Angel Meadow Page 18

  It was the first time that either of them had eaten in a public place, and especially one as fine as the dining-room of the Albion Hotel. They had nothing with which to compare it, of course, but it seemed very luxurious to their unsophisticated eyes. The flowers, the attentive waiters, the sparkling white tablecloths, the gleaming cutlery, the shining elegance of the glassware from which, again for the first time, they drank a delicious wine of Mr Bradbury’s choosing. They ate something that Mr Bradbury told them was salmon, followed by roast pigeon, tiny potatoes and artichokes, which Jennet said afterwards she had heard of but never tasted. There was fruit – figs, melon, nectarines, peaches and some myterious thing they were told was pineapple – all so mouthwateringly delicious they would have liked to wrap some up and take it home for the girls to taste.

  They were quite overcome with Mr Bradbury’s kindness and attention, in their innocence believing that all his customers must receive the same treatment; but it was not until the end of the meal, as he led them out of the hotel, taking their hands and bowing over them, that it dawned on them that it was not their custom he was after but Nancy Brody herself.

  “Perhaps you will allow me to call on you when next I am in Manchester?” he asked her, his eyes warm and admiring, and for the first time Nancy began to realise the power her own female beauty was to give her over the male. Then the picture of this fine gentleman, who must be forty-five if he was a day, knocking on the door of the cottage in Church Court almost undid her. She was afraid to catch Jennet’s eye, for she knew if she did they would both burst into hysterical laughter.

  “Why, that’s very kind of you, sir, and I would be glad to renew our acquaintance,” wondering where the words came from, then remembering the many fine passages she had read in Sense and Sensibility, in Pride and Prejudice, where Elinor Dashwood and Elizabeth Bennett expressed such sentiments. “Perhaps, when my business is on its feet, I may invite you to dine with me.”

  “And when will that be, Miss Brody?” the gentleman asked ardently.

  “A few weeks, no more. I will write to you, if I may . . .” For it did no harm to keep on the right side of a man of business.

  “I would be enchanted, Miss Brody. But perhaps I may come over when the machines are delivered?”

  “Mr Bradbury.” She let her voice become a shade cool and at once he retreated. “I shall be very busy for the next few weeks so . . .”

  “Of course, forgive me. Until the next time then.”

  “Indeed” – warmly – “and may I say how grateful Miss Williams and I are for your help and your hospitality. You have been most kind.”

  Even when they got home they were still inclined to break into giggles at the image of Mr Bradbury, probably in a hansom cab that would be unable to squeeze between the walls of Church Court, picking his way through the filth and debris to knock on her door. Mrs O’Rourke would probably give him the time of day in her own inimitable way and the children, screaming abuse if they were ignored, would beg for farthings at his coat tails. The picture was enchanting!

  Rosie was green with envy, inclined to glower as they described their day, their wonderful day, but Nancy, too overwhelmed with their success, did not notice it, or if she did, believed it would all blow over. Just wait until they moved from here to a better workroom, to a better home, to all the things she had promised herself and them. Rosie would be satisfied then, flowering as Nancy had always imagined her sister would when they lived among decent folk. Fine husbands for both her sisters, comfort and even a little prosperity. Just give her a year or two and it would all happen.

  The question of where to leave Kitty while she and Jennet went to purchase the shirting they would need proved to be a problem that seemed insurmountable and once again Nancy cursed Mick O’Rourke with the fluency she remembered from her mother’s days. They mulled over it, she and Jennet, for it would have to be a weekday and they simply could not afford to keep Rosie or Mary from the sweat shop. They had given Mr Bradbury a hefty deposit for the sewing-machines, which were to be delivered at the end of the week and every penny must be made to count. Mr Earnshaw had lost Nancy and then Jennet, the best of them in his opinion, and if either Rosie or Mary was to take a day off he would most likely sack the pair of them.

  “I saw Annie the other day,” Mary proclaimed out of the blue as she came downstairs from where she had been putting Kitty in her little bed, which was no more than a shallow cardboard box lined with scraps of soft blankets.

