Shining Threads Page 13

  She did not fling open the drawing-room door as she normally would, noisily, a child still in her exuberant need for life and excitement, but moved into the room in a manner so sedate it would have gladdened Miss Copeland’s heart.

  They all turned to smile, her family, welcoming her and had she not, for the moment anyway, been this new and strange Tessa she would have laughed out loud as their smiles slipped away like ice melting in the sunshine. They sat like figures carved in stone for several moments then very slowly her mother put down the glass she was holding, not once taking her eyes from her, and raised a trembling hand to cover her mouth. She seemed unable to move beyond that, her eyes enormous in her bone-white face, her body still, her brain atrophied and unable to function, or so it appeared.

  ‘Tessa . . . child . . . have you had an accident?’ her Aunt Kit faltered and her Uncle Joss rose slowly to his feet, ready, should he be needed, to move rapidly across the carpet to catch his niece when she fell, as fall she undoubtedly would.

  ‘Dear God . . . sweetheart . . .’ Charlie sprang to life, pushing aside Laurel’s trembling hand, striding with his great long legs after his brother until they both stood before her their hands lifted, eager to comfort, to support, to hold, but not sure where to lay them since they did not want to cause further damage.

  ‘What happened? Jesus, lass, what happened?’

  ‘Nothing . . .’

  ‘But look at you. Your riding habit is covered with blood or . . . or is it mud? And your face . . . you’re as white as a sheet. What the devil . . . who . . . ?’

  Slowly her Uncle Joss’s eyes rose to her hair and she became aware that her unkempt appearance . . . yes, she remembered now, she had come off her mare in the ditch beside Jenkinson’s oat field . . . well, it would be the Squire’s oat field since Jenkinson only rented it from him – her appearance, stained, muddy, bloody from the fox had somehow distracted them from the real injury of the day. The injury to her beautiful hair.

  ‘Who did it?’ Charlie whispered, his mind racing to all kinds of horror, to vagrants and gypsies, tinkers and ruffians, rapists and those who . . . who . . . and surely this child had been in some pervert’s hands for who else would take from her her lovely hair, and if they had taken that, what else had she lost?

  Her mother’s face floated, she could think of no other words, towards her, stationing itself besides Charlie’s shoulder, grey and amazingly agonised and for a moment Tessa was confounded by its strangeness, its utter, utter horror.

  ‘Now, Jenny, it’s all right, lass,’ her Uncle Joss said, moving rapidly to take her mother’s arm and Tessa was made aware that there was something in her mother’s absolute terror that had nothing to do with her. ‘Tell us who did this to you, Tessa, tell us . . .’

  ‘I did it,’ she protested harshly and again they were all struck dumb. And all the softness, the love and remorse with which she had been going to approach them evaporated in her own terrified distress for matters had all gone so horribly wrong. ‘I was tired of having Emma forever nagging me to have it brushed and washed . . . and pinned up . . . put into nets . . . and things. Well, I asked her to cut it . . .’ Her voice had become high, childish in her defiance.

  ‘Are you saying Emma cut your hair?’

  ‘No, oh, no, Uncle Joss, no, she wouldn’t so . . .’ boldly, ‘. . . I did it myself.’ She lifted her shorn head, ‘And I like it even if no one else does.’

  ‘Well, no one else does, that’s a certainty,’ and Charlie, her beloved Charlie on whom she had always counted to defend her when no one else would, turned away in disgust.

  There was a clatter in the hallway and a cheerful voice shouted that it was going to see if there was a chance of a drink in the drawing-room. The door burst open and with all the enthusiasm of two boys let out of school, Drew and Pearce Greenwood catapulted into the room, just as mud-spattered, just as tumbled, just as wild-riding and wild-natured as she herself had been, and in their path stood Joss Greenwood and his sister, Jenny Harrison.

  ‘Whoops,’ said Pearce frivolously, still laughing from the overflow of champagne which had run like water from a tap in the Squire’s great hall and of which he and Drew and several other of their young companions had drunk deeply.

