Shining Threads (2 page)

‘What
will
you do then?’ she questioned her cousins. Her eyes were half-closed against the brightness of the sun. ‘Aunt Kit has set her heart on at least one of you
going into the mill. She doesn’t much care which as long as there is someone to carry on the dynasty as she did.’

‘Like hell she did! She got married and passed it over most conveniently to your mother and Charlie and followed Father up to Westminster as fast as the coach would take her. She
doesn’t really give a damn about any of the mills as long as there is enough money to support him as a politician. I can scarcely believe the stories we are told about her when she was a
girl. Obsessed with the mills and as determined to do with them as a son would, they say. Learning to be a manufacturer just as though she was a man, and making more of a success of it than any
other millmaster in the valley, we’re told. Can you imagine anyone, man or woman, being consumed with the tedious task of spinning and weaving cotton when one could be far more enjoyably
employed elsewhere? And yet Mother did it until she was twenty-five or six and married father. Can you believe it?’

Tessa found she couldn’t, really. Joss and Katherine Greenwood were notorious in the Penfold Valley for their absolute devotion to one another, to the exclusion of everyone, even their own
sons. Some would have it that there had never been a more mis-matched pair: Joss Greenwood, a radical, a revolutionary in his younger days, it was rumoured, much concerned with strikes and machine
breaking; and Kit Chapman the daughter of the very millowner whose machines he had wrecked.

Pearce Greenwood lowered himself to sprawl on the springing turf, his back resting against the grey-pitted rock and the other two did the same, stretching out their legs and crossing them at the
ankle.

From behind them there was a sudden snapping of dogs quarrelling amongst themselves. They were only half-trained and excitable, curiously like their young owners, ready enough, it seemed, to be
amiable providing no one interfered with them but with a snarl of temper just beneath the surface. They lay down, lowering their splendid heads until their muzzles rested on their paws, but their
eyes were never still as they kept watch against anything they might not greatly approve.

They all lounged indolently in the early summer sunshine: healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, dangerous when crossed, with very little difference, it seemed,
between the well-bred horses, the magnificent dogs and the handsome young people. They were arrogant in their complete belief in themselves and their place in life, which was privileged and secure.
They were defiant of fetters which might attempt to bind them to a life which was safe and tedious. They cared only for freedom, the freedom to go where they pleased, to do as they pleased, a
desire which was, as yet, sufficiently met up here on the high moorland.

They did not speak for several minutes. Drew held his face up to the sun, his eyes closed and the luxuriously thick fan of his eyelashes forming a shadow on his brown cheek. Pearce chewed a
blade of grass as he gazed reflectively at the slender ribbon of the river which could just be made out through the thickening foliage of the trees in the valley bottom. The dogs moved restlessly:
one stood and lifted its leg against a rock, while the others sauntered across to sniff where he had left his mark, then lay down again waiting for the signal which would herald the wild race
across the tops in which all such days ended. Minutes passed and still nothing was said. They all dozed in the soft spring sunshine, the dogs’ eyes opening and closing in that half-sleep into
which animals fall, the youngsters graceful and lounging, even the horses, heads drooping, seeming to nap a little in the peaceful warmth.

‘I wonder if the millhands are to have a day off next week when the branch line from Oldham to Crossfold is opened?’ Pearce’s voice was lazy, quite unconcerned, really:
he
was to see the celebrations so what did it matter if the lower orders did not? In fact he, his father and brother were to ride on the railway train from Crossfold to Oldham and even on to
Rochdale, if they had the fancy for it, since Joss Greenwood, as Member of Parliament for Crossfold and a man of substance in Lancashire, was to be one of its most important guests on the occasion
of the opening. There was to be champagne, Pearce had been told, bunting and bands playing, the train filled with the town’s leading industrialists, those who were to make even
more
profit with this marvellously rapid method of speeding their cloth and their piece goods to the Exchange in Manchester. It was 1853 and the age of ‘railway mania’, it was called. Each
week new railroad schemes were announced in the Press. So far there had been 357 of them, inviting subscriptions from 332 million pounds’ worth of stock. Many of them were entirely bona fide,
and astute men of business such as the Greenwoods had made themselves even wealthier: but some who had invested in companies which had been floated merely for the purpose of extracting money from
the gullible, had subsequently gone under in their eventual collapse.

