Authors: Jean Stubbs
The metal was his metal, but the trade was not his trade. A village blacksmith does not possess a blast furnace. But he could assemble and fix it for her, build it in and make it trim, to please her. To please her. To make her smile and speak again as she had done.
The neighbours wondered what Hannah had done to deserve such a tribute. And though they came in one by one, to admire the basket grate and moulded hood with its fancy trim, and spy William’s dinner cooking in the neat oven, there was much speculation. For William was a bachelor, and as such could not be expected to care how his food was cooked, provided some woman served it up hot and tasty at noon. Surely he could not be courting a widow on the wrong side of her twenties? Hints and rumours distressed Hannah, and she withdrew into a silence he could not break. Wretched, he neglected the ladies of Thornton House, and hardly went near Kit’s Hill, so that Hannah might come to him on Sundays. While she, aware of all his stratagems, fearful that either Miss Wilde or Dorcas might hear something or make enquiries, cooked enough for both days on the Saturday, and steadfastly avoided every opportunity of being alone with him again.
So winter turned to spring, and spring to summer. William’s homilies to Stephen ceased. He no longer took pleasure in his work, but found every task unwelcome. The ringing of his anvil became noise instead of music. A smiling customer meant mockery rather than friendship. Enquiries were veiled complaints. Sometimes his elbow went. At others the weight of the piece defeated him. He felt that he was losing his power, that Hannah had drawn all the virtue from him.
Others were enjoying life, or so it seemed to William. Either Toby or Charlotte wrote to him regularly of national and international events, stirring his quiet backwater into a river of discontent. Caleb Scholes the younger, fellow-apprentice of William’s Birmingham years, scrawled entertaining tales concerning the trials and delights of working for his father the ironmaster. And occasionally Ruth Scholes of Birmingham, Bartholomew’s wife, put pen to paper, for she had made a subtle favourite of him, and sent him news of her busy household and that ever-increasing network of iron men, bankers, and quiet wielders of power.
In his frustration William turned on Stephen. The silent little lad had become a youth of seventeen, grown four inches taller by the mark on the smithy wall. He could wield a sledgehammer, or truss and throw an ox to be shod, nearly as well as his master. And he loved Hannah, who was more mother to him than his own mother. And he worshipped William, which made him vulnerable. So William chided where he should have encouraged, remained silent when he should have praised, and one summer Saturday was so unreasonable that Hannah came to the door and spoke her mind forcibly.
‘You’ve done nowt but find fault all morning,’ she cried, hands on hips, ‘and the biggest fault of the lot is thee, William Howarth. Think shame on yourself! And remember this — he’ll be as big and as clever as thee, someday, and if you get a clout round the head instead of a hand in friendship — don’t say as I didn’t warn you!’
He had never seen her angry before, and slight as she was her wrath defeated him. He let fall the hammer and followed her into the kitchen, where she clashed pans and slammed the precious oven door to with a ferocity that astonished him. He lapsed into his native tongue to deal with her.
‘Never make a fool of me in front of that lad again!’ he warned, but his tone lacked conviction.
She rounded on him, unafraid, though her cap did not reach his shoulder.
‘Make a fool of thee? Tha makes a fool of thyself!’ she answered, as broad in her dialect as he. ‘Tha’rt nowt but a babby skriking for its sucking-rag! That lad’d go through fire for thee.’
He slammed the door between themselves and the smithy, to pay her back for her treatment of the oven. He loved her, and he could have killed her.
‘I’ve done more than enough for thee,’ said William in a fury, ‘and let me tell thee summat. Tha’rt nowt! Frowning and hiding, when a man does his best for thee, and never a word of thanks. I paid out good money and worked and sweated all winter for thee, and by God I’m sorry as I did. Now get off home and shut thy mouth. Dunnot fret about leaving me a bit of cold meat for my Sunday dinner. I’ll manage for myself. Else go where I’m wanted.’
She tore off her apron, and then hesitated. There was a potato pie in the oven, and though she would not yield to him she had put her heart into the baking of that pie. She stood indecisively, holding her checkered apron to her breasts. He had turned the tables on her, and she was puzzled.
