Raw Silk (9781480463318) (27 page)

“I would like a point of information from Mr. Marbalestier.”

“Certainly,” smiled Oliver.

“Mr. Marbalestier, as I understand it, it is your feeling that the East Anglian profit margin is more important than the general quality of life for people at the mill.”

Oliver grimaced and his voice came out at a slightly higher pitch. “There’s not going to
be
any life if we have to compete with Japan.”

“Yes, well, my point of information is, could you tell us how many shares of East Anglian stock you own yourself?”

Rattled, Oliver took a deep breath and a couple of beats before he answered through set teeth, “It is a matter of public record if you wish to look it up.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Tremain, and sat again. The hubbub rose, the women raucous above the rest.

A horse-faced woman from the silk shed stood up shaking her tweedy hair. “Mister Marbalestier,” she boomed, “you’ve told us something we don’t understand about pro-fits and pro-duction. Well, my grandmother filled pirns in this mill before immigrants such as yourself were born, and I’ll tell you something you don’t know about
weaving.
I went off my manual in fifty-nine, and I haven’t had a day’s satisfaction since. I used to have my sett of six, and when they were fixing to balk, they’d let me know and I’d tell the overlooker. Now all’s I do is walk around my twenty-four, I can go back and forth and not see anything wrong and yet there’s a bad fault in the packet. The overlooker has to tell
me.
You get cloth out of me, Mister Marbalestier, but I get nothing but backache filling batteries all day long. I don’t doubt but what there’s more money in automatics, but you ask me my profession, I’m a walker and a watcher. I haven’t been a
weaver
since nineteen and fifty-nine.”

She sat down in a murmur of approval.

“You won’t be a weaver if this company goes under to Japanese competition either,” Oliver said heatedly, but he was drowned out. Nicholson stood and rapped the gavel.

“It’s Mr. Peer who has studied the disadvantages of the expansion operation …”

Tremain again. “Nobody’s studied the disadvantages like these people. I suggest we hear from Mr. Collingworth on his study of the disadvantages.”

Collingworth, a feisty overlooker in a cowlick and a lumber jacket, picked up the cue before Nicholson could reply. “Yes, well, I’m an immigrant here myself.” Laughter and claps. “I immigrated from Radbourne when they went onto double shifts in forty-eight, and I can tell you I’ll immigrate myself straight out if you do it here. I got no objection to autos except they don’t ever need to stop, and I do. I don’t want another bunch coming in and mucking them about at night.”

“I was on shifts at Oakroyd,” a woman added, “and my oppo was always forgetting to fasten the reed on the last warp he gated. Funny, i’n’t it? He’s on bonus and he’s not interested how the next shift goes, he doesn’t straighten his selvages, does he, as long as the loom is running.”

“It breaks things down.”

“The person you depend on most, you don’t ever see him except to hand over the sett. It makes bad blood.”

“Listen.” The tweed-haired woman took over again. “You’re talking geography, let me tell you the autos mess up the geography of the shed. With a sett of six you’re near to the other weavers and you get to know them. You might not think we could pass the time of day in that racket, but we get pretty good at lip reading.”

She turned to the weavers’ benches and demonstrated, yawping obscenely; I could see the mouthing of “Marbalestier”—the rest I couldn’t catch but hardly needed to. The weavers laughed and there were scattered claps. Nicholson rapped and tried to get attention.

“Please, ladies and gentlemen! I think these remarks would be better addressed to Mr. Peer, who has made a study …”

“Study me ass!” shouted the man who had given me his seat. “Marbalestier’s the one that wants the quantity. Ask him why he put us on hooters, and what he studied that time.”

“Order!” Nicholson pounded the gavel but it was too far gone. Half the room was on its feet, including some Board members behind Oliver, calling for quiet.

“Extra shifts make extra meals.”

“When am I suppose to see my kids?”

“I’m not going to scrap my marriage to turn out your cloth at night.”

“It’s worse for singles, you get no evening.”

“You get less sleep on shifts.”

“When’s it going to end? Aren’t you going to have us on three shifts next?”

