Shining Threads (55 page)

‘Providing I don’t have to go in the spinning or weaving sheds amongst all that infernal machinery, and providing it doesn’t interfere with the hunting season, naturally, I can
see no harm in it. Mind you, my darling,’ his old mischievous smile, the merry humour he had been blessed with before Pearce’s death, warmed his handsome face, ‘I cannot promise
to understand what they are talking about. Profit and loss was never my strong suit and when it comes to adding one figure to another I am hopeless. I have no head for it, you see, but I’m
sure I would recognise it if I was told we had made a profit of a guinea or two. There, that’s a bargain then. I shall accompany you to a . . . what do you call it? . . . a board meeting now
and again and you will come with me when there is some excitement at the Hall. My goodness, won’t Mother and Father be delighted with me? Their son in business at last? Now that’s
decided, come here and entertain your husband as he deserves. Take off that gown . . . no, no, let me undo the buttons. What a divine creature you are . . .’

And so, in the weeks which slipped from spring and into summer, as the mill walls grew as high as her shoulders, then ever upwards, forming one storey . . . two . . . four . . . six, her life
continued pleasantly enough, balanced quite easily, it seemed, now that Drew was prepared to be patient and share a little of her time with the demands of ‘the business’ as he
laughingly began to call the forming of Chapman Manufacturing Company Ltd.

It was really quite amazingly simple when you knew the right way to go about it, she found. Her bank manager, Mr Bradley, when approached, declared himself more than willing to suggest several
gentlemen of unquestionable reputation who might be prepared to sit on her board, men who knew the cotton trade and the commercial world in general. Naturally, with the inducement of
directors’ fees and a chance to purchase some Chapman stock, it could only be in their own best interest to see the five mills prosper. Her lawyer, Mr Dalton, would be delighted to draw up
the necessary papers, he said, to ensure that she, her husband and her sister-in-law, and their inheritance, were protected in the most water-tight,
legal
fashion, the major shareholder in
the new company being, naturally, Mr Drew Greenwood himself. In fact, he would be pleased if she would consider himself as the company lawyer to ensure that all the legal aspects of running Chapman
Manufacturing Company Ltd were completely safeguarded. She was not to concern herself with the complexity of the insurance which had proved awkward but to leave it all to him.

The new mill was quite splendid, six storeys high, oblong in shape and solid, with thirty windows on each of its two long sides and fifteen at each end. There was a chimney, tall and imposing,
with the name
CHAPMAN MILL
in bricks of a contrasting colour, and the whole building had a most pleasing
permanent
look. It would be some weeks before the new machinery could be put
in but in the meanwhile those operatives who had not found other employment, and even those who had, were alerted to the forthcoming opening of the mill and the reinstatement of their old jobs.

The next day the company’s first board meeting was to be held, but at the bank premises since the brand new board room at the mill would not be ready. Drew had ridden over to the Hall
saying ruefully that if he was to be concerned with business tomorrow then he’d better prepare by clearing his head on Longworth Moor with Nicky. She’d smiled to herself reflecting that
one would think he was to be involved in the practicalities of running the mill, taking the burden of all that entailed on his own elegant shoulders, instead of spending, as she knew he would, an
hour or two yawning at the first and probably the last board meeting he would ever attend.

The meeting was to begin at ten o’clock and as Mr and Mrs Drew Greenwood entered the bank the clock on the tower of the church opposite struck the hour.

‘What on earth does one wear for such an occasion?’ Drew had questioned languidly as she coaxed him from their bed at seven thirty. He had not come home until the early hours of the
morning, for the wild riding gentlemen had celebrated the splendour of the day with innumerable bottles of the Squire’s champagne. He had been good humoured then as he sometimes was when he
drank, amiable and boyish, but determined, despite his drunkenness, to make love to her. She had submitted to it, unwillingly for the first time since they had become lovers, sensing that it would
cause less dissension simply to lie still and allow him his fumbling way. He had fallen into effortless sleep on her shoulder, the deed half done, his naked body heavy on hers, not stirring when
she had slid out from beneath him, but the good humour was gone by the morning light.