  ‘You have been at play with the young lordlings, then,’ their father asked ominously, ‘and have just this moment decided to grace your mother’s drawing-room with your presence?’

  Drew laughed and swaggered, somewhat unsteadily, in the direction of the nearest chair but his father’s voice cut about him like a whip.

  ‘Stay where you are, lad, unless you want to feel my hand in your face.’

  ‘Joss . . . darling . . .’ Kit murmured but her husband for once did not listen to her voice.

  ‘I would like to know, and by God, one of you had better be quick in telling me, what has been going on here today. First we have missy here,’ he waved a heavy hand in Tessa’s direction, ‘coming in looking like some waif from the bloody workhouse, frightening everyone into thinking she had been robbed or . . .’ he shook his head like some beast tormented by three troublesome flies, ‘or worse, and then you two swagger in as though you were lords of the bloody manor, and as drunk . . .’

  ‘Joss . . .’

  ‘Don’t Joss me, Kit Chapman,’ he roared and the wild temper which none of them, including his wife, had seen for years, made them all wince. ‘What’s going on here and what’s this damned girl had done to her? Because if you think for a moment I believe she cut her own hair just for the hell of it . . .’

  ‘I did, Uncle Joss.’

  ‘No one asked you to speak, girl,’ he thundered, turning on her, and Jenny put out a hand to him, the first stirring of alarm, not for her daughter but for him, moving in her. Now that she had determined that Tessa was not physically hurt, she could feel her own outrage growing: an inclination to drag the girl upstairs, put her across her knee as she would a child and give her a long-overdue thrashing. What she had done was childishly defiant and though she herself had cut her own hair short against all the then rules of decency, it had been done for a completely different reason.

  Or had it?

  Jenny Harrison looked back for a moment to that wilful, resolute girl she herself had been more than twenty-five years ago. Resolute in her determination, she had told herself to protect and support her mother, her younger brother and sister whilst Joss had been fighting the injustice inflicted by the oppressive millowner. She had been forced to go into the mill when her father was killed at Peterloo and her brother had gone out on the rampage, wild with grief and his need to take Joshua Greenwood’s place. She had been the only wage earner in the family and the responsibility had made her strong, self-willed, defiant of convention. She had told herself that to cut her hair was a measure of safety in the spinning room where machinery was waiting to drag in any careless hand or unbound length of hair, but, if she were honest, had she really cared about that when she had taken her father’s shears to her own waist-length mass of curls? Had she not been impatient of control – as her daughter was – the control that said that whilst Joss might spend his time marching with the rioting men, smashing machines and windows in his challenge of the masters, she must stay at home and guard his family? It had been no more than a display of her own revolution and when it was done and she had enjoyed the shocked stares and whispered disapproval she had had no choice but to leave it as it was.

  The memory brought a measure of understanding.

  ‘Go upstairs, girl,’ she said quietly to her daughter. ‘I will be up directly.’

  When Tessa had gone she turned to the tableau which still stood, tense and ready at any moment to explode into a scene of great violence. The two young men had somehow arranged themselves shoulder to shoulder, not exactly with their fists up and clenched, but giving the impression that they were prepared to fight should they be pushed to it. Her brother, she realised with something of a shock, was no longer taller than his two lean young sons,
and she recognised, if he did not, that though they were no more than seventeen they were at that inevitable stage in a man’s life when he is no longer prepared to be dominated by his father. They were young men now, the two of them, each a part of the other, a double commitment of conflict; young cubs yet, showing their teeth to the old lion but not prepared for much longer to back away from his superior strength.

  ‘Leave it, Joss,’ she said.

  ‘No, by God! These two have been inciting that lass of yours for years now, dragging her along on their wild skylarking . . .’

  ‘She’d not need much dragging, Joss.’ He took no notice.

  ‘. . . treating her as though she herself was a young lad and this is the last bloody straw . . .’

  ‘Joss, Tessa is my responsibility . . .’

