Shining Threads (73 page)

But worst of all, rumour had it, she had walked into the Five Pigeons, an inn on the moor where the Lancashire and Yorkshire roads met and where radical agitators like her own uncle had gathered
in the old days, and asked the landlord for a glass of ale. Bold as you please, she had been, staring round her at the stunned and silent working men, sipping her ale as though she had as much
right to be there as they. Going back to her roots, one fool said, but would a woman as rich and powerful as she want to step into the past, they derided him.

‘Is there anyone here who knew Joss and Charlie Greenwood?’ she had asked, sensibly enough. No one answered for forty years had gone by since they’d been there and she had
laughed, shaken her head and made some remark about short memories before striding off again into the autumn afternoon.

Despite her loss and her strangeness she was tireless in her work for the relief of the Lancashire operatives and in her struggle to obtain cotton for her own millhands to spin and weave but
during the spring and summer of 1863 she was often to be seen riding her dead husband’s bay on the tops of the South Lancashire Pennines. Great wild thing it was and far too much for a woman
to handle, they told one another. Those children of whom she was now guardian would be left completely alone if she did not take more care.

She was like a person split in two. She moved about Crossfold and Chapmanstown, watching over her own workers quite fiercely. Sitting on endless committees with that working-class friend of hers
from Edgeclough she was the picture of lady-like gentility, her black mourning gown correct in every detail, stark and elegant, her black bonnet discreet and hiding the glossy darkness of her hair.
She spoke quietly but her voice was heard and no one starved that she knew about. When there was cotton to be had and her mills were open she was there in her office, dealing with orders and
accounts in consultation with her counting-house clerk, her managers and overlookers.

She took an interest in her factory school, even reading aloud for an heroic half-hour or so from the books which she borrowed from the Greenacres schoolroom. In the winter months she brought
great cans of hot soup from the Greenacres kitchen and watched with quiet pleasure as eager mouths sipped the tasty nourishment and big eyes, round and attentive over the rims of their mugs, became
clouded with satisfaction, minds fed and bellies fed. She sat in on classes where women who were mothers of half a dozen or more spelled out ‘cat’ and ‘mat’, their own eyes
as gratified as those of their children. They were shown too how to gain the maximum nourishment from the cheapest food, how to sew, not a fine seam or delicate embroidery but sensible, decent
garments to keep the children warm in winter.

But there were times when she was doing none of these things, when she could find no man, no woman or child who needed her, no cotton to be carded and spun and woven, when her heart was like an
empty, echoing cavern with nothing to fill it but the words she and Will Broadbent had spoken to each other. Then she would fling on her breeches and boots and jacket, tie up her hair with a scrap
of ribbon and stride from the house as though the ghosts of all her past were at her heels.

‘Let me saddle tha mare, Miss Tessa,’ Walter begged her that first time she ordered him to get ready her husband’s tall bay. ‘Tha cannot mean ter ride Jupiter. ’E
be too strong for thi. It tekks a man to ’andle ’im. Anyroad, ’e’s not bin out of’t stable since . . . well, only wi’ me for exercise an’ ’e’s
full o’ mischief Miss Tessa. I reckon ’e misses . . .’ Walter’s eyes took on a sad and musing expression for though Mr Drew had been a bugger at times Jupiter was not the
only one who missed him. He shook his head and turned back to Miss Tessa who stood waiting, not as imperious and as high-handed as once she had been but determined on her own way just the same.

He took her over that first time, her dead husband’s bay, tearing away like a wild beast from a cage. She could do no more than hang on and let him, praying that his hooves would not find
a rabbit hole or a loose rock in the dips and folds of the rough terrain; that he would not falter as he leaped across fast-flowing streams and raced along the old trackways which had been there
since medieval times, constructed to carry the materials of the booming textile trade to and from manufacturers and markets. Up, up he sped, on to the crest of Saddleworth Moor which had derived
its name from the saddle-shaped hill which formed it, crossing the railway line which ran from Manchester to Huddersfield. It was as though the bay, like herself, was searching for something or
someone in his mad race into the middle of nowhere with the dogs she and Drew had trained to instance obedience close by his heels.

