiled complaints. Sometimes his elbow went. At others the weight of the piece defeated him. He felt that he was losing his power, that Hannah had drawn all the virtue from him.

  Others were enjoying life, or so it seemed to William. Either Toby or Charlotte wrote to him regularly of national and international events, stirring his quiet backwater into a river of discontent. Caleb Scholes the younger, fellow-apprentice of William’s Birmingham years, scrawled entertaining tales concerning the trials and delights of working for his father the ironmaster. And occasionally Ruth Scholes of Birmingham, Bartholomew’s wife, put pen to paper, for she had made a subtle favourite of him, and sent him news of her busy household and that ever-increasing network of iron men, bankers, and quiet wielders of power.

  In his frustration William turned on Stephen. The silent little lad had become a youth of seventeen, grown four inches taller by the mark on the smithy wall. He could wield a sledgehammer, or truss and throw an ox to be shod, nearly as well as his master. And he loved Hannah, who was more mother to him than his own mother. And he worshipped William, which made him vulnerable. So William chided where he should have encouraged, remained silent when he should have praised, and one summer Saturday was so unreasonable that Hannah came to the door and spoke her mind forcibly.

  ‘You’ve done nowt but find fault all morning,’ she cried, hands on hips, ‘and the biggest fault of the lot is thee, William Howarth. Think shame on yourself! And remember this — he’ll be as big and as clever as thee, someday, and if you get a clout round the head instead of a hand in friendship — don’t say as I didn’t warn you!’

  He had never seen her angry before, and slight as she was her wrath defeated him. He let fall the hammer and followed her into the kitchen, where she clashed pans and slammed the precious oven door to with a ferocity that astonished him. He lapsed into his native tongue to deal with her.

  ‘Never make a fool of me in front of that lad again!’ he warned, but his tone lacked conviction.

  She rounded on him, unafraid, though her cap did not reach his shoulder.

  ‘Make a fool of thee? Tha makes a fool of thyself!’ she answered, as broad in her dialect as he. ‘Tha’rt nowt but a babby skriking for its sucking-rag! That lad’d go through fire for thee.’

  He slammed the door between themselves and the smithy, to pay her back for her treatment of the oven. He loved her, and he could have killed her.

  ‘I’ve done more than enough for thee,’ said William in a fury, ‘and let me tell thee summat. Tha’rt nowt! Frowning and hiding, when a man does his best for thee, and never a word of thanks. I paid out good money and worked and sweated all winter for thee, and by God I’m sorry as I did. Now get off home and shut thy mouth. Dunnot fret about leaving me a bit of cold meat for my Sunday dinner. I’ll manage for myself. Else go where I’m wanted.’

  She tore off her apron, and then hesitated. There was a potato pie in the oven, and though she would not yield to him she had put her heart into the baking of that pie. She stood indecisively, holding her checkered apron to her breasts. He had turned the tables on her, and she was puzzled.

  ‘Mind you take that pie out then,’ she said, recovering a little.

  He knew he had won this round at least. In turn, he placed his hands on his hips and played master in his own house.

  ‘Bugger the pie!’ said William deliberately. ‘Get off home!’

  He did not wait to see her go, but strode back into the smithy. Stephen was blowing the fire to welding heat, and did not look at him.

  ‘All right, lad,’ said William kindly. ‘I’m sorry I spoke as I did. I’m in no humour wi’ myself nor anybody else these days. We’ll shut up shop for today. Get thee off home.’

  ‘What about this here welding then, master?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘We’ll do it Monday. First thing. It’ll be a nice afternoon,’ said William, looking at the fleecy sky. ‘I don’t fancy shutting us-selves up, welding, on a day like this.’

  ‘Tha’rt the master,’ said Stephen slowly.

  ‘Come back Monday, lad. I’ll be better-tempered then.’

  He locked the smithy, feeling lighter of spirit He remembered the pie, and his heart beat fast in case it was burned, but when he drew it out the pastry was crisp and golden. He put it in the larder to cool, and covered it with a piece of muslin like Hannah did, to keep off the flies. Then he stuffed a kerchief-full of bread and cheese in his pocket, slung his coat over one shoulder, and struck off down the dusty road, whistling. He had a mind to walk the four miles from Flawnes Green to Childwell, and climb Belbrook How to look over into the valley of Charndale, where she was born.

