Shining Threads (59 page)

28

It was just over six months since Annie had gone to Manchester and with the new mill to be opened the following week Tessa searched for the scrap of paper on which her address
had been scribbled, intending to write to tell her that her job was waiting for her and that she was to come home immediately.

But the memory of their last meeting and Annie’s pigheaded refusal of employment at Crossbank or one of the other mills; her absolute determination to do what she thought right and not
what Tessa considered best for her, made Tessa leave the note she had begun to write and move thoughtfully to the window. Annie was quite likely to turn awkward if she thought she was being
‘ordered’ home. She might even be settled happily in her new place and job and be disinclined to return to the cottage – which Tessa had kept vacant for her – and her job at
the rebuilt mill. Tessa was not awfully sure what ‘pin-heading’ or ‘pin-sheeting’ was. Perhaps it was a splendid job which Annie had found more to her liking and in that
case it would need all Tessa’s powers of persuasion to get her to come home.

She had missed her. Annie’s forthright common sense and practical, realistic outlook on what life could fling at you had often been a lifeline for Tessa in the years they had been friends
and she needed her now as she had never needed her before. She was not awfully sure why since Annie was bound to disapprove of her renewed relationship with Will, but there would be comfort in
having Annie there in the cottage at Edgeclough, even if it was only to scold.

She had wondered vaguely, now that the mill was to be working again, whether Annie could be employed with something other than her spinning machine. There were hundreds of girls who could do the
work Annie had done before the fire. Annie was so bright and sensible, surely she could do something besides mind a couple of self-actors? And her sisters. They were growing up now and were ready,
she supposed, for marriage and how much better they would do, back here with their own people. Strangely, she never thought of marriage in connection with Annie. And, of course, there was Jack
whose place at Mr Dalton’s, the lawyer, had already been arranged and was waiting for him.

No, best get over to Manchester and talk face to face with Annie, make her see what wonderful opportunities were available not only to her, but to her family. Tell her she would be doing them an
injustice if she allowed such chances to slip from her grasp. In the most diplomatic way, of course, knowing Annie!

She told no one, not even Will, that she was going. Drew had ridden into Crossfold to see his tailor and would be bound to tarry at the Dog and Gun, and so on a fine day at the end of July she
took the train from Crossfold, changing at Oldham for Manchester, arriving at Victoria station as the clock struck noon.

The day was warm and though she wore a light-weight sprigged organdie gown of the palest grey she was immediately aware that not only was the close, smoke-covered pall which hung over the city
about to make her perspire in the most uncomfortable and unladylike way, but that her light-coloured gown would be stained and grimy long before she arrived at Annie’s. The huge crinoline
cage, though cooler than the old fashion of the six or seven petticoats she had worn to hold out the width of her skirt, was awkward to manoeuvre. As she and Emma, whom she had been compelled to
bring with her to avoid the attention a lady alone might attract, crammed themselves into a public carriage, Emma was quite appalled by its condition.

‘We can’t ride in that, Miss Tessa.’ Her voice was indignant, but at the same time somewhat apprehensive since, never having travelled in anything other than her
mistress’s splendid carriage, she was not at all sure of the rough fellow who was to drive them. ‘Mr Drew wouldn’t like it at all, not at all,’ she added tearfully.

‘Mr Drew doesn’t know so he cannot form an opinion and if we are not to ride in this carriage are you prepared to walk?’

Emma eyed the curious men who seemed to have nothing better to do than lounge about the station yard and stare and the barefoot, filthy-faced urchins, inclined to beg or throw stones, she was
sure. Reluctantly she climbed into the carriage.

‘Where to, madam?’ the driver enquired politely enough, though evidently not accustomed to driving a lady and her maid in his conveyance. When she told him, giving him the name of
the street which Annie had written down, she was bewildered when he turned to stare at her.

‘
Pike
Street? What, Pike Street what runs by’t river?’ he asked, his expression quite astounded.

‘I do not know where it runs. I merely wish to be taken there.’

‘Are yer sure yer mean Pike Street?’ he repeated, eyeing her elegant gown, her white, lace-trimmed parasol, her pretty pearl-grey bonnet on which an enormous white silk tea rose
bobbed and the dainty white kid boots to which already some quite unrecognisable substance adhered.

