The Silk Factory

by Judith Allnatt

  By the time a month had passed at the workhouse, Effie felt blurred at the edges, as though her sense of her self, her way of being and responding to the world, was fading, eroded by the demand to constantly conform. You could eat and drink but must neither leave a crumb (that would be wasteful) nor ask for more (that would show ingratitude). You could go somewhere else in your head but could not lose yourself completely, as even when daydreaming your hands must never be still but always occupied and busy at work. You must not whisper or smile or laugh together, as levity showed a lack of awareness of the seriousness of your position, nor was it possible to speak one’s mind as certain of the women would report such dissidence to Mrs Smedley, hoping to gain favour. Small luxuries such as meat or tea were given or withdrawn, much in the manner with which one might train a dog.

  In desperation, Effie attempted to convince Mrs Smedley of her skill with letters, in the hope that she might be afforded work in the classroom. She was told roundly that she was unfit and was not to be allowed to exert any influence on young, unformed minds. To punish her presumption she was separated entirely from the rest and set to work on her own, the better to dwell on her shortcomings and repent her loose ways. Sometimes she was sent to work in the garden, doing hard, manual jobs, sometimes she was confined to a room off the kitchen that had once been a storeroom and struck chill even in the warmest of weather. Here she spun lint or tow for the use of the house, her wheel beneath the high window repositioned often during the day to follow the small patch of light as the sun moved round. The repetitive work allowed her mind to wander and it followed those she loved along their strange and distant pathways: Jack marching away over some foreign field; Tobias tramping a towpath through some unknown city; Beulah carrying the baby to some dark place where Effie could not follow. All gone. All out of reach. The thoughts returned and returned, regular as the click of the wheel as it spun. No one will come back. No one will come back, the treadle sang to her. In her blackest moments she thought: I will be like Mary-Anne, living out the rest of my days here without kin, without husband or child. I will moulder here.

  On a day early in September, Effie was set to work in the kitchen garden to lift the crop of beetroot. The afternoon was hot and she rolled up her sleeves and tied her hair back with a string of oakum to keep it off her face, though she dare not hitch up her skirts for fear of being seen and reported as immodest. As she knelt and dug the dry ground with her trowel, pulled on the leafy tops and shook off the soil clinging to the roots, her bones ached and the sun beat down on her back.

  From the yard beyond the hedge, she heard voices coming towards her: Mrs Smedley sounding unctuously polite and a man – a man whom she dare not think familiar. It couldn’t be! The sun must be addling her brain.

  ‘I shall take you to her directly,’ Mrs Smedley was saying.

  ‘If you would be so kind,’ said Jack’s voice.

  As Jack rounded the hedge, he caught sight of her bending to the earth, as she had been the first time he’d seen her picking snowdrops. Something inside him twisted unbearably. She was so changed: half wasted away, thin arms protruding from her sleeves, her delicate skin browned by the sun and smeared with dirt. His darling Effie! ‘Please leave us,’ he said in a tone that sent Mrs Smedley scuttling for the house.

  Effie, on her knees in the dirt, dropped what she was holding and stumbled to her feet. She ran to him; Jack folded her into his embrace and they clung together, kissed and clung again. ‘Thank God! Thank God you’re safe!’ Effie said. Hardly believing this was real, she rested her cheek against his tunic, feeling the warmth, the solidity of him.

  Jack held her close. He could feel her shoulder blades, sharp and bony through her dress. She felt so slight! As though a high wind might carry her away.

  A bell rang inside the workhouse and Effie jumped and stepped back from him as if she had been called to heel; then she checked herself and stayed where she was. He took her hand. ‘Oh, Effie,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘How did this happen? When I came to the cottage and saw it deserted I thought that illness must have come. I thought the very worst … and then I saw your message and came on here.’

  ‘We were turned out of the cottage,’ Effie said. ‘I had almost given you up.’

  ‘Why did you not go to my parents as I said?’

