Audrey Reimann was brought up in Macclesfield where she was educated at the Macclesfield Grammar School for Girls. She and her husband now live in East Lothian.
Audrey has three children and is the proud grandmother of ten, and has been variously a bank clerk, a nurse, a teacher, and a foster mother to twenty-five. But, above all, Audrey is a storyteller. Recently, on Anne Robinson’s BBC Two programme ‘My Life in Books’, comedian Sarah Millican named Audrey’s novel Flora’s War as one of her favourite books, saying: ‘This is a book that will make you laugh and make you cry.’
Oliver Wainwright is still a boy when he first sets eyes on the fair, delicate Florence – the aristocratic granddaughter of Sir Philip Oldfield. And, determined never to be a servant or follow in his father’s footsteps as a quarry worker on the Oldfield estate, he runs away to Middlefield, that very day.
Slowly but surely, he sets about becoming a man of property and a cotton industry king. He works single-mindedly to achieve his ambition – until he meets Rosie, a married mill hand who distracts him with her dark, warm beauty. Has Oliver finally found what he really wanted all along?
Set against a background of the Lancashire/Cheshire cotton industry, The Runaway is a magnificent saga of a young man’s rise to power, his passion and poverty, feuds and triumphs and the two very different women who shape his life.
Also by Audrey Reimann
Flora’s War
It was the hottest day of a hot summer in 1875 and the ornamental lake in front of Suttonford House, one of the finest country houses in Cheshire, was as smooth as a sheet of glass in the midday August heat.
Sixteen-year-old Oliver Wainwright crawled through the hedge from the top field where the reapers worked and ran silently down the grassy slope to the water’s edge at the far side of the lake.
He took cover behind a laurel bush near the reeds and lay looking down at the torn trousers and shapeless singlet, grey with age and careless washing, which barely covered his broad body. He was tall, over six feet, with black curly hair, startling blue eyes and a body grown strong and lithe from three years’ work on the Suttonford estate.
His heart was no longer hammering with excitement and he began to roll up the ragged brown trousers while his eyes scanned the lake. There was a mallard, a little way out from the others, sliding over the smooth water, its metallic green feathers shining in the sun. Oliver felt in his pocket for the home-made catapult of hazel wood, slipped his feet quietly into the shallow water and narrowed his eyes in concentration.
He pulled silently on the leather sling, straining the rubber thongs to their tightest, letting the lead ball go whistling through the still air to crack into the skull of the unwary drake. The bird toppled sideways; so quick was its death that the reflex flutter of wings hardly disturbed the ducks that rooted in the shallow water at the lake’s edge.
The soft, grey mud oozed between Oliver’s bare toes as he waded out towards the mallard where it floated in deeper water. He would not be seen from the house. They would all be too busy preparing for this afternoon’s garden party to worry about a duck.
‘There he is!’
‘Wainwright!’
Oliver turned sharply and saw Wilf Leach and one of the labourers running, crashing down the slope from the high wheat field. He could see the rage on Wilf’s ugly face as the big man grunted, swore and stumbled, red-faced towards him.
‘Get ’im! Hold ’im till I get there,’ Wilf roared at the younger man. ‘I’ll teach ’im! He’s been asking for a thrashing for weeks.’
Oliver dived smoothly into the green water, pushed his kill down the front of his singlet and struck out for the centre of the lake. Wilf Leach wouldn’t come into the water after him, not after all the beer he’d drunk. Wilf must have seen him sneak away from the other field workers.
He pulled away from the lakeside swiftly until he was out of range of the sticks he heard dropping into the water behind him. Then he turned to look.
The two men were at the water’s edge, shaking their fists and shouting. He couldn’t hear them for the water in his ears but he knew that they’d hear him, all right. He put a hand up to his mouth to make his voice carry back to them.
‘It’ll take more than you, Wilf Leach, to thrash me! You may be going to marry Dolly, but I’ll not obey you. You drunken animal!’
His heart was thumping, with anger more than effort, and he swam faster, towards the little island, which was off centre of the long, oval stretch of water. The island was twenty yards from the wide sweep of lawn, which ran down to the lake from Suttonford House. There was a wooden duck-house on the island, where the birds nested, and low trees for their roosting. He’d stay there until Will went back to the field.
Oliver swam until he could feel the muddy lake bed under his hands. He kept low in the water, crawled ashore and lay face down in the long grass. There was nobody to be seen on the lawn, though nearer the house he saw servants setting out painted iron tables and chairs under the elms and cypresses that flanked the three-storey limestone mansion of the Oldfield family. An open-sided marquee had been put up on the close-cut grass but it, the musicians’ stands and the folding metal seats were unoccupied.
Dolly, his stepmother, would be busy in the kitchen at the big house until four o’clock so she’d not hear about his theft of the duck until Wilf came to their house tonight. Oliver rolled on to his back and closed his eyes against the hot sun.
He’d run away tonight. His mind had been made up for weeks. Dolly had set her cap for Wilf Leach, the crude, coarse farm manager Oliver hated. She didn’t need him any longer. His only regret was for leaving Tommy, the eleven-year-old half-brother he loved. He’d speak to Tommy later and tell him not to be afraid. Dolly would protect her own son from Wilf’s drunken rages.
