A Time Like No Other Page 37

  ‘I forged your signature, Harry,’ she said simply. ‘No one knew of your . . . your condition, not even Roly. He thought you were . . . physically handicapped but I pretended you were directing operations from home. Did I do right, Harry?’

  ‘My love, you are worth all the wool men in the county.’

  The wonder of Mr Sinclair’s recovery affected everyone in the house. They had all, those who had served him in his rooms, making up the fire, the bed, fetching his meals, become used to his silent presence. Clara, making up his bed with Jenny one morning, had even gone into details of how Wilf had tried it on with her behind the stable block, not mentioning how she came to be behind the stable block, before she remembered the still figure of the master in his chair by the fire.

  But now he was everywhere, stamping round the house, inspecting the kitchens, for heaven’s sake, as though the work that went on there was anything to interest him. He was forever in the stables, looking over the horses, lifting their legs to inspect their hooves, smoothing their coats, checking their teeth as though deciding whether to buy them and Carly was of the opinion that he had been in another world for so long he could not get enough of being in this one again and must touch and feel, look and listen, blessing his return from that dark place he had been in for so long. He roamed about the paddock, taking young Master Jamie, Alec and Jack with him to pat and stroke the enquiring noses of Teddy and Blossom, Merry and Snowy and to feed them with an apple each. He tried to encourage Boy to come too but the lad was still timid and wanted nothing more than to remain with the women. The two daft dogs raced round them in an ecstasy of excitement and the whole house seemed to come alive with his vibrant presence. After that first week when he and the mistress never left each other’s side, he refused absolutely to follow Doctor John’s orders to rest, to get plenty of sleep – though they noticed he spent a great deal of time in the bed he shared with the mistress! If she hadn’t already been pregnant, Biddy murmured to Jenny . . . well, Jenny would know what she meant!

  30

  Roly Sinclair thundered along the wide corridor of his father-in-law’s house, his riding boots making a great deal of noise even on the velvet luxury of the carpet beneath his feet. He slapped his riding whip against his boots and was evidently in a vicious temper. The groom in his father-in-law’s stables could testify to that, as could the terrified maidservant who had happened to be in the hallway as he pushed past her and made for the stairs. She had flattened herself against the wall, as they all did when he was about, plain or pretty, for if you were plain he nearly knocked you over and if you were pretty you had to turn your face to the wall lest he took it into his head to interfere with you. Those who saw him gaped at the bruise about his eye which, the stable lad told the groom knowingly, would be a right shiner by morning.

  Entering his mother-in-law’s private sitting room he threw the door back with such a clatter that his wife Anne, who was seated on a low chair by the window, jabbed herself with the needle with which she had been placidly sewing on some small garment for the baby she was expecting and the blood from her finger dripped on to the white long-cloth, a very fine, soft material. Her mother sat opposite her embroidering a dress in which the baby would be christened. Mrs Bracken was known to embroider with such exquisite delicacy it was admired enormously in her circle of friends. White on white the embroidery was to be, as was considered suitable, for the gender of the child was unknown as yet.

  ‘My dear Roly,’ Mrs Bracken began, ready to do battle with her son-in-law, since her daughter who was quiet, timid and dutiful was ever reluctant to reproach her handsome husband. ‘Can you not see we . . . ?’ It was then she saw the state of his face and her hand went to her own. ‘My dear Roly, what on earth has happened to your face?’ she gasped

  ‘Never mind that, Mother-in-law,’ he ranted, beside himself in what seemed a temper of enormous proportions. ‘I have just come—’

  ‘Roly, I must ask you to—’

  ‘That bloody fool of a brother of mine—’

  ‘Roly, please, we are two ladies who do not care to be—’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he roared, for it was all he could do not to smash the old fool in the face but just in time he remembered who she was and who her husband was. The house that was being built for him and his new wife and the baby she carried was almost ready for them to move into and though he was not himself short of money he was not about to put in jeopardy the splendid mansion in which he meant to entertain his friends.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mother-in-law, but that blo . . . brother of mine has just had the effrontery . . . In the name of God who the hell does he think he is . . .’