‘Mind you take that pie out then,’ she said, recovering a little.
He knew he had won this round at least. In turn, he placed his hands on his hips and played master in his own house.
‘Bugger the pie!’ said William deliberately. ‘Get off home!’
He did not wait to see her go, but strode back into the smithy. Stephen was blowing the fire to welding heat, and did not look at him.
‘All right, lad,’ said William kindly. ‘I’m sorry I spoke as I did. I’m in no humour wi’ myself nor anybody else these days. We’ll shut up shop for today. Get thee off home.’
‘What about this here welding then, master?’ Stephen asked.
‘We’ll do it Monday. First thing. It’ll be a nice afternoon,’ said William, looking at the fleecy sky. ‘I don’t fancy shutting us-selves up, welding, on a day like this.’
‘Tha’rt the master,’ said Stephen slowly.
‘Come back Monday, lad. I’ll be better-tempered then.’
He locked the smithy, feeling lighter of spirit He remembered the pie, and his heart beat fast in case it was burned, but when he drew it out the pastry was crisp and golden. He put it in the larder to cool, and covered it with a piece of muslin like Hannah did, to keep off the flies. Then he stuffed a kerchief-full of bread and cheese in his pocket, slung his coat over one shoulder, and struck off down the dusty road, whistling. He had a mind to walk the four miles from Flawnes Green to Childwell, and climb Belbrook How to look over into the valley of Charndale, where she was born.
The wooden bridge which spanned the River Wynden between Childwell and Belbrook was a paltry thing. He scorned it, even as he used it. At this point, halfway down the valley, they should have an iron bridge: nothing grand like the one at Coalbrookdale but strong and plain. He looked up into the woods which clothed the hillside, and began the long ascent.
This place was now returned to its former wild beauty, but the soil had been deeply disturbed at some time, and the vegetation told its own tale. Yellow coltsfoot and spiky teasels indicated the presence of heavy clay. Guardians of wasteland, rosebay willow-herbs, stood sentinel. Dandelions and plantains, their rosettes of leaves clinging to the earth to survive the trampling of feet, marked old trackways. Birch trees sprang, silver and slender, the first wind-borne seeds to alight in clearings: now being shouldered aside by the oaks which had once taken shelter among them. On the uneven ground grew goat willow and elder. Thickets of bramble and hawthorn scratched his hands, snagged his home-spun shirt and breeches. Nettles brushed and stung. Tussocks of tufted hair-grass made him stumble. Ground ivy caught at his shoes.
The busy stream, from which Belbrook took its name, lay in slow-moving pools here, silted up and choked by reedmace; then tumbled briskly again over the rocks to find a lower level. Under these clear noisy waters lay a motley multitude of pebbles, drawn inexorably forward along the bed of the brook. Shafts of sunlight illumined their subtle browns and greys, picked out a band of orange, a slab of black.
William stooped quickly, and fished one swart stone from among its fellows, turning it over in his hand. Incredulous, he found another, and another. He examined the banded stone with increasing excitement. Then followed the stream up to another pool, pushing his way past willow and alder, getting his shoes hopelessly sopped, tearing his clothes heedlessly. He stopped to take his bearings: not the bearings of the place, for he was lost there, but the bearings of an outrageous and wonderful plan in his mind. His heart was hammering so madly that the blood sang in his head. He took a great breath and closed his eyes, mastering himself. He needed all his wits now. Man had been here already, plundering the land. In return nature laid a hundred traps against invasion. Pits, ponds and caverns, seductively screened, could drown him, break his leg or his neck. He began cautiously, intuitively, to explore this area of Belbrook.
The furnace pool had been here: now all scum and bulrushes, and the remains of a wooden bridge turned to green bile. Down that steep bank should be the water-wheel, long motionless, and above it the crumbling launder.
