Ravenscliffe (52 page)

‘Amos Sykes, YMA,’ he said, to the gathering in general. No one spoke. ‘Is anybody ’ere interested in a fair deal?’

Silence.

‘Anybody ’ere thought about union membership?’

Again, silence. One of the men looked beyond Amos to the offices, then looked swiftly away. Amos turned. Eric Long was standing at the window, watching closely. His arms were folded and he had on his face an expression of objective interest, as if he was observing a fascinating experiment. He caught Amos’s eye and held his gaze coldly. It was the closest Amos had come to feeling unnerved in a very long time, standing here in this pit yard, scrutinised by the manager,
surrounded by silent men. Suddenly though, someone began to talk.

‘Thing is, we’d all rather ’ave a job than not, in’t that so?’

Amos spun round to join the conversation, but it was impossible to tell who had spoken. Then the voice started up again.

‘There’s not one man in this pit yard who’ll ’ave owt to do with t’YMA. That fella’s wastin’ ’is time.’

It was a miner at the very fringes of the group. He had his back to Amos and was, ostensibly, speaking to a colleague. But he spoke loudly, and there was no doubting his intention.

‘If that fella ’as our best interests at ’eart, ’e’ll walk out of this yard and not come back. Them among us wi’ union membership were sacked. Rest of us are contracted not to join.’

Amos walked a short distance away from the group of men. They had begun to move now, through the open door of the time office, and a new group of miners were clattering down the steps from the bank, with the shattered look that all miners had at the end of a shift. Amos, in his suit, clutching his leaflets, felt suddenly like a lesser being. Still, he thought: in for a penny. From a distance, he began to speak.

‘One day, it’ll be illegal for Silas Whittam to prevent you from joining your union, or to sack you for being a member. On that day, I shall be back. And if any of you want to exercise your freedom to do as you wish in your own time, there’s a minimum wage meeting at t’Arcadian Hall in Barnsley, a week Wednesday, seven o’clock.’

There was not even a flicker of interest. It was as if he couldn’t be seen or heard. The miners were simply going about their business, clocking in, collecting their brass checks for the descent, moving on to the lamp room. Amos, with
a slightly desperate air, went on: ‘The YMA will not rest until every miner in t’kingdom has a fair minimum wage – boys as well as men. Every single one of you should know you ’ave a set amount of money due to you every payday. We’ll fight for this right with or without your support and co-operation, because we believe it to be t’very basis of a civilised society.’

Behind him someone laughed, and he turned to find Silas standing a mere arm’s length away from him. Amos, visibly startled, took a step backwards, and Silas laughed again, without humour.

‘Talking to yourself, Amos? First sign of madness.’

Amos felt wrong-footed, good and proper. Silas must have walked down towards the pit while he, Amos, was in full flow. They stood for a moment eying each other, then Silas said: ‘You’re trespassing and you’re harassing my men.’

‘I’ve said my piece,’ Amos said.

‘I could detain you if I could be bothered. I could have you before the magistrate.’

Now Amos laughed. ‘You’re a strange man, Silas Whittam. Your sister doesn’t know t’half of it.’

Silas’s expression darkened and he looked at Amos dagger-eyed.

‘Get off my land. If any man here has engaged with you in any way at all, he’ll be sacked. Your presence risks their livelihoods, do you realise that?’

‘This industry’s full of bullies like you,’ Amos said. ‘Wielding your big stick over ’elpless men. But it’s all going to crumble beneath you, and if you weren’t so puffed up wi’ self-importance, you’d see t’signs.’

‘Start walking, Sykes, or I’ll set the dogs on you.’

There was no sign of dogs, but he was the sort of man to keep them. He was almost snarling himself, his handsome face twisted into a mask of loathing. Amos performed an
elaborate, ironic, courtier’s bow and took his leave; but as he walked away, he was trembling and his heart hammered in his chest. It was anger, not fear, but it didn’t stop until he boarded the train for Barnsley.

