Slipping her warm cloak back from her shoulders and squaring her shoulders so that the man’s eye went at once to her full breast, she stepped forward bravely.
“I heard you were lookin’ for a barmaid,” she lied confidently, widening her smile into what she imagined a barmaid might bestow on a customer.
“Oh aye? An’ where d’yer ’ear that then?” he asked, but he was not displeased by what he was looking at.
“Oh, some lass in a public house in town. Can’t remember’t name.” She deliberately roughened her speech, for the gentrified tones she had picked up from Jennet would not do here. It was ironic really, she had time to think. She had spent years improving her speech, cultivating the refinement of the upper classes and now here she was doing her best to revert to the way she had spoken in her childhood.
“Is that so?” He didn’t believe a word but he was willing to listen.
As he spoke a short, plump little woman, who looked as though she dined all day on her own good food, came from a door at the back of the bar, a tray of golden-crusted meat pies in her arms. She was flushed, with a bead of sweat on her upper lip and her snow white cap was slighty awry. Putting the tray down with so resounding a thud all the pies jumped an inch into the air, she turned and glared at Nancy.
Here was the true “landlord” of the Grove Inn!
“What’s this then?” she demanded, running her dark, shrewd eyes up and down Nancy’s dress and cloak, eyeing her mass of tight curls with a distinctly disapproving air. There were several men drinking at the various small tables. Right from the start they had watched with considerable interest the entrance of the tall young woman with the unfortunate scar to her cheek, the buzz of conversation dying away so that they would not miss a word of any exchange that might take place. One chap, a farm labourer by the soil that clung to the soles of his boots, was even shushed impatiently by the others when he ventured a remark.
“This young woman’s lookin’ fer a job, Ginny,” the landlord said mildly. “She ’eard there was one goin’ ’ere.”
“Did she now? Well, she were wrong, weren’t she.” The landlord’s wife began to put the pies, piping hot and smelling delicious, out on to plates. “’Ere, Seth,” she called out to a customer. “D’yer want mustard?”
The customer, the one with soil on his boots, which brought a frown to the face of the landlord’s wife, at once sprang to his feet, reaching for his pie and taking the opportunity to get a good look at Nancy. His eyes lingered on her scarred face and you could see the regret in his eyes that such a bonny lass should be marred but as he took his plate, the pie on it covering it from edge to edge, she turned and smiled at him and at once he wondered what the hell he was bothered about. She was still bonny, scar and all.
“That looks good enough ter eat,” she twinkled at him. She who despised all men, twinkling at one of them! If her family could see her they would be stunned but if it helped to get her a job, something to keep them going, something to hold on to until this bloody war in America was over, she’d smile and twinkle until her face ached!
The man looked bewildered for a moment, for was that not just what he was about to do then he saw the joke and laughed delightedly.
“Yer wanner try one,” he said, winking at her with a wealth of meaning, then turning to beam at his open-mouthed companions. It was noticed that the landlord’s wife was watching this small interplay with great interest.
“I will, if Mrs . . . Mrs . . . ?”
“Mrs Ainsworth,” she offered stiffly.
“If Mrs Ainsworth’ll sell me one. I’ve had no breakfast this morning.”
But Mrs Ainsworth was not so easily taken in by a pretty face – if you overlooked the scar – and a warm smile and her stance, hands on hips, said so. Ignoring the pies she went straight into battle.
“There’s no work ’ere, lass, only cleanin’ an’ I’m sure—”
“I’ll take that, Mrs Ainsworth. I need a job. I have a child to support.”
“Where’s yer ’usband?”
Nancy lifted her head and dared Mrs Ainsworth to trifle with her.
“I have none.”
“I see,” Mrs Ainsworth smirked.
“No, you don’t, Mrs Ainsworth. Ever since a man gave me this,” pointing to the scar on her cheek, “I’ve had nowt to do with men like him. But I can be cheerful and polite to anyone who is the same with me which is all that is needed. Don’t you agree, Mrs Ainsworth?”
She was telling Ginny Ainsworth that she’d have no trouble with Nancy Brody if she’d give her a chance.