  ‘As these two are mine and it seems to me that I’ve been sadly lacking in that direction, but I mean to change that right now. They’ve been up at the Hall drinking, aye, seventeen years old and carrying on as though they were the Squire’s sons and with a perfect right to live the lives of landed gentlemen. I’ll have a word or two to say to Longworth the next time we meet. His son might be allowed to act the rake-hell if he wishes but mine certainly will not. Don’t think because I’m in London I know nothing of how you joy-ride about the countryside on those damned thoroughbreds of yours, which were bought, by the way, from your Aunt Jenny’s and Charlie’s efforts on your behalf in the mill. And now Tessa is becoming the same. It’s time all three of you settled down to the realisation of who you are: the sons and daughter of a millowner. You drift in here as though you’re doing us a bloody favour by bestowing your company on us. Your mother has been most upset,’ – which was not true for Kit Greenwood, though she loved her sons, barely gave them a thought as long as her husband was with her – ‘and I’ll not have it. Now I don’t know whose idea it was to crop that child’s head like some sheep at shearing time but I’ve absolutely no doubt that one of you or both, had something to do with it.’

  He passed a hand over his eyes and there was a visible tremor in it. Jenny frowned, for suddenly something seemed not quite right about the shape of her brother’s face, and the smooth amber of it, the look of glowing health which had always been his, appeared to be draining away, leaving it grey and clammy. He put out a hand, blindly seeking some support and in that moment before they began to move towards him in alarm, he seemed to shrink so that not only were his young sons as tall as he but exceedingly taller.

  ‘Joss!’ The scream which came from his wife’s throat had all the despair and terror of a child who has been confronted with a dark, unimaginable nightmare. It was heard quite clearly in the kitchen, freezing every servant to immobility, and up in her room where Tessa sat disconsolately on her dressing-table stool, sighing over the punishment which was surely coming, the sound brought her to her feet.

  Drew and Pearce Greenwood, with the rapid reflexes of the young, had their father by the arms, one on either side of him, their own faces as pale as death itself, their strength the only support which kept him from crashing to the floor like some poleaxed animal. They were quite appalled, panic-stricken, for it seemed their reckless insolence so evident in the unabashed rebellion they had shown, was killing their father before their very eyes.

  ‘Father . . . ?’ Pearce’s voice, no longer that of a man but of a frightened young boy, followed close on their mother’s scream. They loved him, their distraught young faces said; they were sorry, dear God, how they were sorry, and if he would just stand up straight and give them both a good hiding they would never defy him again. But as their mother flung herself across the room, her arms outstretched to hold him, not only upright but in this world since she could not live without him, her expression said, he slipped quietly from their grasp into a crumpled and surprisingly small heap on the carpet.

  The doctor had gone, swearing that if Mr Greenwood put a foot out of bed within the next month, Mrs Greenwood would surely be a widow. He would call the next day, he said; a light diet, perhaps a bit of fish or chicken, and certainly, now that he had been bled he would improve. Mrs Greenwood was to take this potion to make her sleep, or she would be his next patient. Yes, undoubtedly Mr Greenwood had been overworking but it was only a slight inflammation of the head and, given time and rest, he would recover.

  Kit Greenwood was drifting protectively over the still-sleeping figure of her husband, her violet-blue eyes enormous in the suddenly old and waxy pallor of her face, ignoring the doctor’s advice regarding herself with the contempt it deserved. Sleep, when the only person who had ever meant anything to her in the whole of her life, might slip away whilst she closed her eyes! Was anything more ridiculous? She attached herself to his bedside, not quite touching him, but certainly willing into him the very breath of her own lungs should his not prove adequate.

  They sat in the drawing-room, none of them speaking for what was there to say? It was their fault, of course, his sons and his niece knew, for had he not been so goaded by their waywardness, he would undoubtedly not be lying inches from death at this very minute. Laurel held Charlie’s hand, badly frightened and in need of comfort, blaming them as much as they did themselves. She was seen to lean her bright head against the sombre darkness of his shoulder, sighing tearfully, for though Joss Greenwood was not her father by blood, she loved him dearly.

