Shining Threads (46 page)

The fire in the blow room, on the far side of the building from where the watchman drowsed over his
Times
, spelling out words with a calloused forefinger, had devoured the whole room now.
If the inhabitants of the cottages in Chapmans Row had turned to look in the direction of the mill they would have seen at least a dozen windows lit up like the hobs of hell, but most of them were
tucked up in their beds, getting a good night’s sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s enjoyment. There was to be a cheap trip to Manchester and Belle Vue Gardens, starting at seven, and
they’d need to be up early if they were to get there in time to see the great Fife and Drum Contest, as well as look round the splendid gardens. They dreamed about the visit, those who were
to go, as the fire, having devoured the blow room, passed through shaft after shaft, all horizontal and encased in wood. Backwards it surged to the room in which the raw bales of cotton were
stored, pouncing on them and causing such an explosion the roof of the building directly above it was lifted twenty feet into the sky; then forwards to the carding room where every drum was
stretched tight with cotton and every can filled with the soft rope of yarn which came off the machines.

As the explosion lit up the sky every person within three miles sat up in their beds exclaiming in unison though not perhaps in exactly the same words, but with the same apprehension,
‘Good God, what the hell was that?’

Drew and Tessa had been making love, their sweat-slicked bodies entwined on the rumpled bed, the pale moonlight streaming through the drawn-back curtains and open window to touch them with a
strange and unearthly beauty. He was at peace for the moment as though the spilling of his seed into his wife’s empty womb had released the devils which came more and more often to plague
him. Though neither was consciously aware of it, each month both breathed more easily when it became apparent that Tessa was not pregnant. Sometimes Tessa reflected upon it, wondering why she had
never conceived and why, now that she was safely married, she did not desire a child. If she cared to dwell on it she supposed the one she held in her arms at this moment was as much as she could
manage. Drew, if such a thought were to enter his often confused mind, was aware that he could share her with no one. She was
his
mother, giving him security in a shaking and insecure world,
as mothers should he believed, though he had not experienced it with his own. She was the only friend he had for despite his ‘pals’, the fellows with whom he roistered, he had no
others. She loved him unquestioningly and he loved her. Since their marriage he had never been unfaithful to her, despite the many opportunities that had arisen, and he found great satisfaction in
that and in the pleasure she now gained in his arms. She had become, in a completely feminine way, the twin he had lost and when their bodies were joined it was as though he and Pearce were
returned to the safety of the womb.

‘Good God, what the hell was that?’

It took them no more than seconds to fling off the bedclothes and pull on shirts and breeches. Afterwards Tessa brooded on her own absolute certainty that disaster had struck though at the time
she could not identify what it was that had them in such a panic.

‘Good God, what was that?’

The words were but a whisper in Jenny Harrison’s lamplit bedroom for did she have any real need to ask? Her experience told her. Her years in the cotton trade, her knowledge of mills and
their workings had brought with them the fear which lies at the back of the minds of all manufacturers whose buildings are crammed with dangerous machinery, dangerous materials and substances
which, if treated carelessly, bring the lot together in disaster, a chain of disasters which was the millowner’s nightmare. Of course, it might not be
her
mill, or even a mill at all,
but the explosion, for that was what it was, had come from the east and in that direction lay Chapmanstown and Crossfold.

Charlie was out of the bed he shared with Laurel and across the room to the window almost before the echoes of the explosion had begun to resound from hill to hill, those which stood guardian
about the Penfold Valley. Even as he anguished on the certainty that disaster had struck
his
mill, for really, when he considered it, he had not actually heard the explosion since he had
been deeply asleep, he was struggling into his breeches, hopping from foot to foot in his quite comical efforts to thrust the first one down the leg of his trousers.

‘What is it, dear?’ his wife asked, not particularly concerned since she had heard nothing.

‘I don’t know. Go back to sleep. I’ll just go and . . .’

