A Daughter's Shame

by Audrey Reimann

  ‘Who’s coming? Let me guess. John Hammond. Catriona Hammond. The Bible Society. And half the town’s millowners.’

  ‘And Ray.’

  Frank put the paper down and went to the sideboard, dark and angry. He said, ‘He’s only been back at school for four weeks.’

  ‘He won’t mind.’

  ‘I bet he won’t. And it costs an arm and a leg.’

  ‘It’s not you who pays!’ At great personal sacrifice, for she hated to be parted from the son she had moulded to her ways, Sarah had sent her darling boy to Edinburgh, to the school John Hammond recommended; the school John wished to send Magnus to as soon as he was well.

  Frank carried his plate back to the table and cast a cold eye on her. ‘True.’ He sat down. ‘If I were paying he would be at my old school and I’d be able to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘He’s fourteen. He’s had my guiding hand up to now. He doesn’t need your example any longer,’ she answered quickly. John Hammond said that Ray was a son to be proud of – a fine boy. Frank was hard on Ray, too demanding. Ray and Frank did not have an easy relationship though Ray admired Frank and treated him with respect. But it was not Frank’s capacity for work that Ray admired. It was his free spirit.

  She said, ‘Ray knows you don’t practise what you preach. You tell him to buckle down to school work. You tell him to have respect for his mother. You don’t show any.’

  ‘My God!’ Frank’s face darkened. He pushed his breakfast plate away. ‘You do it deliberately. Why do you come between me and my son?’

  ‘Why don’t you spend an evening in our company?’ she said. Then, suddenly, she changed tack. ‘It’s Ray’s half-term. I’m too busy to collect him from the station.’

  ‘I’ll meet him.’ He got up from the table, leaving his food untouched. ‘What are you doing that’s so important?’

  ‘How can you ask? Father’s sinking.’ The doctors said that Father had three months to live, at the most.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Love for your father wouldn’t keep you away from Ray,’ he said. ‘What else are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to be shown round Hammond Silks.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ she said. ‘You see nothing of my worries. You spend your time and money looking after your own. Your mother. Your brothers. Your tenants. Your property. Your Macclesfield!’

  There was cynical amusement in his eyes. ‘Airing your grievances, Sarah? Let’s talk about what you are up to. You were saying … ? Your father wants to make sure there are no death duties to be paid, and–’

  ‘All right!’ she said harshly. ‘I agree with Father. We’ve changed the name to Chancellor Printers. Everything is in Ray’s name so he comes into it when he’s twenty-one, without death duties and liabilities.’

  ‘You should be glad to pay your taxes.’ His voice was rough now. ‘You are not using your father’s weakness to try to persuade him into a merger with Hammond Silks, are you? Your father never gave in to Old Man Hammond. He wouldn’t sell. Nor would I give that old weasel the satisfaction … Anyway, silk manufacturing has been in the doldrums for a good few years. Things can’t improve.’

  ‘I’m no fool.’

  Sarah saw him lift his eyebrows as if he did not believe her. She would not jeopardise Ray’s inheritance. It would be an act of madness, to join forces with Hammond’s. Frank knew that the printworks needed to expand to cope with all the work they had. They needed money to increase the size of the premises. They had never been so busy, printing cottons and the new cellulose fibres, as well as silk.

  But she had to think of everything. She was ageing. She might die young, like her mother. What if, with her dead and her father gone, Frank then took another wife? Had more children? The printworks and all they had worked for must not be lost to Ray. Still, she was going to be with John Hammond all morning.

  ‘Hello, Sarah my dear!’ In his office, John greeted her with a peck on the cheek. ‘So glad to see you.’

  Sarah’s pulse quickened. It always did. She felt like a young girl again when she was near him. ‘Thank you, John dear. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never been inside the Hammond Silks mill.’

  He put his hand out to take her overcoat and hat and place them on a chair then looked, smiling at her for a full five seconds before saying, ‘You look different. What have you done?’

  She’d had her iron-grey hair hennaed and bobbed. It had taken twenty years off her, the hairdresser said. She patted her head. ‘I had my hair done.’

  He was smiling. ‘Catriona will be here in half an hour. We’ll wait for her. We can all go round the mill together.’