‘Is it really necessary for me to go with you, Tessa?’ he asked peevishly, his aching head in his hands, his still-naked body appearing curiously defenceless in its shrunken, flaccid
state as he crouched on the edge of the bed.

‘I’m afraid it is, darling. You are the largest shareholder.’

‘Christ, what on earth does that mean?’

‘You know what it means, Drew. There will be . . . well, decisions to be made . . .’ she ventured hesitantly, not at all sure herself on the proceedings of a board meeting, so how
was she to explain them to Drew?

‘Hell’s teeth, Tessa, I’m in no state to make decisions.’

‘Not decisions exactly. They will . . . plan what is to be done at the mill, the board, I mean, but it is all to be voted on. You and I between us have the major holding . . .’

‘Oh, Jesus, Tessa, don’t go on. Just send Briggs to get me into my things and when I’m dressed I’ll try to drag myself into the carriage. I promised I would come and so I
shall but, believe me, this will be the last time. I had no idea such affairs began at dawn. Dear God, why cannot these people conduct their business affairs like gentlemen, at a decent hour of the
day? Better yet, could they not have come to the house?’

‘Darling . . .’ Her jaw ached with the necessity to stop the hot words from pouring out of her mouth and all over him. Dear God, she had seen often enough in the past months that if
she lost her temper he would lose his, there would be a stormy exchange and he would refuse to come at all. Dammit, if she could arrange it in some way – she must ask Mr Dalton if it was
possible – she would find some means so that he need never attend a meeting again. Once a month, Mr Dalton had said, but the chairman of the board, in this case Drew or his agent, must be
present. Could she be his agent – what was it called? Her mother had mentioned it in one of her letters . . . proxy, that was it – then she would have no need to trouble Drew with
anything beyond putting his signature on whatever papers Mr Bradley and Mr Dalton, the lawyer, presented to her.

Her mother, her Uncle Joss and even Aunt Kit who was not awfully sure that she wished her frail and precious husband to be troubled by the problems of the reorganisation, wrote her long letters
of encouragement. Perhaps in her niece Kit Greenwood recognised herself as she had been over thirty years ago when she had taken up the role of ‘manufacturer’ on her own father’s
death. Her words of support, of pleading, really, since she did not want to see all that her family had built up crumble away, did their best to let Tessa know she understood her frailty at this
time.

‘You can do it, Tessa,’ she wrote, ‘and I promise you that when the challenge, for that is what it is, is taken up and overcome, there is no greater satisfaction to be had.
Gentlemen have told us for so long that we are not made as they are, that our minds are not as theirs, that we are inferior to them in all but one thing, that our brains are incapable of dealing
with anything more complicated than a menu, but
you
know that is not true, my dear. Your mother agrees . . .’

Jenny did, but her letters were softer, more tender, less pressing. She was the only one to know the desperate unhappiness Tessa had suffered through her love for Robby Atherton. No one’s
fault, of course, but what mother can resist blaming herself for her children’s misery, dwelling interminably on what she might have done to prevent it? ‘Don’t allow yourself to
lose hope, Tessa.
Never
lose hope for it is all we have to get us through the day. Always,
always
the strength to overcome life’s adversity is found and I know you to be a
strong woman. Take hold, daughter, and you will win through. If there is anything I can do . . .’ But Tessa was aware that her mother was saying any help she gave would only be sent
by
letter
from the soft, sun-filled world into which she herself had escaped.

She wrote back, letter after frantic letter, begging to be shown the way to ‘take hold’, to ‘meet the challenge’, to ‘overcome’, but though they always
replied kindly, optimistically even, she knew that, at their age, they really could not provide the impossible support she begged of them. They had done it once, Kit Chapman, as she was then, and
Jenny Harrison, and could not Tessa Greenwood do the same?

In every letter which passed between them not once was it suggested she should turn to her husband.