The flames leaped merrily from machine to machine in the spinning rooms on each floor of the mill, racing each other to be first to the weaving shed. Bobbins ricocheted like bullets from wall to
wall and just as lethally, exploding into a hundred tiny shards of wood on impact. Beams above the machines, wooden and impregnated with nearly thirty years of oil and cotton flake, caught fire,
burned through and crashed down in the space of two minutes.

The nightwatchman, with his mug of tea still in one hand and his newspaper in the other just could not believe it, and stood with his mouth hanging open thinking he must be dreaming. It was no
more than ten minutes since he had brewed up and whilst his back was turned, so to speak, someone had fired the whole bloody mill. He watched as the tape-sizing plant where the beams were full of
yarn being sized to stiffen and strengthen the threads, became an inferno, the size bringing fresh life to flames which were already twice as tall as the building itself. The heat took his
eyelashes and brows and he could smell his own hair beginning to smoulder and he moved then, screaming a warning, far too late, dropping his ‘brew’ and his newspaper as he raced for the
mill gates.

The weaving shed was reduced to an unsteady, smouldering skeleton with a dozen huge tottering beams which once had supported whole floors now sticking up like the fingers on a hand against the
brightening sky. The warehouse and despatch room were completely gutted when they arrived in the carriage, driven at a dangerously run-away speed by Drew himself. He was charged up to fever pitch
with excitement, his face quite devilish in the lurid flames of the fire. Just for a second, before the horror of the disaster rooted her to the soot-blackened square of ground on which she stood,
Tessa was quite appalled by her husband’s terrifying intensity. He seemed bewitched, clasping her hand like a small boy who had come across some strange and alarming sight and is unsure
whether to be afraid or exhilarated. The fear excited him, and the excitement frightened him, combining to produce a dangerous state of mind in which, it appeared to her, he might dash recklessly
into the flames to save some small, quite unimportant item, risking his life to do so. And at the same time she sensed a gladness in him, a delirious relief as though he was overjoyed to see, at
last, the destruction of the one thing he hated more than any other on earth.

Then the fury and savagery of the fire took everything from her mind. Her mother stood like a statue in the higgledy-piggledy collection of clothing she had flung on, her eyes following the line
of useless water-filled buckets which passed from hand to hand, directed by a frantic Charlie; and then, amid the confused shouts and the realisation of those who operated it that it was a waste of
time, her gaze turned to the large hand-pump which had required fifty men to haul it here and pump the water from the nearby river.

Dawn came early for it was not yet autumn and still her mother stood at the top of the brow which led down to the mill, now no more than a blackened, smoking pile, spread over an enormous area
of what could only be described now as rubbish. There was nothing identifiable in the stinking debris: the outline of what might have been a spinning mule, melted down in the fierce heat to no more
than a lump of metal; a half-burned-through beam, the unexplained mystery of why half of it was barely touched whilst the solid steel had melted.

Scores of silent onlookers stood about with no thought in their minds of going to Preston or Manchester, conscious only of their jobs which had gone up in the flames along with the mill. Men
moved about aimlessly through the pools of filthy water, scratching their heads for want of a better occupation, their clogs sinking into the water and the mud as they wondered what to do next.
Children watched awed but thrilled, as Drew Greenwood had been, unaware of the consequences which would surely follow this night. And over it all the sun shone benignly from a cloudless sky.

Tessa could not seem to get her stunned and senseless mind beyond the wonder of how much space the mill had taken up. Across the acres and acres of wasteland she could now see the tidy row of
cottages, the village church and its graceful spire, the smithy set beside the small row of shops and, to the left, the fields on which the men played cricket and the children ran in the meadow
grass. Why, it’s open countryside here, her astonished gaze told her, only the mill making it seem like any other small cotton town. There were trees and a park which she had never noticed
before, a whole community which had lived under the wing of Chapman industry, nurtured by the thrift and common sense, the foresight and business acumen of women like her mother and men like
Charlie.

