Shining Threads (51 page)

She felt quite pleased with herself. She stood up and smoothed down the tight-fitting black breeches she wore, smiling a little for she had made a decision and had a sensible plan of action.
That was what she would do tomorrow. She would call on the bank manager and the lawyer and then, step by step, one action surely leading to another, she would gradually take a hold on the unwieldly
package her mother had left her and which was loosely tied together and called ‘the mills’. She’d show them, all of them, meaning, of course, Will Broadbent who had so insulted
her with his nasty proposition. She’d show him that she needed no one’s help, especially his, to keep the profits flowing from the business which had been the most efficient and
productive in the Penfold Valley for almost a hundred years. It only needed that first step to get her going. Everyone had to take it. Her Aunt Kit and her own mother had done it and if they could
do it so could she. She’d let no one guess at her complete lack of knowledge or her fear and though they might suspect they would never know for certain. Bluff, it was called, and she would
learn to be good at it. Damn him to hell. She’d show him.

‘You off then?’ Annie asked.

‘Yes, I’ve had an idea. I’ll go to see the bank manager. He’ll tell me where to begin. Uncle Joss did say something about consulting him and I’d clean forgotten in
all the . . . well, I’m sure he’ll give me some clue where to begin. Thanks for the tea, Annie. I’ll be over again soon and if there’s anything you need just let me
know,’ she added for Annie, Nelly, Polly and Gracie had all been thrown out of work by the destruction of the mill. ‘By the way, where are the girls? ‘They’re usually
helping you with something. Don’t tell me you’ve let them escape your tyranny for once?’

‘They’re workin’. All three o’ them.’ Annie stood up, moving the pans on the fire, setting the tongs to a more precise angle in the hearth, her face expressionless,
her manner defensive, the very air about her rigid with her determination that everything should be in the perfect order she liked. ‘And I’m ter be off in a day or two so I’ll not
be ’ere when yer call.’

‘Oh? You never told me you had a job.’

‘I’m tellin’ yer now an’ yer’d best be off or it’ll be dark soon.’

‘Never mind that. What are the girls doing and where are you going? I thought we’d agreed I’d fit you in at one of the other mills, you and the girls.’

‘Oh, aye, an’ what about them as was laid off because o’t fire? ’Undreds of ’em. Are yer to fit them in an’ all?’

‘You know I can’t do that. There isn’t enough work.’

‘They know that, an’ so do I, that’s why I’m off ter . . .’

‘To where?’

‘I’ve found work in Manchester.’

‘Manchester! But you can’t go all that way. I need you here.’

‘What for?’

‘Oh, Annie, you know you’re the only one with any sense I can talk to. You are . . . aware . . . of how things are with Drew at the moment.’

‘Aye, I reckon the ’ole valley knows.’

‘Well, then, I must have someone to . . . to discuss my problems with. Is it not possible to find work closer than Manchester? And how are you to get there and back each day? It’s
nearly ten miles . . .’

‘We’re moving. I’ve sold up an’ we’re movin’.’ Annie’s face was gaunt and hollow-cheeked and Tessa wondered why she had not noticed it before, but
her voice was tart and quite resolute. ‘We’ve got lodgings in Salford. I’ve got rid o’ most o’t stuff . . . we ’ad to eat, tha’ knows . . .’

‘But you know you had only to ask me . . .’

‘Mebbe so, but we’ve always managed on our own, like, an’ I’ll not take charity.’ She lifted her chin menacingly as though daring Tessa to try pressing it on her.
She was looking for no sympathy. She stated a fact and that was that and there was absolutely no use in Tessa attempting to change her mind. ‘The girls are . . . pin-heading in Brown Street
an’ I’m ter do pin-sheeting . . .’

‘Pin-sheeting?’ Dear God, what was that?

‘Aye, just ’til summat better turns up. Our Jack’s in a warehouse in Portland Street. It tekks brass to keep a lad articled. The lawyer in Crossfold kept ’im on as long
as ’e could but . . . well, ’e’s a strong lad an’ when things is better ’e can go back. ’Till then us’ll manage.’