He broke off a stout ash bough and attacked the tangled undergrowth. The wheel must have been thirty feet in diameter, hanging in its pit, and the huge wooden shaft was clad in rusting iron. William traced the shaft and found where the iron bellows had been. Kicking and pulling fallen bricks aside, he knelt down and brushed and scraped the earth away impatiently, revealing a sand pig bed. He stripped off his torn shirt, sweating and trembling with the joy and terror of discovery, and hung his coat on a thorn bush. He needed something sharper and heavier than his ash stick now, and poked among huge blocks of slag which stood like rocks to one side of the site, disguised with moss and lichen. His search uncovered a heavy iron pole, and this he wielded with both hands, flailing at the thicket beyond the sand pig bed, knowing this would be the greatest find of all.
The brickwork was surprisingly sound, and those vast oak beams, which had been young in the Wars of the Roses, would have held a mountain, let alone a roof. William caught up a switch of birch and brushed the back beam clear. The inscription was cut black and deep into the wood.
DEO GRATIAS 1915
He was standing, breathless, victorious, upon the fore-hearth of an old blast-furnace.
William Wilde Howarth, blacksmith, was at home here. He could have walked the site blindfold, had nature let him. As it was he must dwell lovingly upon those portions he had freed, and imagine the rest as it would be. Slowly he came back to the thorn bush, and wiped the sweat and grime from his face with his torn shirt. He sat upon a boulder of slag, and ate his bread and cheese, hands shaking with excitement and exhaustion. His silver watch insisted it was time to go, and the deepening shadows of the wood agreed. He endeavoured to think what must be done. The owner of the site found, and persuaded to lease it. Advice sought as to the cost of re-building and setting up the foundry. Help asked, coaxed, begged, to clear the place. But that it was his he never doubted, that he had been sent here to find it he truly believed, however long it took to work again.
He seized a handful of earth and stone and wrapped it carefully in his scarlet kerchief, as though it had been precious stuff instead of waste matter. Then the glory of discovery burst upon him, and he gave a great shout which sent small creatures scuttling for cover. But a jay answered him with its harsh screech, and seemed to have been personally insulted, for it scolded a long time afterwards as though the peace of its rural precincts had been wantonly destroyed.
*
Hannah saw him return home like a drunken man in the failing light, and ran across the field afraid. He was sitting at the table in the kitchen corner, head down upon his arms. She stared at his torn hands and wild hair, his soiled shirt and crumpled coat, and the self-imposed discipline of months left her in an instant. Softly she stepped to his side, touched his shoulder, spoke to him like the part of her he was.
‘Eh, whatever’s to do, my lad. Wherever have you been?’ He lifted up his head and smiled at her.
‘I’ve found an old ironworks in Belbrook Woods, Hannah.’
She grasped the implications at once: interested, pleased, and afraid.
‘Nay, you’ve never!’ she cried.
She pulled the other chair out from under the table, and sat opposite him, hands folded in front of her.
‘Well, tell us about it,’ said Hannah, encouraging him.
His narrative tumbled from top to bottom of Belbrook. He told it back to front, and inside out, tripping up on facts, righting himself half a dozen times in his exultation. She could not have understood very much, but she listened attentively, marking his story with little movements of mouth and brow; watching him talk as she watched him eat, with quiet satisfaction. So that he saw the situation in a calmer light, and rubbed his head ruefully, and laughed at himself, even as he believed in its possibilities.
‘There’s not much I can do about it though, my lass. It’d take a year to clean the site. Then there’s the mending and rebuilding and replacing. I don’t know who owns it, or whether they’d lease me the land. And if it’s worth summat then there’s richer folk than me’ll be after it. But I’d give my back teeth to have a try at it. I would, my lass. I would.’
She pursed her mouth and nodded her head, thinking. Then rose briskly.
‘Take what’s left of that shirt off your back,’ she said. ‘I’ll brew us some tea and mend the fire. Then while I clean up those scrats and cuts I’ll tell you summat as you didn’t find out.’
In his weary and exalted state he was content to be cared for, and sat trustfully as she steeped the cloth in hot salty water and applied it to his minor wounds.
‘You look as if you’d been pulled through a hedge backwards!’ said Hannah sarcastically, nipping out thorns.
‘Nay, I’ve been taking hedges apart, my lass,’ he answered, loving her sharpness and gentleness.