Without a Mother's Love (7 page)

No one liked Hesley Mexton around here, and some in this crowd might know Jared was a relative, even though it was distant. As he surveyed the men, he was glad he was a Tyler.

His father was more tolerant of Uncle Hesley than his mother was. Mexton’s coal was cheaper than Swinborough’s at Kimber Deep and had been just as good until recently. Tyler’s Forge had had to refuse a bargeload from Mexton Pit because it was mostly slack and his father had had to buy his furnace fuel elsewhere. But this trouble was about something else, Jared thought. Something that had caused his father enough worry to make him visit the bank, and seemed to be affecting the whole town.

One of the men holding a flare tried to reason with the crowd. He was soon shouted down by an angry mob who, without their wages, would not be able to pay their rent or buy food for their children. As the men pushed nearer to the blackened stone pithead buildings, a few picked up stones and threw them at the manager’s office where a light glowed from a window. The sound of breaking glass raised a cheer, and the tension heightened. Jared saw a door open and Hesley Mexton stepped outside. His manager was close behind him, carrying a lantern. The crowd quietened in anticipation.

‘I can’t pay you without money,’ Hesley shouted. ‘The bank’s closed down. It’s failed.’

‘Don’t give us that! Banks don’t fail!’

‘It’s true,’ the manager added loudly. ‘The furnaces can’t pay us for the coal we’ve delivered ’em.’

‘What are we supposed to do for us rent, then?’

‘Every man will get half of what he’s due,’ the manager replied.

‘Aye, an’ what we’re due is on’y half o’ what we’re worth!’

This comment started up the muttering and grumbling again and more stones hit the building. Hesley turned aside, shielding his head with an arm, but a rock hit him squarely on his side. He cursed and stepped behind the manager as more missiles landed at their feet.

‘It’s all we’ve got in the safe,’ the manager added desperately. ‘It’ll pay your rent.’

‘Aye, an’ what about bread for us bairns?’

Neither Hesley nor his manager had an answer for that. Jared’s attention was drawn to the horses tethered in the shadow of the office building. The noise of the crowd had frightened them and they were restive.

Suddenly the men lost control.They surged forward, shouting and throwing stones, breaking more windows and splintering wood. Jared realized that the pit office would offer no protection for Hesley or his manager.This was a serious business and not only for the pit. His father had reason to worry. His forge relied on regular coal supplies. Also, he used the same bank and his workers wanted their pay too.

The horses whinnied and reared. Hesley and his manager, struck by flying rocks, turned and ran, grabbing the reins of their horses and mounting quickly, spurring the animals to a gallop. A brick caught Hesley full in the back. He yelled and flopped forward, but rallied and urged his horse on. The two men rode away in different directions, faster than any man on foot could catch them.

The mob, angry at their escape, vented their frustration on the buildings and wagons lying around the pithead. Flares were discarded as men rejected them in favour of stone and anything that would serve as a heavy cudgel.

One of the flares landed on a fodder cart for the horses. A bundle of straw smouldered and caught light, spreading to sacks of oats and hay. As it burned, the cart was jostled and began to move, rolling steadily towards the gin-house, containing the steam engine and pit-shaft winding gear.

Cold fear ran through Jared. There’d be coal in there. And grease for the engine, probably oil for the office lamps as well. If that lot went up, the mine would be out of action for weeks! Jared darted around the mob towards the moving cart as the flames took hold. He’d never stop it on his own.

‘Take the shaft and heave! Swing it round!’ Another man had seen the danger and was running with him. Jared registered an unusual accent but no more as both men leaned for all they were worth to change the wagon’s course. It turned slightly and headed slowly towards the army of angry men.

‘Fire! Fire!’

The warning spread as quickly as the blaze and the men scattered.The flaming cart rolled gently towards the mine office and toppled, spilling its burning straw and sacks onto the ground. A couple of miners took off their jackets to beat out the flames, but most could only stand and watch as bedding and food for the carthorses were destroyed.

