The Cuckoo's Child (7 page)

At any rate, Gideon was exerting his usual easy charm, enthusiastically expounding a subject he needed no encouragement to talk about. ‘Yes, I do have a motor – of sorts,' he was telling Laura, ‘but discretion dictates that I mostly keep her down there at the mill. She doesn't go so well up the hills, I'm afraid. I would have driven to the station to meet you myself, only Grandpa . . . Well, nose to the grindstone and all that. And anyway, he doesn't approve of cars—'

‘Considering the number of times you've broken down on the way up here, he can hardly be blamed for that,' Una commented.

‘Oh, well, these dashed hills, as I say – and the old girl
is
second-hand. Never mind, I have my eye on a topping little Wolseley two-seater that's guaranteed for hill climbing, when I can get my hands on the ready to buy it, that is. Tell you what, Mother. You persuade Grandpa to part with a hundred and seventy-five pounds and I'll take you out for a spin when I get it. Even take you down to Ramsden's,' he said, smiling at her but adding for Laura's benefit, ‘My mother walks down to the butcher in Wainthorpe three times a week to buy meat, rather than have them send it up.'

‘I'll not have Joe Ramsden sending up any old rubbish he thinks fit, not as long as I've got the use of my two legs,' Mrs Beaumont stated. ‘You won't get me going down there in one of those dangerous contraptions, neither. What, a hundred and seventy-five pound! You'll never get
that
out of Ainsley Beaumont,' she added with finality, helping herself to another slice of currant pasty.

‘Probably not.' He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Not when he won't even think about motorized lorries for the mill. What do we want
them
for, he says, when we have fourteen horses that don't need petrol at one-and-three-ha'pence a gallon, and neither do they have brakes that fail and run into trams. If he had his way we'd still be using packhorses as they did in Great-great-grandfather Beaumont's time.'

‘You've planted the seed. Let it grow and sooner or later he'll come to think it was his own idea.'

‘How clever you are, Una!' he replied, smiling, as if the idea hadn't already occurred to him. She responded only with a raised eyebrow.

‘Cross Ings Mill has been in the family for a long time, then?' Laura asked.

‘Oh Lord, yes. Generations,' Gideon replied carelessly.

Seemingly, this was a subject which either did not interest Amelia or she did not wish to talk about. Having finished her meal, she took it as a sign to push her chair back. ‘Well, then, if we've done, Prissy will be wanting to side all this lot and get it washed up. And I've still a lot to see to before I get to bed, so I'll say good night now and leave you. There's a good fire in the workroom, and your breakfast will be at half past seven, Miss Harcourt.' She nodded stiffly to Laura, who made a mental note not to be late. Inflexible routine was obviously the rule in this house and she had no intention of getting on the wrong side of Mrs Beaumont.

The room they retired to was shabbily comfortable, haphazardly furnished, and one the twins seemed to have made their own. Books and papers were everywhere, and a typewriting machine on a table seemed to be the reason Mrs Beaumont had called this a workroom.

Laura was glad to sink into a chair by the fire, unable to feel anything but relieved to be rid of a presence she felt to be domineering and humourless, and she surmised she was not the only one. Yet, as if sensing unvoiced criticism, Una embarked on a somewhat defensive explanation. ‘Mother has a lot on her plate, so she's early to bed, early to rise. It's not an easy house to run, and we don't keep a big staff. I expect she's gone to smooth Mrs Macready's feathers. As if one more to cook for will make any difference.'

Mrs Macready had apparently come to Farr Clough when the house had belonged to Sir Gideon Tyas, their maternal great-grandfather, and was still here, despite her old age. ‘Doing us all a favour. Working for Beaumont's is a comedown, as far as she's concerned,' Gideon said with a laugh.

‘Beaumont, that's a French name, isn't it?' But it was one Laura had noticed several times amongst the recurrent Hardcastles and Bamforths she'd seen above mill gates and other concerns, on the way to Wainthorpe.