He grumbled languidly, petulantly the whole time Briggs was dressing him, protesting that his boots hurt his feet, his cravat was too tight, his shirt front far too stiff and how could he be
expected to show himself in a business suit, for that was what it was, when he was not a businessman and had no intention of ever becoming one? His head ached abominably and what he needed was
fresh air, not the stuffy confines of some damned office. She could see that he was genuinely nauseous, the requirement of being what he hated above anything else, turning his smooth brown face
hollow-eyed and pallid. Should she have told him to change into riding breeches, to take up his crop and saddle his horse, to be off on the moorland and up to the tops and that she would go with
him, he would immediately be as charming and lovable, as smiling and generous-hearted as he frequently was, sweet-tempered and terribly sorry he had been such a bad-tempered swine. He would be
willing to do anything she asked, to go wherever she pleased if only it was not to the mill, which was what this meeting represented.

Mr Bradley and Mr Dalton were in the doorway of the bank waiting to welcome them, holding out their hands to be shaken by Mr Greenwood who complied reluctantly, quite startled, it seemed, by the
novel idea.

‘The members of the board are waiting for you, Mrs Greenwood, if you would like to follow me,’ Mr Bradley told them officiously whilst Mr Dalton went ahead to ensure that doors were
opened and a smooth passage was cleared for these important personages. Though neither he nor Mr Bradley would dream of cheating the owners of the Chapman mills since both they and the other
members of the board which they were about to form to run the company were all honest, hard-working businessmen, there would be a great deal of advantage to be gained in being associated with such
an undertaking. Particularly as Mr Drew Greenwood and his wife and, one supposed, the third member of the family who had a small share in it, Mrs Laurel Greenwood, were all totally inexperienced in
the running of the mill and would therefore, one supposed, leave the whole concern to himself and the rest of the board.

‘What a delightful day it is, Mrs Greenwood,’ Mr Bradley murmured politely, ‘quite warm for the time of the year, though one should expect it in July, I suppose.’

‘Indeed,’ she answered, keeping one hand on the arm of her husband who was inclined to wince away from everything on which his eye fell, from the half a dozen clerks at their high
desks who stared at him and his wife with a great deal of impolite interest, he was inclined to think, to the steep stairs he was forced to climb to reach the corridor which led into the board
room.

‘Is this going to take long, Tessa?’ he was heard to say with no attempt to lower his voice, as he followed her up them, and as they moved along the corridor Mr Bradley exchanged
glances with Mr Dalton since it was evident that this meeting was going to be even more trying than they had anticipated.

The board room appeared to be filled with gentlemen. They stood in pairs engaged in serious conversation, or sat engrossed in papers about a large, well-polished table, those who were seated
springing to their feet as she entered. They were soberly dressed in dark business suits, all of them, important of expression and shrewd of eye, about a dozen of them she could see now, men of
obvious worth and standing in the community, whose resolute expressions told her they would be well able to protect the interests of any business in which they had a hand.

Only one smiled and her heart lurched in her breast as she looked into the narrowed eyes of Will Broadbent. She could distinctly feel, and hear, her own breath quicken and the hand which still
rested on Drew’s arm trembled slightly as the emotive picture of the last time they were together crept stealthily into her mind.

Mr Bradley was leading the way across the smooth Turkey carpet, doing his best to usher the reluctant owner of the Chapman mills towards the gentlemen who were to sit on his board. Mr Dalton, as
Drew moved forward, had Tessa by the elbow, a gentleman paying her the respect a lady deserved despite the strangeness of having one where none had been before. His hand guided her and his voice
soothed her since she seemed somewhat alarmed by the seriousness of this meeting and the overwhelming mass of commercial gentlemen to whom she would be unaccustomed. Indeed, he could feel the
trembling of her arm as he placed her in her chair and he smiled to let her know she was in safe hands with Mr Bradley and himself.

The glance she and Will exchanged went unnoticed. She had not seen him since the morning in the mill yard, three months ago now, and though she had been expecting him to follow up and take
advantage of the incident – for that was all it had been, she told herself, an incident – in the foreman’s hut, he had not done so. His embrace had been ardent and her own
response to it surprising, but it had meant nothing to her, she had repeated time and time again to herself, and evidently nothing to him either. He had realised, she supposed, that she was happily
married and was not the sort of woman to be treated as a convenient release for his own nasty lust. She had been relieved that he had finally accepted her refusal and the last few moments of their
encounter, which she must have imagined, she told herself, when he had seemed to imply that there was more to this than the desires of the flesh, were pushed firmly to the back of her mind.