‘It’s too late! Get back!’ The man who had come to Jared’s aid stood in front of the fire, facing the crowd. The leaping flames behind him cast his face in darkness and gave his gesticulating form a demonic appearance as he shouted, ‘Enough! None of this will help your wives and children. Listen to me!’

‘Why should we?’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Tobias Holmes and I’m from County Durham.’

‘Nay, I’ve bin there and tha dun’t sound like it ter me.’

‘I was in America until recently.’

This seemed to impress and still a few of the rebels. There were stories in the taverns of riches to be made in America. Jared raised an eyebrow. So that was where the accent came from.

‘You made a fortune to gi’ us, then?’

‘No, but I can help to feed your families until this business is righted.’

‘Oh, aye? How?’

‘I’ve taken a lease on the old farmhouse. I’ll have soup and bread for your wives and children in the barn at dinner time tomorrow.’

There was quiet as the crowd took in the stranger and his offer.

‘You from the poorhouse, then?’

‘Aye, well, we don’t want your charity, we want us pay.’

‘I’m a Wesleyan,’ Tobias Holmes shouted. ‘I’m setting up a mission in Mexton.’

‘One o’ them preacher types, are you?’

‘Like them that live at the Dissenters’ House?’

‘We’re church folk ’ere. We don’t want no radical preachers stirring up our womenfolk.’

‘I’m not a preacher,’ he declared, ‘and it’s not charity. It’ll cost a farthing for each family. Go back to your wives and tell them there’ll be dinner in the old barn tomorrow for a farthing.’

The men muttered but the offer was not to be spurned, and they retreated to their homes. Jared licked his lower lip and tasted blood from a cut. His boots and trousers were scuffed and his good jacket dusty. He looked around for his cap and found it trampled in the mud.

Tobias Holmes came over to him and held out his hand. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Jared nodded. His grasp was firm. ‘It could have been nasty. I’m Jared Tyler. Are you serious about a mission here?’

‘Yes. Do you know of us?’

‘I learned about Wesleyans at school.’

‘You have been to school?’ Tobias Holmes stepped back to look at him in the dying firelight. ‘Yes, I see now that you’re not a miner.You speak well and your coat is cut from good cloth.’

‘My father is an ironmaster.’

‘Then he will know of the bank’s failure. A bad business. The rich will suffer as well as the poor.’ Tobias Holmes grimaced. ‘But I care only for the poor.’

‘The Methodist chapel in town has a growing following.’

‘Give us time and we shall set up missions with poor funds in every pit village in the Riding.’

‘I wish you well.’

‘Thank you.Will you not join us on Sunday? I hold a meeting in the barn at the old farmhouse.’

‘I might.’

Jared’s mother and father were church people and he was expected to worship with them. He noticed the last of the miners hurry away as a rider approached. It was the constable from town. He slowed and picked his way carefully through the debris of stones, broken glass and charred wood.

‘We had better leave,’ Tobias Holmes suggested.

They parted, and as Jared hurried home he thought that Tobias Holmes was a different kind of chapel man from the ones he had known in the town and at school. For one thing he was physically strong, more like the miners he wanted to help than the church leaders Jared had known. But, then, he had travelled to America and probably knew how to look after himself. Jared did not have much time for God in his adolescent life but he reckoned he might have time for Tobias Holmes. If he wasn’t a preacher, he wondered what kind of meeting he would have. He would go and see for himself.

‘Is that you, Jared?’ his father called, as Jared closed the door from the kitchen behind him. He stood quite still, hoping his father would go back to his reading. The door from his study next to the kitchen stood open, casting a glow from the candles into the hall.

‘Come in here now. We must to talk. And close the door quietly.’

Jared dusted down his clothes with his hands, but could do little to improve his appearance. Why hadn’t he thought to clean himself up in the scullery? He joined his father in the small study. It had once been a morning room, but now that Jared and his younger sisters were growing up, and they had a maid who slept in the attic, they breakfasted in the dining room.

‘Where have you been? Your mother’s been worried.’

‘I’m sorry, Father. Where is she?’