Oliver had never called her ‘Mother’ though she was the only mother he’d ever known. His father had found Dolly in the nearby town of Middlefield at the end of a day’s frantic search for a wet nurse and foster mother for Oliver, whose own mother had died in childbirth.
Dolly had been fourteen then and her own bastard child still-born. Oliver learned to call her Dolly, as his father did, and it was too late to learn another name when his father married her, the year before Tommy was born.
The sun burned into his tanned face and broad shoulders. His singlet and trousers were dry and he could hear voices. He must have been asleep. Oliver rolled over again and opened his eyes.
In front of the house, ladies in bustled dresses, holding silk parasols to protect their complexions from the sun, were parading the wide sweep of lawn. Top-hatted men strolled with them or gathered in groups, drinking fruit cup. Oliver could clearly see one man lacing his with brandy from a flask. Their voices were raised to a certain pitch of refined excitement as they greeted Sir Philip and Lady Camilla Oldfield.
Oliver remembered Dolly telling them that Sir Philip’s daughter, Laura Mawdesley, and her daughter, Florence, would be there. Florence’s father had been killed a year ago, Dolly said, and they were coming back from London. Sir Philip was giving them a house in Middlefield. Dolly knew all about them.
Oliver accused her of kowtowing to them all the time. ‘We’re as good as them,’ he told her. ‘You don’t have to talk about ’em as if they’re bloody gods.’ Oliver wouldn’t kowtow to them. No, he’d never do that. His dad had never kowtowed, only been respectful. Well he’d not even be respectful, Oliver vowed. All the same, he wondered which one was Sir Philip’s granddaughter, Florence.
There were four young girls at the water’s edge, all unaware that they were being watched. One of them, the one he thought was the prettiest, turned round and, for a full minute, looked directly towards him. Oliver thought she had seen him but she turned away, her gold hair swinging lazily across slight shoulders that were alabaster white against her dress of pale yellow silk. He had never seen a girl as pretty as she was and he could have lain there all afternoon, watching her.
But he had to get away, unseen. Now that she’d looked away he’d crawl round to the other side of the island, drop into the water and swim for the far bank. Then he’d pull himself out of the water further down, under the overhanging trees at the water’s edge, where the lake ended and the water funnelled over a weir, once again the river Hollin that fed the lake.
Florence had seen him. A dark-haired boy looked right into her eyes from where he lay on the island. He must be one of her grandfather’s workers, hiding from his overseer.
She turned her head slowly so that he’d think she hadn’t seen him. There was something arresting in the youthful arrogance of his strong features. She pretended to look into the distance so she’d not have to acknowledge his presence, but she saw him slide, long and sinewy into the water, and pull strongly across the lake with powerful arms. It made her feel like a conspirator, letting him go unchallenged.
She was troubled and a little ashamed of the thrill she’d felt at seeing, for the very first time, a young boy – no, he was assuredly a man – wearing so little. For in truth she had only once seen the unclothed body of another living soul and that had been a babe-in-arms.
She had seen statues, of course, in Paris and Rome; they had been informative. Once, when she’d disobeyed Mama and ventured into the servants’ quarters in their London house she’d chanced on a group of housemaids admiring a naked baby that a disgraced servant girl who had come to beg for food had brought to the back kitchen door. Florence had insisted that the house staff fill the girl’s bag with good food and she’d held the wriggling baby and tried to wrap him in his holey old shawl until the girl took him away.
She recovered her composure. ‘Shall we go back to the marquee?’ she asked her companions. ‘Our mamas will be looking for us.’
Her voice, low-pitched yet clear, had not a trace of the north-country tones that touched the edges of the other girls’ speech and it drew their attention at once.
‘Do you think you will enjoy living in Cheshire?’ The dark-haired girl whose name, Florence remembered, was Sylvia, spoke first as they crossed the lawn towards the gathering. ‘Middlefield may seem small and dull after London society.’
‘I saw very little of London society,’ Florence told her. ‘I’m only just out of the schoolroom. I shall enjoy living in Middlefield.’
Her natural gaiety and her eagerness to be liked by the girls who were to be her daily company made her reply with a little less than the truth. ‘Indeed, I’m glad to leave the capital – and Mama’s tiresome old friends.’
The Bell-Cooper girls giggled at this and Florence added hastily, ‘What I mean is that they simply took no pleasure in anything.’
They had reached the tables where Mama, with a slight frown on her face, stood with Grandfather Oldfield and Uncle Bill. Mama’s hand lifted: the signal that Florence was to go to her.
‘There’s Mama.’ Florence raised her own hand almost imperceptibly in reply. ‘I must join her. Shall we meet later?’ She touched her new friends’ hands in a delicate gesture of goodwill, which she hoped was neither too mannered nor too haughty. ‘Let us sit together after tea.’
One of her faults, she well knew, was a tendency to ‘climb the high horse’ as her old nanny used to say. The other fault, she suspected, was a fierce determination to have her own way. On the good side she knew herself to be sensitive in the extreme to the feelings of others and aware at all times of the need to treat everyone with the utmost good manners. She simply couldn’t bear to see anyone reduced to embarrassment or tears and often went to her room to weep when Mama turned cold contempt upon a servant, or a social inferior.
