Shining Threads Read online

  But none of this concerned the Greenwood sons. What was it to do with them, they asked each other, since they cared nought for the slightly distasteful business of making money?

  ‘Why should they?’ Drew grunted, settling his back more comfortably against the rough rock ‘They can’t afford the price of a railway ticket so what difference will it ever make to them?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. They are saying there will be track laid all over Lancashire and even over the Pennines into Yorkshire. Many believe that railway travel will become cheaper and that eventually everyone, even the poorer classes will be in on it.’

  Both boys sat up and their young faces glowed with interest. They had been to London once, by coach on the rutted, bone-shaking turnpike roads. Though the onset of the journey had been of great excitement to them as young boys, twenty-four hours later it had become so tedious to their restless minds and bodies they had decided it was of no interest, nor the several days they had spent in their father’s company being shown the ‘sights’ of London. Give them the open moorland, the excitement of being part of a walking line of guns every autumn, shooting the grouse, the pheasant, the young birds hand-reared expressly for the purpose of a gentleman’s sport. The thrill of Squire Longworth’s hunt was what they enjoyed, leaping hedges and ditches, wild gallops across open fields, the fox no more than a breath away, the hounds giving voice on a frost-bitten winter’s morning. They wished to be gentlemen, in the company of other gentlemen, following the fine and gentlemanly pursuits their pedigreed friends followed.

  But the railway train! Would that not make a difference? The idea of moving at great speed, to Liverpool where no doubt there would be fascinations dear to the hearts of the young men they almost were; to Manchester, now that Oldham and Crossfold were connected, and whatever heady temptations lay there, and even, as the men of steam predicted, through the tunnel they were to dig beneath the Pennine chain and on to the ‘other side’ where God alone knew what delights might await them.

  ‘It might be worth seeing, brother, what d’you think? When Father said we were to go I was not particularly concerned but it might be fun, you know. We’ve never been to Rochdale.’

  ‘Yes, we have. We went with Mother once to see some dreary Chapman relative, don’t you remember?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I do.’

  ‘Of course you do. My God, Pearce, your memory is as bad as some old woman’s.’

  ‘And who are you calling an old woman?’

  ‘If the cap fits . . .’

  ‘Would you like to stand up and say that?’

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure. A bloody nose would look well on you next Wednesday.’

  ‘And a black eye for you, brother.’

  The quick, snarling Greenwood anger slipped its leash and lifted both boys to their feet, their eyes flinty blue, their black brows dipping furiously as they clenched strong brown hands into fists, ready, each one, should it be needed to kill the other to prove himself right. But Tessa sprang up, stepping between them as she had done a hundred times – when it suited her – before a blow was struck.

  ‘And what about me?’ she snapped. ‘Why can’t I go with you on the train? Who declared it should be you two and not me? I’m just as interested in the railway train and in travel and would dearly love to go to Rochdale. Miss Copeland told me it is situated in the most beautiful valley and that the manor of Rochdale was once owned by Lord Byron.’

  Both boys looked confused, not perfectly certain who Lord Byron was though they had an idea he might be some sort of literary person and as such surely of no interest to their cousin who held books in as much contempt as they did. But she was merely clouding the issue and well she knew it.

  ‘You can’t be serious.’ Pearce lowered his lists as Drew did.

  ‘Why not? Why can’t I go if you can?’

  ‘There are to be no ladies included, that’s why.’

  ‘And why not?’ Her eyes snapped furiously.

  Drew shrugged. ‘I suppose because the gentlemen imagine they will not be interested.’

  ‘Mother is, and Aunt Kit and they haven’t been invited either, have they? Oh, they can go and stand on the platform and watch the gentlemen have all the fun but they are not to ride on the train. It simply isn’t fair,’ Tessa declared as she did at least once a day. ‘They are both concerned in the business world, just as Mr Abbott and Mr Jenkinson are, so why shouldn’t they go? Tell me that.’