She stood with her arm about Jenny’s shoulders, drawn to her with compassion, their past animosity forgotten, watching as Charlie began to walk in the direction of the ruined mill, his
long stride taking him down the slope and through the wide open gateway into the filthy yard. Jenny began to follow and Tessa went with her, both still stunned by the enormity of the destruction.
Drew was helping the men push the hand-pump from the area. Pearce, his brother, had loathed – and been afraid of – the factory in his youth. Now Drew, who had been part of him,
certainly did not feel the need to poke about in its remains as Charlie seemed intent on doing.

‘Charlie,’ Jenny’s voice was nervous, warning her brother not to go too near.

‘Don’t fret thissen, our Jenny,’ Charlie answered in a strained, ragged voice, the broad vowels of his Lancashire heritage strong now in his distress. ‘I’m nobbut
tryin’ to see if there’s owt in’t . . .’

‘What, for God’s sake? Everything’s burned to a crisp. What can there possibly be left worth risking getting yourself burned for?’

‘Th’office were here, lass. Happen there’s a file or two . . .’

‘Don’t be daft, Charlie. Please come back. The wood’s still smouldering and your clothes might catch alight.’

‘Give ower. The men’ve cleared a path through theer to mek easier access for’t hosepipes. I’ll just . . .’

‘Charlie . . . please . . . ’ Jenny begged, then turned to the men who stood in dispirited groups in every corner of the yard. Some had come for miles and some seemed not quite so
downcast as others, since it was not their mill which had burned down nor their jobs which were lost.

‘Is it safe for him to go in there?’ she asked them irritably for, really, her brother was so pigheaded sometimes and would listen to no one. Perhaps if another man told him, one of
those involved in the fire-fighting, he might be persuaded to stop poking aimlessly around and come home for a hot bath and a rest. Heaven only knew what he would do with himself, nor she either,
until the mill was re-built: the four other mills, the old ones built by Barker Chapman nearly eighty years ago, were small and with only enough managerial work to keep those already employed there
fully occupied. But that was for tomorrow. Today must be got through and they were all in a badly shocked state. They needed food and sleep and the sooner they left this desolation the better.

The smoking beam, though as solid as one of the rocks up on Badger’s Edge, made from the strongest wood, twelve feet long and at least two feet wide on each of its four sides moved ever so
slightly. It stood bolt upright from the dense mass of melted machinery which supported it and though Charlie was at least six feet away and standing quite still as his eyes darted about in search
of something he might salvage, a ledger perhaps, a wages book or some record of the work done here only yesterday, it seemed to line itself up with the menace of a wild animal ambushing its prey.
It fell so slowly all those who watched were quite convinced Mr Greenwood could easily have side-stepped, and they stood waiting for him to do so, shouting a warning nevertheless, just to be on the
safe side. It struck him squarely on the back of the head, falling with a sound like thunder, taking him with it into the muck and filth and water-soaked ashes, the charred wood and melted steel,
the stinking ruin of what had once been the best and safest mill in the whole of south Lancashire.

For a moment that seemed to stretch on forever more there was an appalled silence. Then Jenny Harrison began to scream and it was not until her daughter gripped her savagely, pulling her into
her own desolate arms – for how could any of them survive if Charlie, dear, dependable Charlie was lost to them? – that she fell into chilling unconsciousness.

The funeral of Charlie Greenwood, little piecer once, in the mill that he had for less than two years owned in partnership with his sister and nephew, was attended by high and
low from every part of Lancashire and even beyond into Yorkshire where he had been well known for his clear business head and his reputation for fair dealings. Piecer he might have been, years ago,
but when he died, besides being a wealthy man, his wealth now inherited by his distraught widow, he had also been the brother of the illustrious Joss Greenwood, once and for many years Member of
Parliament for Crossfold.

The ladies were in black silk with corsage and sleeves ornamented with jet, and skirts with no more than seven flounces, for one did not want to seem ostentatious on such a sad occasion. The
gentlemen wore black coat and trousers, mourning bands and tall black top-hats. Black, black everywhere except for the wisps of white cambric and lace, black-edged, which many of the ladies lifted
to their eyes though they could not say they had exactly known the dead man.