‘It might have been once, though we've no French ancestors that I know of. We were nothing more than hand-loom weavers up on the moors, until the first Ainsley Beaumont graduated towards owning a small mill in the valley, where the woven pieces could be finished as well. Where the water flowed – plenty of it for powering the mill wheel, and soft for washing the wool. And where there was plenty of room for expansion. Now the whole process of manufacture's under one roof – thanks mainly to Grandpa – though it was an uphill job, as he never ceases to remind me,' he added dryly. ‘Beaumonts—' He broke off abruptly. ‘Sorry, I tend to get carried away.'

‘No, no, please, go on. After all, it's a story to be proud of.'

He shrugged and said he supposed it was, of course, if you thought about it like that, though you didn't often, not when you had been brought up with it. You just took it as it came, got on with the day-to-day running of the mill and accepted its profits as the natural outcome.

If he was endeavouring to sound cynical, he was failing signally; flippancy could not conceal that this was the way to his heart. Laura could see she had touched on a nerve, a passion in him. This cloth-making business was clearly as much in his blood as it was in his grandfather's, inherited from one generation to the next.

‘I'd like to know more about it all,' she said, ‘don't forget, it's all new to me – and by the way, what is mungo? I asked your driver what it was but all he would say was devil's dust.'

‘John Willie? I'm afraid the old so-and-so's disposition doesn't improve as he gets older. What he meant was—' Gideon paused. ‘Old rags and wool are ground together to make a lesser quality cloth called shoddy, and an even cheaper one called mungo. Unfortunately it makes a lot of fine dust.'

‘That gets into the men's lungs, so they can't breathe,' said Una.

‘It's cheap, however. Cheap cloth. There's always a cost.'

‘Mostly to folks like Jessie's father. There's nothing done about it because money matters more. Even Grandpa has a share in one of these mills.'

‘Used to have.'

A taut silence fell between them, broken only by the sound of the wind in the chimney. Tread softly, Laura warned herself, though she didn't know why.

‘Well,' she said awkwardly, after a moment, ‘it's obvious there are more aspects to the wool business than I'd dreamed of. Tell me more.'

It appeared Gideon had a better idea. ‘It's far easier to show than to explain. Why don't I take you round the mill sometime and show you the different processes – that is, if you're not afraid of noise, and some dirt?'

‘I'm used to both. Stepney, where I've been working lately, isn't exactly famed for cleanliness, or silence.'

She guessed she had surprised them both, but the change of subject seemed welcome, and for a while they talked about the Settlement, the conditions in which the women had been forced to live before being taken in there, and how they were helped. ‘Oh, if you knew how hopeless those women feel!' Laura finished, ‘when there's absolutely nothing they can do about the position they find themselves in.'

‘But it's not only in Stepney where that sort of thing happens.' Una was showing more animation than Laura had seen in her yet. ‘It's here, in the valley, in Wainthorpe, in the mills and everywhere. Women work ten hours a day in the mill – when they are not having babies – and have to cook and wash and clean for their husbands and children after they get home – and then have to watch these same children going to work half-time in the mill when they're but thirteen—'

‘It used to be when they were only seven or eight, and they worked fourteen hours.'

‘So it's all right, then, for children to work
six
hours?'

‘I didn't say that, Una. You're deliberately misunderstanding. My sister,' he said, turning to Laura, ‘in case you hadn't guessed, is a supporter of rights, for herself and everyone else. Would it surprise you to hear she also supports votes for women?'

‘You can't have one without the other,' Una retorted.

So it was true that the flames of feminism which Mrs Pankhurst and her three daughters had set alight in Manchester and were spreading in London like the Great Fire, were leaping here, too. ‘My friend Eva Carfax is a member of the WSPU and she has told me how strong the movement is here in the North.'

Quickly, Una asked, ‘And you, too? Are you committed?'

Gideon sighed. He was beginning to look bored.

‘Not . . . exactly,' Laura said cautiously, unwilling to admit that the extent of her commitment so far had been in occasionally addressing stacks of envelopes.