It was difficult, learning to be a lady when her impulses were to laugh out loud when amused or, as had happened only a few minutes ago, to stare rudely at a ragged, half-naked young man.
‘Well, Florence? How do you like your new friends?’ Uncle Bill’s eyes twinkled, blue and lively under his bushy white eyebrows. ‘Ye’ll no be lonely. Eh, lassie?’
Florence laughed out loud. ‘I’ll no be lonely. Och aye,’ she teased, trying to imitate Uncle Bill’s deep Scottish accent.
She saw Grandfather flinch. Was it her laughter and mimicry that displeased him? Or was it Uncle Bill’s presence? Sir Philip had never forgiven Uncle Bill for having no background. Mama had explained; Uncle Bill was rich, yes. But his money was made in the cotton mills of Middlefield. His money was from trade. Most of all, Florence knew, Uncle Bill had never been forgiven for running away with Grandmother’s sister Lucy and marrying her when she was just sixteen.
Aunt Lucy and Grandmother were coming towards them now. Florence saw Uncle Bill’s face break into a huge smile at their approach; saw Aunt Lucy’s eyes flash with merriment in response and knew that, white-haired and old though they were, the old couple had never lost the love that had drawn them together so long ago.
Uncle Bill took hold of Aunt Lucy’s hands. ‘You look beautiful, Lucy,’ he declared. ‘It’s a bonny gown.’
Mama’s eyebrows lifted in disapproval. Public displays of feeling were never tolerated. But Aunt Lucy did look beautiful in a dress of fine lavender tussore. Mama herself, since they were out of mourning, wore only grey.
Grandmother – Lady Camilla Oldfield, small, birdlike and terrifying in her severity, wore indigo silk with a lace collar and a high, lace-trimmed hat of the same stuff. She appeared to be carved from stone, so set was her expression. ‘How did you like the Bell-Cooper twins, Florence? And Sylvia Machin?’ she was asking. ‘Your mama says that you are to share lessons with them.’
‘I like them very much,’ Florence answered sweetly. ‘It will be a great pleasure not to have a governess,’ she added mischievously to see if Grandmother would delight, as Aunt Lucy had, in the facetious remark.
Grandmother remained severe. Grandfather, who had been approached by a footman, came to Grandmother’s side and patted her shoulder. ‘I have to attend to something, Camilla,’ Florence heard him say. ‘Servant trouble. No. Not you. I’ll attend to it myself.’
Grandmother gave a brief nod. ‘Come, Florence. Laura. We’ll join the Davenports for tea.’ She led the way with Florence and Mama following her across the crowded grass.
So Aunt Lucy and Uncle Bill were not expected to sit with them. Florence felt colour rush to her cheeks at the high-handed manner in which the snub to her darlings had been dealt and then relief when she heard, behind her, Aunt Lucy’s tinkling laugh and Uncle Bill’s hearty chuckle as the old couple turned their attention to the other guests.
Would she ever get used to the ways of Mama and the grandparents – to the assessing of people for their social standing before a friendly overture was made or returned? It had been easy in London. There, all she had to remember was never to go into the servants’ quarters and to be welcoming, charming and polite to Mama’s friends.
Here, in Cheshire, Grandfather dealt with the servants himself, yet held himself aloof from Uncle Bill and Aunt Lucy. She hoped that she would not do or say the wrong things this evening at the dinner. There was to be musical entertainment afterwards and Florence herself was to play her pianoforte piece. ‘I shall simply observe the way things are done here,’ Florence decided. ‘I shall do things my own way as soon as I am able. Today is for enjoyment.’
Hollinbank, a settlement of squat, lime-washed cottages, was a mile from the big house. Oliver followed the river path on its meandering course until the Wainwrights’ cottage came into view with Tommy, sitting on the step, waiting for him.
‘Tommy!’ Oliver saw the lad’s face, so like his own, break into the mischievous grin that transformed his features from an expression of brooding to one of infectious gaiety.
‘Where’ve yer been? I’ve been waiting for hours.’ Tommy ran up to him and pulled the mallard from Oliver’s hand. ‘Have yer killed it today?’
‘Aye. You don’t think I found it dead, do you?’ Oliver gave Tommy a playful clout across the head. ‘I got it this afternoon, instead of working.’
‘Ooh. Oliver. Wilf’ll be mad. Does he know?’
‘Aye.’ Oliver laughed at his brother’s worried face. ‘Put the duck in’t scullery. We’ll walk down to the stones. I’ve summat to tell you.’
They walked, out of sight of the cottages, to the place where the riverbed was stony. They climbed a stile between stiff hawthorn bushes and slid down the grassy bank to where the river ran deeper, over green velvet stones that were leaden and polished from the passing of feet where they stood proud of the water. They plunged their bare feet into its cool depths and crossed to the other side where they sat watching the bright water.
‘I’m leaving the estate, Tommy. I can’t stop here,’ Oliver told him. ‘I don’t want to leave you but I’ve got to go. I only stayed to help Dolly; to save us from the workhouse. She doesn’t need me now she’s got Wilf.’
Oliver saw the hurt in Tommy’s face but he didn’t know how to tell his brother kindly that eleven years of closeness were over. ‘I don’t know how she can do it,’ he added bitterly. ‘How can she want Wilf after being married to Dad?’