  Both Nancy and Jennet looked up in surprise.

  “Oh?”

  “Mmm. She didn’t look very well.”

  “Oh?”

  It was a month now since Annie had saved not only Nancy’s life, they all firmly believed, but Kitty’s, and she had seemed well enough then.

  “She was just off to the market as we were coming home from Earnshaw’s. She laughed as she told us she was looking for the leavings though she didn’t seem very amused. Remember how we used to?”

  “And still do.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “But what was Annie . . . Well, did she say she was poorly?”

  “Oh, she’s not poorly.”

  “Dear God, Mary, will you get to the point? It’s like trying to draw teeth. What’s the matter with her if she’s not ill?”

  “She’s had an accident. Hurt her hand so Hayes put her off.”

  There was a deathly silence then, “Nay, never!” from Nancy, reverting to the speech of her young childhood in her shock. “She’s been there for years and was the best spinner they ever had and then just to turn her off. Poor Annie. How will she manage? She only knows spinning.”

  “And looking after children,” Jennet added quietly.

  “Yes, she had enough of those, I remember, though—” Suddenly she stopped and swivelled to stare at Jennet, then they both smiled as Nancy’s thoughts caught up with those of her friend.

  “D’you know where she lives?” Jennet asked.

  “No, but I can soon find out,” Nancy answered, while Mary looked from one to the other in honest mystification.

  “It would be ideal, for she is a kind woman and could be trusted to care for Kitty as we do.” This from Jennet, since it was the most important factor in this.

  “And we would all be able to work uninterrupted,” Nancy added, glowing with good humour, stating what to her was the nub of the matter. “Not to mention putting a few pence in Annie’s pocket which I’m sure she’d welcome. See, Rosie,” turning to her sister who lolled indolently on a chair by the window, staring at something in the street, not taking a great deal of interest in what was being discussed, “will you run over to Monarch? The girls who worked with Annie will know where she lives and then when you’ve found out go there and ask her to come and see me. As soon as she can, there’s a good lass. Tell her . . . tell her it’s to her advantage.”

  If she was surprised at the alacrity with which Rosie set off up the street, suddenly as cheerful and sunny as a summer’s day, Nancy did not voice it. She knew her sister became easily bored with what she called “hanging round the house” and was always eager to run an errand, or indeed was glad of any excuse to get out. But then she was young and pretty and should have been out having fun, like girls of her age did. Not in her class, Nancy realised, but then Rosie had been brought up differently to girls in her class and must feel sometimes that she was neither one thing nor the other. But that would change soon.

  And with Annie Wilson to help they might make it happen all the sooner!

  13

  They did not call Manchester the warehouse town for nothing, since the warehouse played a vital role in its economic life. There were cotton mills in abundance, multiplying from the one built by Richard Arkwright in 1783 on Miller Street near Shude Hill to the hundreds of steam-powered spinning factories in Ancoats, New Cross, Beswick and Holt Town and the new industrial zones along the Rochdale and Ashton canals to the east and astride the Irk Valley to the north. As the River Irw
ell wound its way through Salford it brought industry in its wake.

  But there was more to the cotton trade than its mills. Never more than a few streets away was the main warehouse district. The demand for commercial premises grew with the development of the mills themselves, spreading from King Street to Cannon Street, High Street and Moseley Street where the quite magnificent warehouse belonging to Edmund Hayes and Sons was situated. The great architect Thomas Worthington was so impressed by this building and by the many others built by Manchester’s merchant princes he named the city the Florence of the nineteenth century, for they were indeed as glorious as many an Italian palazzo. The palatial edifices had rows of regular windows to four storeys and sometimes more, with a central doorway at first-floor level reached by a flight of steps. The tops of the buildings were marked by prominent cornices.

  Nancy and Jennet, though they knew their business here was as legitimate as that of any of the gentlemen who hurried up and down the steps, hesitated at the bottom, overawed by such magnificence. They themselves were as carefully and neatly dressed as any lady in the outfits they had worn to Oldham, but beneath their bodices their hearts beat rapidly for it was very obvious this was strictly male territory. Even just standing here at the bottom of the steps looking up at the impressive open wooden doors, they were exciting some interest and not a little irritation.