But none of this concerned the Greenwood sons. What was it to do with them, they asked each other, since they cared nought for the slightly distasteful business of making money?

‘Why should they?’ Drew grunted, settling his back more comfortably against the rough rock ‘They can’t afford the price of a railway ticket so what difference will it
ever make to them?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. They are saying there will be track laid all over Lancashire and even over the Pennines into Yorkshire. Many believe that railway travel will become cheaper and
that eventually everyone, even the poorer classes will be in on it.’

Both boys sat up and their young faces glowed with interest. They had been to London once, by coach on the rutted, bone-shaking turnpike roads. Though the onset of the journey had been of great
excitement to them as young boys, twenty-four hours later it had become so tedious to their restless minds and bodies they had decided it was of no interest, nor the several days they had spent in
their father’s company being shown the ‘sights’ of London. Give them the open moorland, the excitement of being part of a walking line of guns every autumn, shooting the grouse,
the pheasant, the young birds hand-reared expressly for the purpose of a gentleman’s sport. The thrill of Squire Longworth’s hunt was what they enjoyed, leaping hedges and ditches, wild
gallops across open fields, the fox no more than a breath away, the hounds giving voice on a frost-bitten winter’s morning. They wished to be gentlemen, in the company of other gentlemen,
following the fine and gentlemanly pursuits their pedigreed friends followed.

But the railway train! Would that not make a difference? The idea of moving at great speed, to Liverpool where no doubt there would be fascinations dear to the hearts of the young men they
almost were; to Manchester, now that Oldham and Crossfold were
connected
, and whatever heady temptations lay there, and even, as the men of steam predicted, through the tunnel they were to
dig beneath the Pennine chain and on to the ‘other side’ where God alone knew what delights might await them.

‘It might be worth seeing, brother, what d’you think? When Father said we were to go I was not particularly concerned but it might be fun, you know. We’ve never been to
Rochdale.’

‘Yes, we have. We went with Mother once to see some dreary Chapman relative, don’t you remember?’

‘No, I can’t say I do.’

‘Of course you do. My God, Pearce, your memory is as bad as some old woman’s.’

‘And who are you calling an old woman?’

‘If the cap fits . . .’

‘Would you like to stand up and say that?’

‘With the greatest of pleasure. A bloody nose would look well on you next Wednesday.’

‘And a black eye for you, brother.’

The quick, snarling Greenwood anger slipped its leash and lifted both boys to their feet, their eyes flinty blue, their black brows dipping furiously as they clenched strong brown hands into
fists, ready, each one, should it be needed to kill the other to prove himself right. But Tessa sprang up, stepping between them as she had done a hundred times – when it suited her –
before a blow was struck.

‘And what about me?’ she snapped. ‘Why can’t I go with you on the train? Who declared it should be you two and not me? I’m just as interested in the railway train
and
in travel and would dearly love to go to Rochdale. Miss Copeland told me it is situated in the most beautiful valley and that the manor of Rochdale was once owned by Lord
Byron.’

Both boys looked confused, not perfectly certain who Lord Byron was though they had an idea he might be some sort of literary person and as such surely of no interest to their cousin who held
books in as much contempt as they did. But she was merely clouding the issue and well she knew it.

‘You can’t be serious.’ Pearce lowered his lists as Drew did.

‘Why not? Why can’t I go if you can?’

‘There are to be no ladies included, that’s why.’

‘And why not?’ Her eyes snapped furiously.

Drew shrugged. ‘I suppose because the gentlemen imagine they will not be interested.’

‘Mother is, and Aunt Kit and they haven’t been invited either, have they? Oh, they can go and stand on the platform and watch the gentlemen have all the fun but they are not to ride
on the train. It simply isn’t fair,’ Tessa declared as she did at least once a day. ‘They are both concerned in the business world, just as Mr Abbott and Mr Jenkinson are, so why
shouldn’t they go? Tell me that.’

