The Cuckoo's Child (3 page)

Laura was fiddling while Rome burned. She was already twenty-one and it was high time she got rid of all this nonsense about being independent and doing good works, and got herself launched into society – by which Lillian meant finding a husband. Not Philip Carfax, however. Philip did not enter into the equation. He was likeable enough, but not one to fasten one's hopes on. Besides, Laura would run rings round the poor boy.

‘Well, at least all this will stop you going down to that terrible place in Stepney—' she began, incautiously voicing her thoughts.

‘Please. Don't.'

The dangerous spark in Laura's eyes should have been warning enough. ‘Dearest child, it's all very well for your friend Ruth to waste her life making cabbage soup and scrubbing floors for these women, she has her religion – and I'm sure these Quakers are wonderful from what one hears, but all the same . . .'

‘Aunt Lillian, the women scrub the floors themselves!' Laura took a deep breath and held on to her temper. ‘And if only you could see what a difference living in that house does for them, even for a short time, you would not say any effort was wasted. Maybe you should come down one day and see for yourself before you make judgements.'

‘Yes, well, there's no need for that, I'm sure,' Lillian said, barely repressing a shudder. ‘Oh, by the way, there's a box of clothes in my dressing room. Cox has been sorting through my wardrobe, it's nearly Easter and I shall be needing my new spring fashions . . .' She caught a glimpse of Laura's expression in the mirror, coloured slightly and had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Well. Well, of course, they can be sold, I suppose.'

‘Yes, of course they can, Aunt, and thank you. The money will be appreciated,' Laura said, getting up to kiss her. Lillian was really very good and kind, and it wasn't her fault that it had not even entered her head that thin silk gowns, dainty cambric underwear and delicate shoes were unsuitable wear for penniless women for whom a warm skirt and a pair of resoled boots was the highest luxury they could hope for.

Unusually, Lillian joined her husband for the substantial breakfast he took to fortify himself before setting out for business, albeit in her wrapper and with her hair still in its night-time plait. The serious business of bathing, dressing, being laced into her stays, having her hair done and generally being prepared for the busy day ahead needed time and concentration.

She eschewed the porridge, nibbled on a piece of toast and sipped her tea while she screwed up her courage to mention yet again the matter that was constantly on her mind.

‘I do wish Philip Carfax hadn't put this idea into Laura's head,' she began.

George set his coffee cup down and reached for more toast. ‘Philip Carfax is a fine young man,' he replied, without taking his eyes off
The Times
.

‘Well, yes, there is no question of that. Though one does wonder, sometimes, if there is enough – if he isn't a little too – well,
sedate.
For Laura, I mean.'

‘You know what they say about judging a book by its cover.' George turned over the front page of the newspaper with a crackle, propped it against the coffee pot and addressed himself to his second egg. Lillian sighed.

‘George, you are not listening.'

‘Oh, yes, I am.' It was an art he had long since perfected, allowing Lillian to rabbit on while he pursued his own thoughts. ‘You want me to put my foot down and tell Laura she mustn't embark upon this mad escapade. Well, Lillian, I'm not going to do any such thing.'

George Sandford Imrie was a successful and distinguished banker. The most important things in his life were his business, his passion for Japanese art and the well-being of his wife and the child whom he had almost forgotten wasn't his own daughter. Laura, from the moment he first lifted her wriggling little body into his arms and she had pulled his moustache, stuck her finger in his ear and then planted a wet kiss on his mouth, had been the apple of his eye. He was not a man, however, for making a show of his affections. He thought that was evident enough in the provisions he made for domestic comfort, for the general welfare of his wife and Laura and the freedom he allowed them with money – so long as they did not exceed in extravagance. In return he expected, and usually got, an ordered life and a household that ran smoothly. He did not like being assailed at breakfast with something which had already been chewed over until there was nothing left of it.

‘My dear Lillian,' he said at last, folding the newspaper and pushing back his chair. ‘Laura is twenty-one. She is basically a sensible young woman, if a little too impulsive, but if she's going to make mistakes, there is nothing you, or I, or anyone else can do to prevent her.'