I took Malcolm’s hand, thought better of it, and went back to twisting my ring. It’s a strange thing to sit listening to a thousand people hate your husband. I was glad I was on the audience side, not identified with him. And when the guilt welled up for thinking that, I let it go, and watched it go. Oliver, when I dared to look at him, looked pompous and belligerent. He looked that way to me, which was the way he looked to them. I felt about him as they felt, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. Protective but justified. I’d been hating him for just those qualities, but I guess you always half discount a merely marital hate. Now they were shouting at him, for me, and I wondered, about the way Oliver is and the way he’s changed—is it possible that I was, simply … right?

The noise wore itself down a little; Nicholson finally put some force behind the gavel and knocked it back to a murmur.

“Please. We will entertain questions one at a time.”

Tweed-hair and her commanding bosom had the floor again. “I’d just like to point out to Mis-ter Marbalestier,” her stentorian voice rang out, “that it’s a different matter up there in Admin and your man-or houses. I work my sett, and my Pete was overlooker twenty-eight years before he died. Now my first girl’s a spooler and I got two more coming up for it in the next three years. At our place we eat East Anglian cloth, we sleep it, we brush our teeth with it. It’s all right for you, you don’t have your whole family wrapped up in the mill like us.”

Nicholson half rose but Oliver could take this one on himself. He leaned over the apron edge glowering into the weavers’ bench.

“I think that you have a distorted impression of life in A … Administration. I think you forget that my wife works right along beside me at East Anglian. As a matter of fact …”

He turned back to Nicholson, as if in appeal, and I think I understand very clearly what went on in the next few seconds. He turned in appeal to Nicholson, and Nicholson completed his rise. Then Oliver tumbled to what he was doing and put out a restraining hand. Nicholson cocked him a quizzical look as the hand fell on his arm. Oliver left it there a second and then took it off again. He turned away, away from George but also away from the house, and Nicholson walked down to the edge.

“As a matter of fact”—he beamed—“I think you all know Ginny Marbalestier, who works down in Design Print. It’s a great pleasure to be able to tell you, we had word this afternoon, that Ginny has won the Carnaby Award for Innovative Design. It’s a great honor for East Anglian. Let’s have a round of applause for Ginny Marbalestier! Where is she?”

There I was. I stood on stiff legs; Malcolm said, “Hey, mother!” and a begrudging scatter of clapping broke the rhythm of the meeting. That’s all it did, it broke the rhythm; it didn’t change a single mind. It brought the meeting to an end, I guess, a piffling, a piecemeal sort of dwindle. But if Oliver thought, in the minute between putting his restraining hand on George’s arm, and taking it off, that it would do any more for him than that, well then I guess it has to be said that he sacrificed me on a miscalculation.

Nicholson went into a statement of profound gratitude for the “open airing,” and assured the crowd again that their feelings would be taken into account. The workers rose and milled, a few women I knew nodded congratulations but no one wanted to come over to me, for which I was thankful. Malcolm began to enthuse, but I asked him please to save it, and he saw I meant it.

“What’s up?”

“Just save it, will you? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

As the hall began to empty the porter came up to us, hat in hand. “I wouldn’t advise you to drive it, Mrs. Marbalestier. I can’t do anything with it.”

“No. Thanks. No, I’ll go home with my husband.”

“Do you want a lift, Ginia?” Malcolm peered puzzled at me.

“No, go on, okay? I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.”

“It’ll be all right, you know. They’ll merge, and the workers will take it all right. When they’re riled you think they won’t, but they always do.” He patted my arm. “And the funny thing is, you know, they’ll send Tyler Peer to Japan. I’m pretty sure of that. Nicholson will want Oliver to mend his fences. He’ll want an eye on him.”

“You think so?”

“I do. And I hope so, ’cause we need you around here, babes.”

“Thanks, Malcolm.”

“Call me tomorrow.”

He left with the muttering stragglers. I went up and hung around in front of the stage behind Oliver and the members. They were huddling up there, Ian Kitto and Mrs. Linley and a half a dozen others, discreetly slapping each other on the shoulders and the backs. I loitered. I figured when I faced Oliver there was going to be a “moment.” The truth is, I felt a little overtired for a recognition scene. Then they started down the steps; Mrs. Linley squashed my hand in her doughy ones.

“What splendid news, my dear!” and Oliver headed down toward me.

He looked me straight in the eye. “I think it went pretty well, don’t you?” he said. “What do you think?”