Mrs Ainsworth studied her, liking what she saw, though for a different reason than her husband. The reference to the chap who had smashed her face was not lost on her. Not a husband, that was for sure, but if all the lass was going to do was scrub floors and wash pots she could surely be kept out of mischief, since there were always men who would try to coax her into it. A barmaid had to be saucy, pert, inclined to giggle, which you could see was not this woman’s style, but then a scrubber of floors and a scourer of pots had no need of such accomplishments.
There was a long silence and the men at the tables found they were holding their breath.
Then, “When can you start?”
“How about now?”
“Yer’ll find a bucket in’t scullery and soaps on’t shelf ter’t right o’t back door. Passage needs a good goin’ over an’ if yer shape, when Bella – she’s barmaid – is on ’er day off, I’ll try yer be’ind’t bar. An’ when yer’ve done there’ll be one o’ these pies keepin’ ’ot for yer.”
They managed, just! The lease on the factory was given up and the sewing-machines, apart from one, returned to Oldham, most of them almost paid for, which was a bitter blow since it meant they would have to start at the very beginning again when better times came. Mr Bradbury of Bradbury and Company was quite desolate, for he had taken a great liking to Miss Brody and Miss Williams, who were both ladies fallen on hard times, but he had assured them that when good times came again, which he was sure they would, he would do his best to let them have their machines back at a very reasonable price. He himself was in a similar position, for who wanted to buy or rent a sewing-machine when there was no decent material to sew on?
Those girls who were left after the closure of the factory were sadly let go to find work elsewhere, which would be hard, and most, like their families, would be on poor relief by the month’s end. By the
year’s
end, December 1862, half a million cotton workers in Lancashire were in the same condition: despite the fact that many “blockaders” managed to bring in thousands of bales of raw cotton, it was not enough. In Manchester and many of the cotton towns around the city, whole families were close to starving and had it not been for the good-hearted altruism of many Manchester men, mill owners who lost money every day of the week, many of them would have gone under. It was said that Edmund Hayes had lost his health and will to live as his businesses struggled to survive and had it not been for his elder son, Joshua, who had become as good a man of business as the old man, they might have lost everything they had. Despite this, young Mr Josh, as the older men still called him despite being the virtual head of the firm, and other mill owners of like mind made allowances or loans to their hands, ran soup kitchens without which many of them would have starved and did not press for cottage rents. Schools were opened for unemployed men, many a weaver gaining a decent education through the adversity of the cotton famine. Some learned shoe-making and other trades and never went back to their old jobs.
The gentry, Mrs Edmund Hayes among them, helped in the soup kitchen her son had opened and sat in classes of young girls where they were taught to sew. She formed a committee to raise a special fund to release from pawn the clothes and bedding of the distressed workers. Meetings were held in Manchester Town Hall with a view to extending loans to unemployed operatives and by the end of 1862 there was a relief committee, not only in Manchester but in almost every town in Lancashire. On reading of the plight of the mill workers financial help came from London and even from as far as the northern states of America who must have felt somewhat to blame.
The one remaining sewing-machine was installed in the parlour, the good furniture, which was held ready to pawn should it get to that, pushed back against the wall. Nancy had decided that any cloth they could manage to purchase, which was when Hayes or one of the other mills in the town had got their hands on some raw cotton, should be made up by Mary. She didn’t want her sister to be wandering about Manchester searching for work, she said firmly, not adding that she thought her sister too immature, too sheltered, if you liked, to be out on her own. Mary sewed the cheap, good-quality baby clothes, the chemises and petticoats, the work shirts and vests that had been such good sellers when they had started out. It was not good enough for Hetty Underwood, who still managed to keep open her shop, but it was sold on the market stall behind which Jennet stood four days a week.
They managed, just, and each night Jennet prayed to her God that the war would soon be over, that they would all keep healthy and strong, for it only needed one of them to fall ill and the whole pack of cards would tumble about their ears. Nancy merely smiled grimly and looked at her chapped and chilblained hands which her new position in life had caused.
