The Wild Dark Flowers (6 page)

Now Harry sat forward in his chair, listening to the conversation. Octavia saw that he was particularly struck by the overseer, Capthwaite: he was an unpleasant-looking man with a large stomach barely contained in a greasy waistcoat. She knew him of old; he had been her father’s man. He had a florid face on which a large, empty-looking grin was permanently plastered. The smile was so false that it made her uneasy just to look at him, and, the more she spoke, the broader his smile became, his frank gaze flitting between herself and her son. She was convinced that she amused Capthwaite. Occasionally he would use the kind of cajoling tone that one would use with a little girl. It made her pulse increase, her hackles rise.

She turned to Ferrow. “Why are children still working here?”

“It’s the bylaw,” Ferrow replied. “His lordship approved it.”

“They look only nine or ten.”

“No, ma’am,” Capthwaite interjected. “Eleven’s the youngest.” His bullish tone challenged her to contradict him. She was convinced that he was lying to her, but there was no way to prove it. “I won’t have underage children working here,” she said now, looking pointedly at Capthwaite and then back at Ferrow. “Is that understood?”

She knew that it was against the law to employ young children, but the mills and factories of Yorkshire and Lancashire routinely gainsaid it. At eleven, both boys and girls worked half-time; at twelve, full-time.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Lady Cavendish,” Ferrow added, “it’s the families who want it, and the children. They want to work. Now more than ever. The men are going. Someone’s got to replace them. And the orders . . .”

She knew about the orders. The mill was working flat out to meet the demand for the army. Last Christmas, they began to work twenty-four hours a day.

She stared down. She could see girls of Charlotte’s age, and younger, hurrying to and fro. There was a smell in the air, too: lanolin from the wool, and oil. It permeated the wood, the floors. Wool fibers floated in the air; even in the closed office she could feel it at the back of her throat.

Harry was smiling at Capthwaite. “Do you have children?” he asked.

“Aye, sir. A boy.”

“Is he working here?”

Capthwaite flushed. “Nay. He’s at school.”

“And why is that?”

“He’s a gradeley lad, he’ll make summat.”

“Make something? You mean of himself?”

“Aye, sir.”

“And these children won’t?”

Capthwaite’s empty smile broadened. “Them? Nay.” And his hand strayed to the leather strap at his waist. “They’re mardy, like. Stubborn.” He stuck out his chin as he glanced down at the workers below. “They’re good for the looms, and that’s all.”

“And you know that, do you, of each one of them?”

“Each one, aye,” he said, meeting Harry’s eye unapologetically, and holding his gaze.

Octavia spoke. “Thank you Mr. Capthwaite,” she told him. “Don’t let us keep you from your business.”

Capthwaite looked at Ferrow, who nodded his approval. They watched the man go, lumbering his way down the metal steps. He strutted up the central aisle glancing from right to left; halfway along, Octavia saw him stare in a leering fashion at a girl.

“Extraordinary,” Harry muttered.

“Mr. Ferrow,” Octavia said, “will you walk with us awhile outside?”

They left the building by the outside stair; standing on the stone steps, they watched the yard, full of horse-drawn wagons, getting a shipment ready to be sent down to Bradford.

“The flatbed lorries were requisitioned,” Ferrow said.

“I read your reports,” Octavia answered curtly. “I’m aware of the requisition.”

“They were brand new.”

“It can’t be helped.”

“Ma’am,” he acknowledged. And there it was again—that small slight smile to himself, as if she were intruding on a man’s game. As if to underline the point, Ferrow turned now and addressed Harry. “Perhaps you might ask, sir, if your father will ensure that no more are taken?” he said. “We’ve one other, but it is needed. It is so much faster than the horses.”

“I’m sure that my mother will ensure that herself,” Harry replied.

This time, Ferrow merely grunted.

“Have any more men enlisted since last month?” she asked.

“Twenty-two, ma’am.”

“His lordship has made a case to be presented in Parliament to let no more experienced men go from mills,” she told him. “We hope it shall be considered. I don’t like taking the women from their children in order to replace them.”

“The women work well,” Ferrow replied.