‘That's something we must remedy, then. You'll be surprised how many women around here are involved. All sorts of people. Jessie Thwaite, for instance, is one of our strongest supporters.'

This was no surprise. Jessie was clearly a strong-minded young woman with views of her own. Una, becoming animated, went on to say how she herself helped to draft speeches for the women who worked in the mills and weren't afraid to stand up for what they felt was right, but who didn't feel themselves educated enough to put it into the proper words. She wrote pamphlets and letters to the papers, organized meetings, and most importantly, she produced a small, quarterly magazine called
Unity
, which she wrote mostly herself and distributed, free, as widely as she could in the neighbouring towns.

‘In fact, put her in here with a nosebag and a jug of water and you're unlikely to see her for days,' Gideon drawled.

Una ignored him and told Laura there was to be an important meeting in Halifax in a couple of weeks. ‘Will you come? We're hoping some of the WSPU leaders will be there, and there's to be a great speaker, a political activist who's on our side. Do come and swell the ranks.'

Gideon ceased to yawn. ‘Halifax? I'll drive you over there,' he volunteered.

‘What, and risk conking out over the moors?'

‘Better than the tram, but it's up to you. There's room for both of you.'

‘And for Emmie Broomhead as well, of course.'

He shrugged with a show of indifference. ‘If she wants to come – though Emmie isn't interested in all this feminism.' Una raised a cool eyebrow. ‘But look here, Una, if you insist on talking suffragettes at Laura, I must remind you she's had a very long day.'

‘I'm sorry, yes, I am thoughtless. You must be tired, Laura.'

Laura made polite protests but she could not make them very convincing. She was quite thankful to Gideon for the intervention. Tonight, of all nights, she had even less inclination for ‘talking suffragettes' than usual.

Someone had been into her room while she was out and had banked the fire and, she saw by the stirring of the curtains, had opened the window again. Beyond the dark outlines of Cross Ings Mill almost directly beneath her, the darkness of the hills was pricked by hundreds, maybe thousands of lights from farm, cottage and street, the squares of light from the occasional late-working mill, spreading into the distance towards the red glow that lay above Huddersfield.

Despite the cold, she stood mesmerized, until at last she was forced to shut the window, wash, undress, and climb between icy, starched sheets that seemed to smell of the peaty air which had dried them. She thought longingly of the hot-water bottles always placed in her bed at home and wondered how she would ever get to sleep. But she discovered that a stone hot-water bottle, flannel wrapped,
had
been placed in the huge feather-bed, and under the pile of soft blankets of best Yorkshire wool, she soon grew warm and, exhausted with her long, bewildering day, fell asleep with the breathtaking view she had looked out on still in her mind.

It was not this sight that presently haunted her uneasy dreams, however, but that of the blackened shell of the other part of the house, the feeling that had come over her when she had first set eyes on it, and the knowledge that it lay just the other side of the wall from where she slept.

Part Two

Six

Amelia Beaumont invariably rose at the crack of dawn and by six thirty she was already seated in the small, over furnished sitting room that was her favourite place, in the little corner which was big enough only to accommodate a desk and a chair. But that was all she needed to do her weekly accounts.

She was careful to note down every penny before adding it up, after which she wiped the pen and dipped it into the red ink, ruled off, blotted it and turned to a different page. The household accounts, like everything else at Farr Clough, were kept in meticulous order, ready at any time for Ainsley to inspect them, but though she would have preferred him to see the evidence of his trust in her, he always waved the suggestion away. ‘Carry on, if it makes you happy to see it all in black and white, but don't bother me with your sums. You wouldn't diddle me, Amelia.'

That was true, and waste of any kind was anathema to her. Amelia had taken thrift in with her mother's milk. Nothing was ever wasted in the Chadwick household, and the same rules applied under Amelia's jurisdiction here at Farr Clough. She was quietly satisfied to see that this week she had even saved a shilling or two. That, and seeing that his house ran as smoothly as his business at Cross Ings, was the least she could do. It was her way of paying Ainsley back for everything he'd done.