Eppie (57 page)

The narrowness of the room reminded Eppie of the interior of
a canal boat that Tobias had shown her.

Rowan laid her pine-cone patterned cashmere shawl and her
bonnet on the dressing table. Standing before the pier-glass, she tucked stray
wisps of wavy hair beneath her scarlet hair-band.

‘Why has your uncle got a wooden hand?’

‘It’s his whole arm.’ Rowan fetched out a bottle of lavender
water from a damp-smelling drawer and dabbed some behind her ears. ‘He comes
from a wealthy family. He was disowned by his father after he told him he felt
a calling to improve the lives of the poor. My uncle lost his arm at the cotton
mill when he tried to rescue a girl who was caught by a machine. That was after
Lord du Quesne became the owner and had the safety guards removed.’

The dog sniffed and scratched at the bottom of the door.  

‘Priscilla must be preparing something tasty,’ Rowan said. ‘Shall
we go and see what it is?’

The rat catcher was seated at the kitchen table, sipping a
glass of brandy. Eppie recalled seeing the man the day they arrived in
Malstowe. Since then, glancing out of a mill window, she frequently saw him
trudging to Bridge House. She marvelled at his dun-coloured ears, enormous as saucers,
which made him so alike to a rat. 

Turnips climbed into a wicker basket and curled up beside
Jack, Loafer’s terrier.

An open fire blazed, a flavoursome vapour rising from a
small joint of game enclosed in a cradle spit.

Making griddled corn cakes, Priscilla dipped into a jug of
flour. ‘Who’ve we got here?’

‘Eppie, she’s a friend of Gabriel’s - and mine.’

‘Wonders never cease.’ Priscilla said, glancing at Eppie’s
threadbare frock. ‘Your uncle should be back from the jail soon. He said he wasn’t
stopping long, seeing as how the sickness is raging. Something to eat and
drink, girls?’

Sipping a cold glass of cordial, Eppie wandered off,
intrigued by the dipping, bulging house.

In the parlour was a collection of once-fine furniture, now
shabby. Over the years the floorboards had expanded and shrunk with the ingress
of water, making them uneven to walk upon. As Eppie trod towards the window they
creaked like the top of a packing case being forced off with an iron bar.

Several of the diamond panes in the bowed casement were
cracked and let in fresh air. Looking down, she watched riders cross the
bridge, their horses trotting as regular as pendulums.

‘Uncle says the house is his shipwreck,’ Rowan said, coming
to sit beside Eppie on the window-seat. ‘He calls this parlour the poop deck.’

Priscilla stared at people cooling off in the river. ‘Would
you take a look at those wild fellows?  I don’t know how they have the nerve.’

Eppie grinned, watching Wakelin and Fur taking turns to dive
from rocks into the deepest reaches of the river.

Priscilla dragged up her apron to reveal a rubber float tied
around her midriff. ‘I can’t swim a stroke so I wear this monstrosity day and
night in case I fall in. Mr Grimley’s forever teasing me about it, although on
stormy nights, when my bed is rocking and the floor is rolling every-which-way,
I lay awake, terrified for my life.’

Loafer topped up his tumbler of brandy from a walnut drinks
cabinet. Settling on a chair, he stuck his feet upon the top of a shiny walnut
table. ‘It’s a wonder Captain Grimley doesn’t have you all sucking lemons and
sleeping in hammocks.’

Over his head hung garlands of dried-up holly, interwoven
with dusty ribbons, flaking flower heads and pomander oranges.  

‘Don’t stand on that rug!’ Rowan warned as Eppie stepped
towards the garlands to take a closer look. ‘You might fall into the river.’

Kneeling down, Eppie peeled back a corner of the rug and shifted
aside a board which had been placed over the hole. Deep pockets of water,
surrounded by boulders, raged beneath the house. The drop gave her a curdling
sensation in her stomach.

A pungent, alcoholic breeze gusted up from the cellar,
directly below. Rows of wine and spirit bottles were ranged on shelves around
the walls. She recognised the rat-chewed timbers through which Fur had scrambled,
and the boulders upon which she and the others had rested.