‘When are yer going?’ Tommy asked.
‘Tonight.’
‘Take me an’ all.’
‘I can’t, Tommy. It’s too dangerous. They’ll come after you. But I’ll come back for you one day. Get you away from Wilf.’ Oliver wanted to console the youngster whose eyes were filled with pain at losing his big brother.
‘She’ll maybe not marry him,’ Tommy said in a trembling voice.
Oliver sent a handful of pebbles skimming over the water, cracking sharply against the stepping stones. ‘Hard to say. Meself … she can do as she likes. I’ve had enough of her!’
‘So’ve I, Oliver.’ Tommy was near to tears.
‘You can’t have. She’s your own ma. But she’s not mine. I can go.’
‘Suppose she sends Wilf after yer? He’ll kill yer when he finds yer.’
‘He’ll not. He’ll be glad I’ve gone.’ Oliver spat out the words, hatred in every syllable. His blue eyes narrowed in concentration as he told Tommy. ‘I’m going to run when they go upstairs. Wilf takes his clothes off and leaves them on the settle. We’ve seen him do that, haven’t we?’
Tommy grinned weakly, recalling the night they sat on the stairs, not four feet from the gin-soaked pair, taking turns to squint through the cracked door, which opened into the living room.
‘I’m going to creep down and take his britches and his boots.’ Oliver’s mouth twitched with pleasure at the thought of Wilf’s face when he discovered the theft. ‘The boots were Dad’s anyway.’
‘Oh, Oliver. Don’t let ’im hear yer. Where are you headin’ for?’ Tommy looked taken aback with the effrontery of the plan and had lost his desolate look. ‘I won’t tell.’
‘I know you won’t. I’m going to Middlefield.’ He gave a laugh of derision. ‘Where the Mawdesleys are going to live.’
‘Who’s the Mawdesleys?’ Tommy asked.
‘Sir Philip’s daughter and his granddaughter. The ones this big garden party’s for.’
‘They ’ave a garden party every year. Yer know they do.’
‘Aye. But this time they’re going on all night with it. Dolly says there’s goin’ to be a dinner and musical concert an’ all. Then they’re going to live in’t biggest house in Middlefield.’
‘What’s wrong wi’ that?’ Tommy said. ‘They can do what they want. It makes no difference to the likes of us.’
Oliver felt anger rising in him. ‘They’re no better than us, Tommy. Our dad’s lying under tons of stone in their blasted quarry. And they’re feasting and larking. It takes ten of us to serve every one of ’em. And they’re not worth it.’ He turned his head away and spat into the stream. ‘I’m doin’ no more of it.’
‘Where will yer live?’ Tommy’s voice was shaking again.
‘I’ll get work in one of the mills and find a place to lodge. I’ve got four shillings hidden. Come on.’ Oliver pulled his brother to his feet and together they crossed the stones and made for the path.
‘Why won’t you ask for a job at t’quarry? It were good enough for Dad. Old man Jessop’s a good boss and they don’t pay bad,’ Tommy asked him as they went back to the house.
Tommy still didn’t understand, after all the explanations. Oliver took his brother by the shoulders and turned him gently in the direction of the quarry.
‘They’ll not kill any more Wainwrights,’ he said, his eyes hardening, his voice low and intense. He tightened his grip on Tommy’s thin shoulder.
‘We’re as good as them, Tommy. Me mother worked right up to her time, on her knees in their damned kitchen. That’s what killed her. It wasn’t having me as killed her.’
He let go his hold. ‘It’s not just Jessop and Wilf. They’re only lackeys. It’s them – Sir Philip and Lady Oldfield and all like ’em. I’ll never raise me cap to them again. Never!’ He looked into Tommy’s face. ‘I can’t stop here, lad. You see that don’t yer? The Oldfields can’t take one generation after another and have ’em drop dead in their service. I’m not one to start a riot or set their workers against them. I want better for meself, like Dad did. Dad got to be quarry-master. We lived in the village in the quarry-master’s house. When Dad died they threw us all out – Dolly, you and me. They gave us the cottage we live in so long as Dolly worked in their kitchens. You were a baby and I was five. Dolly was glad of the work and a roof over our heads. I don’t hold with it; one man owning another; his house, the work of his hands. They’ll never own me.’
Tommy didn’t understand. He was only eleven. So Oliver went on, ‘Dolly – I mean your ma – has always worked hard. She gives back a lot more to them, by way of her work. But I never felt like her real son. And I don’t feel bad about leaving her. Not now she’s got Wilf.’
Tommy was listening intently. Oliver put an arm about his shoulders. ‘We’re nearly home. Say nowt to your ma when I go. Tell them you were asleep when I went – if they ask.’
Tommy began to cry, jerking his chin in an effort to control his tears. ‘Take me. Take me with yer,’ he pleaded.
‘Listen.’ Oliver tightened his hand round his brother’s shoulder. ‘I’ll do all right. I can work, I’m strong and I’m quick. And I’m clever. I’m cleverer than all of them. One day I’ll have it all. You’ll see. I’ll have a proper home, with carpets and things and I’ll come for you as soon as I can and I’ll take you away with me. And we’ll be rich, Tommy. Richer than the whole bloody lot of them put together.’
