Angel Meadow (9 page)

“Aye, I suppose so, lass. Well then . . .?” Annie waited while Nancy drew breath and sorted out her thoughts. She had a crust of bread in her hand which she crumbled to bits then threw them to a couple of sparrows pecking hopefully at the cobbles.

“Well . . . ?” Annie prompted again.

“There’s nowhere to go here, Annie.”

“Eeh, what can yer mean? Nowhere ter go.”

“If I lived to be fifty I’d never get any further than a spinning frame.”

“I’m over forty, I reckon . . .”

“There you are then.”

“. . . an’ I’ve bin at that same pair o’ mules since I were ten.” Annie’s voice was sad and yet not humble.

“You see what I mean, Annie,” Nancy cried. “Oh, I’m not sniffing at what you’ve achieved. You’ve worked hard and are well respected and that’s a wonderful accomplishment. To be well thought of. To have pride in yourself.”

“Aay, ’old on, lass. Anyone’d think I’d bin made Lord Mayor o’ Manchester.”

Nancy laughed but there was a break in her voice. Her face was like marble with the intensity of her feelings and without being aware of it she took Annie’s old, calloused hand between her own, which were equally calloused, but young, strong, enduring.

“It’s not enough for me, Annie. I want to get on. I want to be someone. I don’t want to wait until I’m forty to have Mr Hayes tell me what a loyal and conscientious worker I’ve been.”

“No chance o’ that, chuck. Some lad’ll snap yer up an’ wed yer an’ before yer know it—”

“That’d be worse still, Annie, don’t you see?” Nancy’s voice had dropped so that it could barely be heard. She looked about her at the busy yard. Men in soiled cotton shirts and trousers, sprawled on the cobbles or lolled against the high wall surrounding it, smoking their pipes, most of them eyeing the lasses who tossed their heads and fluttered their sparse eyelashes in a show of coquetry. Most would be married before they reached seventeen and had no greater future than a child every year and a husband who spent his hard-earned wage in the beer house and probably gave her a good hiding if she objected.

“My mam was wed at sixteen, or at least she said she was but who knows. My pa ran off and she took to the streets.”

“Eeh, lass, I didn’t know. I’m that sorry.”

“When she vanished a few years back I swore I’d be no man’s wife, at least one of these men,” looking about her at those in the yard, “and no man’s whore. I’m going to be independent, respectable. I’m going to get on somehow and make a success of what I do and the only thing I know is cotton and the dozens of industries that come from it. I’ve read books, Annie. I’ve kept me eyes and ears open while I’ve been here and I know the time’s come for us to move on. I know how to spin cotton. I’ve watched it right from the blow-room where the bales are opened and the raw cotton cleaned. I’ve stood in the combing-room and studied what goes on there and then I’ve spun what comes out of it on my frames. I’ve watched the winding, the knitting, the warping, the sizing and then the weaving and I reckon if I was asked to I could do the lot. There’s only ‘making up’ left. I know a bit of decent cloth when I see it, Annie, and I’m going to put it to good use. It won’t be easy. I don’t know how our Mary and Rose’ll take to it but I’ve made my mind up.”

“Ter do what, Nancy?”

“As I said all I need now is to learn how to make up. To use a sewing-machine and make shirts, trousers, baby things, anything. Value for money for working-class folk to begin with. Good stuff but cheap.”

“Eeh, lass.” Annie was clearly flabbergasted. “I’m fair speechless. I can’t tekk it in. Glory be ter God, a little lass o’ your age tekkin’ on them manufacturers from Brown Street ’n’ Shude Hill.”

“I’m going to take a stall on Smithfield Market, Annie. I know someone who’ll help me. One of us can work on it while the others machine whatever we find sells best.”

“Eeh, lass,” Annie said again, shaking her head, her admiration for Nancy’s courage warring with her instincts to tell her not to be so daft. Women like them didn’t go into business for themselves. In fact women of any sort, as far as she knew, didn’t go into business at all. That was a man’s world. Women who were married to wealthy chaps, though how they lived and what they did all day was a mystery to Annie, stayed in their own homes, safe and protected. If you were poor like she was you got wed and had bairns and still worked in the jennygate, leaving the children to drag each other up, those that survived, and when they were big enough they followed you into the mill. Her old man had been a labourer at the market and between them they had managed but it was a hard row to hoe. How much harder for this bright-eyed lass who had no man behind her. Even one as feckless as Annie’s had been was better than nowt.

