Shining Threads Page 21

  ‘Give over.’

  Tessa stood up. ‘If you’re going to insult my family then I think it’s time I left. Thank you for the tea. And I don’t think I shall be able to call next week.’

  ‘Suit thissen.’

  But as Annie watched Tessa ride away her face was sad and filled with pity, not only for the girl – for what else could you call her? – who seemed unable to reach out and hang on to the happiness which was offered to her, but for the man who offered it.

  12

  The first awareness Tessa Harrison had had of the ‘trouble’ which existed between Russia and Great Britain was last November when the newspapers reported that the Russian fleet had fired on seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes at Sinope – wherever that might be – and nearly four thousand men had perished. She couldn’t understand it, really she couldn’t, she had said to her mother who had read the account out loud to them. Why should the sinking of Turkish ships and the killing of Turkish sailors have anything to do with them, for heaven’s sake? But everyone seemed to think it did and it was apparent the British public was highly indignant. Now it appeared the French and British had declared war on Russia and troops had embarked for Varna.

  The news about the war excited Drew and Pearce. They had known from the start that there was to be one, Drew said, and naturally, Britain should be drawn in if she was to protect her interests out there.

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘In the Balkans.’

  ‘Well, it’s a mystery to me and I can make neither head nor tail of why Britain and France should declare war on Russia over it.’

  They were all three sprawled before the drawing-room fire. Laurel and Charlie were dining with commercial acquaintances and as always when Laurel was absent they all took advantage of it, even Jenny, turning up at table in whatever they had worn during the day. They were relaxed, quiet, a family with no need of the bright social conversation which Laurel insisted upon.

  ‘They’ve made their camp on the northern slopes. The French have 15,000 men and 520 guns. It says the Russians have already retreated from Silistra and the British and French have pitched camp at Varna. It’s rumoured to be quite a glorious sight: white tents and green fields, broad sweeps broken by a great many fine trees overlooking a shining lake, or so the papers say, and all surrounded by meadow land and backed by the rugged outlines of the Balkans.’

  Pearce’s soft voice trailed away and his eyes seemed to gaze, not at the valley he described but at some image only he saw. His brother looked away, his own eyes shuttered.

  Jenny lifted her head from the newspaper and her voice was startled.

  ‘You sound as though you’d like nothing better than to be there, lad?’

  ‘The thought had occurred to me, Aunt, that it might be rather splendid to see something other than mill chimneys and loom-gates before I die.’

  ‘You’ve been to Italy to visit your mother and father. Why should you wish to see . . . where was it? . . . Varna? I don’t even know where it is.’

  ‘Varna is on the Black Sea, Aunt Jenny, half-way across the world and a long way from Chapmans mills.’

  ‘But your life is in those mills, Pearce, you know that.’

  ‘Indeed. I am only too well aware of it.’

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Why, nothing. Only that Pearce and I are not the stuff you and Charlie are made of, Aunt Jenny.’ Drew’s voice was smooth as he stepped in quite instinctively to support his brother. ‘We are neither of us, or so it appears, naturally cut out to be industrialists, as you are, as our own mother was. Father became a politician, despite his humble beginnings . . .’

  ‘Humble beginnings, is it, Drew Greenwood? And don’t we all come from those, you included?’

  ‘Oh, indeed we do, Aunt Jenny, but I hardly think Tessa, Pearce and I fit into the . . .’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk daft, lad. Your grandfather and your father planted taters to see them through the winter and even in 1826 during the power-loom riots they brewed nettles to make a bit of nourishment for Charlie and Daisy who was our sister. They were only children then . . .’

  The three faces about her had taken on that faint and uneasy look of the young when confronted with the awkward and tedious reminiscences of the old. It was all history, their expressions said, and nothing to do with them and their generation. But she had lived through those times, riots and machine-breaking and the fight for a decent standard of living for the working man. And the father and mother of those two young men who were staring so irritatingly at her, had been in the forefront of that fight. Yet here their sons sat, careless, restless, ready, it seemed, to take a ship, if they had the choice, to some far-flung spot on the globe just for the hell of it. Just as though they were Nicky Longworth or Johnny Taylor, with no other obligation but to amuse themselves.