  Drew scratched his head wonderingly then looked at his brother for really they had given it no thought. Indeed, they had given little thought to their own inclusion in the great event. Their father would no doubt officiate at the splendid moment when the engine had got up steam and was ready to head off on its journey. They themselves would certainly share in the excitement, watched and admired by the ladies who would come to see them off, but, as usual, this cousin of theirs was not satisfied with her own female part in it.

  She had begun to whirl about in her indignation and the dogs milled at her feet, moving excitedly as her fierceness communicated itself to them. She turned to face her cousins, hands on her hips, legs apart, chest heaving and her expression was bright and furious. Her eyes snapped, the pale grey velvet shaded, like a stormy sky, to the tints of slate and charcoal, deep and threatening. She could scarcely contain herself, not, as they thought, in her rage, but in fear.

  Tessa Harrison by, in her opinion, a fluke of nature, was born a girl and for as long as she could remember, though she defied authority and her own femininity, she had resented it. Whenever she could throw off the reins her governess slipped about her, the bridle which convention and her mother put on her as the gently reared daughter of a wealthy middle-class family, she had escaped from them, riding about with her male cousins and their friends wherever they went. She would put on a pair of their outgrown breeches and riding boots, leap on to the mare’s back and gallop away exultantly, as they did, knowing that she would be punished later for it, not caring, for that would be later and this freedom and excitement was now. But lately, as they had begun to move away from boyhood, she had sensed that her cousins were ready to leave her behind, that her participation was accepted somewhat reluctantly, that they were a trifle irritated by her female presence as they went off on their completely masculine jaunts with Nicky Longworth and Johnny Taylor. They wouldn’t tell her where they were going sometimes, which was worse, saying carelessly that she was not at all likely to enjoy it, eluding her grasp and her furious demands to know what they were up to, and she had become increasingly alarmed. She had not accepted it, naturally, begging them to wait for her, declaring that she was not going to be left out of it, whatever it was, but they had gone off nevertheless, and she had become even more afraid. She could ride and even shoot as well as they, for they had taught her. She had been given permission by her mother to ride to hounds with the Squire’s hunt, for were they not gentry and therefore, in her mother’s eyes, responsible and understanding of the need to protect a young, unmarried girl’s reputation? But that was not enough for Tessa Harrison. She wanted to go wherever her cousins went, illogical and absurd as that might seem, and she would tell them so. What else was she to do with her life if she could not be with them, she asked herself, do as they did, laugh with them over the foolishness of those who were fettered to rules, risk herself in the hazards they were to know? What would her life be without them in it?

  ‘I’m going with you next week. I want to ride on the train just as much as you do and I shall ask Mother and Uncle Joss to let me go. Why should you go and not me? I can do anything you do, cousins. I can ride, yes, outride the pair of you and you know it. I could race you both from here to Greenacres and be home five minutes before you. Don’t you dare simper at me, Drew Greenwood, or I’ll take my crop to you. I could open your cheek to the bone and then that cheeky little dairymaid . . . oh, yes, I’ve seen you hanging about, both of you, outside the dairy. Well, she won’t smile so sweetly at you then, will she? I
can do anything you do and I don’t mean to sit at home next week and sew on my sampler whilst you enjoy yourselves . . .’

  ‘Sew! A sampler! You! Now that would be a sight worth seeing, don’t you agree, brother?’ Pearce stretched his growing body, throwing back his head in a shout of laughter.

  ‘I would have to see it before I’d believe it.’ They were both laughing now, taunting her, for there was no finer sight than Tessa in a rage. They all had hot tempers, they were the first to agree, especially themselves, snarling, knife-edged tempers which could flare in a minute from mere irritability to a rage from which the servants fled in alarm. Their Aunt Jenny, who had them in her charge whilst their father was at Westminster, refused to become involved with what she called their childish squabbles.

