Angel Meadow Read online

  7

  If she had not kept a tight hold on Mary’s hand she was convinced her sister would have turned tail and made a run for it. Even Rosie, who was of a stronger constitution than Mary, blanched and held her hand to her mouth as though she were about to be sick.

  It was the smell that first assaulted their senses. They had come straight off the street which was by no means bright, even at six o’clock of a summer morning, not with the usual pall of dirty brown smoke that hung over it, and at first Nancy could see nothing beyond a few vague shapes moving about or sitting at tables. She had worked in a cotton mill since she was nine years old and, as Annie used to say cheerfully, that didn’t exactly smell of roses, but this was a mixture of the secretions of the human body, women’s bodies, which, at certain times of the month were particularly rank if unwashed, of overflowing privies and the accumulated years of a mass of humanity living and working together without the benefit of an open window. There was a strong odour of gas, of scorched cloth, of rotten food and some other indefinable aroma that reminded Nancy of the foetid stink caused by damp. The cellar was below ground with no windows except a skylight which she could now make out at the far end of the large, rectangular room. It was low-ceilinged inside the entrance at the bottom of the rotten steps which led from the street but expanding irregularly upwards and outwards to the skylight at the other end. The walls were lined with match-boarding which might have been a pleasing light shade when it was put up but now it was black and greasy with age. Placed at regular intervals along the room were hooks on which hung shawls and bonnets, and beside them, casting a flickering, evil-smelling light, were several gas lamps. In a prominent place, framed and under glass, hung the Factory and Workshops Regulations which, it seemed to Nancy, had never been adhered to in all the years they had been in force.

  “You can’t mean us ter work here, our Nancy,” Rosie said in a loud voice, her horror making her aggressive, and a man whom they had not noticed hovering over a child at a table turned menacingly so that they all three shrank back.

  “Nobody’s mekkin’ yer work ’ere, lass, so if yer not satisfied, sling yer ’ook. There’s plenty lookin’ fer decent jobs like these so ’op it if yer not suited.”

  Nancy recognised the man as the one who had agreed to employ her and her sisters, very reluctantly with respect to Mary and Rosie since none of them was a trained machinist, he added, but he was prepared to take them on, looking her up and down with that particular gleam in his eye that she was beginning to recognise in men.

  “We’re quick learners, Mr Earnshaw,” she’d pleaded with him. “We want to learn to be machinists but you can put the other two on as hand finishers to start with if that suits you better. They can both sew a decent seam.” Which was true, for they had helped her to alter many a garment gleaned at the market. “We’re willing to do anything, really we are, to get a decent job in your establishment.”

  “Where you learn ter speak like that, lass?” he had asked her suspiciously, just as though she were trying to put one over on him.

  “Does it matter, Mr Earnshaw? We . . . we all went to Sunday school so . . .”

  “Aye, that must be it but I want no high-falutin’ pernickety lasses ’ere. I told that to ’er,” nodding in the direction of a frail-looking girl who was staggering between the tables under a load of what looked like half-sewn shirts in her thin arms. “She talks all lah-di-dah an’ all but as long as she does what’s needed she can speak chinee for all I care. You an’ all. It’s ’ard work an’ long ’ours so delicate ladies ’re no good ter me. If yer not prepared ter work when I want yer to work then yer’d best look elsewhere.”

  “No, really, Mr Earnshaw, we’ll do whatever you say.”

  They had no choice. She knew Mr Earnshaw of Earnshaw’s Fine Shirts would exploit them, as he exploited all the girls in his employ, but he was the only one who had been prepared to take on all three of them. She had not been willing to let Mary or Rosie, or even both of them, find employment on their own, Mary because she was too timid and Rosie because Rosie needed a firm hand and God knows what she might have got up to. This place was wretched but as soon as all three of them had learned the trade she meant to get out of it and start what had been her dream, at least the start of her dream, ever since she had been old enough to formulate it in her childish mind. She had in the hole behind the spare brick in the upstairs room, beside her precious hoard of money, a letter from a firm of sewing-machine manufacturers in Oldham by the name of Bradbury’s which told her that they would be pleased to hire her one of their splendid sewing-machines at a cost of one and sixpence a week. If she kept up the payments and did not fall into arrears, it went on, the machine would ultimately be hers. If she could afford it she meant to have two, or even three. She had spoken to Mrs Beasley who had promised to enquire about the possibility of a stall on the outskirts of the market, providing it didn’t interfere with her trade, of course, for there was no place for sentiment in Mrs Beasley’s line of work.