  “Madam,” said one gentleman, addressing Nancy, which gentlemen tended to do, “are you to go up or not?” He clearly expected the answer to be in the negative as he did his best to brush by them. He was seriously alarmed when, with a polite nod, Nancy took Jennet’s arm and walked her gracefully up the steps ahead of him.

  “Can I help you, ladies?” he ventured to ask as they moved through the wide doorway at the top of the steps, politely removing his top hat, fully expecting that, like ladies the world over, they would find themselves to be in the wrong place, thinking this to be the Portico Library which was further along Moseley Street.

  “Thank you, you are most kind but we can manage,” Nancy told him, giving him a smile that quite bowled him over. He was not to know that she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was looking for nor how to proceed with her business when she found it. There was a massive central staircase leading to the upper floors and again gentlemen dashed up and down as though they had not a minute to spare and with another flashing smile she proceeded towards them, propelling the speechless Jennet with her.

  “I thought you knew what to do in the purchase of materials,” she hissed at her friend. “Mr Earnshaw . . .”

  “Mr Earnshaw did not buy quality stuff, Nancy. We bought from back-street merchants, anywhere it was cheap and plentiful.”

  “Then how are we to know what the devil to do in a place like this? It’s like a bloody palace.”

  “Oh hush, Nancy, please, we are supposed to be ladies, after all.”

  “You are a lady, Jennet. I’m not.”

  “Don’t be silly. You are the same as me in every respect. If I’m a lady so are you. But if one of these gentlemen should hear you swear they wouldn’t think so and might call someone to put us out and that would be the end of our venture before it began. Now smile at me and pretend that we do this every day of the week.”

  “But what shall we do? Where shall we go?”

  “Let’s have a look round first. Perhaps we’ll get some idea of what we should be doing.”

  Arm-in-arm, just as though they were strolling round the department store, Kendal, Milne and Faulkners, two ladies out to do a morning’s shopping, which was what they were but not the sort usually done by ladies, they wandered from floor to floor doing their best to be calm and unhurried, the only females among the male visitors to the warehouse. Everywhere they went they were met by amazed stares and open-mouthed curiosity, though none as yet had the nerve to question their right to be there, since, for all they knew, the two ladies might be relatives of the Hayes family.

  On the upper floors were the sample-rooms where customers might inspect goods by the light of the tall front windows and this was packed with jostling men who threatened to take the coats off the backs of one another in their eagerness to get a good look at the sample of what was on offer.

  It appeared the ground floor was taken up with offices and the basement used solely as a packing-room, which Nancy and Jennet discovered when they stumbled inadvertently into a room jammed with astonished workmen. This must surely be the hub of the warehouse, for Nancy believed she had never seen such frenetic activity taking place in one area, which covered the whole of the basement. There were men in shirt sleeves working hydraulic presses and porters with great brawny arms and shoulders, reminding her of the men in the mill yard at Monarch, groaning under heavy bales of cotton. Clerks perambulated about holding notebooks in which they checked and noted this and that; beyond them, leading on to a side street, was an enormous open loading bay crammed with waggons, each one in turn receiving pack after pack of goods until they were made up, when the whole lot rolled away like moving mountains.

  It seemed there was to be a public auction that day, not only of a range of cotton goods but of textile machinery which was apparently being viewed prior to the auction later in the morning. As the two women sauntered here and there, quite enjoying themselves now that they seemed to have their bearings and nobody had interfered with them, the scenes about them began to take on a frenzied atmosphere. Warehousemen scrambled up the stairs with rolls of material on their shoulders, placing them on a clean white cloth spread over the floor of the top room before racing down again to fetch another. Nancy and Jennet were roughly pushed to one side and it began to be obvious why the customers had looked so astounded, for this was no place for the niceties shown by gentlemen to ladies. They were pressed back against the wall and it was only with the greatest difficulty that they extricated themselves and fled down the stairs to the floor on which the offices were situated. It was quieter here and for a moment they leaned against a wall and fanned themselves.