Dolly Wainwright, assistant cook, red-haired and quick-tempered, stabbed at the lemon, over and over, put it inside the prepared goose and heaved a sigh of relief. She was a small, good-looking woman with fine, chiselled features, a sharp, sometimes waspish manner and a habit of scowling when she was upset or angry.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon and she’d been working in the kitchen of Suttonford House since five that morning. Not that she was the only one who was tired, of course, but there was only young Bessie in the kitchen with her at the moment. The others were all in the garden, waiting-on. They were run off their feet as well, but Dolly had not had a minute away from the heat of the stoves all day.
The results of her handiwork were spread out before her on the scrubbed deal table; a galantine of beef to be eaten cold, glistening on a dish of freshly pulled young lettuce. Tiny cold potatoes thinly coated in parsley butter were piled high on china plates. Crisp salads; a poached salmon, its pink flesh coated in a creamy sauce; fruit compotes of glowing late strawberries and ripe yellow peaches from the estate glasshouses; fruits she had preserved in syrups and brandy, thin almond fingers, macaroons, bread and cakes to last three days.
‘What the hell can Sir Philip want with me, Bessie?’ she asked the new kitchen maid. ‘On a day like this, with his garden party goin’ on. You’d think he’d have enough to do without sending for me in the middle of it.’
In their basement kitchen the heat was unbearable. The range had been lit since five o’clock that morning. The oak dresser was almost bare of the piles of plates and dishes it normally held and the sounds of scurrying feet and the clattering of crockery in the side kitchen told of the fevered effort that four kitchen maids, ten housemaids and two footmen were making to serve the guests outside.
‘With a bit of luck we’ll not need to light the big fire tomorrow,’ Dolly declared, before hooking a length of butter muslin from the rack high overhead in the old beams. ‘If it’s warm like this they’ll not want hot food.’
She wet the cloth under the pump, then carefully, using upturned ewers as supports, draped it over her day’s work. Taking the window pole, she fitted its brass hook into the top sash and pulled, letting a little more air into the stifling kitchen. Even the stone-flagged floor was warm. Dolly pumped water into the deep brick sink, her plump arm working the handle hard and fast.
Cold water gushed up from the well beneath the kitchen and she splashed her face, cupping the water in her strong, square hands, letting it run down her forearms. Then she ran wet fingers inside the tight, clinging collar of her grey working dress.
‘Good job Jackson’s in ’is pantry, eh, Bessie?’ she said. The girl didn’t answer. Dolly knew that Bessie would be shocked into silence by her offhand way of referring to the dignified old butler. ‘He can’t abide us washing at the sink. Silly old fool.’ She laughed aloud. Bessie’s eyes had flown to the door, afraid Mr Jackson might have overheard.
Dolly carried the goose on its iron skillet to the blackleaded range and placed it carefully in the big oven, adjusting the draught control so as not to let the fire get too hot.
‘There! Take it out in an hour and put that ’erb stuffing inside. The lemon will have soaked up some of the grease by then, see? And mind yer don’t break it up! Cook will be ’ere in a minute but Sir Philip wanted me to do the goose, particular.’
‘He says no one can do them as good as I can!’ she added with satisfaction as she pulled off the coarse blue apron, set her cap straight and made towards the door. ‘I hope it’s not our Oliver he wants to see me about.’
Dolly, of the sensuous hips, narrow waist and full breasts was, at thirty, becoming impatient with the toil that had been her life until now. She had rediscovered passion and shameless delight in the attentions of Wilf Leach and the reproaches and wilful contempt of him by her stepson, Oliver, and her own son, Tommy, angered her.
She knew they hated Wilf but they didn’t understand how it was for a woman without a husband. Wilf might not be as good a man as Joe, their own father, had been. Wilf was a drinking man but he was better than none. He earned good money and could keep a woman happy in bed. And in time they would be given a farm manager’s house in the village, once Wilf had married her.
‘There’s plenty as’d swap places wi’ me to get a man and his wages,’ she told them often enough. ‘Believe me, there’s a few women in the cottages as’d like to be in my shoes.’
Sir Philip Oldfield’s office overlooked the kitchen garden at the back of the great house; a small room, one-third taken up by a big oak bench, piled high with heavy leather-bound ledgers and estate records.
Dolly saw the tall man with craggy features and greying fair hair as an aristocrat whose world was bounded by the stone wall, which enclosed his two-thousand-acre estate. He owned everything his stone boundary walls encompassed; Suttonford House, the farms and Suttonford village, the quarry where her husband’s body still lay beneath a hundred tons of stone. Plus, rumour had it, Sir Philip owned most of the nearby town of Middlefield as well.
Normally the housekeeper or even Lady Oldfield attended to the domestic servants so it had to be something important for Sir Philip to send for her.
She stood before him, ginger curls springing out beneath her tightly drawn mobcap and her face pink and perspiring. Once, she had been told by the butler that she had a singularly disrespectful manner but since she did not know what the long words meant, believed she had been flattered. ‘Did yer want me for summat?’
‘Close the door, please,’ he commanded.