T
hese days, Monday to Friday, Lilly Pickering walked from Beaumont Lane to Ravenscliffe with her ragged assortment of younger offspring trailing behind, before and about her. She would arrive at ten-past eight, by which time Daniel would be long gone, Eve would have left for the mill and Seth and Eliza would have gone to school. Anna would be waiting for Lilly, who on arrival would go immediately to the big kitchen and warm her backside on the range, however brightly the sun might be shining outside. Too thin, Daniel said: no flesh to warm her bones. Anna would then take off for Netherwood Hall to wield her paintbrush in the countess’s suite of rooms. Lilly held the fort at Ravenscliffe – a little washing, a little cleaning, a few stolen moments on the swing in the sunshine – until Anna came back at four in the afternoon, unless Eve managed to get home sooner, in which case Anna would walk not into the riotous assembly of Pickering infants, but into a calm, orderly house with tea in the pot and warm scones on the table.

The arrangement suited everyone. Lilly had real, regular paid work; a weekly pay packet, the first she’d ever had. Her children ate a cooked dinner every day, prepared the night
before by Eve or Anna. Maya and Ellen had four new playmates – the best kind: clueless and easily led, happy to fall in with orders from the two little generals. And Anna was released from domestic duty for the first time since she’d come to live with Eve, in those dark days when the loss of Arthur was still an open wound and Anna was a foreigner in Netherwood.

Anna’s walk to Netherwood Hall took her each morning past the new miners’ memorial, and every day she would pause and lay a hand on the lamp that the bronze miner held out before him as if he was following its light down a tunnel. She kept this little ritual to herself, but it had become important, and passing by without this moment’s pause was now unthinkable. She had never known Arthur Williams, but she felt he had somehow granted her the right to step into the life he had left behind, and for this she would always be deeply grateful. When she stood before the bronze statue, she imagined Arthur like this: a noble bearing, his shoulders broad, his arms sinewy and strong, his eyes warm in a careworn face. She saw Amos, too, of course. Her own Amos, who through gritted teeth had given his blessing to this new venture of hers, and who could see – indeed, had admitted – that the happiness it seemed to bring her made his own qualms and concerns immaterial. She was more than halfway through the job now. Thea would be back at the end of July, and her rooms would be ready for her. She had given Anna carte blanche to complete the work as she saw fit – ‘surprise me with something wonderful’ had been the instruction, daunting in its simple optimism – and this had included the freedom to hire some help for the donkey work. Cue Jimmy and Stan, seconded from the only firm of painters and decorators that had adequately fulfilled Anna’s scrupulous list of requirements: cleanliness, thoroughness and affability in adversity. She was a hard taskmaster, and she didn’t like her instructions to be questioned.

They were waiting for her this morning; overalls laundered, obliging smiles on clean-shaven faces. They never made a start without her, and they never finished until she said they could. Something about her made them anxious to please.

‘Morning, boys,’ she said now, walking past them in the courtyard, collecting them in her wake.

‘Morning,’ they said in unison, like nicely behaved schoolboys. They followed her into the house, whose passages and doors she knew now as well as she knew Ravenscliffe.

‘Cup of tea before you get going?’

This was the housekeeper, who had spotted Anna’s progress from the boot room past the kitchen.

‘No thank you, Mrs Powell-Hughes, best crack on,’ Anna said.

The housekeeper smiled. She liked this young woman very much. It had taken precisely one working day for Anna to win her heart, and she hadn’t even really been trying. When the family was absent, the great house was always cleaned with the sort of dedication to infinitesimal detail that wasn’t possible when they were in residence. There were 612 chandeliers in Netherwood Hall, and each one would be washed, one crystal drop at a time. Curtains and pelmets would be removed, beaten, brushed and replaced. Pictures would be taken down from the walls and their frames carefully cleaned with stubby little sable brushes whose bristles penetrated every cranny of the elaborate gilt. With all this to accomplish, the very last thing Mrs Powell-Hughes needed was decorators traipsing in and out of the house, so she was very much minded to take umbrage when she had entered the countess’s rooms at the end of Anna’s first day there, fully expecting mess and mayhem. Instead, she had found Anna on her knees with a dustpan and brush, cleaning the carpet. The two lads seemed to have gone, the dustsheets were folded in a tidy pile by the door, and the pots of paint and brushes were
stacked in a wooden crate. Two long stepladders had been laid on their sides along the skirting boards. Anna had looked up from her labour.