21
He watched her come up the stairs from behind the pillar where he was hidden from her sight, tall, slender – was she thinner than the last time he had seen her? – her back straight and graceful, her fashionably bonneted head held high. Beside her was her companion, Miss Williams, without whom she would not dream of venturing into this business world of gentlemen. She might not have been born a lady but she acted like the one she had worked so hard to become. She spoke to Miss Williams, bending her head a little, for she was six or eight inches taller and they both laughed. She looked serene, calm, composed, totally at her ease and he was not to know that her pulses raced, her heart was in her throat so that she could hardly breathe and her stomach was churning as it did every time she passed through the wide doorway of the warehouse.
In the year since the civil war in America had begun the average weekly consumption of four hundred-to five hundred-pound bales of cotton had dropped from around fifty thousand to fewer than twenty thousand but somehow Josh had managed to get his hands on a small share of it. Every week since the crisis had begun he himself had made the journey to Liverpool and the Exchange Building, along with dozens of other agents and mill owners from all over Lancashire, all with the same objective in mind. The hope was that a blockader might have slipped out of one of the ports of the cotton states of America, bringing a cargo of precious cotton to the distressed county of Lancashire. Josh had a man in Liverpool, a man paid solely for the purpose of hanging about the Liverpool docks to watch for ships, many of them steam-powered now, that carried the eagerly awaited bales of raw cotton. His vigilance had paid off and a couple of times he had managed to get hold of enough to keep his spinning mill and his weaving shed occupied on a part-time basis. Whenever more cotton was available full time production was resumed.
The cargoes of cotton, most shipped from Charleston which was the only port still unblocked by the union navy, had been steam-pressed before it left the port in order to squeeze the largest volume of cotton into the smallest possible space on the ship carrying it. The solid bales were then jammed into the hold with such force that Josh had heard the deck planking on some ships had been forced up. Even so, more were piled up on deck, three bales high, and a wall of cotton was built round the helmsman to protect him from bullets and shell splinters in the running fights that often ensued.
So was the precious cargo brought into Liverpool, the ships that carried it taking back cloth for uniforms, buttons, threads, boots, stockings, medicine, salt, paper, quinine, candles, soap, preserved meat and tea, all the goods that were in short supply in the beleaguered southern states, the rewards on these items, among others, so rich the blockader was willing to take the enormous risks to get them.
Josh had been lucky at the beginning of the month, arriving in Liverpool as a steam ship of the Hemingway Shipping Line had limped into Liverpool Bay. The bales of raw cotton she had carried had hastily been unloaded and transferred to the cotton sales room on the third floor of the Exchange Building ready for the buyers and Josh had been there among the huge crowd waiting to get their hands on it.
Cotton spins into hanks approximately eight hundred and forty yards in length and from a pound of cotton a hundred hanks can be spun. Depending on the fineness of thread required, the width of the cloth, the length of the piece, the pattern, and the speed of the loom, many thousands of yards come from one bale of raw material. Over three million such bales had been imported in 1860. It was considerably less now! Josh had managed to procure enough bales, each containing four hundred to five hundred pounds of raw cotton, to keep his almost sixteen thousand spindles working for a fortnight at full time and the cotton yarn woven from them was at this moment being taken up to the first-floor salesroom of his warehouse where a scramble would then take place among the buyers.
He watched her hungrily, keeping well out of sight. It was almost a year since the day his mare had ridden her down in Market Street. Almost a year since his arms had held her and she had allowed it and in that year barely an hour went by when his thoughts had not drifted back to that moment. He considered himself fortunate that when he was conducting his affairs with other cotton men he had enough willpower to relegate her to the back of his mind, tearing himself apart with the hope that as time moved on it would become easier to forget her. Not if you spend your time hanging about like a besotted schoolboy for a glimpse of her, his foolish mind whispered to him, and in his quiet corner he smiled wryly to himself, for it would be easier to make the bloody rain stop at his command as miss the chance of seeing her, if only for a moment or two. God only knew what would have happened to his spinning-rooms and weaving sheds and all the processes that took place in his mill between one place and the other; to his warehouse and all the other concerns he had turned to recently had he not got a good grip on himself at such times. It might be said that his work, the long days he spent in his mill and warehouse, and his young son who was the hub of his life, were all that kept him from going mad with wanting her.