“So where yer goin’ then, ter learn all this stuff?”

“It’s a shirtmaker’s in Brown Street.”

Annie was horrified. It might be hard work in the jennygate but compared to those deep cellars in Brown Street and the other streets in Manchester and Salford where making up was done, this was bloody heaven.

“Not in one o’ them sweat shops, Nancy,” she protested. “They’ll work yer ter death there, lass, so I ’eard, an’ in the most dreadful conditions. Not fit ter keep pigs in, some o’ them places. Cellars, cold an’ damp so that the girls are ill all the time.”

“I . . . I saw it, Annie, when I went to ask for work and I agree it’s not pleasant but we must learn the trade and we won’t be there long. We’re all quick learners and machinists are better paid than handworkers. As soon as we know all they can teach us, we’ll leave and go to one of the factories in Shude Hill and learn how to make undergarments. How to cut out and . . . well, whatever is needed to set up on our own. You can hire a sewing-machine, Annie, did you know that?”

“No.” Annie was in a daze, unable to keep up with the sharp flight of Nancy’s mind.

“Oh, yes, I’ve been making enquiries so if I could hire one, or perhaps two, to use at home in the evening making up . . .”

“What about cloth, lass? Where yer gonner get it? They don’t sell it by’t yard, yer know.”

Nancy’s face fell. “Mmm, I know that.” Then she brightened, unwilling to be put off by Annie’s practical question. “I’ll get over that when the time comes.”

They sat for several long minutes staring bemusedly at the familiar scene before them, not really seeing it, for it was one their eyes happened upon every day of the week. Even though it was breakfast time the yard was busy, for several waggons loaded with bales of raw cotton just come from the southern states of America via Liverpool were in urgent need of attention. The bales weighed five hundred pounds each but the men, young and broad-shouldered, hefted them from the waggons as though they contained nothing more than feathers. They were sweating, their brawny, muscled arms rippling in the smoke-hazed sunshine, glancing across the yard to where the mill lasses were eating their “snap” and though most of the lasses smiled and looked away, then back again in the manner of young girls, the bonniest of the lot did not appear to notice that they were even there, let alone showing themselves off for her.

There was a shout and a sudden clatter at the mill gate and the gatekeeper ran frantically to unlock it. Every morning at six o’clock it was locked against latecomers and was not opened again until eight o’clock and breakfast time. This was nearly over and those who had been allowed in a few minutes earlier had dispersed and the gates locked behind them again.

A fine chestnut mare cantered through. The animal was, even to their untrained eyes, a thoroughbred, dashing and wild and as good-looking as the man on her back; a beautiful animal with a rippling coat that looked as though it had been polished with a silk scarf. Her hooves crashed on the cobbles in alarm over something only she could see. She rolled her eyes in what seemed to be furious rage and her rider struggled as he strove for dominance. He rode through the crowd of men and women and children, scattering them like a flock of squawking chickens in a farmyard in a way that appeared to imply they either got out of his way or he would ride them down.

“Aay up, ’ere’s our lord an’ master,” Annie muttered. “It’s a bloody wonder ’e don’t injure someone on that there bloody ’orse of ’is, the great daft sod.”

They had both stood up since it was almost time for the engines to be switched on, shaking down their skimpy skirts and smoothing their hair back from their sweaty faces. They watched as the young master, apparently not in complete control of the lively mare, did his best to restrain her lively side-stepping.

“Steady, girl, steady,” he was saying, his voice low and soothing, leaning forward to put a gloved hand on the animal’s neck but she was young, new to him, new to the vigorous bustle of the yard and she continued to toss her head, to roll her eyes and dance her way sideways across the cobbles.

There were two enormous shire horses, which had just brought in a further waggon load of raw cotton, standing patiently awaiting their turn to be unloaded. Children darted about, so used to the gentle, patient giants they played almost under their bellies, and when one of the horses began to urinate in a long, yellow stream, after an initial cry of dismay, the children stamped and jumped in the warm and widening pool. They wore no shoes as they shrieked with delight at the game then, suddenly noticing them, they stopped and stared at the horse and rider.