It was evident to Lillian she wasn't going to get the support she needed. She ought to have known it was as little use arguing with George as it was with Laura. ‘That's all very well, but it's what Philip is up to that I'm worried about.'

‘And why should Philip be up to anything?'

For a moment they looked at each other. Then George reached out and gently touched Lillian's unpowdered morning cheek. ‘There's nothing to worry about, my dearest. How could there be?'

Three

As her train lurched over the points some ten minutes before it was due into Huddersfield station, Laura closed her book and stood up to peer into the mirror above the opposite seat, hoping there were no smuts on her face. She could not see any, but still dissatisfied with her reflection, she tried to pull the brim of her brown peach-bloom felt hat to a more becoming angle. It was not a very nice hat, and she couldn't think now what in the world had compelled her to wear it – except perhaps a vague feeling that she ought to tone down the effect of the rest of her outfit, which was very nice indeed, although it was saxe-blue in colour, a shade hovering uneasily somewhere between blue and grey. That had been Aunt Lillian's fashionable choice, not hers, but whatever Laura's reservations about the colour, it couldn't be denied that the cut of the garments was superb. Up here, in the wilds of Yorkshire, might it not be considered . . . a little too smart? It was too late to do anything about that now, however. The train, precisely on time and in great clouds of steam, was already panting and hissing into the station, where she had been told someone would be waiting to meet her and convey her to Wainthorpe.

Laura had never before been further north than St Albans, to spend occasional weekends at the home of her college friend, Cicely. This part of Yorkshire they called the West Riding was a mystery to her, despite some conscientious revision of what she'd been taught about the northern woollen trade of which Huddersfield was a great centre, and what role the West Riding had played in the Industrial Revolution. She had listened to Ruth Paston on the iniquities of the old child labour system in the textile mills. She'd read again about those machine-breakers they had called the Luddites, who had believed those first machine looms would rob them of their livelihood. She had also done her best to disregard the comments of all those who had learned she was to pass some time here, to the effect that its inhabitants were hard-headed folk who called a spade a shovel and lived years behind the times.

Now, however, as she emerged from the station in Huddersfield, she was taken aback by an immediate impression of the town's solid Victorian prosperity. Surrounding her were substantial buildings of dressed stone, heavy with importance, and a railway station that would have rivalled London's Euston in its neoclassical splendour. The place was busy with motor-driven delivery vehicles and motorcars, one of which had broken down (as motors everywhere were still apt to do) impeding the passage of several more reliable horse-drawn vans and carts. Smartly painted dark-maroon and straw-coloured double-decker electric trams, crackling and sparking from their overhead poles, rhythmically clanged and swayed their way down the tracks set in the road, just like London trams. And as it became obvious the people in the busy streets were no less well dressed than similar people in any other large town or city, she could see her own fears about being overdressed as ridiculous and rather patronizing.

But then, there came the matter of her mode of transport to Wainthorpe.

She stood at a loss beneath the station's Corinthian columns, her luggage at her feet where the porter had dumped it. No one appeared to be waiting for her. But within a minute or two an elderly man approached, wearing a black coat turning green at the seams, with an old-fashioned billycock on his head, a large red-spotted handkerchief round his neck and a pipe stuck in his mouth. Without removing the pipe, he asked her if she was Miss ‘Arcourt, and when she said she was, with an unsmiling nod he picked up her luggage and took it towards – not one of those up-to-date motorcars she might have expected from a rich man with a library full of books – but a little horse-drawn trap. Was this the mode of transport deemed suitable for one who was after all, only to be an employee? An indication that Mr Beaumont, her new employer, was tight-fisted – or merely one of those northerners she'd been warned about, who hadn't yet entered the twentieth century and felt that hardiness was next to Godliness?

Oh, well! Gamely, she clambered up beside the driver, a surly individual whose uncouth accent she had difficulty in understanding, who gave his name as John Willie Sugden and after that seemed to feel he had no need to prolong the conversation further. The trap was open to the elements, and he made no move to pull up its hood, but it was smartly painted, the chestnut coat of the little horse between the shafts was glossy and well-groomed and there were leather cushions on the front seat next to the driver. Morosely, Sugden indicated a folded woollen rug, evidently intended to throw over her knees, and shouted, ‘'Ey-up, Jinny!'