  ‘Don’t you care?’ she asked coldly.

  ‘About what, Aunt Jenny?’ Drew’s voice was polite, genuinely puzzled she could see.

  ‘About what happened to your family. To all the families around here thirty years ago.’

  ‘Really, Aunt Jenny, it is all so long ago. The future . . .’

  ‘Depends on the past, my father always said.’

  ‘How very quaint.’

  Drew’s face had assumed the haughty expression of a young prince and her own became a bright pink in her anger.

  ‘You supercilious young devil! Your grandfather was a great man with a wisdom and a feeling for others which I suspect you wouldn’t recognise. He was a working man, as I am a working woman, as you, both of you, are from a working-class family, and you will not expend your so-called humour at his expense. You really do amaze me, yet I don’t know why you should for you’ve always shown a marked reluctance to take up your responsibilities in the mill. And I suppose you feel the same, do you?’ She turned savagely on Pearce. ‘About . . . what were the words your brother used? . . . the need to see something other than mill chimneys and loom-gates before you die?’

  ‘Well, it would be splendid to travel but I don’t know whether I’m prepared to go all the way to the Balkans to . . .’

  ‘To escape your heritage, is that what you’re saying? To live like young lords without having to do a day’s work in your lives? Shooting grouse over the Squire’s moor . . .’

  ‘The Squire works hard, Aunt Jenny,’ Drew protested angrily. ‘He is busy from morning till night seeing to the needs of his tenants, just as you do your operatives. His people, he calls them. He is Chairman of the Bench at Quarter Sessions, a magistrate and is always occupied about the estate . . .’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Jenny Harrison’s voice was contemptuous, reducing Squire Longworth’s busy day to the proportions of a tea-party which, if he did not care for it, he had no need to attend.

  ‘Yes, that!’ Drew was beyond caution now and though Pearce made a movement towards him, one that said he should take care, he chose to ignore it ‘And, I can tell you, the life would suit me admirably. Out in the sunshine instead of inside that . . . that . . .’ It seemed he could find no word strong enough to describe his detestation of the mill. ‘In the rain, if you’ve a mind to, not bound by clocks or bells but merely the seasons, the needs and desires of one’s own inclination which certainly would not include the amassing of more and more money which one can scarcely need, surely?’

  ‘That’s because you have plenty already which others have worked for.’

  ‘But there is no need of it any more. There is enough and to spare for us all. We can live in luxury for the rest of our lives . . .’

  ‘And what happens to your workers? Are they to be thrown out like old bobbins, or will you keep them in this luxury as well?’

  ‘They would not lose their jobs. If we were to sell the business whoever bought it would continue to run it just as it is.’

  ‘Really! So you would cast off your responsibilities just as though you were talking of a herd of cows or a flock of sheep to be sold to the hig
hest bidder? These are people you are concerned with: men and women who have worked loyally and faithfully for your family, some of them for over twenty years; young men who are beginning to make something of themselves because of the chance they have been given. Your family have shown all these people the opportunity to move forward, to find a change of place, each generation taking another step up. Yet you want to throw them all away so that you might walk in the rain whenever you have a fancy for it.’

  ‘You will not understand, will you, Aunt Jenny? You will not even try to see what I am, what Drew Greenwood is. That we are not all the same. You are one of them . . .’

  ‘And proud of it, lad.’ She stood up and with quiet dignity walked from the room.

  ‘Well, you have put the cat amongst the pigeons,’ Pearce said softly, wondering how the war in the Balkans had led to the passionate argument between his brother and his aunt on the eternally recurring theme of the trials of the working ‘poor’.