Dolly ignored him and stood, head to one side, impatient to know the worst. ‘It’s not Oliver, is it? Has he been doin’ summat? He’s a wayward lad, sir. I can’t do nothin’ with ’im.’ In Dolly’s book attack was the best line of defence. She had practised the art for so long now that she knew no other way and found, in consequence, that she was seldom challenged.
Sir Philip looked down his aquiline nose at her. ‘I am taking the unusual step, Mrs Wainwright, of speaking to you directly about your stepson’s behaviour. I thought highly of his father. Joe Wainwright was killed on my estate. He was a good father and a fine man.’
Dolly’s lips tightened into a hard line. She had no intention, five years later, of listening to hymns of praise to her dead husband. Soon she’d be Mrs Leach. It was time to forget the past. Life was for living and Wilf was bringing her to life again. She felt a thrill, anticipating the night ahead. ‘What’s he been up to, sir? He’s too much for me. He is that!’
Sir Philip continued. ‘He was seen by one of my workers, taking duck from the lake, here at Suttonford. I don’t allow labourers or their families to come into the garden grounds. They must keep away from the house unless they are ordered to work here. If I send for him I shall have to punish him but I mean to let it pass this time. Does he work?’
‘Yes, sir, but he …’
‘Here? For me?’
‘On the farm, sir. But he won’t take orders from Wilf Leach. That’s the trouble. Me and Wilf’s gettin’ married soon but Oliver thinks he’s the head of the house and he doesn’t want Wilf in it. That’s why he’s behavin’ bad.’ She knew that Sir Philip saw plenty of wicked youths. They came before him twice a week at the bench. He’d not wish to see any of his own workers brought before the court.
‘Send him to Mr Jessop in the quarry. Five o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. He can work where his father did.’
Sir Philip had seemingly done all he intended to do for Oliver. ‘That will be all, Mrs Wainwright.’
‘Do you still want me in the kitchen?’ Dolly asked brazenly. Nobody else dared to speak to Sir Philip as she did. ‘The new cook’s here now but you was glad enough for me to do it when old Mrs Gunnel took bad.’
Sir Philip was losing patience. ‘Mrs Wainwright, you are an exceptionally good cook. Had your manner matched your skill then you could have taken on Mrs Gunnel’s job. You are the second cook. You are to work in the kitchen from five o’clock until four in the afternoon.’
He held the heavy door aside for her but Dolly, unused to courtesies, darted past him, almost breaking into a run as she descended the stair to the kitchen.
‘I’m goin’, Bessie. I’ll catch ’im one!’
‘Young Oliver?’ Bessie asked.
‘Yes. He’ll cop it when I get back,’ Dolly replied. She untied the mobcap and pushed it roughly into the pocket of her grey dress and folded the blue apron for tomorrow. It was clean on today and it would do another turn.
Dolly went out the back way, glancing quickly about her as she slipped through the gate into the kitchen garden. There was nobody about today, they were all at the front, but just to be sure she pretended to sit and rest for a moment while she edged nearer a small heap of carrots that lay on the end of a row. There was so much in the garden – so much went to waste it was wicked not to use it. She’d tell them so, if they caught her.
There were bunches of onions drying on a fencepost and she knew she could snatch a few of those as she went. The vegetables safely under her skirt, Dolly, well pleased with her haul, went on swift feet away from the distant sounds of music and voices, behind the glasshouses and onto the track that led to the cottage. She had a parcel of food for Wilf’s baggin, which she’d also concealed under her skirt. He’d be working until it was dark and he’d be glad of a bite.
As soon as she unlatched the door she saw the duck. Oliver had been poaching then. She’d better not say anything to Wilf. Outside she could hear Oliver and Tommy rolling in the sun, armlocked in Tommy’s impossible challenge to his idol.
She peered through the window and watched Oliver flatten her son on the ground, heard Tommy start to whine.
‘Why don’t yer let me win for once?’ he pleaded.
‘Because if I do, you’ll take on someone bigger than yerself,’ Oliver was laughing, ‘and get a pasting for yer cheek.’
‘Tell us what yer did then, our Oliver.’ Tommy’s high-pitched voice was muffled under his brother’s chest. Dolly saw Oliver spreadeagle himself, laughing, over the lad, pinning his wrists to the baked hard ground.
‘Then I hit him, Tommy. I hit Wilf Leach hard, right in the mouth. I broke what’s left of his dirty brown teeth in his ugly mouth and I told him what he’d get if he came round our house again. I said to Wilf, “If you ever show yer face at our house again, Wilf Leach, me and Tommy’ll string yer up from the rafters.”’
‘What did he say?’ Tommy squeaked. ‘You’re a liar, aren’t yer?’ Tommy struggled and kicked, but could not dislodge Oliver.
‘Aye. But I wish I had hit him.’ Oliver stopped laughing and pushed himself up on to his knees. ‘And if I don’t go soon I’ll probably kill him …’
Dolly heard him. She flung open the cottage door. ‘Oliver! There you are, you lazy devil.’ She could feel her face suffuse with anger as he came insolently towards her.
‘I heard yer,’ she said. ‘Go where? You’re not going anywhere.’
‘I’m not stoppin’ ’ere. I’ll not live wi’ you and Wilf Leach,’ he answered her and she saw the defiance in his eyes.