It was not long before she found those agreeable first impressions of her new surroundings were to be distinctly reversed. Scarcely was the town centre left before – hey presto, the trap was being driven straight into just the sort of heavily industrialized area she had expected, but was still not properly prepared for. Truly, as they drew deeper into it, she began to feel as though she had been plunged into another world. A pall of smoke and vapour mingled powerfully with another, unidentifiable, disagreeably rancid odour. Engineering works, textile machinery factories, dye houses and all manner of other concerns ancillary to the woollen trade jostled with warehouses and corner shops, but overriding everything else were the towering mills – one every few yards along the road, it seemed. Square, fortress-like, many-storeyed and built of soot-blackened stone, they loomed over narrow rows and terraces of little grey houses, darkened with the same grime. A noxious river, the Neller, flowed alongside the road, beside that the canal, and every mill had its big iron gates bearing their name – telling the world they belonged to Bamforths, Hardcastles, Shawcrosses, a litany of repeated names. Each had its own tall, tapering chimney stack, no doubt meant to send the thick belching clouds of smoke and soot issuing from it above the tops of the surrounding hills, though the intention had not been conspicuously successful.

Every now and again flat, tarpaulin-covered wagons harnessed to teams of huge stamping draft-horses pulled in and out of mill gates in front of them, forcing them to stop, the carts' iron-shod wheels grinding on the stony road surface. Top-heavy with enormous loads of big, square bales of greasy wool, their passing left little doubt as to where that odour had come from. Dyers and spinners, the mills proclaimed themselves, weavers, fullers, woolcombers, shoddy and mungo manufacturers . . .
shoddy
? And what could mungo be? she asked Sugden.

‘Devil's dust,' he replied grimly, but did not choose to elaborate and went on puffing away at his evil pipe, not appreciably improving the atmosphere. Laura bit her lip, vowed to keep her own silence thereafter and lapsed into her thoughts, with only the jingle of metal, the creak of leather and the rhythmic impact of the little mare's hooves to keep them company.

As the distance lengthened the Neller valley narrowed, and the rolling hills either side soared ever more steeply up to the bleak moors on top. Small mill towns climbed the hillsides at an angle of forty-five degrees, where pinafored women hung out washing on lines strung across the streets, wearing clogs and woollen shawls wrapped over their heads, fastened under the chin with a safety pin. By now, Laura would have been glad of the fur-lined cape Lillian had insisted she packed. Forgetting her vow of silence, she asked, shivering, ‘Is it always so cold up here?'

‘Cold? Nay, it's nobbut fresh today. Wait till winter!' Laura pushed her gloved hands further under the rug on her knees, seeking warmth, very glad indeed that she would
not
be here by the time winter arrived. Relenting, Sugden added, pointing ahead with his whip, ‘Nearly there, any road. Yon's Wainthorpe.'

It was suddenly upon them, another steep little town, grey rows of back-to-back terrace houses, one above the other, like the rungs of a ladder. The main road ran in a curve here along the floor of the valley, past shops and public houses and a Co-op, with dark alleys and less than salubrious streets in between; a church and at least two chapels, a little market square. Mill machinery hummed and clattered, carts rumbled on the stone setts.

Sugden again pointed with his whip. ‘Beaumont's.'

They had reached a humped bridge over the river, as polluted here with the discharge of dye products and factory effluents as it was lower down. A large sprawl of buildings, and rows of low weaving sheds from which issued a deafening racket, were dominated by a five storey mill with a smokestack taller than any of the others in the town, aggressively proclaiming ownership. ‘BEAUMONT' was painted in giant white letters from top to bottom of its length, which were reflected in its gently steaming mill dam. An imposing wrought iron arch into a cobbled yard proclaimed the name: Cross Ings Mill. Oddly, in all this stood an old-fashioned, low-roofed dwelling house with open windows and white lace curtains, built on to one side of the mill itself. Was this Farr Clough House, where Mr Beaumont lived?