  The scene between Jenny Harrison and her nephew was not spoken of the next day or the next, and by the end of the week Drew and Pearce had convinced themselves it had been forgotten. The weather had turned quite glorious. It was almost the end of May, Whit Monday and a holiday, and they with Tessa were to stroll down in the bright sunshine to watch the Whit walks.

  Tessa had seen nothing of Will and made no attempt to. She missed him quite dreadfully. Her body, now that of a woman with the needs of her awakened sexuality, was even more restless than usual and she rode the moorland with all the wildness which had always been in her, but doubly so now without Will to soothe her to peace. She startled many a tramping family as she flew past on her fleet-heeled mare, her dogs about her feet, her unconfined hair growing longer now and streaming about her head like a dark and whipping pennant. At night she lay in bed, tossing her stimulated body from side to side, or fidgeting at the window for the rose-flushed dawn to break over the hills.

  He had steadied her, she was aware of that now, making her think of things which had nothing to do with the wild excitement which had once been important to her. Now, without him, she needed it, or him, again. Several times during the week, as the spring evenings drew out towards summer she had been tempted to ride over to his cottage. She longed to fling her arms about him in a passion of love, to declare that she would marry him, despite her doubts, since she really could not manage without him and his quiet strength. Perhaps, in a week or so, if she still felt as miserable, she would drop by and talk to him, ask him to be patient with her, give her time to think. The thought heartened her, glowing like a tiny candle flame in the surprising darkness his absence left her in. Drew and Pearce had grown somewhat cool with her in the months she had known Will, going, she thought sadly, knowing nothing of their secret, on their own masculine and hell-bent pursuits from which she was firmly excluded. She had ridden to hounds in season, the last hunt in April, and joined the Squire’s shoot over his moorland during weekdays when her cousins had been forced to the mill, accompanying them when they managed to elude her mother’s and Charlie’s disapproving eye, but they were different with her now. They had their share of milliners, dressmakers, actresses and parlourmaids, those who were fair game to young gentlemen such as they, and appeared to be completely preoccupied in their man’s world in which, she was aware, she no longer had a place.

  On the day of the Whit walks the houses in Jagger Lane and Reddygate Way were decorated with flags and banners, with mottoes which read ‘God save Good Queen Victoria’. There were processions of Sunday school children in their Sunday best, the girls in white starched pinafores, the boys in white starched shirts and all provided, to those who could not afford them, by the ladies of the many church committees formed to help the deserving poor. Those who could pay for the new outfits of their children, a custom at Whitsuntide, did so, naturally, and even put a ribbon on the end of a glossy plait, or a rosette in a buttonhole.

  The Mayor and Corporation marched manfully into the market place. When silence was obtained and the children, who were inclined to be boisterous on this day of freedom from loom or mule or schoolroom, were hushed, the Mayor said a prayer for Whitsuntide, since Pentecost was a religious festival after all.

  The bands, of which there were at least half a dozen, struck up ‘God Save the Queen’ and when they were done the children who had been practising for weeks sang it in piping voices, most out of tune and not one finishing at the same time as his neighbour.

  Led by a marshal on horseback supported by two stalwarts with spears, both on foot, the procession moved on then for it was felt that some of its members were becoming restive, It must have been two miles long, Tessa grumbled to Drew, and did they really need to stand and watch this endless assembly of Wesleyan, Methodist, Primitive Methodist, of Latter Day Saints, Catholic and established religion as church after church went proudly by carrying its own treasured banner? There was to be a fair on Crossfold green with stalls, dancing and puppet shows, prize-fights and side-shows, a fortune teller and later, when it was dark, a display of fireworks.

  There were three or four annual fairs held at Crossfold, where trading took place, where household goods were bought and sold, where menageries and travelling shows drew folk from miles around, and the excitement was intense. There would be clowns, they had been told, acrobats, peep-shows and freak exhibitions. Percy had whispered to Emma who had breathed of it to her young mistress as she brushed her hair – almost back to its original length, thank God – that there was to be a goldfish pulling a boat in a glass tank, could you believe it? Oysters smoking a pipe apiece just like a man, and, giggling, dancing girls exposing themselves to the public gaze for money.