  ‘ROLY! I will not have such language, such blasphemy in my own sitting room.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake . . .’ Roly Sinclair had been living beneath the same roof as his mother- and father-in-law since his marriage to Anne Bracken. They had considered it unsuitable to expect their well-brought-up daughter, used to every luxury her wealthy father could give her, to live in a small mill house next to a busy, noisy mill. Their daughter’s new house was set in the countryside south of Halifax, placed on a slight rise of land off Briar Lane and indeed was to be called Briar House. The grounds fell away from it like a wide, tiered skirt, comprising lawns, flowerbeds and elaborately clipped box hedges. There was to be a summer house where Mrs Sinclair might sit with her new baby, a covered trellis walk festooned with hanging baskets of ferns and blossom and at the bottom of the slope a quiet, lily-studded lake on which swans would glide. The inside of the house was said to be richly furnished with carpets so thick one’s feet would sink into the pile, drawing rooms, dining rooms, a billiard room for the master, bedrooms galore since the newly married couple would entertain sumptuously, great fireplaces in which fires would burn night and day in the winter and tall, wide windows open to the sun in the summer. No expense spared, in fact, and Roly Sinclair could not wait to move in and remove himself from the constant nagging presence of Anne’s parents. It was a slight drawback that he must take his wife with him but she would be no trouble as long as she kept out of his affairs.

  He had just come from South Royd and his office where his brother, sitting behind Roly’s desk, had informed him of his plans for the future of the mills. The mills of which Roly was part owner. His engineer Adam Elliott had been with him, the pair of them poring over some papers on the desk. The sight infuriated him. He had, of course, heard of his brother’s miraculous recovery from whatever it was that had ailed him but he had decided to leave it for a few days more before confronting him on the future of the mills, particularly after the destruction of High Clough.

  ‘Well, brother,’ he had said as he strolled into his own office, totally ignoring the damned impertinent bugger who had had the effrontery to think he was as good as Roly Sinclair in the wool trade, keeping his thoughts and his temper in check. ‘You are fully recovered, I see, but what I would like to know is why you are seated in my office when you could perfectly well—’

  ‘I am here because you are not, Roly,’ Harry answered mildly. ‘My engineer . . .’

  ‘Your engineer?’ Roly drew out his cigar case, selected a cigar, lit it and blew smoke across the desk into his brother’s face.

  ‘Well, he certainly isn’t yours, brother. I believe my wife employed Mr Elliott here to do your job and since I have been told that you declined to go abroad and sell our cloth there is another gentleman who is doing just that, and very successfully too, by the look of the orders that are here on my desk.’

  ‘Now look here, Harry, I have had enough of this tarradiddle. Now that you are back to oversee the mills I can see no reason why we—’

  ‘We, Roly? There is no we about it. Without your help, Lally and Susan Harper, and Adam here, have kept this business running and now that you are married to the richest young heiress in the county I suggest you go home to her and get on with . . . with whatever it is you have been doing for the past five months. You will, nat
urally, receive your share, or what I consider to be your share of the profit made but as you will never know what that is, since the accounts will be under my supervision, you will just have to accept what you receive. I hardly think you will go hungry, lad, not with George Bracken as a father-in-law and now, if you don’t mind, we have something on a loom we must look at. By the way, all the operatives who lost their jobs at High Clough have been employed at West Heath and South Royd. We are to run the mills twenty-three hours a day. A shift system, you see, until the new mill is opened.’

  ‘What bloody new mill?’ Roly could barely speak he was so incensed.

