Down Weaver's Lane (3 page)

As he and the soldier turned to leave, Jack followed them to the door and asked in a low voice, ‘Where have they taken Dad’s body?’

‘To the church hall. He’ll go into a pauper’s grave unless you’ve money put by for a proper burial?’ Eli looked questioningly at the lad, who shook his head.

‘And our Tom?’

‘He’ll likely wind up in Lancaster County Gaol till the next Assizes. It’s a serious matter, machine breaking is.’

Jack had to ask it, though the words nearly choked him, ‘Will they - hang him?’

Eli shrugged. ‘That or transport him. He was a damned fool. The whole town’s full of fools, it seems, my own cousin among them.’ He clapped Jack on the shoulder, the only sympathy he dared offer, then moved towards the door, signalling to the soldier to follow him.

When the two men had left, Jack leaned his head against the wall near the door and tried to hold back the sobs that were choking his throat, but they wouldn’t be held in. He couldn’t believe his dad was dead. Jem Staley had always dominated this house, been so full of life and vigour. And Tom - further sobs came out, strangled, harsh noises - Tom had been Jack’s best friend as well as his brother. He could not imagine life without him.

It was a minute or two before he could control himself enough to turn and then he saw Meg still kneeling by their unconscious mother, chafing her hands and weeping quietly.

She looked up as he came across the room and offered in a small, tight voice, ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you, Jack. You were right not to go out tonight. Do you think Sam Repley was with them?’

‘Aye, I should think so. He’s another damned hothead like our Tom.’

She sobbed aloud at that, a rare thing for a lass who usually kept her feelings to herself.

He put his arm round her, saying, ‘Meg, Meg.’ But what comfort could he offer when he still felt raw with his own grief?

She stared down at her lap. ‘I’ve allus liked Sam. Even when I were a little ’un.’ Her voice was dull, her whole body drooping.

Jack gave her another hug. She wasn’t quite fifteen, but she seemed older suddenly. ‘Eh, love, you allus did choose a hard road. Could you not have settled your fancy on a lad as wasn’t so wild?’

‘Sam’s allus been special. An’ he cares about me, too. He said so.’

‘You should be thinking of our Dad an’ Tom now, not an outsider.’

‘I am thinking of them. But I’m thinking of all as were out machine breaking tonight as well. I heard you ask if they’d hang our Tom. They might hang them all.’ She began sobbing.

He could not think of anything to say that was worth saying, so he watched his mother. She was conscious now, he could tell from the way her eyes were moving behind her closed lids. ‘Mam?’ he said gently.

She groaned and kept her eyes closed as if she didn’t want to face reality.

‘Mam,’ he said more urgently, and at last she opened her eyes.

‘Tell me it isn’t true?’ she begged, clutching his arm.

‘You know it is.’ He expected her to weep hysterically or even faint again, but she didn’t.

Swallowing hard, she sat up and asked, ‘What are we going to do, Jack? How can I feed them childer now?’ Her voice rose. ‘I’ll kill myself, aye an’ them too, afore I let anyone put us in the poorhouse.’

‘It won’t come to that.’ But he couldn’t be certain. He looked round, feeling bitter. Recently they’d been living more comfortably than ever before, but now, despite his brave words, he couldn’t think how they would possibly manage - always supposing Mr Rishmore let him stay on at the mill. He wasn’t earning a man’s wages yet. Old Rishmore didn’t pay you full wages till you were eighteen. Said he wasn’t encouraging early marriage. His mother’s voice, low but still throbbing with suppressed hysteria, made him look round.

She clutched his arm. ‘Promise me you won’t leave me, Jack. Promise me you’ll always be there to look after us. Promise you won’t desert us like your father did.’

‘No one can always be there,’ he protested.

She screamed and shook him, then began to weep hysterically, saying, ‘Promise me, promise me!’ over and over.

So wild was her appearance that he feared for her reason and could not refuse what she asked. ‘I promise I’ll do my best, Mam.’

It was some time before she stopped weeping then she fixed her eyes on his face and demanded, ‘You won’t go getting married and leaving us with nothing?’