Octavia remembered the Sunday that the most recent of the men had left, two months ago in March. She and William had come down from Rutherford to stand on a makeshift stage and wave their own good-bye. They felt it was their duty. There had been flags and a brass marching band, and the men sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” as they passed by, each face looking up at her and William broadly smiling. Laughing even, swinging their arms. It had happened all over the country, but especially in the Lancashire and Yorkshire mill towns. Mill towns and factory towns like theirs, emptying of men. Even London offices—government offices. And shops, and railways. And the universities. It made one sick to think of it—those optimistic men in their hundreds of thousands leaving home. Young men and family men who could not be spared by their wives or their employers. And yet they had gone, and continued to go.

The three of them walked on, out of the gates, and turned towards the long street of narrow houses that careered down the incline, so close together that they seemed to be toppling one on the other. In the gutters, grimy children played in the sun. On the doorsteps, old women looked up the street towards her.

Octavia turned to Ferrow. “Mr. Ferrow, I’m aware that you would rather his lordship came to see you rather than myself,” she said.

“Not at all, ma’am. . . .”

She waved the lie away. “But you know, I spent my whole childhood listening to my father detailing the workings of the mill.” She looked pointedly at him; Ferrow himself—his shortcomings, his abilities—had been discussed on more than one occasion. Ferrow blushed. This, at least, had hit its mark. “So you understand,” she continued quietly, “that when his lordship is not available, I shall come in his place, and I shall be fully aware of everything that needs to be attended to.”

Ferrow nodded silently.

“It’s not only the women here who have to lend a hand,” she said. “I must be involved, just as they are.”

The manager shuffled along beside her, but did not reply. He half turned to go.

“Do you know a man called Richards?” she asked.

He stopped, perplexed. “Richards? In the mill?”

“No,” she said. “He doesn’t work in the mill anymore. He used to, before he was injured and his boy killed. He would, I suppose, be in his fifties now.”

Light dawned on Ferrow’s face. “Francis Richards?”

“Yes. His daughter Mary is one of our maids.”

Ferrow nodded. “He sweeps the yards. Does odd jobs for us.”

“Is he reliable?”

“About as reliable as any broken-down man can be.”

She looked at Ferrow keenly. “I see,” she said. “Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Ferrow.”

*   *   *

O
n the way home, she asked Harry to stop his car on the ridge before the moors.

They sat looking back at the belching chimneys of the mills and the towns huddled beyond them. It was hard to believe that only on the other side of the moors, Rutherford lay in such peaceful glory.

“Do you miss it?” she asked Harry now. “England, I mean. Home.”

“Every moment.”

“Is it . . . very bad?” She paused. “The newspapers talk of victories, but I don’t believe it, Harry.”

“Yes,” he said at last. “It is very bad.”

She was very thankful that he could be honest with her; she waited, thinking that perhaps he wanted to tell her just as much as she wanted to hear.

“The strangest things haunt one,” he murmured, gazing straight ahead. “Near one of our billets was a little country railway station. It must once have been attractive; there was a signal box.” He smiled wanly to himself. “And a train standing just outside the platform. It was a sorry sight; it had been used for target practice.” He turned to look at her. “There are pockets of civilians left here and there. Lost souls, you know, who won’t leave. And every morning, the signalman used to come to the signal box. He would pick his way among the debris and sit there—quite ‘ten-a-penny’—demented, you see?”

“What happened to him?” Octavia asked.

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. “We moved along. But very dead by now, I expect. Like the beekeeper.”

Octavia was briefly distracted by Harry’s hands. He kept the right one quite rigid, but the left was trembling, the fingers describing small circles on the material of his jacket. “There was such a nice old lady in a farm,” Harry told her. His voice was muted, almost dreamy. “She actually walked along one of the army supply trenches to get water. She was very sweet; she brought us honey. She was very interested in our aircraft, and kind to us all. It was ridiculous, though. So absurdly dangerous. She was told to leave. She said that the bees didn’t mind the shelling; the hives were busier, if anything. And then one day, her cottage took a direct hit.”

“Oh, no.”

“It had to be. Shells fly everywhere, you know, sometimes a great deal off target. We never saw her again—blown to atoms, I don’t doubt. But the hives, at the back of the house, were untouched. And you know . . . those bees flew in and out. They went on without her. And the birds sing among all the hell of it. . . .”