‘The garlands are left over from a Christmas past,’
Priscilla said as Eppie replaced the board and let the rug fall flat. ‘Mr and
Mrs Grimley were entertaining a dozen of the most elderly people from the
poorhouse to dinner when Mrs Grimley choked to death on a goose bone. Mr
Grimley misses Hester sorely. A woman senses that sort of thing. Mrs Grimley
used to organise the upkeep of the house. Nowadays there’s precious little money
to repair the place, not since Lord du Quesne took over the mill. Mr Grimley
refuses to take the garlands down. If you ask me, he has a notion that, if he
does, Hester’s spirit will leave the house.’

‘So Mrs Grimley is a ghost?’ Eppie asked, surprised.

‘Bless us, there are no such things!’ Priscilla exclaimed.

Standing before the fireplace, Talia playfully put her thumb
to her nose and wriggled her fingers at Priscilla.

‘How are you getting on at Number 61?’ asked Mr Grimley. None
of them had heard the front door bang or the clatter as he stowed away his
walking cane.

‘Slice of ham pie, Mr Grimley?’ Priscilla asked.

Eppie and Rowan sat together on the
tapestry couch, whilst Mr Grimley settled himself on one of the mismatched
fireside chairs.
He
chuckled at the sight of Turnips, lying
upside down on the window-seat, paddling with his short back legs as though
running in a turnspit wheel. ‘Turnips loves the sun.’

Eppie smiled, listening to the dog’s
ecstatic
rumbling sounds as Talia tickled his tummy.
S
ipping tea
from a china cup, she said, ‘This tastes nice. Mam used to fetch our leaves off
Mr Loomp. We don’t no more because we got fed up of fishing out bits of stuff
like iron-filings. The water from the well rising next to the graveyard at Saint
Peter’s church has got a peculiar taste so, even though we have to pay for it,
and we’re worn out, we take it in turns to rise early and queue with our
buckets and jars at the standpipe in the market square. Sometimes the queue
stretches back to the river.’

‘Overcrowding,’ Mr Grimley said. ‘That’s part of the
problem, both for folk living in the town and for those unfortunates
languishing in jail.’

‘What’s it like in jail?’ Eppie asked.

‘Deplorable. Sick and well sleeping
together. Someone ought to do something about the filth. Ankle deep in places.
The prisoners I visit always seem delighted to see me. A drop of brandy
fortifies the blood, the only treatment they can expect. No doubt the quack
would disagree. Young Kep hangs tomorrow, Rowan. Sorry business. He stole
half-a-crown to help feed his family. Thurstan du Quesne collects forty pounds
for every notorious thief or highwayman he hangs. Scandalous. Funny thing, when
you think about it. Money. Or rather the lack of it, for most people. There
must be a better way of organizing things. I have always had the notion of
building a
community mill where workers would benefit from their labours
. I had everything planned for the cotton mill. All I needed to do
was accumulate sufficient funds. So I gambled and went into banking with Mr Basset,
a brewer. I lost everything.’ His mind buzzing with ideas, he absent-mindedly
tinkered with the silver tea strainer. ‘If only I had my way … ’    

‘What?’ Eppie asked, mystified.

‘Hmm?’

‘What if you had your way?’

‘Yes, tell us, Uncle,’ Rowan urged.

‘Pay the mill workers decent wages, that’s
what I’d do.’ He slapped his wooden hand upon his knee, reveling in their
enthusiasm. ‘I would cut working hours. Construct comfortable houses, clean and
dry. Give them gardens and allotments. Build almshouses for the infirm.’

‘If only, Mr Grimley,’ Eppie said
enthusiastically.  ‘Tell us more.’

‘More?’

‘How’d it be?  Would you build a school for
the children?’

‘There’s a thought. Why, yes. And I would
refuse to employ children younger than ten.’ 

‘No more truck store?’ Eppie asked.

‘Absolutely. I would open a store for the
benefit of the workers. Buy at wholesale prices and sell at retail prices. The
profit, after allowing for the cost of running the shop, would be shared amongst
the members, the very workers who shop at the store, in proportion to the amount
of purchases each of them makes. Everyone will benefit. Capital will grow.’

‘There’d be a decent cup of tea for my mam
every day?’

‘Without question. And, to cap it all
there’d be no more Lord du Quesne.
The man’s profit mongering is evil. He attempts to put himself
higher than God in the way that he controls his workers, whether they toil in
the mills or plough the earth.’
He drifted into
a mood of despondency. ‘However, reality, my girls, into that we are
irrevocably sunk. Ideals are fine, but we live in a world where we must, daily,
tackle the problems facing us. Up at the woollen mill, workers are going down
like flies from a sickness that surpasses all conception. Warts breaking out
all over their bodies. No one has the slightest conception of the cause.’