  The wooden bridge which spanned the River Wynden between Childwell and Belbrook was a paltry thing. He scorned it, even as he used it. At this point, halfway down the valley, they should have an iron bridge: nothing grand like the one at Coalbrookdale but strong and plain. He looked up into the woods which clothed the hillside, and began the long ascent.

  This place was now returned to its former wild beauty, but the soil had been deeply disturbed at some time, and the vegetation told its own tale. Yellow coltsfoot and spiky teasels indicated the presence of heavy clay. Guardians of wasteland, rosebay willow-herbs, stood sentinel. Dandelions and plantains, their rosettes of leaves clinging to the earth to survive the trampling of feet, marked old trackways. Birch trees sprang, silver and slender, the first wind-borne seeds to alight in clearings: now being shouldered aside by the oaks which had once taken shelter among them. On the uneven ground grew goat willow and elder. Thickets of bramble and hawthorn scratched his hands, snagged his home-spun shirt and breeches. Nettles brushed and stung. Tussocks of tufted hair-grass made him stumble. Ground ivy caught at his shoes.

  The busy stream, from which Belbrook took its name, lay in slow-moving pools here, silted up and choked by reedmace; then tumbled briskly again over the rocks to find a lower level. Under these clear noisy waters lay a motley multitude of pebbles, drawn inexorably forward along the bed of the brook. Shafts of sunlight illumined their subtle browns and greys, picked out a band of orange, a slab of black.

  William stooped quickly, and fished one swart stone from among its fellows, turning it over in his hand. Incredulous, he found another, and another. He examined the banded stone with increasing excitement. Then followed the stream up to another pool, pushing his way past willow and alder, getting his shoes hopelessly sopped, tearing his clothes heedlessly. He stopped to take his bearings: not the bearings of the place, for he was lost there, but the bearings of an outrageous and wonderful plan in his mind. His heart was hammering so madly that the blood sang in his head. He took a great breath and closed his eyes, mastering himself. He needed all his wits now. Man had been here already, plundering the land. In return nature laid a hundred traps against invasion. Pits, ponds and caverns, seductively screened, could drown him, break his leg or his neck. He began cautiously, intuitively, to explore this area of Belbrook.

  The furnace pool had been here: now all scum and bulrushes, and the remains of a wooden bridge turned to green bile. Down that steep bank should be the water-wheel, long motionless, and above it the crumbling launder.

  He broke off a stout ash bough and attacked the tangled undergrowth. The wheel must have been thirty feet in diameter, hanging in its pit, and the huge wooden shaft was clad in rusting iron. William traced the shaft and found where the iron bellows had been. Kicking and pulling fallen bricks aside, he knelt down and brushed and scraped the earth away impatiently, revealing a sand pig bed. He stripped off his torn shirt, sweating and trembling with the joy and terror of discovery, and hung his coat on a thorn bush. He needed something sharper and heavier than his ash stick now, and poked among huge blocks of slag which stood like rocks to one side of the site, disguised with moss and lichen. His search uncovered a heavy iron pole, and this he wielded with both hands, flailing at the thicket beyond the sand pig bed, knowing this would be the greatest find of all.

  The brickwork was surpri
singly sound, and those vast oak beams, which had been young in the Wars of the Roses, would have held a mountain, let alone a roof. William caught up a switch of birch and brushed the back beam clear. The inscription was cut black and deep into the wood.

  DEO GRATIAS 1915

  He was standing, breathless, victorious, upon the fore-hearth of an old blast-furnace.

  William Wilde Howarth, blacksmith, was at home here. He could have walked the site blindfold, had nature let him. As it was he must dwell lovingly upon those portions he had freed, and imagine the rest as it would be. Slowly he came back to the thorn bush, and wiped the sweat and grime from his face with his torn shirt. He sat upon a boulder of slag, and ate his bread and cheese, hands shaking with excitement and exhaustion. His silver watch insisted it was time to go, and the deepening shadows of the wood agreed. He endeavoured to think what must be done. The owner of the site found, and persuaded to lease it. Advice sought as to the cost of re-building and setting up the foundry. Help asked, coaxed, begged, to clear the place. But that it was his he never doubted, that he had been sent here to find it he truly believed, however long it took to work again.