‘I do and I would be obliged if you take me there at once.’

‘Well, you know best,’ he remarked cheerfully, turning out of the station yard and into Victoria Terrace which led into Victoria Street.

They proceeded at a steady pace along the pleasant thoroughfare until the carriage turned a corner and there, in the centre of a vast square, stood the imposing building of the Royal Exchange,
the very heart of the cotton industry and without which, it was said, the sprawling body of its trade which spread over most of Lancashire, would cease to function. Radiating out from the Exchange
like the spokes of a wheel were dozens of streets in which lay the thousands of warehouses, factories and sweat-shops connected with the cotton industry, and all within five minutes’ walk of
its hub. The Royal Exchange was the focus of buying and selling cotton and on market days, Tessa had heard, its huge halls were crowded from one end to the other with buyers and sellers, not even
the least self-respecting of them without his tall silk hat for this was the most important cotton market in the world. She would come here one day, Will had told her, for she must learn everything
there was to know about cotton if she was to become the manufacturer her mother and her Aunt Kit had been. All around it, enormous warehouses were crammed with cloth, some of it her own, brought
from surrounding towns: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Stockport, and Crossfold! The excitement began to grow in her at that moment.

The streets became increasingly narrow and twisting the further they went and the buildings were so tall it was almost impossible to see the sky. There were waggons heavily laden with cotton
cloth, with piece goods and dress goods, with huge bales of raw cotton and all the commodities on which Manchester had built its reputation as the centre of the cotton industry. Waggons lumbered in
and out of wide gateways, the patient, plodding dray horses which pulled them bending their heads with the weight of their huge loads.

‘Oh, Lord,’ Emma gasped as their own carriage swayed quite dangerously in the frantic rush which seemed to pervade the area. A hurrying multitude crowded about the conveyance and the
impassive animal which pulled it, and surely the massed sea of people were in danger of being run down by the dozens of vehicles which crammed the streets, all of which were involved in the many
and complex layers of employment the industry produced. Brokers, yarn merchants, dyers, waste dealers, merchants, manufacturers, buyers and sellers, all were hurrying in the direction of the
particular street or region which dealt with their own section of the trade. Stockport and Salford were ‘making up’; Piccadilly and Portland Street where the great warehouses were
situated; Brown Street was ‘shirts’ and Stride Hill ‘underwear’. It looked just as though some careless foot had kicked over an ant-hill, scattering the human ants in every
direction, but there was a strange kind of order about it for each ant knew exactly its own destination and business.

‘Oh, Lord,’ Emma said again, inclined to be even more tearful as rude, inquisitive faces peered in at them, some leering at the sight of two pretty women in a place where the only
females were those drabs who worked in one of the hundreds of small factories, sweat-shops most of them, which crowded the cellars of every street, and were allied to the cotton trade.

The bustle of the town centre began to die away as they crossed the river Irwell, turning left to follow what was really no more than a cobbled track running beside the river. It was here that
the stench invaded the carriage, faint at first and causing no more than a tendency to sniff and turn one’s head in an effort to identify it and its source.

‘What is it, Miss Tessa?’ Emma whispered.

‘God knows, Emma, but whatever it is it seems to be getting worse by the minute.’

They each held a dainty scrap of perfumed lace to their nostrils and Tessa felt her stomach begin to move distastefully as the stink became so strong she could not only smell it, but taste
it.

On one side of them ran the river, slow moving, evil looking, with unidentifiable objects floating sluggishly just below its surface. Along its banks great piles of rotting garbage swung in the
gentle eddies of river water which had carried it there. The smell was appalling and Tessa had the strongest desire to scratch at herself just as though the deeper they penetrated into the squalid
district the more loathsome the miasma of filth grew on her skin.

‘’Ere we are,’ the driver of the carriage told them. He had a look about him which said he would be glad to get away from this place himself. Already attracted by the sight of
the carriage, the area was beginning to swarm with what must have been inquisitive children but which looked for all the world like small, scurrying monkeys, grey-coloured, pallid, furtive. He
could not imagine what two such elegant ladies wanted here, but a fare was a fare though if they asked him to wait he’d have to refuse. These urchins would pick his cab clean, wheels
an’ all, if he stood still for more than two minutes.