There was one child, skinny, as they all were, dirty, as they all were, a little girl with a wild mop of uncombed curls who seemed to be transfixed as the tall mare loomed over her and though the man on her back shouted at the child to get out of the way, she continued to stand in her path, her eyes wide with shock.

Nancy was the nearest, and the quickest, and though she felt herself for several heart-stopping moments to be directly under the mare’s belly, she snatched the child sideways, throwing her and herself to the pile of sacking she and Annie had been sitting on. Annie clutched at the child, holding her as she might one of her own, telling her with rough kindness that she was all right and to give over snivelling, for there was no harm done.

Nancy didn’t think so. Her pale face had become pink with indignation.

“What in hell’s name d’you think you’re doing, riding that horse among a group of children. You might have killed that child or any of them, for that matter,” she cried accusingly, and everyone in the yard surged forward enthusiastically the better to hear. “If you’ve no control over the bloody thing you’ve no right riding it in here where there are young children about. Children under nine years of age, I shouldn’t wonder,” she spat at him meaningfully. She shaded her eyes with her hand, almost falling over backwards in her attempt to look up into his face several feet above hers. “Have you no consideration for these babies you employ? Not content with endangering their lives in the mill beneath those lethal machines of yours, you ride them down in the mill yard.”

She paused for breath as the young man threw his leg over the horse’s back and leaped lightly from the stirrup to the ground. The mare was still nervous, inclined to jib at every sound and movement and when he shouted for someone to come and see to her, the reluctance to do so was very marked.

The animal was finally led away by the burly chap who drove one of the waggons and who looked as though he’d stand no nonsense even if the thing had a pedigree as long as her long legs. She went meekly enough, recognising authority, it seemed, her head hanging as though ashamed of her previous precocious behaviour.

They stood face to face. He saw a tall, slender girl with eyes like molten honey. A girl with full breasts, the nipples of which almost pierced the thin, sweat-stained cotton of her sleeveless bodice. Her skin was flushed at the cheekbone, whether with her indignation or perhaps where the sun had tinted it, he didn’t know. Her mouth was wide, a ripe tomato red and her teeth were as white and even as his own. Her hair was a rich, gold-streaked brown fastened at the back of her head into a plait as thick as his wrist and yet it still managed to look unconfined. Crisp curls hung into her eyes and about her cheeks so that, like another man before him he felt the strangest need to put up a hand and smooth it back. Her jaw was strong, clenched to a defiant angle and her whole manner spoke of fearlessness, of her need to let him see that she was afraid of no one, and certainly not of him.

She saw a man, hard, tall, lean, arrogant as men of consequence often are, dressed in the manner of a young gentleman of business, his linen immaculate, his dark grey suit and dove grey waistcoat fitting him to perfection. His face was amber-tinted as though he spent a great deal of his time outdoors. His narrowed eyes were a smoky grey with strange flecks of darker grey in them, almost like stripes running from the iris to the outer edge of the pupil. They were surrounded by long, curling lashes. His hair was much the same colour as her own and just as thick but where hers was curly his was straight, spiky, standing up from his forehead where it had been brushed.

He was perhaps half a head taller than she was and in the tick of a second on the gold watch he wore across his waistcoat, less than a second, as their eyes met there was a flare of recognition, not from a previous meeting but of something in them both. So here you are, his spoke to hers. I knew you would come one day, and here you are. Yes, I’m here, the answer followed, then the strange moment was over, forgotten as though it had never been and they were just one furious combatant facing another who was more surprised than annoyed.

“And what the hell is this, then?” he asked, not speaking to the crowd of operatives in the yard, of course. “And who, may I ask, are you?” looking her up and down impudently, clearly amused and not at all put out, even if she was. The child who, to his credit, had aroused genuine alarm in him was forgotten. There was insolence in the way he stood and in the long, lounging line of his body, in the curve of his well-shaped mouth which was inclined to smile, if she would. She was a very lovely girl, his eyes said, though she was clearly maddened by something: was it to do with the child she had thrown, as though she were in great danger, to the pile of sacking? The child – and weren’t there always children in his father’s mill and beneath his father’s machines, illegally so – was not harmed. Even if this furiously indignant and gloriously attractive girl had not removed her as she had done, he would not have run the child down. He was too good a horseman for that but it had been a close shave. Still, she had no reason, and no right to turn on him as she had done, ready to scratch his eyes out by the look of her.