The Wood Beyond (36 page)

He stopped in his tracks but I could see he wasnt going to back down not unless he had a way out - and he were too thick to think of one - and I was wrought too tight to give him one - then one of the others - Tommy Mather one of the Union men - said - No need to get thy dander up Pete. Archie ud never have spoke like he did if hed known tha was really courting the lass - would you Archie? - and Doyle said - No. How was I to know? - and I said - Thats all right then. Just then the hooter went and as we went back to work Mather said to me - Best start making up to the girl for the next week or so at least young Pascoe - just till Archie gets used to the idea.

I didnt answer but I found myself thinking about it all through the shift. The truth was - and Im almost ashamed to write it - that Doyles foul minded question had got me thinking about Alice not as a growing child but as a grown woman. Its funny the way God twists things - turning bad to good and sometimes so it seems good to bad.

So thats how I started courting Alice and she told me later to my surprise that shed been waiting ever so long for me to ask and had almost begun to fear I never would!

We were in no rush to get wed - partly because we wanted something behind us - and partly because so sure were we of each other neither felt the need to tie us together with church knots. As for those strong fleshly urgings which some women use to lead a resisting man to the altar - so alike were we in this that soon we were giving and taking gladly - confident that what we did was holy without need of parson preaching his solemn words.

Another reason was that I was getting on so well in the job. Id long moved on from being a crawling boy and rapidly moved up through most of the jobs on the machines - too rapid for some like Archie Doyle who started sneering at me as the bosses pet. In the end I did what I mebbe shouldve done that first time and told him to put up or shut up - and when he put up I split his head open. He still got one or two blows in and gave me a cracked rib or two but there was no doubting the result and after that no one said owt about my rapid advance. In fact Doyle suffered unjustly - though not before time - because I knew in my heart that it werent no peculiar merit that was getting me on - though I quickly mastered everything I turned my hand to - but Mr Grindals special interest.

By this time the Union men had just about given up on me - not that I argued against them but rather I twisted and turned and ducked and dodged - knowing as I did that my progress would hit a brick wall if ever Mr Grindal got it in his head I was mixed up with them. Sometimes I talked of this with Alice whose father was hot for the Union - she played the submissive maidens part saying it were mens business and beyond her - but there was nowt submissive about her when her dad told her that no bosses man was going to marry his daughter - whereupon she told him that no Union man was going to tell her who she could wed or not!

For all that he might have been an obstacle to us till she came of age - which I had rather waited for than what did happen - which was an outbreak of typhoid fever in Kirkton that carried several off including Mr Clark among the first. Alice too was touched and I feared for her life but when I told Mr Grindal of this - who till now I had kept dark about my hopes for marriage not knowing how he might view them - he immediately got his brother in law Mr Sam Batty to consult with her doctor. Mr Sam was now quite famous for his patent ointments and stomach draughts which he would probably have given away for free if Mr Grindal had not set him up in works on a piece of land he owned just over the river from the mill. I have heard Mr Grindal say his brother in law knew more about the workings of the human system than any doctor in England but less about the workings of the capital system than any grocer in Leeds. I know not what he prescribed or said but do know that under his advice Alice quickly recovered - for which I am more grateful to him than any man living.

So now with no father to object and with Mr Grindals approval - for once he met Alice he could see for himself that she was apt to make a wife and helpmeet fit for any man - we had the banns called and married in the spring of 1911 - and the following year little Ada was born.

By now I was off the mill floor and into the counting house - a proper clerk with good prospects and enough money coming in to keep his wife and family properly - I even bought a piano because Alice hoped that Ada would turn out musical - and to my surprise I found that I was gifted that way myself - never before having any chance to discover this - and in no time I was able to pick out the ragtime tunes which were all the rage.

Mr Grindals trust in me grew daily - and when he decided that his son young Bertie should spend his summer holiday emptying his head of all the fancy notions he was picking up from his mother and his expensive school it was to my care that he entrusted him.

He was a good looking boy in a rather girlish way with long soft light brown hair - which when he was advised to take care of it catching in the machines he tied back with a red silk kerchief - after which everyone called him Gertie though never in Mr Grindals earshot.

He said he recalled me from when he was a baby and he talked of my mother most affectionately - whom I had not seen for more than a twelvemonth. She had been taken ill while the family were in the house at Cromer and remained there when they moved on - unable even to travel to see her grandchild. I had accepted reassurance that it was a slight and temporary illness but from some hints that young Gertie carelessly let drop I began to fear it might be something much worse - but to my shame I did nowt about it. This apart there was little to trouble my life - and when Mr Grindal recommended that I should go to the Institute to take courses in book keeping and generally improve myself I looked into the future - working for the best of firms in the best of countries - and saw nothing but peace and prosperity on the horizon.

Mr Cartwright asked me last night how my autobiography was going on - I answered pretty well - though in truth I have neglected it for many months now - and he asked if he might see it when I felt it was ready - I said there was a long way to go - but what I meant was I do not think I will let him or anyone see it - save it be Alice and one day our little Ada.

Mr Cartwright told me that Mr Philip Snowden the Member of Parliament was coming to speak at the Institute tomorrow and said I might be interested to hear what he had to say. I have read about him in the newspapers. Also I have heard Mr Grindal speak of him - he thinks he is a disgrace to Yorkshire and to England and ought to be hanged! So perhaps I will go - but well muffled up against discovery.

Its many weeks since I wrote and much has happened - my mother is dead, thats the worst and the saddest thing - and they say there is to be a war but no one is sure when.