Tessa fumbled her way into a chair, her face like paper and somehow, though her mind told her it was foolish, this appeared to be even worse than the death of poor Charlie and the chaos she
herself was in. She had no one,
no one
in whom she could confide her absolute terror, her sense of being caught in some ghastly nightmare from which somehow she must escape. Only Annie. Only
Annie and now Annie was to leave her as well. Drew was . . . well, Drew had a contempt for the commercial world so great and so condemning he would beg on the streets rather than submit to it. He
was, in the opinion of Crossfold and the Penfold Valley and to himself, if she were to be truthful, too fine a gentleman for the life of a millmaster. He had simply been waiting, they told one
another, to get his hands on his considerable share of the Chapman fortune when he would be off, with or without that dashing wife of his, to more exciting climes than Crossfold.

‘We are rather rich now, are we not?’ He had grinned amiably, daring her to deny it, his vivid blue eyes quite beautiful in the deep, smooth brown of his handsome face. He really is
quite flawless, she had thought, from the outside, for she had no illusions about her husband’s unstable mind. She herself was wild and just as carelessly imprudent, but where Drew exposed
himself to danger with no thought to the consequences, not even aware that there were any, she had, in the past, done it quite deliberately, challenging the gods to stop her. And now the gods had
stopped her and she must find a solution without even Annie to give her a hand.

‘I didn’t know,’ was all she could find to say in response to Annie’s news. ‘I really had no idea.’

‘Thi ’as enough on thi mind, lass, wi’out me ter think on. But we couldn’t just sit ’ere an’ wait fer summat to ’appen. It’s same fer us all, them
as worked at Chapmans. Mouths ter feed an’ no wages ter do it. Anybody with a bob or two put by ’as spent it. Now it’s pawnshops’ turn, then, fer them as can do nowt else,
poor relief. You’d not noticed, what with all you ’ad on yer plate, but I’ve ’ad ter let me mam’s things go.’

Tessa looked about her dazedly noticing for the first time that the dresser on which Annie’s willow pattern had once proudly stood, probably bought at one of the pot fairs which toured the
north of England and not worth a great deal but dear to Annie, was empty of all but a couple of chipped mugs, the old kettle and a frying pan with a broken handle – a few things not even the
pawnbroker would consider. The room was bare somehow, though she could not have said what else was gone, and when she turned back to Annie her friend began to polish the dresser vigorously, wanting
nothing said, nor willing to receive pity and indeed showing quite plainly she would be deeply offended if any was offered.

‘There’s no need ter look like that, my girl. We’ll be all right, me an’ the childer.’ She always called them that though Jack would be eighteen now.
‘It’s only temporary, o’ course,’ she asserted, warning any fates which might be listening that she’d know the reason why should it prove otherwise.

Tessa stood up again, the colour seeping slowly back into her pale cheeks. For a moment she had allowed Annie’s news to bring her close to fainting, the awful prospect of not having this
sharp-spoken, sharp-faced woman right here where Tessa could find her whenever she pleased, taking her wits. They had been friends, or as close to friends as Annie would allow, for years now, a
faintly uneasy relationship since Annie was extremely sensitive to what she thought of as ‘decent’ and ‘proper’ and in her opinion persons of a different class did not mix.
She was a good listener, becoming involved in all Tessa’s troubles, conveying her opinion with grunts of scorn, irritable shrugging of her shoulders, unbelieving shaking of her head, sharp
tuttings, an ability to let you know exactly how she felt without saying a great deal. And yet when she did speak she demonstrated her north-country shrewdness, cunning almost, with bite and
humour. What was she to do without her?

But she was right, of course. Tessa could not find employment for the hundreds of operatives who had been thrown out of work by the fire until the mill re-opened and only the Lord knew when that
would be, but though she might be unable to do anything about the rest she would put this family back to work by the end of the week.

‘You get down to the pawnshop and get your things at once,’ she said briskly, ‘because if you think I’m going to drink out of those dreadful mugs you are mistaken. See,
here’s a guinea, it’s all I have on me. Then get the train to Manchester and fetch those girls back. And Jack. I’ll see to the lawyer. Jack’s had too good an education to
waste it in a warehouse and I’m sure when . . .’

‘You can stop right there, Mrs Greenwood, if you please.’ Annie’s face was taut with displeasure. Her pale brown hair was dragged back severely into a small bun with not a wisp
allowed to escape and the style gave her an added sharpness. She laid her calloused, hard-working hands on the table top – where had her handsome chenille cloth gone? Tessa had time to
consider – and her eyes were quite astonishingly vivid in her colourless face. Her voice almost splintered it was so icy. ‘We can manage right nicely on us own, if yer don’t mind.
We’ve takken no charity, me an’ me family, ever, an’ we’ll not start now. Any road, all’t arrangements’ve bin made an’ I’ll thank you not ter come
’ere interferin’. You sort out yer own life, my lass, before yer start on mine.’