  He had not remembered that it was her birthday and he was coming to dinner tonight. She supposed all men were the same. He led her towards a seat by a small table in the window. An open book was set upon it. ‘I thought you might like to have a look at this book of drawings,’ he said. ‘Made by the Chinese two hundred years ago.’

  He pointed to a print on the wall; an old print of cocoon-reeling in Europe, from four hundred years back. ‘Much the same methods are used today, Sarah,’ he said.

  He went to sit at his desk, to wait for Catriona’s arrival, and she had no choice but to examine the book in which were depicted, to the tiniest detail, every process, from the rearing of silkworms to the woven material. This was not what she wanted. ‘I had hoped to have a private talk, John,’ she said. ‘I need advice – about Ray.’

  He looked up from his papers, surprised. ‘Ray? What can I–?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Her cheeks burned. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Why did she allow herself to react like this whenever he mentioned Ray? He had asked her, years ago, if he were Ray’s father. She remembered how the question had affected her; how she’d seen in a flash that unless she denied the truth she would be betraying Ray. She had tried to put the truth from her mind there and then. She’d prayed for forgiveness and after giving herself a lengthy and arduous penance had received God’s pardon, in private, as a sign.

  God had told her, in the sign, that Ray must never be told the truth. All the same, she could not help her enormous pride in seeing Ray standing so high in John’s eyes. For a reason she would never understand, she liked to think that John envied her her flawless son. And it was only right that his natural father should see that Ray was one of God’s finest creations.

  Ray was what the Bible called ‘whole’. When Jesus cured the woman with the issue of blood, she who touched the hem of his garment, he said, ‘Thy faith hath made thee whole’. Ray had not inherited the sickness that had affected John’s son. Nor would he. Sarah had bought books on the inheritance of haemophilia when John’s children were born. She made an amateur study of the disease. Haemophilia was never passed from father to son, it said in the books. Ray was healthy and clever and good. He was perfect.

  John said. ‘He has not done anything wrong, has he? Ray?’

  ‘No,’ Sarah replied. ‘It’s Father. He hasn’t long to go …’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. He is being well cared for. He’s not in pain. Father wants to secure Ray’s inheritance. We need to spend what we hold on deposit. We must raise money if we can … to expand the printworks. We don’t want it all going in death duties.’

  ‘What does your husband think?’

  ‘We haven’t asked Frank’s opinion.’

  ‘Frank runs the printworks. Is he not to benefit from all his work?’

  ‘It sounds underhanded. Put that way.’

  He was silent for a second then, lowering his voice, ‘Your marriage did not turn out well?’

  She found herself defending her marriage. ‘Frank and I have an understanding. Frank has all he wants. He holds ten per cent of the shares. He is a director of the printworks. He has property. Frank and I are both devoted to our son and determined to see him provided for.’

  ‘He’s a grand young fellow, Sarah. Catriona and I have often said how we admire the boy. Ho
w very lucky you are to have …’

  ‘It’s Ray I want to talk about,’ Sarah interrupted. She did not want to hear him say ‘Catriona and I’ again. He used to have a mind of his own. ‘I want to ensure that everything possible goes to Ray. He will be the majority shareholder in the printworks. Pilkington House belongs to him.’ She made light of it, saying, ‘Father put the deeds of the house in his name when he was born. We are living with Ray. Not he with us.’

  John said, ‘I’ll make an appointment for you to meet the head of the bank’s stocks and securities. You could raise funds by issuing bearer bonds.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He said sadly, ‘You are a lucky woman, Sarah. Magnus may not live to twenty-one. It is Sylvia who will inherit Hammond Silks. And Sylvia has no interest whatever in the mill.’

  The door to the office flew open. Catriona, in a blue woollen costume and wearing one of the new dipped-brim hats, sailed into the office. Magnus, looking frail and thin, followed her with his tall, older cousin behind him. Soon the room was filled with laughter and light-hearted chatter.

  ‘Sarah,’ Catriona said as she presented the tall boy to her. ‘Do you remember Ian?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ She looked at the dark-haired young man who was taller by far than anyone else in the room. ‘You were a little boy the last time I saw you. We sent Ray to your school, on your Uncle John’s recommendation. Have you come down on the train with Ray? Has he arrived safely?’