  “Right then,” Mr Earnshaw said briskly, “let’s get yer started.”

  Close by the door and well within reach of the gas stove that was used for heating irons, were two small, high tables which served the pressers. There was a long, low plank-like table furnished underneath with a wooden rail on which those sitting at it might rest their feet, with forms on either side of it and a chair at the top and bottom end. This was where the shirt finishers were seated and this was where Rosie and Mary were placed with instructions to wait there until Jennet came to set them off. Those already seated were diligently cutting out and making buttonholes on shirt fronts already machine sewed. The girls sank to the form, huddled close together, their faces showing their trepidation, for it seemed their Nancy, who had always looked after them, worked beside them, decided the very pattern of their lives, was to be whisked off with Mr Earnshaw.

  “It’ll be all right,” she whispered to them. “Just do as you’re told and it’ll be all right.”

  Along two high tables, one against each wall leaving a passage down the centre of the room, were clustered women who were basters and this was probably where “them two”, Mr Earnshaw said, indicating with a nod of his busy head Rosie and Mary, would begin, since basting was very simple. Directly under the skylight and at the far end of the room, again lining each wall, were rows of sewing-machines, each one on its own treadle stand with a small table between on which were piled cut-out shirts ready to be made up, and the rapid movement of the machinists’ feet was already in progress. Beyond this, at the extreme end of the workshop, was what appeared to be a private kitchen, for a woman stood at a stove and several children were sitting round a filthy table eating what looked to be a decent breakfast of bacon and eggs. There was another door which led to a small yard with an outhouse and, near to it, a tap and a sink for the use of the inmates of the establishment.

  Nancy counted forty hands in a space that seemed barely big enough for a dozen but so crammed together were tables, machines and humans alike they all appeared to be working, despite the conditions, in some sort of haphazard harmony.

  “’Ere, this’ll do yer,” Mr Earnshaw told her, nodding at a machine that stood idle between two others at which girls of about eighteen were industriously engaged, their feet going ten to the dozen, the treadle a blur of movement, their hands the same as they whisked the cotton cloth across the cloth plate and under the needle. “Ivy, show this lass – what’s yer name again? Nancy. Right, show ’er what ter do an’ then keep an eye on ’er. An’ don’t pull faces at me, me girl, or yer can ’op it. There’s two more up along waitin’ ter get on’t machines,” nodding towards Rosie and Mary who were bent over the table with the frail little girl standing over them. “You ’ad ter be taught an’ so’s this lass so get on wi’ it.”

  Mr Earnshaw stamped off in the direction of the kitchen where presently he could be seen eating what was evidently his breakfast. Nancy sat down at the machine and, without a word being spoken, I
vy left her work and, with a face like thunder, shoved a pile of unfinished shirts at Nancy, taking one in her none too clean hands and proceeding to feed the material across the cloth plate.

  “Treadle,” she hissed venomously. “It won’t work unless yer use treadle.”

  “I appreciate that,” Nancy began tartly, for it was not her fault that Ivy had to stop her work, thereby losing precious minutes in which she could be earning money. Machinists were the best-paid workers in the industry but they had to labour practically non-stop to earn their wage, she knew that.

  “An’ what the bloody ’ell does that mean?” It was plain Ivy was nonplussed, not only by the word which she didn’t really recognise but by the fearless defiance in the new girl’s manner.

  “It means that even you had to be taught so if you’d just show me how to get this machine going, what I am to sew and how it is done, I will continue from then on by myself.”

  “Oh, one o’ them, are yer? Know bloody everything, is that it? We’ve met your sort before, ain’t we, Doris? If yer so bloody clever get on wi’ it yerself.”

  Ivy smirked at Doris and several other girls who had overheard the exchange, then sat down at her machine and began furiously to set the treadle in motion.