He swerved suddenly, almost unseating her. It appeared to her that he had heard a call in his own noble head for she could hear nothing but the thunder of his hooves, her own harsh breath in her
throat and the high wind in her ears. She thought he would stop then for his lungs laboured and the breath from his nostrils mixed with the steam from his sweating coat, but he went on, almost
tearing her arms from her shoulders. North he turned then, back across the railway track, beyond the quarry at Delph until at last they stood, gloriously free both of them, and temporarily at peace
in the place known as Badger’s Edge.

She was slow to dismount for it seemed the stand of rocks was too emotionally peopled by the men she had loved in the past. They were all there, tall, strong, handsome, laughing up at her in the
soft spring sunshine, calling to her to come and join them, to sit and dream with them as they looked out over the softly wooded valley from which no factory smoke rose today, Pearce was there,
young as he had been when he had died on the battlefield of the Crimea eight years ago, and his brother, her husband Drew, older but just as merry as he and Pearce skylarked like the young colts
they had once been.

There too was Robby Atherton, the man her young girl’s heart had loved. He had been forbidden her for in his veins had run the same blood as hers since they had shared the same mother.
Warm brown eyes, crisp golden curls lit by the sunlight, slender and fine-boned, he had that air of easy-mannered courtliness she had loved so well. Delightful and charming, but perhaps he lacked
the stamina their mother had given to her, Tessa, since concerned with his own devastation he had ridden away with no thought to hers. Sadly she recognised it.

And leaning indolently against the tall, grey-pitted rock, his mouth stretched in a wide smile, his arms folded across his broad chest, his face tipped to the sun, was Will. Will Broadbent, a
strong, working-class man, as her own forefathers had been, but with the sweetness and warmth of heart of a true ‘gentle man’.

She bent her head and closed her eyes to shut them all out for she simply could not bear the pain of her loss of any of them and her loneliness was quite insupportable. When she opened them
again she was still alone but for her dogs and the well-bred, handsome horse she rode and she knew she always would be. She got down slowly and let the reins hang loose. The tired animal was not
reared for endurance and had raced for over an hour to reach this familiar place where his master had once come, and she knew he would not roam.

She sat with her back to that same rock where she had sat so often before, convinced she could feel in the hollow the warmth where masculine shoulders had leaned against the granite. Where was
he now, her heart asked painfully? Not Drew, not Pearce, not even Robby, but Will. No one had spoken his name to her for months ever since Mr Bradley had informed the board regretfully that Mr
Broadbent had resigned from his position as managing director of Chapman Manufacturing Company Ltd and had put his shares up for sale. They were not worth a lot in today’s fragile market but
perhaps Mrs Greenwood herself might be interested?

She had answered mechanically that indeed she was, her heart thudding badly out of control but relieved at that moment that the anguish of seeing Will at the now monthly board meetings had been
averted. She had heard, like bird twitterings from afar, the discussion and vote on who should take on the position left vacant by Mr Broadbent, and was shaken when she discovered that she was
their choice.

‘But . . . I cannot . . . really . . .’ she had begun to protest. Then, as their faces turned politely in her direction, her cool brain had asked why not? She had been involved in
the business in one way or another almost from the day Charlie had died five years ago, and though she knew she was not yet the ‘businessman’ her mother or her Aunt Kit had been –
indeed there was not a great deal of business to be had – she knew in that instant that she could do it. Had she anything else to do with the rest of her life, she asked herself? So she had
accepted gracefully, pushing aside the memory of Will’s humorous face as it had smiled at her from the shadows in the corners of the dark-panelled room.

It was high summer when she remembered her promise to herself that she would take Charlie’s children, as she now called them in her own mind though she could not have said why, up to the
moorland tops where she had spent so much of her childhood. They all now had ponies which the girls rode in a decorous, slightly alarmed circle about the paddock, encouraged to do so by her own
example and the assurance that it was a proper occupation for a lady to be concerned with. Though they had not said as much, she knew that their minds, which were so like their mother’s, saw
the exercise as a step nearer to the grand husbands they hoped to win, perhaps from among the gentry with whom Aunt Tessa was acquainted.