  ‘Let them fight it out between them, preferably in the stable yard,’ she would say wearily, eyeing their bloody noses with distaste, her attitude perhaps the result of the accidents, some of them leading to death, and the floggings she herself had witnessed as a young spinner in the mill she now managed. It had not been unknown for an overlooker to break a child’s arm with his leather thong, and her nephews’ bruises inflicted on one another seemed petty indeed when compared to the suffering, the real suffering which had once prevailed. Her own brother Charlie had taken such a beating when younger than they. It had almost killed him and he bore the scars on his back and face to this day.

  ‘I can do anything I have to, Pearce Greenwood,’ Tessa remarked loftily, ‘anything, and that includes sewing a sampler if I put my mind to it, though I must admit I’d rather fight a game-cock.’

  ‘Perhaps, little cousin, but you cannot beat me or Drew in a race to Greenacres. That little mare of yours is game but no match for my bay, or Drew’s.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks! I’m not talking about keeping to the tracks, you know. I mean whichever way any of us cares to take and if that frightens you then you have only to say so and we will forget the whole thing.’

  ‘Now hold on, Tess. You cannot mean to gallop across the moorland. It’s as rough as hell out there and if one of the animals should put a foot in a rabbit hole or be faced with rocks which . . .’

  ‘Well, of course, if you are not up to it . . .’

  ‘Of course we are, but . . .’

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’

  Pearce shrugged, then turned to grin at Drew who leaned indolently against the rock, his eyes half-shut against the sun, seemingly oblivious to the wrangling between his brother and cousin. He was well used to this throwing down of the gauntlet by one or the other of them – a challenge which must be taken up if the scorn of the others was not to be endured. They loved the friction which set the blood tingling, the dare which must be accepted. Wild as young colts, all three of them, daring and reckless, they gave no thought to danger, to risk, beyond a care for their nervous, high-stepping mounts, to anything which might smack of caution. The brothers, young as they were, defied all comers at school, fighting back to back for the sheer joy of risking their handsome faces, their fine young bodies against boys older and heavier than they, often over nothing more serious than the sorry cut of a fellow’s jacket.

  ‘What d’you say, Drew? Will we take her on? I know it’s a shame to risk her mare against our bays, but if she’s mad enough to do it who are we to deny her?’

  The stretch of moorland from Badger’s Edge to Greenacres lay to the east of Crossfold and Edgeclough. It was rough terrain and uneven, about three miles mainly downhill and inhabited on the ‘tops’ only by rabbit and stoat, curlew and magpie and wheatear. It was fit only for small animals and birds but within ten seconds of the signal, which was the dropping of Tessa’s scarlet ribbon, they were all three soaring away from the sun which was beginning to lower itself towards the hills on the far side of the Penfold Valley.

  Tessa could feel her mare start to take charge and she let her go, trusting her instincts, guiding her only generally in the direction of Greenacres. She could feel the intense excitement vibrate through her own body and she knew she communicated it to her mount for the mare surged on as madly, as blindly as she herself did, not caring what came up before her, not seeing it, only sensing the rapid approach of the scattered rocks, the dips and folds and hollows which must be traversed before she and the mare clattered into the stable yard. At no time did she even consider that she might not get there, nor be the first home.

  The mare nearly pulled her arms from their sockets and she flew like a wild bird, a bird knowing it should be alarmed at its own height and speed, and yet unwilling to return to earth and safety. On and on, and at her back she could hear the frenzied yelping of the dogs, the thunder of her cousins’ mounts as they dashed over the stretch of grey rock. For a moment, as the mare turned instinctively to avoid an outcrop of tumbled rocks higher than a man’s head, the sun was in her eyes and she was blinded but she let the animal take her round the rocks.

  They came to a dry-stone wall, then another as they reached the lower ground for it was here that enclosure had made inroads upon the edge of the moors, and the mare rose lightly over each one, her hooves not even clipping the crumbling stones. There was a cottage or two clustered in a hollow, sheltered from the cruel Pennine winds, and women and children stopped to stare in amazement, then shook their heads and turned away since it was only the wild Greenwoods trying to kill themselves as usual.