  ‘At Penfold Meadow. Haven’t you heard? The footings went in months ago but you, in your wisdom, stopped it. But it seems with the foundations already laid we are to go ahead at once. Albert Watson is putting all his available labourers on the building. It is to be massive, Roly, in the Italianate style, something on the lines of Titus Salt’s place, and will employ 3,000 workers. I have made an offer on the land surrounding the site and intend, as Salt has done, to build an entire village of houses, a park, a school, a library, a learning institute, recreational and outdoor sport facilities. It will cost a great deal of money but my wife—’

  ‘So your bloody wife is at the bottom of all this, is she? I might have known. She did nothing but interfere with my work—’

  ‘Your work! What work? I hear from every quarter that you spent your days, and nights, gambling, racing, hunting, shooting and leaving that poor wife of yours—’

  ‘You leave my wife out of this,’ snarled Roly, ready to leap across the desk and throttle his brother, not because of mention of his wife, who concerned him not at all, but at the reference to his activities.

  ‘Gladly, if you will leave out mine.’

  ‘That slut. You do realise that the child in your nursery—’ It was then that Harry leaped over the desk and hit his brother. Harry had done nothing during the past five months but sit in his chair and, apart from some gentle exercise with Martin at his side, had barely moved. He had put on weight and was out of condition which he meant to put right and had already charged Carly, who was well known for his sporting prowess in the boxing ring and on the football field in a team from Moorend, to help him get fit. Nevertheless he managed to get a blow in before Roly, younger and fitter, knocked him down, kicked him in the ribs and stormed out of the office, threatening to go at once to see his lawyer, Alfred Hardcastle, and put a stop to the whole bloody thing. Adam Elliott did his best to get between the brothers and had he not been there Roly might have done more damage to the man who was only just recovering from his past injuries. Roly was shouting, to the enormous entertainment of the men in the mill yard, that if Harry thought he, Roly, was about to part with a bloody farthing for this mad scheme he was out of his mind.

  He said as much to his mother-in-law and when his father-in-law, who had heard the commotion from the comfort of his own study where he had been reading The Times, came storming upstairs to see what the hell was going on, the whole incident was related again, while in her low chair by the window his wife sobbed pitiably.

  George listened – he had no choice – since Roly was so maddened he would not be stopped and George began to wonder if he had perhaps been mistaken in allowing this unstable, as he saw it, young man to take possession of his precious only daughter. At the time Roly had been in joint charge of the Sinclair mills and had seemed a fair prospect but in George’s opinion, who had mills of his own, Roly Sinclair had paid no proper attention to them while his brother was incapacitated. Now the elder Sinclair was in charge and from what his son-in-law was telling him, was doing the only thing possible and that was to get the whole bloody business going again. Of course he had to build a new mill to replace the one that had been destroyed in the explosion, the cost of which would be covered to some extent by the insurance which any responsible man of commerce would have put in place. He had done so himself, so what was Roly Sinclair so incensed about?

  ‘See, Dorothy,’ to his wife, ‘take Anne to her room. We don’t want her to be upset at a time like this,’ for his girl was pregnant by this . . . this husband of hers and must be protected.

  ‘Now then, lad,’ he said placatingly when his wife and daughter had left the room. ‘Let’s get this thing in its proper prospective. Those mills of yours—’

  ‘Don’t call me “lad”. I’m not your lad or anybody’s, come to that, and if I wish to object to what my brother is doing to the mills, my mills, as you reminded me, then that is my business and nobody else’s.’

  ‘Of course, of course, but if Harry believes he is doing the right thing, and I’m inclined to agree with him, then you must abide by what he advises. He’s an astute businessman and knows what he is about. Surely even you can see that what he proposes is the best way to get the mills working as they were before his accident.’

  The ‘even you’ was a mistake and George realised it too late.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sweet sake. I can’t take this.’ Roly was beyond reason and with another oath made for the door. ‘I’m not standing for it a moment longer. Until our house at Briar Lane is ready for us my wife and I will move back to Mill House.’

  ‘Nay.’ George Bracken was appalled. His girl could not possibly live in that poky little house where the Sinclairs had resided for generations. For God’s sake, there was no bathroom, no proper kitchen, a poky parlour and dining room and three, most probably only two bedrooms and the mill . . . well, the mill had gone but it was said that another was to be built in its place and could you expect a delicate lass like his Anne to live in such a place, even if it was only until Briar House was ready for them. But Roly Sinclair was his daughter’s husband and George knew that she belonged to him and that he, George, had no power to put a stop to this.