Drew scratched his head wonderingly then looked at his brother for really they had given it no thought. Indeed, they had given little thought to their
own
inclusion in the great event.
Their father would no doubt officiate at the splendid moment when the engine had got up steam and was ready to head off on its journey. They themselves would certainly share in the excitement,
watched and admired by the ladies who would come to see them off, but, as usual, this cousin of theirs was not satisfied with her own
female
part in it.

She had begun to whirl about in her indignation and the dogs milled at her feet, moving excitedly as her fierceness communicated itself to them. She turned to face her cousins, hands on her
hips, legs apart, chest heaving and her expression was bright and furious. Her eyes snapped, the pale grey velvet shaded, like a stormy sky, to the tints of slate and charcoal, deep and
threatening. She could scarcely contain herself, not, as they thought, in her rage, but in fear.

Tessa Harrison by, in her opinion, a fluke of nature, was born a girl and for as long as she could remember, though she defied authority and her own femininity, she had resented it. Whenever she
could throw off the reins her governess slipped about her, the bridle which convention and her mother put on her as the gently reared daughter of a wealthy middle-class family, she had escaped from
them, riding about with her male cousins and their friends wherever they went. She would put on a pair of their outgrown breeches and riding boots, leap on to the mare’s back and gallop away
exultantly, as they did, knowing that she would be punished later for it, not caring, for that would be
later
and this freedom and excitement was
now
. But lately, as they had begun to
move away from boyhood, she had sensed that her cousins were ready to leave her behind, that her participation was accepted somewhat reluctantly, that they were a trifle
irritated
by her
female presence as they went off on their completely masculine jaunts with Nicky Longworth and Johnny Taylor. They wouldn’t tell her where they were going sometimes, which was worse, saying
carelessly that she was not at all likely to enjoy it, eluding her grasp and her furious demands to know what they were up to, and she had become increasingly alarmed. She had not accepted it,
naturally, begging them to wait for her, declaring that she was not going to be left out of it, whatever it was, but they had gone off nevertheless, and she had become even more afraid. She could
ride and even shoot as well as they, for they had taught her. She had been given permission by her mother to ride to hounds with the Squire’s hunt, for were they not gentry and therefore, in
her mother’s eyes, responsible and understanding of the need to protect a young, unmarried girl’s reputation? But that was not enough for Tessa Harrison. She wanted to go wherever her
cousins went, illogical and absurd as that might seem, and she would tell them so. What else was she to do with her life if she could not be with
them
, she asked herself, do as they did,
laugh with them over the foolishness of those who were fettered to rules, risk herself in the hazards they were to know? What would her life be without them in it?

‘I’m going with you next week. I want to ride on the train just as much as you do and I shall ask Mother and Uncle Joss to let me go. Why should you go and not me? I can do anything
you do, cousins. I can ride, yes,
outride
the pair of you and you know it. I could race you both from here to Greenacres and be home five minutes before you. Don’t you dare simper at
me, Drew Greenwood, or I’ll take my crop to you. I could open your cheek to the bone and then that cheeky little dairymaid . . . oh, yes, I’ve seen you hanging about, both of you,
outside the dairy. Well, she won’t smile so sweetly at you then, will she? I can do anything
you
do and I don’t mean to sit at home next week and sew on my sampler whilst you
enjoy yourselves . . .’

‘
Sew! A sampler! You!
Now that
would
be a sight worth seeing, don’t you agree, brother?’ Pearce stretched his growing body, throwing back his head in a shout of
laughter.

‘I would have to see it before I’d believe it.’ They were both laughing now, taunting her, for there was no finer sight than Tessa in a rage. They all had hot tempers, they
were the first to agree, especially themselves, snarling, knife-edged tempers which could flare in a minute from mere irritability to a rage from which the servants fled in alarm. Their Aunt Jenny,
who had them in her charge whilst their father was at Westminster, refused to become involved with what she called their childish squabbles.