  Effie looked away from him. ‘There are things I must tell you.’ She took his hand and led him to a seat at the edge of the orchard. They sat beneath a medlar tree, Effie silent at first, watching the dark dots of wasps zigzagging along the ground at their feet and crawling in and out of the windfall fruit. Without looking up she said, ‘When you were sent away, I was already with child.’

  Jack’s eyes brightened and then, seeing her face, his expression became uncertain.

  ‘I didn’t want to shame you by going to your family and I hoped the war would end and you would come back …’ Her voice began to break. ‘But then I lost the baby anyway. Oh Jack! Our baby, our boy …’

  He put his arms around her as she cried, holding on to her as the pain hit him. A child, his child.

  At last, he asked, ‘Did you give our boy a name?’

  ‘I called him Jack, after you.’

  He swallowed hard. ‘Where is he buried?’ He knew that children born outside marriage weren’t allowed to be buried within the bounds of the churchyard but were afforded only a lonely plot outwith the wall.

  ‘Beulah took him.’ Effie began to rock to and fro, her arms folded across her stomach as if remembering the carrying of her child. ‘It was at the silk factory and Alice said … Alice said there was no life in him and Beulah took him away. But she didn’t come back!’

  ‘Shh, shh.’ He put his arm around her and took her hand in his.

  ‘We have nothing of him, not even a patch of earth to mourn beside,’ she said, her eyes desolate.

  He held her while she wept again, until at length she rubbed at her face, leaving streaks of dirt and tears. ‘Look at me, Jack. What a state I’m in!’ She held out her hands to take in her stick-thin figure in its ugly dress, her lifeless hair and her ruined hands. ‘I’m not the woman you fell in love with.’

  ‘Yes, yes you are and always will be!’ He traced her cheek with his fingertips. ‘I’m taking you away from this place today; you’ll not stay here another minute. We’ll find you board and lodging at Weedon Royal until we can be married and then I’ll try again for married quarters at the barracks.’

  Effie looked at him searchingly. ‘You know that people will talk? They’ll say you’re marrying into a family whose name is disgraced.’

  ‘There is no fault for you to answer; it’s I who have brought you to this,’ Jack said gravely. ‘You must let me make it right.’

  She frowned. ‘But it is not just … duty?’

  ‘How can you say that!’ His eyes filled and he took her in his arms and kissed her.

  Afterwards, as she sat with his arm around her, she asked, ‘What of your family, Jack? You wanted to ask your father’s blessing and do all in proper order.’

  ‘Desperate times demand desperate remedies, so we will not delay the marriage and will go to them afterwards. I shall go first and explain.’

  ‘Not about the baby!’

  ‘No,’ Jack said thoughtfully. ‘That’s our private sorrow and no one’s concern but ours. I shall say only that in my absence you fell prey to an unscrupulous landlord and, being from a respectable family and too proud to apply to them for help, fell into such want that I decided to act straightaway, as I know they would have wished me to, in order to relieve it.’

  Effie nodded slowly, considering. ‘And you believe they will forgive me for entering your family so abruptly?’

  He touched his forefinger gently against her lips to stop her doubts. ‘They want only my good and when they see how I love you, dearest Effie, they will know that you are where that good lies.’

  Effie rested her head against his shoulder, letting relief wash over her, at last laying this bur
den down. She asked him about his foreign service and he told her how they had taken Badajoz but he had been caught by a shot from a window and forced to take cover in an alleyway. ‘I lay there wondering if I should ever see you again,’ he said. ‘Such a deep sadness came over me at the thought that we might be separated until the far side of the grave. I can’t express how much it grieved me, and how I longed to see your face. All around me was the clamour of plunder: muskets shot through keyholes and wine barrels rolled out, their heads tapped in to run wine and liquor into the streets so that men lay down and drank from the gutters! The drunken rabble ransacked houses, destroying what could not be taken and I thought that if it were my fate to die, I would not die in this very Hell.’

  ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘I hauled myself up using the wall as my support and ventured out. I had the good fortune to meet with a fellow officer who was trying to keep order.’ Jack attempted a smile. ‘I think he was as glad to meet with me and escape this obligation as I was to meet with him and have his help.’ He told her of his time in the hospital, the fever and his slow painful recovery, and then the unexpected joyful news that he had been recalled to his old station.

  He asked her to tell him more of Beulah’s disappearance. He looked grave at her answer and when she told him of Fowler’s accusation he looked graver still.

  ‘We will mount our own search,’ he said determinedly, although, with a month gone by, he feared the trail would be cold.

  He stood and offered her his hand. ‘Your old friend, Maisie, is tethered outside,’ he said. ‘I shall walk and you shall ride. We’ll be in Weedon Royal within the hour, have you lodged safely by sundown and be married in a month, once the banns are read. How does that sound?’

  For answer, Effie took his hand and they made their way together.

  On Sunday, at Weedon Royal church, the Fowler family sat at the inside end of the row directly behind the gentry. The surveyor, Marshall, and his family were next to them, then the doctor and the constable, the whip maker and his family. The smaller farmers, landlords and other businessmen with their families filled the rest of this rank: the men in dark jackets, holding tall hats upon their knees, the women in pastel, high-waisted dresses and their best hats or bonnets. Behind them, the mass of common folk – the servants, manufacturing hands and farm labourers – sat or stood at the back. The hierarchy arranged itself from wealth to poverty, mighty to lowly. The weavers and their families were scattered among the latter. Ellis Coulishaw had picked a place at the end of a row, the better to stretch out his injured leg that stiffened with inactivity and the damp chill of the church; his wife and gaggle of children took up the whole pew. Old Griffith Hood and Jim Baggott sat together near the open door to catch a little of the warmth and freshness from outside. Jervis sat with his family, his head already bowed in thought, if not in prayer. The east window, one of fine stained glass, was afire in red and yellow and the sun that streamed through it, cutting a path of light to the back of the nave, shone indiscriminately on every man, woman and child.

  Septimus Fowler, in black tailcoat and high collar, with a grey silk cravat wrapped up to the chin, sat staring into space, his mind elsewhere. He had been too busy to attend church for the last few weeks: writing letters to canvass for larger orders from his existing customers, placing advertisements to bring in new orders, calculating break-even points assuming lower labour costs. Losing the Jacquard looms had hit his pocket hard and there had also been a falling-off of trade. His credit with the bank was used up and he could not put up prices; the market wouldn’t stand it. He needed to raise productivity, increase orders but also cut costs, get more work done for less outlay. The truth was, he was running out of cash. Unless he took prompt action, the whole manufactory, everything he had slaved over, could go to the wall.

  The bells were yet pealing out, calling all to service, and the church was still abuzz with conversation. Fowler tapped his fingernails on his prayer book in irritation. Church was all very well but he wished they could get on with the proceedings. The real business of the morning would be to buttonhole the members of the vestry afterwards to make sure of those he had already secured as supporters for his scheme to employ paupers, and to persuade those he had not. The matter was to be discussed the next day and he must make sure of it. In preparation, he leant forward to look past Marshall and his fidgeting children to try to catch the eye of Hinchin, who sat further along, across the aisle. Hinchin, however, did not look his way and seemed engrossed in reading the numbers of the hymns and lessons that hung above the pulpit and marking them in his book. Fowler half rose and raised his hand but still Hinchin did not turn his way. At his rising, he sensed a change in the level of the noise of conversation behind him, a sudden dip as if many individual voices had broken off, their interest caught. As he sank back into his seat he was aware of shuffling and nudging going on behind him and when the congregation began to converse again it was at a muted rather than a cheerful pitch and filled with mutterings and whispers. He strained to hear and thought he caught a snatch or two: ’Tis a disgrace … Still never been found. Uneasily, he glanced at Tabitha and Hebe, who sat between him and the wall, to see if they had marked the change. Hebe, looking delicately pretty in a white dress and short powder-blue jacket, was fiddling self-consciously with the buttons of her gloves, while Tabitha, looking lumpy in dark bombazine, fished around in her reticule to check, for the umpteenth time, that she had the collection for the plate. Neither seemed to have noticed anything untoward and he let his shoulders drop and, with fingers and thumb, smoothed his whiskers.