‘Mam, that’s not fair,’ Meg put in.

Netta rounded on her. ‘You shut up, you young slut! We s’ll be lucky if you’ve not getten a bairn in your belly, the way you’ve been carrying on with that Sam.’

Jack saw his sister flinch as if their mother had struck her and stepped between them as he often did. ‘Mam, if I do get married it’ll not be till the little ’uns are grown an’ able to look after theirsen. An’ I’ll allus make a home for you.’ There was nothing he could do to help his father now and his brother’s fate was in the hands of the judge, but somehow he would find a way to look after his mother and the others, that he vowed most solemnly. And as Joey was only two, it would be a good many years before he would be free of that promise. He knew it and did not flinch from it, not when he saw the anguish on his mother’s face, not when he thought of Shad, Joey and young Ginny going hungry.

On that thought, he called up the stairs, knowing the children could not help but be awake after all the noise, for the walls were thin, ‘Come on down, you lot.’

They stood huddled by the foot of the stairs, pressed close together. His mother made no move towards them so Jack did, gathering them to him and saying in a voice which broke on the dreadful words, ‘You heard it all, didn’t you? Our Dad’s been killed and our Tom’s in prison.’

The two youngest looked up at him only half understanding the significance of this and Shad gulped audibly as he nodded. He was old enough at eleven to know how hard it was to set bread on the table every day.

‘Us Staleys cannot do owt now but stick together,’ Jack went on. ‘We mun help one another as best we can. An’ help our Mam, too.’ He’d hoped his mother would come over to them to reinforce what he was saying, but she didn’t. She stayed where she was, on her own, sobbing and rocking to and fro, still perilously close to hysterics. He knew then that the main reason he must stay with her was the children. Someone had to care for them properly and his mother grew more selfish as she grew older. He looked across at Meg, also standing by herself, and jerked his head in a silent invitation to join them.

She stepped across and put one hand hesitantly on Ginny’s shoulder, then all of the children were hugging one another, weeping together for their father and brother.

 

Jack didn’t need the knocker-up rapping at his bedroom window in the morning to wake him because he’d hardly slept. Tom usually shared this bed with him, while Shad and Joey slept on a mattress in the corner. It felt wrong to have the whole bed to himself, lonely too. And in his mind’s eye he kept seeing Tom, manacled and perhaps bleeding, because the soldiers weren’t gentle when they were dealing with a riot.

His mother stared at him when he went downstairs at his usual time to go to the mill and said, ‘Eh, you look different, older!’

Jack certainly felt different. He knew himself to be a man grown now, one with heavy responsibilities - and all this just two weeks past his sixteenth birthday. It wasn’t fair, but then life rarely was. He must just get on with it. And the first thing to do was see if he still had a job.

 

It was all for nothing, Jack kept thinking as he joined the other people making their way towards the big brick building that dominated the town. The new machines were still there and now many families were deprived of their breadwinners, his dad was dead, Tom in jail - and all for nothing. Folk nodded to one another but there were no cheery greetings and banter. Not this morning. And more than one face showed eyes swollen by tears.

The big mill gates were closed, with only the little side gate open, so they had to queue to get in. Constable Makepeace was standing outside with a soldier, both of them very watchful, so no one said anything as they stood there in the rain.

Inside Isaac Butterfield stood in the little boxed-in shelter, with his wages book on its wooden stand, checking them in one by one. He was as much part of the mill as the Rishmores were.

As his turn came Jack held his breath, praying they would not turn him away.

Mr Butterfield looked at him, then said his name as usual and ticked the big book.

Jack let out his breath and passed through the gate. Maybe there was hope still. He shuddered as he looked round the rain-slicked mill yard. There were signs of damage everywhere: stones and pieces of broken glass swept into piles, the windows of the weaving shed gaping to the weather.

Mr Graslow was standing outside his little office in the weaving shed. He nodded to Jack and muttered in a low voice, ‘Sorry about your father, lad.’