‘I’m just about done,’ she had said, not apologetically, but with satisfaction.

‘But aren’t you back tomorrow?’ said Mrs Powell-Hughes.

‘Oh yes,’ said Anna. ‘But tomorrow I don’t want to arrive to yesterday’s mess.’ She had stood and with a gesture of her hand directed the housekeeper’s attention upwards. ‘I cleaned chandelier. I hope you don’t mind. It was a little bit dusty, and I was up ladder and …’ She tailed off and shrugged.

Mrs Powell-Hughes looked up. The myriad glass droplets were pristine in their brass surround. She looked about her. In the housekeeper’s mind, the memories were still painfully clear of the pandemonium caused during the last lot of renovations: paint on the stair runners, builders’ rubble in the bathrooms, turpentine fumes accompanying her all day long on her rounds. Redecoration meant disruption. And yet, here was a room in better order now than it had been before Anna arrived. She looked about her, at the walls and the ceiling. Nothing much seemed to have changed, except that on the long section of wall between each of the three sash windows, she could see the sketchy outline of what appeared to be birds in flight. Anna, following the direction of the other woman’s gaze, said: ‘Just ideas, nothing final.’

Mrs Powell-Hughes, her eyes still fixed on the birds, said: ‘Years ago, Lady Henrietta drew on the drawing-room walls in charcoal.’ She looked away now, at Anna. ‘There was such a rumpus.’

‘A rumpus?’

‘Fuss, you know? Lots of shouting and crying – well, Lady Henrietta cried, when her pictures were washed away. They weren’t half bad, actually.’

‘What were they?’

‘Horses. She was mad for horses as a little girl. Still is, of course, though she seems to have less time for them now.’

The housekeeper looked sad, Anna thought; lost among her recollections.

‘You’ve known Lady Henrietta for a very long time?’

Mrs Powell-Hughes nodded. ‘Almost all her life. She was a babe in arms when I took this position. And Master Toby – the earl, I should say – was just walking. They were delightful.’

There was a brief silence, almost awkward. Anna said: ‘They must be very fond of you,’ and the housekeeper seemed to come to, returning to the present from the past.

‘Well,’ she said, briskly now, ‘I’d best crack on.’ She smiled warmly at Anna, who returned the compliment. ‘See you tomorrow Mrs Rab …’

‘Anna,’ said Anna. ‘It’s so much easier.’

This was when she first began. Now, five weeks into the job, they were as thick as thieves. Anna – endearing, engaging, entertaining – had tapped a maternal vein in Mrs Powell-Hughes, who found the details of Anna’s life quite fascinating by comparison with her own rather uneventful history and, for her part, Anna enjoyed rediscovering the lost luxury of a motherly ear. Her brief marriage to the poor, sick Jewish boy; the rift this marriage created with her family in Kiev; her love now for a firebrand former miner; her surprising, modern views about a woman’s place in the world: all these matters were aired over refreshments at the kitchen table and the older woman had found that Anna, young though she still was, had a surprisingly wise head on her shoulders. There was no giddiness about her, no flightiness; she had all the best qualities of Mrs Powell-Hughes herself, without her tendency
– acknowledged, to her credit, by the housekeeper herself – to judge too swiftly or too harshly. Furthermore, as Anna wasn’t a member of staff, she could be accepted as an equal, and this had proved an unexpected and wonderful bonus, because while hierarchy must always be respected, a housekeeper’s life could as a result be a little lonely. Constantly vigilant, ever on the lookout for wrongdoing or shoddiness, Mrs Powell-Hughes was no one’s first choice for a companion at the tea table, except sometimes for Parkinson, who suffered just as she did from the inevitable and necessary dearth of friends at the top of the household’s pecking order. In Anna, however, she had found a confidante and today, having failed to tempt her at the beginning of the day, Mrs Powell-Hughes caught her instead as she left.