  Ian shook her hand. ‘We were met at the station by Mr Chancellor. Ray is safe,’ he said.

  Magnus gave a loud, snorting laugh. ‘I expect Ray kept them all on their toes, did he, Ian? He is a rogue, isn’t he?’

  Sarah was pleased that Ray was the centre of attraction outside the home as well as in. She did not like to hear Ray referred to as a ‘rogue’, but Magnus liked to be one of the boys so she took their ragging in good part. ‘Your turn will come, Magnus. When are you going to school?’

  Catriona answered for him. ‘Soon. We have applied for a place. Magnus has to get the go-ahead from the specialist first. Magnus and I are going to Edinburgh next week. We have found a good doctor.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ said Magnus confidently.

  John said, ‘Right then. Are we all going to look over the mill?’ There was a chorus of agreement and he said, ‘First, to the throwsters.’

  They followed him out, into the passageway and down a flight of steps to a big damp cellar room where skips of raw silk, which Chinese and Japanese women had wound from the cocoons by hand, had been packed, lumpy and jumbled in huge brown hanks of wiry thread.

  ‘Magnus can tell you all about it,’ John said. ‘He’s terribly keen on the mill. He knows more than I do.’

  Magnus, flushed with pleasure at being asked to do the honours, indicated the hanks with an enthusiastic sweep of his arm and explained the processes. ‘It’s covered in a gummy substance. And it has to be softened in vats of oil for a long time, before it goes to the girls for winding. Shall we watch the winders?’

  Obediently, Sarah and everyone followed Magnus’s awkward tread up more steps to machines that had revolving winding arms, like umbrella frames over which the hanks were stretched. Girls fed fine silk that had had the gum removed, from the hanks onto bobbins. Magnus spoke to one of the girls – she could have been no older than Magnus – saying something in her ear that brought a shy look as she said, ‘This is the best stuff. It’s one continuous thread, see. It goes for men’s ties and ladies’ scarves, for underwear, knitted stockings and fine filters.’

  The tall boy, Ian, who was Magnus’s cousin asked her, ‘How long did it take you to learn all this?’

  The girls looked up at him, blushed and said, ‘Not long. Wait till you see the skilled work.’

  Sarah watched Magnus and Ian closely. Ray had a much easier way with the hands at the printworks – a little casual, like Frank she sometimes thought. But her boy was young and eager and fine and … She tried to concentrate on what she was seeing and not think about Ray and how he would be looking for her.

  She would drive him to Chester Cathedral, to the service there on Sunday. It would be a lovely treat for him. He was deeply religious, like herself.

  They were at the huge, whirring machines that doubled and twisted the yam. Magnus was shouting, ‘Ringspinning!’ They moved on to the high speed machines that spun two or more bobbins together to put a twist on the thread. ‘Uptwisting.’

  Magnus said, ‘I want to show you what we do with the rest of the silk.’

  Sarah went from one great shed to another with Magnus instructing, like a teacher at every stage. ‘You wouldn‘t recognise this as silk, would you?’ He pointed to the bales of gummy silk that had come from the cocoons in such short lengths that they could not be reeled by hand.

  Sarah saw men in a room as hot as the tropics with air that caught at the throat, boiling this silk waste in smelly soap vats until nearly all the impurities were gone and they took from the vats a lustrous, tangled mass of silk, which they wheeled on carts to the drying ovens. Then she followed Magnus on to where this silk was passed over spiked cylinders and rollers.

  ‘Filling machines!’ he called as they watched the fibres being combed and straightened and sent to the ‘Dressing machines!’.

  It was an eye-opener to Sarah. All these processes and they had not reached the weaving stage yet. Small wonder silk manufacturing had its ups and downs. So many hands had to be paid. Dad was wise not to want to merge with this expensive business. It would not do to saddle Ray with such a big responsibility when her father died. Now, where were they going?

  Men and girl operators were leaning over an iron guard as they spread masses of fibres over huge rollers. Magnus said, ‘They are taking out the first drafts. They will go for spinning. First drafts go for the finest silk yarns. Second drafts from shorter fibres will be blended or used for cheaper yarns.’