‘Thanks.’ Jack went to fetch the broom and started his first job, sweeping out Mr Graslow’s little office with even more care than usual. He then went to fill the oil cans. One or two people muttered words of sympathy as he passed and he wished they wouldn’t because they made him want to sob like a little lass.

Some faces were missing. No one commented or asked where they were.

There were people coming and going in the yard and office all morning, and men mending the broken windows, but no one in the weaving shed with its rows of noisy, clanking machines looked up, just kept their heads down and worked steadily. There was one woman in between each pair of machines tending them, the odd child fetching and carrying for the women, while the few men left in the mill now mainly worked in the engine house or drove the drays that fetched the yarn or took the bolts of cloth to be finished or dyed.

Jack had been kept on when other lads were turned off, either because they’d grown older or because the machines had been changed. Mr Graslow, the overlooker, said he was a smart young fellow and was training him up to act as assistant overlooker when he was older and the mill grew bigger, as Mr Rishmore said it would. Jack had been proud of being singled out for that, though if there were any other sort of work available he’d not have chosen to work in such a noisy, stifling place as the mill, with its rows of machines thumping away day in, day out. Now, as main bread-winner, he was terrified of being turned off and for all his grief he worked harder than any of the others.

The hours passed and Mr Graslow didn’t say a word about the machine breaking. What did this mean? Only - if they were going to turn Jack off, why had they let him start work? When Mr Rishmore dismissed anyone, they usually had to get out of the mill straight away, often with him beating them about the shoulders with his walking stick.

After the half-hour dinner break, during which people ate their snap in near silence, the overlooker laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder as he was about to go back to his work.

‘Mr Samuel wants to see you in the office.’

Feeling a hundred years old Jack nodded and crossed the yard to stand in front of the polished wooden counter in the outer office.

The elderly clerk in the corner had his head down and was scratching busily with his quill, while Mr Butterfield, the head clerk, was standing behind the counter, grim-faced. He greeted the lad with, ‘Wait over there, Staley.’

There were no seats, so Jack stood by the wall for a good half hour until the worry had built up inside him like a ton of lead. He felt sure now that he was going to lose his job, then they’d all be turned out of their house and have to go on the tramp to beg for a living. Or be sent to the poorhouse.

At last he heard a bell ring and Mr Butterfield came out from behind the counter to show him into the master’s room.

Mr Samuel, the master’s son, who was the same age as Mr Butterfield, was sitting behind his father’s big polished desk today, looking very stern. He said nothing, staring at Jack as if sizing him up. The lad stood quietly. He had never been inside this room before but it was just as luxurious as folk said, with a thick carpet on the floor, velvet curtains at the window and solid pieces of well-polished mahogany furniture everywhere you looked. He felt so nervous he wondered if he’d even be able to frame a word.

Mr Samuel was not as severe in his dealings with the operatives as his father, but he was still strict enough. He fined those who came late to work or who disobeyed the rules by leaving the places where they toiled without permission. There were rules for everything, it seemed sometimes. You had to sweep the floor where you worked four times a day, oil the machinery at regular intervals, not speak to anyone while you were working except about the work itself. Folk joked that you had to piss carefully, too, or they’d fine you for doing that wrongly. No one was joking today, though.

Jack usually managed to escape without a fine and he’d have to be doubly careful now because they would need every farthing he could earn. Every single one.

If he still had a job.

‘Go and stand in front of the desk,’ Mr Butterfield whispered, giving him a poke to make him move forward.

Mr Samuel picked up a piece of paper and studied it.

Feeling resentful as well as afraid Jack stood where the clerk pointed, clasped his hands tightly in front of him and waited. What did the paper say? Surely there was nothing they could accuse him of?

Mr Samuel finished reading, set the paper down and stared at Jack again. ‘You didn’t go machine breaking with your father and brother last night, Staley. Why not?’

‘I didn’t think it was right, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you can’t stop progress, even when it hurts you and yours. And because the machines are your family’s property, not ours.’

Mr Samuel consulted another piece of paper. ‘I’m told you go to church regularly and are a member of the choir.’