‘Yer will. And you’ll have to change yer name. You and our Tommy. You can start calling yerselves Leach from now on, like I am.’ That was the best way, just tell them to do it.
Oliver’s eyes were full of scorn for her and she saw that his hands were clenched as if it was all he could do not to raise them against her. ‘You can call yerself Strumpet for all I care,’ he said. ‘But I’ll not answer to Leach . . . nor will Tommy. I’m leaving.’
‘You’ve got to stop ’ere. You belong to the estate. Like we all do,’ she told him. ‘You have to work …’
‘They don’t own me, woman!’ He was shouting.
‘They do!’ She hesitated for a moment before adding, triumphantly, ‘You’re articled … apprenticed … and yer can’t get away from that!’
‘An apprentice? I’m an apprentice?’
‘Stop shoutin’,’ she yelled.
‘Apprentice what? Apprentice bloody slave?’
He’d got the better of her. Again. ‘Get yerself up to t’farm,’ she said, impatience with him rising above annoyance. ‘Tell Wilf to bring some potatoes and milk if he can gerrit. And if you see Old Jessop tell ’im you’re startin’ work tomorrer at t’quarry. Sir Philip said so. Take Wilf’s baggin with yer. And take our Tommy.’
She handed over the linen-wrapped parcel. ‘Coom on. Be sharp.’
‘What are yer feeding that great ugly beast for?’ Oliver asked cheekily but he grabbed the parcel and ran. ‘You don’t send any baggin up when I’m in the fields,’ he flung at her.
‘No! And you don’t earn enough to keep yerself in salt, never mind bloody baggin!’ she called after them.
She raked the hearth and brought sticks and paper from a box under the settle. There were a few logs left, enough to finish the rabbit stew she’d started yesterday. When she had done, and the stew was bubbling over the fire, Dolly changed out of her working dress into a skirt of brown dyed calico and a blouse, pink silk and lace-trimmed. Apart from a feathered hat, the blouse was her best bit of finery, bought in a rummage sale for twopence. She boasted of its distinguished history, having once seen Lady Oldfield in something similar. Wilf would be back in an hour or so and she liked to look fetching.
Half an hour later she stood at the door, in her skirt and blouse, scowling, impatient for their return.
‘Get some water, will yer?’ she demanded of Oliver, lifting the pail from its shelf above the kitchen slab. ‘Get a move on! And you, coom in, Tommy.’
Oliver took the iron-hooped pail to the pump, which was shared by all the cottages. She can’t face the neighbours, he thought smugly. And no wonder when she goes around like a wanton woman. She’s got nowt on under that skirt. Everyone can see right through it.
He took the water back to the cottage and placed it on the kitchen slab. The duck was hanging, plucked and drawn, at the open window.
Dolly stood at the door, arms folded in front of her waist, head cocked to one side in the battling attitude Oliver knew so well.
‘I had to stand and take a tellin’-off from Sir Philip this afternoon – over you and yer bloody duck,’ she said in her sharpest voice.
‘You’re glad enough to pluck it though, aren’t yer?’ Oliver replied caustically. ‘You didn’t chuck it out, did yer? Who told him? Wilf?’
‘If he did, it’s because he has to,’ Dolly said. ‘Sir Philip knows we’re gettin’ married – me and Wilf. He knows Wilf’s responsible for us. So it’s Wilf as’ll get blamed for your nonsense,’ she added with the air of one who has just put a miscreant in his place.
She was sticking up for Wilf again. Oliver’s anger got the better of him. He grabbed her wrist and held it. ‘I’d have looked after yer. You and our Tommy. I earn ten shillin’ a week and I give you nine and six.’
‘It doesn’t alter the fact. Wilf’s going to have to answer for us.’
‘You can tell Wilf Leach that he’s only answerable for his own bloody nonsense. Not mine,’ he roared, bending until his face was close to hers. ‘I only take what’s there for the asking. Like wild duck and rabbits!’ He gripped her wrist tight until he saw an answering anger in her eyes. She’d not let him know he was hurting her. Oliver loosened his hold but his mouth was a tight, hard line.
‘I don’t take anything that belongs to yer stinking Oldfield family,’ he told her. ‘They don’t own what’s wild and free. Ducks and rabbits come and go as they please. They don’t have to kowtow!’
Dolly pulled her arm away and faced him, eyes blazing. ‘You’re just trying to make it harder for me, aren’t yer,’ she said, ‘always making trouble. Yer can’t stand it, can yer? Can’t stand anyone else in charge?’
‘There’s nobody tells me what to do. Least of all Wilf Leach.’ Oliver heard the fury in his own voice. ‘How you can let him do what he wants with yer I’ll never know.’
‘Wilf wants to marry me. There’s nobody else’ll have us. The Oldfields put us out of the quarry-master’s house when Joe died. They’d put us out of ’ere, soon as look, if I couldn’t work. Wilf’s going to look after me and you can’t let him be. Can yer?’
‘Marry you?’ Oliver looked at her in disgust. ‘He’ll not marry you. He’s promised half the silly widder wimmen in the village that he’ll marry ’em.’
‘You’re a liar!’ Dolly tried to push past him but Tommy was in the doorway to the living room, blocking her way.