  “I don’t think Mr Earnshaw will be very pleased if he comes back to find I’ve spoiled his shirts, do you, particularly as I have been put in your charge. It seems to me that you will be held responsible. I had better call him over and ask him if—”

  “Yer little bitch.” Ivy was so incensed she missed her footing on the treadle and her machine came to an abrupt stop. “Yer’d bloody tattle ter ’im an’ before yer’ve bin ’ere five minutes?”

  “No, I won’t. Just show me what to do and I’ll leave you alone. I’m a quick learner, Ivy, and I promise not to hold you up for long. In fact, when I get the hang of it I’ll do a few for you so that you won’t lose any money over it. How’s that?”

  Ivy was astounded, though somewhat mollified, but she would not let the new girl see it, so with a pretence of irritation she bent over Nancy and guided her on her first steps to becoming a machinist. It was apparent in her demeanour that she thought the new girl was a real facer and no mistake, even the way she talked confusing her, but if she was prepared to make up Ivy’s time then she didn’t mind giving her a hand.

  It seemed that the frail-looking girl, whose name was Jennet, was not only a machinist, a hand finisher and an exquisite needlewoman, which was not really needed in Mr Earnshaw’s line of business, but also Mr Earnshaw’s right-hand “man”. It turned out that she had been with him for four years and he trusted her. As Nancy was to find out later, Jennet could have run Mr Earnshaw’s business as well as, if not better than, he could. There was nothing she did not know about the business of shirtmaking from the purchase of the cotton cloth to where to sell the finished product and every process in between. There was a Mrs Earnshaw who rarely emerged from the back realms of the workshop, even sending her eldest, a child of ten, to do what shopping was needed for her and Earnshaw, as she called him, and the nine children who came after the ten-year-old.

  Nancy was in trouble within the first hour, not only with Ivy, who had soon calmed down when she realised that Nancy was going to be no bother to her, but with Mr Earnshaw. There were several young girls, no more than ten or eleven, standing at the basting table carefully tacking the seams which would then be hand sewn. They were not allowed to sit down, for if they did they could not comfortably reach the high table. For hours on end they sewed, their heads nodding now and again and it was Mr Earnshaw’s practice to give them a crack about the ears to keep them alert.

  She stood it for no more than an hour, cringing every time his heavy hand cracked a child’s head to the bench in front of her. She had seen overlookers in the cotton mill give a child a clout to keep it from dozing off but it had been no more than a cuff round the ear and nothing like the heavy-handed treatment Mr Earnshaw doled out.

  “Surely there is no need to be so brutal with that child, Mr Earnshaw.” Her voice was heard even above the racket of the machines, but it was noticeable that not one female, from eleven years old to fifty, lifted her head. “Can not a more humane method be used to keep them awake? I would have thought so.”

  So far neither Mary nor Rosie had faltered and God knows what she would do if they did, for she would have no truck with him slapping them about as he had done with several others. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning. What would these children be like by six tonight?

  Mr Earnshaw turned in astonishment, ready to do a bit of slapping in her direction, then he began to laugh. It was not often someone, especially a female, caused a flicker of interest in his busy and often worrying life, for there was a lot of competition in the making up trade, but this lass was proving to be a real diversion. Not that he would take any notice of her, not in that respect anyhow, but it might prove interesting to see, if she wanted to keep her job, that is, how she would respond to a bit of . . . well, he wouldn’t mind feeling her up in the outhouse in the back. She was a bloody good-looking girl!

  “Well, will yer listen to Lady Muck ’ere. ’Umane! Where d’yer pick up words like that, my lass? Not in Angel Meadow, I’ll be bound. But there’s one thing you an’ me’d best get straight or yer might as well bugger off right now an’ tekk yer sisters with yer. You mind yer own business, see, an’ stop stickin’ yer nose inter mine. That way you an’ me’ll get on fine. I dunno, talk about bloody cheek.” He walked away, quite entertained, it seemed, by the new girl, smiling and shaking his head. Nancy bent her head to her work, conscious of the smirks and soft whispers around her. She had made a mistake and though it would be very hard to restrain that quick flare of temper which now and then afflicted her she would damn well have to do it. It incensed her to see these fragile little creatures, who, but for her own hard work, might have been her own sisters, misused by men like Earnshaw, and, she supposed, the thought popping uninvited into her head, the young master at Monarch Mill, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do about it. She had her own future to think about, her own carefully planned and dreamed-of future to safeguard, so she must learn to keep her head down and her trap shut.