Robert and Henry rode to school on their small roans, quite incredulously delighted with the sudden freedom their Aunt Tessa seemed to think was appropriate for them to have, though Nanny was
none too pleased and said so repeatedly to Miss Gaunt in the privacy of the schoolroom. But they were bent on careers as manufacturing gentlemen, as their father had been, serious and eager to
learn their lessons so that when the time came they would be ready to take up their duties at Chapmans as all the Greenwood men did. They really had no time, they explained politely to Aunt Tessa,
to ride in the narrow wooded valleys, across the wooden bridges which spanned tumbling waters, up the old packways and on to the splendour of the tops. Oh, yes, they were certain it would be grand
to explore the Druidical remains at Fairy Hole, the Rocking Stone, the Standing Rocks, Dovestone Wood, Badger’s Edge and Friar’s Mere where Aunt Tessa, Uncle Drew and the scarcely
remembered Uncle Pearce had known such ‘fun’, but they would really rather go into the weaving shed, if she didn’t mind. Mr Wilson had promised to explain to them the workings of
a new loom he had seen at the London Exhibition last year. Perhaps another time, they said, looking exactly as their father, Charlie Greenwood had done, smiling but very resolute. She had not the
heart to dissuade them, wondering at the same time what the ingredient was in them which had been so sadly lacking in Pearce and Drew.

Only Joel showed any interest in the hesitant invitation his aunt extended to him. She was not used to children. She did not compel them to her own preference which might, perhaps, have done
them more good in the long run but gave them the choice and only Joel chose to follow her.

They took the dogs. She had Walter saddle her own mare this time for Drew’s bay was too fast for the short-legged cob which Joel rode and when they reached Badger’s Edge she
dismounted at once, automatically striding to the edge and looking out across the deep clough as though she were alone. In the back of her mind she could hear the boy chattering as he scouted about
the rocks, asking questions but apparently expecting no answer, calling up the dogs in a high, excited but unafraid voice.

‘It’s grand up here, Aunt Tess,’ she heard him say, the only person to shorten her name. ‘I can see right across the valley . . .’

‘Clough,’ she said mechanically, her eyes turned away from Badger’s Edge, beyond Dog Hill, beyond Whitefield towards Rochdale where . . . where Will . . . But perhaps he had
gone now. Perhaps he had left the world of cotton, the broad sweep of the South Pennine moorland, left Lancashire itself and gone to a place where he would not be reminded of Tessa Greenwood and
the misery she had brought him. She had not asked Annie who she was quite certain would know, for she wanted . . . hoped . . . that if his name was not mentioned his presence would finally leave
her and she would find some peace. One day, surely . . . sweet Jesus, one day the tearing, clawing agony of loss and guilt would ease and she would know, if not peace, then perhaps the oblivion of
forgetting.

‘Pardon?’ the boy said beside her and his bright face smiled up expectantly into hers.

‘What . . . ?’

‘You said “clough”.’

‘Oh, yes. The valley. Well, round here we call a narrow valley such as this one, a clough.’

‘Why?’ She did not as yet know the inquisitive nature of a child, the eternal questions, the ever-ready word “why?”

A small spark of interest stirred her heart and she smiled. She sat down on the sun-warmed rock and he sat obligingly next to her, his small body leaning quite amazingly against hers. His
sea-green eyes, pale and just like those of his mother, were trusting and hopeful and she realised that this child had received affection from no adult except Nanny since his mother had died.

‘I have no idea,’ she answered honestly.

‘Haven’t you?’ He was clearly amazed that a grown-up could admit to a lack of knowledge. In his experience they knew everything and told you so frequently.

‘There are quite a lot of things I can tell you, though.’

‘Really?’

‘Mmm. For instance, a quarry like the one in the far distance is known as a delph. The narrow bridge we crossed . . . do you remember . . . ?’

‘Yes.’ He squirmed with delight.

‘. . . that’s a hebble and that clearing on the far side of the clough is a royd.’ His face gazed up into hers earnestly, then turned in the direction of her pointing
finger.