They were in a courtyard, large and square with immensely tall houses on three sides of it, each floor-level of the buildings contained by an iron-railinged balcony and each connected by narrow
stairs up to the sixth and top floor. The courtyard was unpaved and in its centre a huge pool of water had collected in a hollow, unable to run away to the river in which sewage was dumped.
Directly in the middle of the water was a broken building with an opening, evidently once a doorway from which not only the door but the frame was missing as well. It was from here that the stench
came, an invisible eruption to which those who inhabited the court seemed impervious but which brought stinging tears to Tessa’s eyes. Everywhere was filth, mud, rotting carcasses of what
must once have been a living cat or dog, and in it the children played, barefoot, almost naked, and men and women lolled, the smoky sunshine and warmth lulling them into a somnolence which gave
them the appearance of living corpses.

Emma began to choke and gasp as the foetid air entered her lungs. ‘Merciful heaven! Miss Tessa, please . . . we can’t stay here . . . call the carriage . . . don’t let him go,
Miss Tessa. . . . We’ll be murdered where we stand . . . or worse. Please, oh, please, Miss Tessa . . .’

Tessa felt the smarting tears clog her eyes but she clung to Emma’s arm, convinced that if she did not keep a hold on her the maid might make a run for it. They moved jerkily towards the
left-hand side of the courtyard. Her pretty, pale grey gown now had six inches of brown filth about its hem and the ooze of something quite dreadful seeped into her boots. Emma continued to weep
loudly.

‘Be quiet, Emma,’ Tessa said through gritted teeth, ‘or I swear I shall strike you. We shall just enquire here for Annie.’ She indicated a doorway above which was a sign
stating that ‘Good Beds’ were available, but Emma was beyond caring and continued to cry loudly. The children screamed in play and Tessa wondered how such undernourished bodies could
make such a noise as they threw whatever came to hand at one another. Slime ran down every wall, seeping into the unpaved ground, but a woman leaned casually by the doorway, inured, one supposed;
to the horror by its familarity.

‘I’m looking for Annie Beale,’ Tessa said firmly, her manner letting the woman know that she would tolerate no impertinence.

‘Who?’ The woman smiled pleasantly, or so she thought, but the sight of the blackened stumps in her mouth made Emma recoil against her mistress’s shoulder and reminded Tessa of
that day on the moor, long ago now, when the tinkers had chased her.

‘Annie Beale. This is Pike Street, isn’t it?’

‘Aye, it is.’

‘Well, then, do you know her? She’s about twenty-four and has three sisters and a brother. She came here six months ago . . .’

‘Oh, that one.’

‘You know her then?’

‘’Oo doesn’t, stuck-up cow.’

‘Where is she then? Where does she live?’

The woman indicated with her head towards a doorway which stood below ground in the third house along the road. Down the flight of area steps which led to it trickled some thick brown liquid,
gathering at the bottom and leaking under the fragile door and, Tessa assumed, into the cellar beyond.

She had turned away, her manner brisk and undaunted, wanting somehow to show this woman who eyed her with such amusement that despite her own upbringing she was quite able to cope with the
difficulties the woman lived amongst every day.

‘She’ll not be in,’ the woman said.

‘Oh . . . ?’

‘Well, she’ll be at work, won’t she, now she’s better.’

‘Better?’

‘Aye, from’t fever.’

‘Fever?’ Emma moaned and Tessa felt the dread move in her.

‘What . . . fever?’ There were so many. Cholera, dysentery, and dozens with no name but all rife in places such as this and carried indiscriminately to strike down where they were
least expected, for they were no respecter of class or privilege.

‘We gerrit regular round ’ere.’ She smiled more broadly, revealing most of the obscene interior of her mouth. ‘Sorts out weak ’uns, they say. Mind you, I’ve
seen a strong, well-set up lad go whistlin’ off to’t mill in’t morning’ an’ be lyin’ wi’ ’is toes turned up by nightfall.’