  At dinner time some of the women left the workshop and turned out into the street but the majority pulled dirty newspapers from under their tables wrapped around bits of bread and butter, cold sausages, salt fish, slabs of bacon or herrings. There was a tin teapot stewing on the stove where the irons were kept hot and from this those who wished to pay into the collective purse might purchase a cup of tea coloured with skimmed milk. Nancy, Rosie and Mary caused quite a sensation when from a small wicker basket Nancy brought out a red checked cloth wrapped around pieces of fresh bread, cheese and pickle, three apples and a jug of fresh milk. The bread, bought on Saturday from the fresh bread stall on the market, was two days old by now, of course, but a hell of a lot more appetising than what the rest were eating, though the milk had been purchased only that morning from the milk dray that did business in St George’s Road.

  “You and your sisters eat wisely,” a soft, gentle voice said in Nancy’s ear. “No wonder you are all so attractive.”

  Nancy turned in surprise. They were seated on the forms round the sewing table, she, Rosie and Mary and several other girls who were staring in amazement, and whose mouths salivated as Rosie bit deeply into a fat pickle. On Nancy’s other side was the girl called Jennet and from a small but clean packet she was nibbling on a piece of bread which had smeared on it what looked like thin, colourless dripping. She had a bottle with a screw top and in it was a clear liquid which could only be water and which she poured daintily into a small cup with roses painted on its side.

  “Well, that’s nice of you to say so . . . er . . .”

  “Jennet.”

  “Jennet, what a pretty name. I’ve not heard it before.”

  “No, it was my mother’s name and when she died at my birth my father, who loved her, gav
e her name to me. But please, won’t you tell me about the contents of your picnic basket? It is most unusual.”

  Nancy smiled. “Well, I found early on in life that if you are careful in what you eat there is less likelihood of being ill. My mother used to make us drink milk, I didn’t know why at the time but it seems it builds good teeth. The same with cheese. I’ve come to the conclusion that all . . . all natural foods are better for you. Dear Lord, will you listen to me giving you a lecture on what to eat. Most people think I’m simple-minded. Besides, I’m sure you must know all this.” For it was very evident from the way she spoke and acted that Jennet was not of the same class as the other girls in the workshop. Though she had not said much, really only to give orders and speak here and there to another hand, her voice was like no other Nancy had heard. Except one!

  “Well, I’m afraid it’s a case really of having little choice. When you have no more than a few shillings a week left to spend on food after rent and—”

  “Oh, no, Jennet. I go to the market every Saturday and if you leave it until late you can buy food at knock-down prices. Poultry, meat, fish, stuff that won’t keep until Monday, and the choice of vegetables and fruit . . . I’ve brought my sisters up on such a diet and they’ve not ailed a day.”

  “You!” Jennet looked astonished.

  “Yes, you see our mother . . . died when I was nine and so I had no choice but to . . .”

  Dear God in heaven, why was she rattling on like this to a perfect stranger, one she had met only hours before? Jennet was no bigger than two pennorth of copper, with bones on her like a bird and looking as though a puff of wind would have her over. And yet Nancy had seen the amount of work she had got through with no word of complaint. The help she gave unstintingly when asked, her quick replies to Mr Earnshaw about this or that bit of business, her knowledge which Mr Earnshaw appeared to rely on. This was the first time she had sat down, except when she was untangling some mistake one of the other machinists had made. She was eating what looked like bird crumbs; in fact there were scarcely enough to keep a sparrow alive. Her face was thin, pale, her nose was too big for it, her forehead extremely high, her mouth too wide with scarcely more colour in it than her cheeks. Her eyes were an enormous silvery grey, and her soft, pretty hair, a pale golden blonde, was scraped back from her face into a tumbling knot of curls. She wore black, unrelieved, plain, coarse, beneath which her black boots twinkled with polish. A clean, neat little person and Nancy approved of that. Perhaps it was why she had taken a . . . yes, she must admit it, she had a taken a fancy to her.