I didn’t know the answer to this. So I said, “My exhaust pipe broke.”

He said, “I think they’ll come round, don’t you?”

I said, “My exhaust pipe broke. I’ll leave it here and go home with you.”

Ian and Tyler came round to praise me. Oliver said, “I’m just going to take Mrs. Linley to the station. I’ll be home soon.”

I said, “Oliver, my car broke down. It’s illegal. I already got a ticket.”

“I’ll just take Mrs. Linley to the station,” he said. “I’ll meet you home in an hour or so.”

I don’t think I was there. I walked out and got into my car; I thought maybe he would hear a busted exhaust. I started and roared up in front of the Board of Directors, which was just coming out the door, Oliver and the members and their controlling interest. They looked up at my roar. The porter started toward us from the back of the parking lot. I idled.

“I’m going home now,” I said to Oliver. “I’m going home.”

I
WENT HOME THE
way I’d come, in ten o’clock twilight. This time I saw no cops. I kept the speedometer steady at fifteen, and after a while I got used to my monotonous noise, which even began to absorb my attention, something like the rhythm of the looms, putting a barrier between me and the still streets, the peaked roofs and spires of Migglesly. My slightest pressure on the accelerator produced a ferocious roar, a lift of my foot toned it down again: illusion of control. That must be the attraction of a motorcycle, that illusion of command. At that speed it was a very long drive. Still, I kept noticing landmarks and not remembering how I’d got there. Hempton Mill appeared on my right before I remembered passing the Gatford roundabout. I didn’t register Eastley turnoff until I passed the George’s Head. I knew Oliver had not followed me, and yet every time I saw a headlight behind me I slowed to ten miles an hour until it passed. I could see from a long ways along the lane from Eastley Village that the house was dark, and the garage as I had left it, empty and open.

So I didn’t pull in. Instead I drove over the shoulder and onto the grass across from the gate, switched off and sat a minute in the moonlight. The fifteen miles had taken me over an hour; the moon had come out after a gray day, and now caught at the leaves of the dense hawthorn hedge that lined the field. Between me and the hawthorn was a grassy drainage ditch about eight feet across and six feet deep. It sloped gently into a muddy rivulet at the bottom, which took the moonlight prettily, weaving around stones and roots. I lit a cigarette and watched the water.

I’ll smoke this cigarette, I thought, which will take about fifteen minutes. If Oliver comes to rescue me before I put it out, then we’ll discuss it. If he doesn’t, then I’ll deal with my car, which is unfit for human transportation.

This seemed to me a very reasonable, a very ordered sort of decision, a reasonable start at putting things in order. I contemplated the angle of the ditch and visualized the slope of the mini’s side, tested my grip on the steering wheel so that my head wouldn’t hit the roof too hard. I tucked my handbag under my hip. All that was all right. I was quivering through the thighs and torso but not with fear; I knew perfectly well I was in no danger. On the contrary, I was averting danger by preparing to dispose of a death trap, clearly so designated by an expert bloke. The violence I was about to perform was a violence of statement merely; the manifestation of a manifesto I had not had ordinary verbal courage for, rather as if I should draw patterns on my hand with an X-Acto knife.

I watched the cigarette burn down, neatly tapping the ash, bounced it out and closed the tray. Nobody was approaching. I turned the motor on and shifted into first, edged parallel with the ditch before I began the descent, then inched forward in a shallow slant. I was halfway down before she rolled, and the left tires left the bank lazily, as if sucked back by the wet grass, so that the right fender broke the fall, and the bonnet and roof did a balletic somersault, slow motion, comfortable and satisfying. I hung onto the steering wheel and felt quite weightless as I turned over, the air circulating under me. I didn’t hit my head at all. My handbag was released and slithered past me to the roof. The car rocked once and settled. The motor died. It was deliciously quiet.

The mini was not quite upside down, and my weight was sliding sideways, looking for its natural relation to gravity; so I simply let my feet come to rest against the far door, hooked my bag on my wrist, and climbed out. I was now on the far side of the ditch, so I had to take my shoes off and wade through. I looked back at the mini, lying askew with all four tires in the air, and I rather wished I had closed the driver’s door, which stuck at an undignified angle in the air. As I thought this it began to creak, shifted and slammed to. It seemed a good omen. I went on into the house.