‘Gone to bed, so leave her be.’ His father approached him with the candle. ‘Which is just as well, with the state of you. Have you been fighting? You shouldn’t have stayed out so long. Don’t you know there’s a deal of unrest?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You may think you’re a man at nigh on seventeen but, believe me, my lad, you still have much to learn. Did you see any trouble?’

‘A gang of ironworkers gathered down by the canal. They went down the towpath to Mexton.’

‘And on to your uncle’s pit, no doubt,’ his father continued sourly.

‘Uncle Hesley hasn’t paid his men. I heard about the bank. Has Mexton Pit failed too?’

His father gave a short, dry laugh.‘Not yet, son. Hesley always manages to scrape by somehow. He’s lost his capital, though, and he was going to use it to sink another shaft and install a new steam engine. I - I was going to invest in it, too.’

‘Did Mother know that?’

‘No. And don’t you tell her now it’s not to be. It would have been sound business, though. I can’t run my forge without good coal and I’ll have to pay more to have it brought from Kimber Deep.’

‘The men were angry, Father. They threw stones at him. The constable was there.’

‘Aye, I expected that. And Hesley?’

‘He was hit, but he rode off. Lost a feed wagon, though. It caught light.’

His father gave a disapproving grunt. ‘Sit down, son. This bank business has affected me as well.’

Jared obeyed, fearful of what his father had to say.

‘Some of my investments have gone, and the money I owe to Sir William for my pig iron. But he is a fair man and I have a contract with the railway company for my castings. My reputation is good, so my forge will survive. But—’ He stopped and Jared sensed bad news. ‘I’m sorry, son, I’ll not be able to keep you at that school now. There’ll be no university either.’

For the first time that day Jared felt elated. He was tired of learning and anxious to be in the forge with his father. What could university teach him anyway? He needed to know how to make cast iron that was strong enough to carry a railway wagon. He tried to look dejected.

‘These things happen in business.You’d best learn it now as later,’ his father added.

‘Yes, Father. I can work for you instead. Let me start on the smelting. You need not pay me a wage. That’ll help, won’t it?’

‘Can’t be done. I’d have to lay somebody else off to give you a job, and it’s bad enough having to cut the wages of good men. Besides, after all this trouble some wouldn’t take kindly to my son labouring alongside them when their lads languish without work.’

‘I can look after myself, Father. I’m the fastest runner at school and I’ve learned to fight.’ He put up his fists.

‘Quite so, my lad. I’ll not have fighting in my ironworks. It never helps matters and the sooner you know that the better.’

‘But I must do something.’

‘What about learning to be a shipping clerk at the canal company?’

Not an office! Jared’s heart sank. ‘I want to be an ironmaster like you, Father.’

‘Aye, and I’m proud of you for that. But my plans were for you to help me run the forge when you’d finished at university, not to graft in the thick of the heat with the men.’

‘But I want to work at the furnace face, to cast the iron.’

‘You need an apprenticeship for that.’

‘Well, why not take me on, then?’

‘I’ve told you why. I’ve already got a lad, and a good one at that. Besides, you’ve got a sound head on your shoulders and there are other things for you to learn.’

‘What things?’

‘Well, the Swinborough ironworks are the biggest round here and Sir William has his coal mines too. He can always use a bright fellow like you. He’s called a meeting of his debtors tomorrow. I owe him, so I thought you could be of service to him.’

Jared’s eyes brightened. That was more like it. Proper men’s work. ‘Yes, Father. Where shall I be working?’

‘I’ll talk to Sir William after the meeting. His ironworks are in town but he has pits on his land, along the cut that goes up past Fordham before you get to Mexton.’

Jared nodded. ‘I know.You’d let me go down the pit, then?’

‘You won’t be doing that.You have to be born into mining. Sir William has men to run his transporting and his engineering. He’s up to date on these new steam engines. That’s what you need to learn about, my lad.’

Jared’s excitement mounted. ‘When can I start, Father?’

‘Steady on. I haven’t asked him yet. If he does take you, you’ll have to walk there and back every day because I can’t afford the horse I promised you for your birthday. I’m sorry, son.’

‘Oh.’ Jared was disappointed. ‘I could lodge over there, I suppose.’

‘Your mother wouldn’t like that.’