  Tessa had lately taken, much to the surprise of the Penfold Valley, to wearing an elegant gown when she was seen about Crossfold and had even been noticed coming out of Miss Maymon’s dressmaking establishment, her mother’s coachman behind her staggering beneath an armful of packages. They could not, of course, explain it and neither could Tessa herself, seeing no connection in her new preoccupation with how she looked and her love for Will Broadbent. It was as though that part of her which had been subdued for years as she rode madly at the heels of her cousins had begun to drift lightly, awakened by his hands and lips, to the surface of her woman’s sensibilities. Now that she was a woman in the truest sense of the word, she needed to look like one, even to act like one at times.

  She had gone a time or two to Annie’s cottage in her new, stylish gowns, and to the Hall with Laurel, who had been invited to tea by the Squire’s lady. Stepping down from the carriage in crimson taffeta, amethyst silk, honey-coloured velvet, turquoise satin, in cashmere of the softest hyacinth blue, tarlatan of palest peach, as bewitched by exotic and glowing colours as her mother, it seemed, she appeared as an elegant, suddenly fashionable young lady when it pleased her to be, delighted by the sensation she caused.

  Now, on this annual day of celebration she wore a gown of rich cream, simple and beautifully cut, fitting closely to her breast and waist, the skirt so full it had filled the carriage. Her hat was like a flower garden of cream and apricot rosebuds, made from silk and lace. Her gloves were cream and so were her high·heeled kid half-boots and the dainty, lace-trimmed parasol it amused her to carry. She was playing a game, as both Drew and Pearce were aware, delighted with its novelty, basking in the admiration which turned every head in her direction and brought an appreciative gleam to each male eye which fell on her. When she was tired of this part she played she would discard it.

  The green at Crossfold was an enormous pasture on the edge of town, reached by walking up the steep slope of Reddygate Way. It was packed from fence to fence with hundreds of tents and side-shows, with stalls selling everything from sweetmeats to the very latest Bowie knife, made in Sheffield but fashioned, it was advertised, for American and Indian fighters. Painted and gaily dressed clowns tumbled about the spaces between the tents. Acrobats performed the most amazing and seemingly impossible contortions with their elast
ic bodies. Jugglers juggled and showmen screeched of the wonders of fat ladies and thin men, of sheep with two heads and a fish with a woman’s body. Bands played and the sky was blue and cloudless and when she saw him she felt her spirits lighten and her curiosity sharpen but she would not, of course, show him that for one didn’t with a real gentleman.

  ‘There’s Nicky Longworth and Johnny Taylor,’ Drew said.

  ‘Who’s that with them?’ Pearce asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured and it was not to Nicky and Johnny that her eyes were drawn but to the indolent figure of the man who strolled beside them. He was looking at her with the exaggeratedly cool expression gentlemen of his class always seemed to assume when presented with a pretty woman but there was a leap of pleasure in his eyes which she knew was answered in hers. He was tall, loosely put together, half a head taller than she, with crisp fair hair cut short and brushed smoothly about his well-shaped head. His eyes were a deep chocolate brown, narrowed and speculative in his bronzed face, and when he smiled as he did now his lips parted on teeth which were white and perfect. His manner said quite plainly that his ancestors, like those of Nicky Longworth and Johnny Taylor, had been of the privileged class, generations of them stretching back into time, of landed gentlemen, great soldiers, men of superiority and honour, but his whimsical smile told her that it did not matter since what was it to her, whoever she was, and to himself at this special moment?

  ‘Drew, Pearce, good to see you,’ Nicky Longworth said enthusiastically, just as though he had not drunk himself into a stupor with them the night before, pumping their hands, terribly glad to have them for his friends, it appeared.

  ‘And Miss Harrison . . . Tessa. How splendid you look, doesn’t she, Johnny?’ But Tessa, her hand bowed over by both her cousins’ friends, had not yet torn her eyes away from those of their companion.