I went to hear Mr Snowden that night and I came away with my head reeling with ideas. Id listened in the past to our Union men talking of course - and also to the likes of Mr Cartwright at the Institute - but all they had to say seemed so local and domestic and concerned with battling against bosses who didn't have the interests of their workers at heart like Mr Grindal did - or so I thought he did.

Mr Snowden wasnt just talking about Leeds but - he was talking about the whole of the world and what it meant to be a working man wherever you were. I were bursting to tell Alice all Id heard and she listened - sometimes nodding - sometimes frowning - and when Id done she said it all sounded grand but Id best not to go sounding off round the mill next day - which was good advice except that it turned out that somehow Mr Grindal knew Id been at the meeting - I can only guess that there were police spies there and one of them knew my face - and he asked me straight out what did I think? Shouldnt this man Snowden be transported to Germany where all the other enemies of the King were concentrated? I said I had not heard anything that sounded like treason to me and did he care to look at a new scheme I had devised for the more efficient billing of creditors? This distracted him and soon after he had to go away on business - now I took the chance of talking to Tommy Mather who I guessed would have been at the meeting too - though I had not seen him. I was right - and we had a good talk about what had been said - so good that it could not be finished on the mill floor in view of everyone - so we met later to continue.

This was the first of many talks I had with Tommy - real talks these - not me half listening to his recruiting propaganda as our exchanges had mostly been in the past.

By the time Mr Grindal came back from London a week later I was a paid up member of the Union.

When Mr Grindal came into the counting house and asked me to step into his office he looked so grave of face that my heart fell - thinking as I did that he had heard the news and was going to sack me - now here would be a chance to test this solidarity of my new comrades I had heard so much about - instead he told me that Mrs Grindal had had news from Cromer that my mother was much worse and asking to see me.

He gave me leave to go at once - I had never travelled so far on the train before nor wish to do so again - though I must admit it were a grand sight to see the sea all sparkling mile after mile under a sky as blue as a painted ceiling.

I found my mother on point of death alone and uncared for - oh there was a housekeeper there to see to her needs - but she was a strange close unwelcoming creature providing as much in the way of company as a splintery yard brush. As for care and tender loving kindness - I dont doubt she was fed regularly and the doctor called to attend when she seemed worse - but thats no more than youd give to a sick animal.

How long has she been like this? I asked - More than a week - And how long since you let your mistress know in London? - The same.

So Mrs Grindal had known my mothers state well before her husbands trip yet made no attempt to tell me  - And he had known of it from the start of his visit - yet waited till his return to pass it on. But both would think they had treated her well - almost as one of the family.

This was the sad heart of service which my mother had warned me away from - work should be defined by a wage contract not by the patronage of the employer. Guilt fanned my anger. I should have paid more heed - asked more questions. I sat by her bedside holding her cold hand - the doctor came - shook his head - and left

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I sat with her five hours - she gave a little sigh - I thought the life had gone out of her and squeezed her hand to bring it back - too hard for she grimaced with pain and said - Getting bearing leaving - you always were a painful child - then she was gone.

So that was it - a strange life she led - looking after others children - not looking after or being looked after by her own - till we parted at last knowing as little as we knew about each other when I first went to Kirkton to set on at the mill.

I had stopped being angry when I travelled back home or at least Id stopped showing it - anger is a good fuel but a wasteful flame - but I knew now where my loyalties lay.

Back in Kirkton I found Mr Grindal in a mood which was almost frenzied - the war was coming he said and we must be ready for it - he made it sound like patriotic zeal but I overheard him say to his brother in law one night when he thought they were alone in the office - It may last only a matter of months and unless were in at the start it will be too late to reap the full benefit - this sounded more like profiteering than patriotism to me.

He was spending more and more time energy and money on developing Mr Sams medicine works and had already started converting part of the mill to machines for the production of bandages and dressings. I asked him if it was wise to rush into such a limited market which would require injuries on an unimaginable scale to make it worthwhile - he laughed and said I should forget about the horsemen Id seen with their bright sabres exercising on Ilkley Moor - he had been in Germany the previous year and seen the German army at its exercise - this was going to be a war fought not with horses and lances but with machine guns each worth a whole rifle Companys fire power - with artillery that could throw shells twenty miles - with bombs and mines that could blow a hole in the ground big enough to sink a church in.

I spoke with Tommy Mather and told him that it seemed to me to be wrong that a workers union should be engaged in preparing in any way for a war which must involve our comrades killing and being killed by men just like us in foreign countries. He said that with no unemployed men left in Kirkton and no love of the Germans in Yorkshire he doubted such a view would get much support but hed call a meeting anyway as the members ought to know what was going on.

He was right - Archie Doyle got the biggest cheer when he said - Likely there wont be a war so lets make hay while the sun shines - and if by chance there were a war he for one wouldnt mind seeing a bit of these furren parts everyone said were so grand - and knocking a couple of Germans on the head while he was there.

When I spoke there was silence except for one voice - probably Doyles - which called - Dost Mr Grindal know thas out by thysen lad? - which got the biggest laugh of the meeting.

Mr Grindal werent laughing when I saw him next day  - He said - What the hell do you think youre playing at? Ive fetched you up from nowt and here you are acting like some socialist agitator with a chip on his shoulder.

I might have known hed have his ears even at a Union meeting.

I tried to explain but he was in no mood to listen - all he said was - Well Im glad the rest have got more sense  - They soon gave you your answer - And I said - Aye and theyll likely give you yours - all the working men of this country - if you really do get your war. You'll need men to fight it and you wont find them in the unions that I can tell you.

It were stupid to say that really - temper talking which is a sad waste of good breath.

He said - Suppose youre wrong Pascoe - suppose there is a war and your mates show more stomach for a fight than you do? What'll you do then? Sit at home and complain about it?