  They were side by side on the sofa, the three culprits, Drew and Pearce with Tessa between them, still in the mud and muck of the hunting field and they all jumped guiltily when Jenny spoke.

  ‘This is not your fault, you know.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, it was, it was.’ Tessa began to weep noisily, no longer, now that the crisis was over somewhat, able to contain herself.

  ‘We’ve always made him wild, Aunt Jenny, and now look what we’ve done.’ Pearce’s voice was distraught and Drew put his head in his hands, filled, it seemed, with the deepest shame.

  But Jenny Harrison, though she recognised this as an ideal opportunity to hit them with the stick her brother’s ‘turn’ had presented to her, was too honest a woman to use it.

  ‘No, lad. Joss has always had a quick temper. We all have, let’s be honest, and if it were that which had cudgelled him as it did, he would have been struck down years ago. Your father has driven himself for the last thirty years doing what he set out to do when your grandfather died on St Peter’s Field. He swore then he’d take the fight wherever it was needed to try to get a decent living for the “afflicted poor”, as we were called. Aye, I say “we” because he and Charlie and me were among them when the hand loom became obsolete. He fought himself to a standstill, did your father. He went to gaol twice, as you know, and for the past twenty years he’s never given up hope of a fair deal for the working man. Twenty hours a day he’s worked and I reckon he’s just paid the price for it. He wanted to see the rest of the men he fought beside get a vote of their own, you see, not just those with property and influence, but it’s not come and I think it’s taken the strength from him. So you’re not to blame yourselves, any of you. But that’s not to say you’ve no need to mend your ways. I want to see you two at the mill gate at five thirty sharp tomorrow morning and as for you, miss, you’ll go nowhere without a bonnet to cover that head of yours until your hair’s a decent length. D’you hear?’

  Tessa said fervently that she did but even as Jenny Harrison looked into the tearful face she was aware that though her daughter meant what she said, and honestly meant to obey her, it would not be long before she forgot her bonnet, or lost it, or simply threw it away, since she was her daughter after all.

  That night as Tessa lay restless in the tangled covers of her bed, the house hushed and uneasy about her, she brooded on the shape and colour of her own nature. Why had she done it? Why did she do so many wild and challenging things? There was no need. She was allowed so much more freedom than the girls of her acquaintance and yet she abused it, gambled with it, risked losing it just for the sake of some excitement, which, after all
, caused nothing but sorrow to her family whom she loved dearly. That moment of reflection in the hallway before she had entered the drawing-room had been, probably, the first feeling of uncertainty she had known in her life. She had found it uncomfortable and so had ignored it. But perhaps they were right, those who bade her shape her restless activities into a more lady-like pattern. Perhaps she should stay at home and . . . and . . . what? What should she do? Sew and paint, play the piano and write interminable letters . . . ? Oh, dear Lord, the thought appalled her. She couldn’t do it but she really would try to be a little more as her family wanted her to be. She would . . . she . . . would . . .

  8

  They were seventeen years old when they really saw her for the first time and strangely, or perhaps not in view of their closeness, they did so at exactly the same moment.

  ‘I think we’ll give a big Christmas party this year,’ Laurel said, ‘not just the family but friends as well. We could empty the salon and line the walls with chairs, put a dais at one end and engage a small orchestra so that we might dance. Not a grand ball since we haven’t the space and not a dinner party either but something in between the two.’ She turned anxiously to Charlie who was studying a newspaper whilst coffee was being served after dinner. ‘Do you think it might be possible to invite the Squire, darling?’ She sat down beside her husband and looked up entreatingly into his face, begging his support, her tense look implying how dearly she would love someone to show some interest in this splendid idea of hers. There was nothing she feared more than being overlooked in this family of arrogant males – except Charlie, of course – and self-possessed women and yet, unless she stamped her foot and pouted, made a great to-do, that was exactly what happened.