Octavia saw that his eyes were full of tears.

“Harry, darling . . .”

He suddenly wrenched away from her. “This won’t do at all,” he said loudly, and he restarted to engine; the Metz revved up with its usual coughing roar. “Waste of a good bit of leave to talk about it,” he told her. “Waste of a lovely day.”

And he put his foot down, and they sped away.

*   *   *

I
t was the time for morning coffee at Rutherford, but only Louisa and Charlotte were home. The two girls sat together on a bench filled with cushions in the gardens, enjoying the sunshine.

Louisa was watching Charlotte’s expression of concentration over the book in her lap; eventually, she snatched it away and looked at the spine. She loved her sister, but Charlotte’s incessant preoccupation with current affairs and risqué literature had the capacity to annoy her. “What on earth is this?”

“James Joyce,” Charlotte told her. “
The Dubliners
.”

“Sounds awfully grim.”

Charlotte took the book back. “You’re not much of a politico, are you?”

“I’m liking books more, but not ones like those. Don’t tell me that you do.”

Charlotte smiled. “Everyone in England ought to be interested in Ireland just now.”

“Well, I’m not,” Louisa said. “There’s too much upset in the world. I’m heartily sick of it. Let’s go and sit in the orangerie,” she suggested. “Let’s see what’s in flower.”

Charlotte sighed, but obeyed. Arm in arm, they wandered into the sultry heat of the elaborate Victorian glasshouse, and sat down eventually on the bench near the far door. To an outsider looking in, they would have seemed like two elaborately lovely flowers quite at home in their surroundings, and each almost a matching copy of the other in their white pressed linen dresses. Only a very much closer inspection would have seen the worldliness, a trace of sad experience, in the older girl; and the flash of rebellion in the younger. But for now they presented a picture of tranquility, and all that could be heard was birdsong and the subtle rush of water in the heating pipes. Then abruptly Charlotte asked, “Do you ever think of him?”

“Think of whom?”

“You know very well. Charles de Montfort.”

“No,” Louisa answered.

Charlotte prodded her. “Go on—you do.”

“I try not to.”

“Did he—you know—”

Louisa raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have anything to tell you, little beast.”

“I’m old enough to know.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Charlotte picked up a leaf and slowly shredded it. “I think it a very poor show when one’s own sister won’t let on.”

Louisa sighed. “There’s nothing to let on about,” she said. “I wish I could thrill you, but there it is.”

“Not a kiss?”

Louisa withdrew her hand from Charlotte’s arm abruptly. “Do you think this is a subject I want to talk about?” she demanded.

“You ought to.”

“Why? So that you can delight in it?”

Charlotte bridled. “That’s unfair. I just want to know.”

“Oh, you must know everything, mustn’t you?” Louisa complained. “What’s going on with Father and the government and the war, and the Irish question—as if it had anything to do with us—and the women’s vote. It’s very exhausting, Charlotte, it really is. It’s none of your business, and neither is Charles de Montfort.”

“I should think whatever goes on in the world is my business, and yours,” Charlotte retaliated. “Father says we have a responsibility—”

“Excuse me,” Louisa interrupted, “but Father says the thinking
man
has a responsibility. He said it at breakfast yesterday. He said nothing at all about women. You know very well he loathes women interfering in politics.”

“Well, Mother seems not to want to stick her head in the ground, even if you do,” Charlotte told her. “Look at all she’s doing in Blessington.”

Louisa sighed. “It isn’t right.”

“The mills are Mother’s property!”

“They are
not
Mother’s property. Not since she married, you dolt. They are Father’s property.”

“Well, they’re her family’s. Why shouldn’t she do something about them?”

“Because it isn’t attractive. Just like politics for a woman. Not in the least attractive or appropriate.” She looked at Charlotte for some moments, frowning. “I hope that you haven’t got it into your head to oppose Father, Charlotte.”

“You did.”

“I did not!” Louisa said.

“Anyway, I don’t see that being attractive took you very far,” Charlotte retorted. “In fact, it took you to entirely inappropriate places.”