  Roly was already out of the door and on the way along the landing to the room he occasionally shared with Anne. As he had done at the sitting-room door, he flung it open, George at his heels, and strode inside. Dorothy Bracken was just about to loosen her daughter’s stays and help her on to the bed as Roly and her husband erupted into the room, but before she had time to speak Roly was at the bell ringing for a servant.

  ‘What . . . what . . .’ she stuttered, looking for guidance to her husband but Roly spoke before her.

  ‘Get up, Anne, and get your maid to pack your things. Enough for one night will do. We will send for the rest tomorrow.’

  ‘Roly . . . Roly, darling . . .’ Anne began to weep again and Mrs Bracken fell back from her son-in-law’s fury which she had never seen before.

  ‘Where . . . where . . . ?’

  ‘We’re going to Mill House, my wife and I, until Briar House is ready for us. I will not stay here to be insulted. Come along, Anne, get yourself packed and be ready in the hour.’

  It was Adam’s practice, since it was no more than a ten-minute easy canter, to go home for his midday meal, his home which he hoped one day would include Susan Harper and her lad. He had been ‘made up’ as they said in the north when Lally had told him it was his, and she hoped he did not mind if she was being a bit presumptuous but he was to consider it a wedding present from herself and Harry. He had been overcome, as had Susan when he told her but he had been out of his digs like a shot and had settled into Mill House at once. He and Susan had thought they were being most discreet in their strange courtship but it seemed his actions on the day of the explosion had given their feelings for one another away and so they were only waiting until Susan could walk again and they were to be married.

  Mrs Cannon, whom he had asked to stay on, for Susan would need help for a while, seemed only too pleased to have someone to cook for and always put a tasty, light meal in front of him. Something cold, meat and pickles, cheese, newly baked meat pies and fresh bread with a tankard of ale if he fancied it and usually to finish off one of her own fruit pies. Since Mr Harry had married and gone to live at the Priory and Mr Roly had moved to the Brackens’ sumptuous mansion on his o
wn marriage, she and the maidservants had rattled about Mill House, doing the work they were paid for, naturally, keeping the place as immaculate as she had always done. The gardens were tended as they had always been and were a picture of spring colour thanks to George who, although he was getting on in years, took a great pride in his work. The stable lad and groom, Enoch and Arthur, since there were no longer horses to care for, had been taken up to the Priory but now that Mr Elliott had moved in there was talk of one of them being brought back to look after Mr Elliott’s animal and the gig that was to be purchased for . . . well, it was no secret that Mr Elliott was courting that friend of the older Mrs Sinclair and they were somewhat apprehensive at the thought of having a mistress after all this time. Looking after two bachelors was a vastly different thing to being ordered about by a mistress!

  George was pottering about the rose beds when the carriage came rattling up the track, pulling up at the front of the house. He stared in astonishment when Mr Roly leaped out, his face like thunder, and made at once for the front door. The coachman, whose own face was stiff with outrage, was left to help a half-fainting lady, who George supposed was Mr Roly’s wife, from the carriage where she wavered, a handkerchief to her face, leaning on the coachman who had his arm about her. Without waiting to be let in Mr Roly barged through the door, almost knocking Mrs Cannon, who had also seen the carriage come up the track, to the floor and from the small dining room where the housekeeper had just been about to put a fruit pie in front of him, Mr Elliott came into the flagged hallway, a napkin still in his hand. On his face was a look of utter astonishment, one that matched that of Mr Roly. George edged nearer, not wanting to miss what was going on.

  It was a contest as to who was more amazed, Adam Elliott or Roly Sinclair as they faced one another in the hallway, their mouths agape. It was no more than two hours since they had almost come to blows over what Roly considered to be his desk in his office and from where Harry Sinclair had been driven home by his frantic wife to await the arrival of the doctor. Harry had not seemed to be badly hurt but that kick to his ribs had been a vicious one and Adam had felt it needed looking into, especially to a man with Harry’s medical history.