  “Well, it’s no good expecting anyone to ask us what we want to buy, Jennet, because they’re not going to do it. It’s just a free-for-all and unless we press ourselves into it we shall go home empty-handed. If only there was some likely employee from whom we could find out . . . well, where to start.”

  They were in a relatively quiet corridor off which there were several doors, splendid highly polished mahogany doors. After the frenzy of the upper floors it was almost silent down here, just the muted sound of voices beyond the doors, presumably those of the clerks, the office staff, the managers and whoever helped to run this vast enterprise, for surely it must have many employees.

  “Well, I don’t think we’re going to get what we want down here, do you?” Nancy murmured, straightening up from the wall against which she had been leaning. “The action is on the top floor so I suppose we’d better get up to it. Let’s hope all the best lengths have not already been sold while we’ve been dithering down here.”

  Jennet squared her narrow shoulders and lifted her head as though she were about to march into battle. “You’re right, Nancy, though I must admit the notion of forcing my way back into that room among all those men fills me with alarm.”

  “What can they do to us, love? A few shoves won’t hurt us and if they do shove we must just learn to shove back.”

  They linked arms and though Jennet’s stride was shorter than Nancy’s she kept up with her, skimming along the corridor and up the several flights of stairs that led to the top floor. It was just as frantic as it had been before, with men elbowing one another aside to get their hands on pieces as they were brought up, so frantic that, as Jennet said, one could be forgiven for thinking that what was on sale was the last cotton ever to come off a spinning frame.

  They circled the room, looking for a way into the fray but these men were here on business; if the two women were also buying they must take their chances with the rest of them. They shouldn’t be here, the men’s disapproving expressions said
, and if they were jostled then it was their own fault.

  But Nancy Brody had not come this far only to have her dream of success pushed to one side by a bunch of hooligans, for that was how she saw them and she’d dealt with enough of those in her time. They could not be worse than the guttersnipes in Church Court who she had dispersed with many a sharp word and even a clout or two round a filthy ear. If she had to clout the ear of an impertinent fellow here, then clout it she would and be damned to them!

  “Excuse me,” she told two of them in a firm voice. They stood shoulder to shoulder and as she tapped them on their smooth broadcloth backs with a peremptory hand they turned and parted to stare in amazement.

  “Thank you, you are most kind,” she told them, smiling her most dazzling smile. Dragging Jennet with her through the small gap she forced her way to the front of the circle and, ignoring those about her who muttered ominously, as she did those who clustered about the stalls at the market, she took off her glove, bent down and lifted the end of a roll of creamy cotton, fingering it knowledgeably.

  “Feel this, Jennet,” she told her bemused friend. “This seems of good quality. What d’you think?”

  “I agree. Has this come off the spinning frames at Monarch, do you think?”

  “I suppose so, but let’s not decide on the first we see. There are other pieces that look suitable and there may be a difference in price. We must find out all we can before we buy. A farthing saved, you know the saying.”

  Now that they were in the inner circle of the heaving, pushing, shouting, gesticulating men they found it easier to move round the room, watched with slack-jawed astonishment by the men who had not at first noticed them. They seemed to want to say or do something, perhaps eject these interlopers, but as yet they were unsure how to go about it. It was quite unprecedented. They even stood back to allow the two females to circulate more freely and Nancy smiled at them which further increased their dismay. A woman in their midst was mystery enough, but a well-dressed woman of great loveliness, a woman with a smile that they would have liked to respond to, a smile that asked for and deserved some show of gentlemanly attention was very pleasant, but this was neither the time nor the place and they resented it fiercely. And not just one woman, but two, though the second was hardly worth a glance she was so plain and childlike. Ladies did go about in pairs, for it was only proper, but they certainly didn’t wander about a male-dominated warehouse, nor were they so bold and presumptuous as the lovelier of the two was. She seemed to find nothing strange in being among men of business and was busy studying lengths of cotton, pointing out this and that to her companion as though she had as much right to be here as they did. Something should be done, for how could business be transacted when all were distracted by this phenomenon.