  Drew and Pearce raced a scant yard behind her, watching her back with fond pride for, really, was there another girl like her in the whole world? Her hair streamed out three feet behind her, a banner of dark, burnished chestnut in the late afternoon sunshine. They were so close they could see the sweat stain the back of her shirt and hear her breath, ragged and urgent in her throat. She was fearless, leaping shoulder-high rocks and wide, quite appalling chasms cut in the rough ground in her determination to be first home. She did not even look back so convinced was she that they had been forced to drop behind, unable to keep up with her.

  ‘Shall we let her do it, brother?’ Pearce shouted, for really she deserved to win, but she heard him and her outrage exploded in her, flowing madly to every part of her body. With a fierce shout she urged her mount on until the animal’s legs were no more than a dark blur against the grey and green of the moorland. The smell of gorse was everywhere and she thought she had never been happier in her life. The wind created by her own speed and momentum slashed at her face and plastered her shirt against her chest. She could feel the animal beneath her strain harder and harder. She could sense the heartbeat, like a rapid tattoo on a drum matching her own, and she threw back her head in joy, catching for a moment a glimpse of the tiny speck in the sky which was the skylark wheeling in perfect grace above her. It was free, as she would be free, always. It flew high and wide allowing no man’s hand to capture it, filling its days with no employment other than the ecstasy of living, being, breathing, its existence tied to nothing other than the next moment, and she would do the same.

  She could hear the explosion of hoofbeats at her back and the sound of Drew’s voice, breathless and frantic as he realised that she might win, not by his allowing it but by her own efforts, and a great shout of triumph erupted from between her lips. She could see the chimneys of Greenacres ahead of her among the magnificent trees which clustered about the house. Then she was in them, galloping, moving as precisely as the bird in the sky as she guided her mare expertly between their enormous trunks. For a moment she had been sightless, coming from the brilliance of sunlight into the dim and dappled softness of the trees, then she was through and beyond them was the gate into the stable yard at the back of the house. Walter, the stable lad, had heard her shout and was running across the yard to open the gate but she could see he would not get there before she did. Not for a second did she hesitate. Up she went, she and her mare, up and up, high as a man’s head. She was over with no more than an inch to spare, landing on the other side as lightly as drifting thistledown. There was the smell of steaming horseflesh and the sound of
the animal’s laboured breathing, the ring of its hooves on the cobbles, and for a timeless moment she was alone in the magic world she and the mare had just shared. Then they were there, Drew and Pearce, crashing about the yard, their faces red and sweating, their eyes admiring, bestowing on her the accolade of acknowledging she was as good a horseman as any they knew, including themselves.

  Walter hovered on the fringe of the mêlée caused by the three overstrung horses, joined by Thomas and Jack, ready to lead the animals away when they were told. On the faces of all three grooms was an expression of resigned acceptance which said quite clearly they were of the opinion that none of the young people would make old bones! They strode off laughing, arm in arm, and though Drew and Pearce were taller than she was, and six months older, they looked considerably younger. They were boyish, their faces almost formed in that curious way of males who are not quite men. Tessa, on the other hand, though only sixteen, was completely a woman, even if her appearance at the moment belied it.

  Charlie Greenwood glanced about the dinner table at his family. They were all there this evening. His brother Joss, down from Westminster, splendidly handsome in his evening black and white, his hair still thick and curling about his head but where it had once been dark as a gypsy’s, now it was threaded generously with white. Commanding of eye and well used to moving amongst all classes of men from the operatives in the mill to the Prime Minister, the great Lord Aberdeen himself, Joss was as usual no more than an arm’s length from his serenely smiling wife, Katherine, their hands, or so it appeared to Charlie, to be forever hovering, each ready, should it be needed, to give loving support to the other. Their devotion had once been the talk of the Penfold Valley; anyone in their company was immediately conscious of their apparent inability to be more than a yard or two apart and of the secret and sometimes disconcerting smiles they constantly exchanged, but now, after twenty years of a marriage which most had said would not last, their passion for one another was unabated.