  Sarah wanted to handle the lovely soft and shining hanks. She watched women spreading the drafts through another machine and then watched girls with sharp eyesight laying the silk hanks on an under-lighted glass table, picking off every tiny hair or thread that had got into the silk.

  ‘Are you enjoying it all?’ Magnus beamed with pride. ‘Now, to the spinning sheds …’

  It was too much for Sarah. ‘I think I’ve seen enough,’ she said. ‘My brain is spinning. I’ll have to leave. Ray will wonder where I am.’

  Chapter Six

  Lily had not found what she wanted: a best friend. Girls offered friendship but Doreen always ridiculed them for wanting ‘Silly Lily’ when they could have Doreen herself. A girl Lily particularly liked, Shirley Anderson, known as Shandy, had no best friend either. Doreen tried to grab Shandy for herself, so Shandy kept her distance. And Doreen, off-hand with Lily, would suck up to Mam, flattering her, asking how she got the finger-waves into her hair, admiring Mam’s clothes, Mam’s ways. Mam thought Lily was being difficult, being rude to Doreen, whom she saw as a well-brought-up girl.

  But Mam, under the influence of sherry, let herself go a little and now it was getting worse for she had started telling risqué stories in front of Doreen. Seeing Mam’s pleasure in Doreen’s flattery made Lily jealous – and knowing how Mam was about Nellie Plant, she did not dare tell her that Doreen Grimshaw passed comments about Mam behind her back, saying, ‘Elsie Stanway’s a case. What a scream!’ A clutch of girls gathered about Doreen at school, but outside she associated with much older girls, girls of thirteen and fourteen.

  Occasionally Doreen would ask Lily to play at her house, but she never did so without inviting one of the older, more interesting girls as well. Doreen looked and acted much older than her ten years and had started making up to Mollie Leadbetter, who was fourteen, very pretty and what people called ‘vacant’. Mollie could not even write her name. The Leadbetters were quiet, respectable people and Mollie was the only one out of the six children born to them who had survived. Even with Mollie there, and Mollie Leadbe
tter hadn’t a wicked thought in her simple mind, Doreen would set up one of those awful threesome games – the ones where two ganged up against the odd girl out, changing the rules until Lily would be reduced to tears and a shameful retreat home with Doreen’s taunting ringing in her ears.

  Soon she had worse to fear. She was afraid that Doreen would find out about Mam’s weakness for the bottle. Mam’s drinking was getting worse. She could not stand upright after she’d been at the sherry, and Lily hated helping her to her feet when she fell flat on her face. It worried her more and more, because Mam said she was old enough to be left in the house alone when she went to the Angel every second Friday to a meeting of the Chamber of Trade, she said. Mam came home as drunk as a sailor.

  Lily was always sent early to bed; a chamber pot under the bed in case she needed to ‘go’ and under Mam’s strict orders never to come down at night. Mam said the bogeymen would jump out at her if she tried to get downstairs, and at first this was enough to keep her in her room. But she was more afraid of being left alone in the dark than she was of bogeymen, so if she couldn’t sleep she forced herself on to the landing, straining to hear Mam in the kitchen.

  Sometimes she was wakened by the sound of the back gate clicking to. It had to be their gate because they had no domestic neighbours, only shops and the Swan and Mr Chancellor’s property office next door. Lily would tiptoe down to the landing and hear voices, a man’s voice murmuring and Mam’s muffled, tipsy laughter as if someone had covered her mouth. Once or twice Mam said, loud enough for Lily to hear, ‘No! Down here! I don‘t want to wake our Lil.’

  She felt guilty. She was spying. But she stayed there or crept nearer to the bottom flight to try to find out who was with Mam. She never heard the other person speak, but after a few minutes she’d hear the fire being poked and what sounded like the table being dragged back against the wall.

  Then came a rustling and Mam going, ‘M-m-m … Oh! Mm-m’, before the other sounds came: the bump … bump … bump, bumping, steady and rhythmic, of the fender being pushed repeatedly into the fireplace wall. This was followed after ages of thumping and bumping by a speeding-up of the sounds, faster and faster, until all at once Mam would cry out, ‘Oh, love! Oh, love!’ and a rapid, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’, before an abandoned wailing sound that subsided slowly into her last cries of ‘My God! My God!’