She sniffed loudly, then turned away as though to imply that there was nothing more to be said on the subject. She’d brook no argument, not from anyone: not from her brothers and sisters
who’d set up such a caterwauling you’d have thought she’d asked them to jump off Badger’s Edge instead of take up the decent employment she’d found for them, and
she’d brook none from this woman who would insist that they were friends. Just as if the likes of her and Annie Beale could ever be truly that. She’d not say she wouldn’t be sorry
to . . . well, to lose sight of her since she’d given Annie many a good laugh on the quiet, but as for allowing her to order their lives, just like they belonged to her or summat, that would
never do.

‘Annie, please. I really am not offering charity. You will all be working . . .’

‘Aye, an’ who’ll get t’sack ter give us that work, tell me that?’

‘Oh, Annie, please let me . . .’

But Annie would not be moved. She’d keep in touch, she promised grudgingly, and no, Tessa wasn’t to visit them – Annie tried to picture the elegant Mrs Drew Greenwood in the
small cellar room she rented in Salford – but first chance she got she’d come up to Crossfold and . . . well, it were no good frettin’ over what couldn’t be helped and Tessa
must stop making a fuss over nothing. But when her friend, and she admitted to herself
now
Tessa was her friend, put her arms about her in farewell, Annie allowed the gesture.

Tessa and Laurel sat one on either side of the cheerful drawing-room fire that evening waiting for Drew who had not yet come home from the races. Was that where he had said he was going, or was
it off on a day’s hunting? She couldn’t remember. The episode with Annie had upset her more than she cared to admit and her face was bleak as she sipped the sherry Laurel insisted upon
before dinner. Her thoughts were scattered dwelling on the awful disruption in everyone’s life caused by Charlie’s death. She felt guilty that her own overlying emotion was not one of
sadness for Charlie, for his widow and five fatherless children, but for herself who had lost with his death, not only her freedom, her friend who had kept her afloat on more than one occasion when
life had seemed quite intolerable, but her husband too, for where on earth was he at this time of night?

‘My brother is not to dine with us, then?’ Laurel enquired tartly. Her mourning black was deep and sombre, allowing not even a jet bead. She was playing for all it was worth the role
her husband’s death had cast her in, knowing full well that the deep black gave her an air of fragile vulnerability, a defencelessness which said she would simply break and shatter into a
hundred pieces should anyone speak a harsh word to her. She was a widow, a woman for whom the deepest respect and sympathy was expected, and she expected it. She was also a shareholder in Chapman
Manufacturing now, or would be when the estate was settled, small certainly, but with a voice in the running of things and she was waiting, unable to comprehend the true state of Drew
Greenwood‘s heedless indifference to the fate of the firm, for him to step into the shoes her Aunt Jenny and her own husband had left vacant. And where was he? And at this time when his
disregard for the convention of mourning was really quite indecent. Gadding about still with Nicky Longworth and the other wild-riding young men of his acquaintance, she supposed. It really was too
bad and her manner said so.

‘He will be here soon,’ Tessa replied shortly, not at all prepared for one of Laurel’s eternal lectures on the behaviour which was expected at a time like this of a gentleman,
which, one presumed, Drew was.

‘May one ask where he has gone?’

‘One may but I cannot promise to give the right answer.’

‘Are you saying you don’t know where your own husband is?’

Tessa sighed a long, wavering sigh. ‘That is what I am saying.’ And, really, I could do without your disapproving face and air of displeased resignation, she thought. Indeed, she had
begun to worry for though he had been late home on several occasions he had always sent a message to let her know. She did not want to share her anxiety with Laurel, constrained by pride and a
reluctance to let her sister-in-law crow, but when Briggs announced that dinner was ready and they moved into the dining-room, the third place set for Drew proclaimed even more loudly his
absence.

‘I do think he should make more of an effort to be here on time for meals,’ Laurel grumbled, picking delicately at the tiny portion of turbot her widowhood allowed her to manage, her
manner saying that really, in her state, should she be asked to put up with such thoughtlessness? ‘I suppose he is drinking with Nicky Longworth and has not noticed the time, or has probably
become so absorbed with whatever those wild friends of his get up to all day, he cannot bring himself to remember that he has a family at home grieving the loss of one of its members,’
meaning herself for who but Laurel Greenwood, she seemed to say, mourned her husband?