‘D’ya reckon it might have o’t to do with the beetles?’
Eppie asked.

‘Beetles? What beetles?’

‘Crawling in the sheep fleeces.
After Grump’s sheep died in wheelbarrows, Gabriel twiddled with them. He liked
learning about their skeletons and pudding bits. Once, when he showed me the
horses’ skulls in the threshing barn, he said there might be a connection
between the beetles and the sickness that woollen workers suffer.’

Eppie dragged herself through the following week’s work and
was listlessly leaving the mill on the Saturday evening when Mr Grimley hailed
her. 

‘That matter, about the beetles. Fleeces burnt. Seems to
have done the trick.’ 

Treading towards the chapel, she gazed thoughtfully at the
moon glowing mysteriously through sweeping ebony branches. ‘If some small
action could help lessen the burden of the poor, what more might be done?’

Six years crawled by.

Eppie, Martha, Lottie and Fur no longer lived in Rotten Yard.
They had moved to the second floor of a house that overlooked the corn
merchants, though they shared the room with another mill family.

With a recently purchased steam-driven engine powering the
spinning machines there were now work shifts, day and night. Investing heavily
in other enterprises, du Quesne had also introduced shearing frames and power
looms to speed the textile production.

Eppie, Martha and Lottie stepped warily into the yard,
startled to see red-coated soldiers pointing muskets into the crowd. Crumpton
was shouting at jostling workers. The air smelt stagnant with smoke.

A pained expression upon his face, Thurstan was listening to
du Quesne’s ramblings, outlining the repercussions of his latest technological
ventures. ‘It is in my veins, being a shrewd judge of when to step ahead and
when to pull back.  I have always sought to expand, to keep ahead of my competitors.
Compare me to Bulwar. He has stuck to farming. What good has it done him? Diversification.
That’s what you need. Get in where the money’s being made. You’re late, Grimley.
What’s the matter, man?’

Mr Grimley puffed as into a holed paper bag. ‘Been up half
the night. Pains in the nether regions.’

A notice was pinned to the office door. Knowing that Eppie
could read, since she presided over the Sunday school at chapel, the workers
pressed around her. Children clung to her skirts as she read the poster to
baffled onlookers. ‘Following the recent installation of steam-driven machinery
in these mills the employment of unskilled men and all boys over the age of
eleven is no longer required. This is, therefore, a notice of termination of
their employment.’ 

‘Oi’m being sacked!’ Fur cried, bewildered.

‘My, what an astute observer,’ Thurstan scoffed. ‘Indeed, I
cannot imagine why my uncle would choose to dismiss a man of such stupefying
intelligence. Miss Grimley, I am gratified to see that you have returned safe
and well. I hope that during your stay in London you contemplated my proposal?’

A worker shouted at du Quesne, ‘Have you given a thought to
what it’ll mean putting us out of our jobs? How’s we gonna manage, what with
the cost of bread an’ ‘taties going through the sky?’

Mr Grimley, aware of Thurstan forcing his unwanted
affections upon Rowan, came to stand protectively beside her.

A disgruntled look on his face, Thurstan shoved his way back
to the soldiers, eager to deal with any skirmish.

‘Uncle, did you know about the workers losing their jobs?’ Rowan
asked.

‘Not in the least.’

The truck store manager sidled up to read the notification
of dismissal.

‘It ought to be you who’s being sacked,’ Mr Grimley grumbled,
‘especially after my maid made the grave mistake of acquiring that joint of
gammon off you.’

‘What I sell is quality merchandise.’

‘That’s what you call it, is it?’ Mr Grimley took Rowan by
the hand. ‘I will escort you home, my dear.  Events may turn nasty.’ 

Loomp’s eyes narrowed. ‘In that, Mr Bigwig, you are not
mistaken.’

‘No man can stem the tide of progress,’ du Quesne said. ‘Increasingly,
efficient machinery is transforming the nature of work into mere supervision, work
that can be carried out by any child or feeble woman.’

Wilbert Hix pushed past Eppie. ‘Feeble woman, I like that. Seen
any toads recently?’

 Several weeks ago, Wilbert had come to work alongside Redgy
Dipper as engine-hand, his job demanding no great skill, chiefly to oil the
gear and ensure each screw and bolt performed glowingly.