  The pealing bells stopped and then began a mournful tolling as a last warning that the service was about to begin. Did he imagine that as the final note faded away he heard the name Fiddement just as a hush fell on the congregation? The music of hautboy and viol began from the balcony at the back as Parson Hawkins, a gaunt-looking middle-aged man with his hair cut in the Brutus style, led the choir forward to the chancel. They filed in to the choir stalls and the parson climbed the creaking steps to the pulpit. As he gave the bidding prayer, his hooded eyes scanned the kneeling congregation, as if to draw them all in, commanding them through his sombre expression to leave their everyday thoughts behind and concentrate on the state of their souls. Those who had not already bowed their heads hurried to do so, but Fowler, still thinking of the mutterings of the village, was caught unawares as the parson’s sweeping gaze snagged on him. For a moment the parson turned a piercing look upon him and then passed on.

  After the prayer, they sat once more, Tabitha surreptitiously rubbing from her knees the ache from the hard, chill floor.

  ‘Here beginneth the first lesson,’ the parson intoned, ‘from psalm sixty-eight.’ His deep voice boomed out into the high spaces of the nave:

  ‘As smoke is driven away so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

  But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice.

  Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.

  A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation …’

  Fowler, who paid no attention to the lesson, excising it from his consciousness, as was his habit, was thinking instead that if he were able to reach Hinchin quickly after the service he might be able to draw him over to speak with the doctor, who still remained sceptical about his scheme. He would explain to him the figures he had calculated for the likely savings in parish relief currently paid to paupers. Hinchin’s presence would help to imply that there was general agreement to the scheme and that the doctor would be out on a limb if he should stand against it. He felt sure that he could win him over.

  As the parson announced, ‘Amen. Here endeth the first lesson,’ Fowler came back to himself and found Hawkins’s eyes once again directly upon him. He shifted uncomfortably in his sea
t. What was the matter with the man?

  It had been apparent from the inception of his plan that the parson was not going to support it. Fowler could see that he was a reformer type who refused to keep his religion where it belonged, within the walls of the church, and let it spill into every day of the week and matters in which it had no place. Why, earlier in the year when the parson had overheard him talking after church of the new Frame Breaking Bill, with Hinchin and some other men of business, Hawkins had had the brass neck to interfere, pushing himself into the conversation. Just as he had been telling Hinchin that the new measures would prove an excellent deterrent, Hawkins had said, ‘Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scarecrows?’ He had rejoined that this was a gross exaggeration. Parson Hawkins, with an unaccustomed twinkle in his eye, had said drily that, in that case, Fowler disagreed with Lord Byron, for it was he who had expressed these sentiments in his maiden speech on the Bill to the House. This had left Fowler feeling foolish in front of the other men, and he had at once categorised Hawkins as foe not friend in this matter. He had turned his attention to other vestry members with minds more open to progressive ideas and their own advantage, those where he judged he would be pushing on an open door.

  The service rumbled on with the repeating of the creed and the singing of a hymn, ‘’Tis by Thy Strength the Mountains Stand’. Fowler was aware of Hebe’s high clear voice beside him, and he sang out in his own rich bass so that between them they should drown out Tabitha’s wavering alto. He had told her before that she should mime the words and her flouting of his wishes tested his patience.

  For his sermon, the parson took as his text ‘The Fatherless Child’. First he expounded upon the idea that without faith all should be ‘fatherless children’, as each one would be cut off from the bounty and grace of the Lord. Then he spoke of the responsibility to emulate the Father in caring for widows and orphans, drawing on the psalms, and Fowler began to take notice.