‘Don’t marry Wilf, Ma. Find someone else,’ he cried.
‘Wilf’s not a bad lot, son. I’ll not let him do anything to you,’ she said in a gentler voice. She went to the cupboard and brought out basins, placed them on the old stained table and began to ladle rabbit stew for them.
‘Did you tell Old Jessop you’ll start tomorrer?’ Dolly asked as she sliced bread for them to dip in the bowls.
Oliver knew she was trying to change the subject. She half-believed all he’d said about Wilf’s other women. He sighed and sat down. What did it matter? He’d be gone tomorrow. She could go to the devil any way she wanted. ‘Aye. He said to be there sharp so I’ll go to bed straight after me supper.’ The lie came easily but he dared not look at Tommy as he spoke.
When they had eaten he climbed the steep spiral stair that led to Dolly’s tiny attic room and the cubbyhole beyond, where he and Tommy slept. He gathered his few possessions into a roll, slipped outside, and hid them under a heap of dusty straw in the old stable, then went back into the cottage to wait.
At ten o’clock Oliver and Tommy lay in their corner on the heap of old clothes that served as a mattress. There was no window in the roof space and the place under the eaves that they shared was musty and airless in summer but damp and freezing in winter. They heard Wilf return, singing loud and tunelessly, swinging a sacking bag wildly as he tried to keep his balance on drink-weary legs.
‘I’ll take my belt to that Oliver. He’s asking for a hiding, Dolly. I’ll thrash the bugger to within an inch of ’is bloody life!’ His words carried clearly up the stairs.
‘Leave ’im, Wilf. Anyroad, he’s starting work for Old Jessop in t’morning,’ Dolly replied.
‘Jessop’s never seen ’im. Jessop would have told me if he’d taken ’im on. Look in the bag, woman!’
They heard him lurch against the stair door, heard the contents of the sack being spilt over the floor, heard Dolly set the milk can upright and squeal with delight. Oliver crept to the foot of the stairs and watched, through the cracked door.
‘Here.’ He saw Wilf pull Dolly towards him, gathering up her thin skirt in his dirt-engrained hands. The waistband tie came loose and he pulled clumsily at the fastenings on her blouse. His hands searched her body and he took her noisily and violently, standing against the stair door, his beard raking her neck, thrusting her hips repeatedly against the wood.
Oliver went back up to Tommy who lay, squeezing his eyes tight shut, his fists to his ears to blot out the sounds of Wilf’s grunts and a strange high wailing that must surely come from his mother – and the terrible, rhythmic hammering.
The drinking started. Soon there would be angry voices. Every night followed the same pattern – Wilf enraged and bullying: Dolly placating and whining by turns until they staggered up the stairs to fall, too tired and drunk to do battle any longer, upon the rough wooden bed.
Oliver waited until Wilf’s grating snores masked Dolly’s, then, lowering his head, he crept past the bed and edged his way downstairs to the living room that looked eerie in the pale light that bathed it. Wilf’s breeches and boots were lying discarded on the settle.
He dressed quickly, his hands fumbling in their haste, and at last he was away, retracing his steps of the afternoon, now in brilliant moonlight and the air like wine, with only the gentlest of breezes, filling him with speed and energy.
He ran past the silent cottages at Hollinbank, along the whitened grass that bordered the path and up towards the high field where the stooks of wheat the men had made in the afternoon resembled groups of small people leaning together in talk. He ran through them swiftly and silently, along the top field to the hedge and down the long slope that led to the lake, back to where he been earlier in the day.
He paused at the lakeside and looked across the still, inky water to the big house. Lanterns were strung across the front of Suttonford House – bright yellow points of light hanging between the tall windows. On the wide semicircular sweep of gravel carriages waited to take the guests. Oliver heard light, happy voices. It was as if the lake amplified the sound for he heard the horses’ hooves stamping impatiently, waiting their turn to move forward.
In the brightly lit entrance hall people were saying their farewells. Gloved hands waved from the darkened carriages as they pulled away and though Oliver could not see their faces from where he watched he wondered if she was there; the girl he had seen from the island.
He ran round the lake’s perimeter, keeping to the trees and bushes, out of sight of the guests. He ran round the back of Suttonford House itself. He ran parallel to the two-mile gravel drive that extended from the manor to the highway and he crouched behind the hedge that bordered the road when the carriages passed by.
The last carriage passed within feet of him. And she was there; the girl he had seen earlier. She wore a dress of blue satin, cut low in the front and she was tiny, as aristocratic families are, not much above five feet, Oliver guessed.
She leaned out of the lowered window, her long fair hair fanned out about her shoulders and her voice when she spoke was musical and low. ‘Mama. Do look. It’s so beautiful. There’s not a soul about.’ The carriage rounded a bend and was gone from his sight but the impression remained for long afterwards of the loveliest girl Oliver had ever seen. He could have believed he had imagined her, were it not for the trundling wheels, crunching gravel and the rattling of harness he could hear through the trees.
Middlefield was a hilly market town between Manchester and the Derbyshire border. The three main streets met at the cobbled market square before the solid, four-square edifice of the Town Hall, which in turn was overshadowed by the Norman church of St Michael and All Angels. The church sat at the highest point of the town in a solemn churchyard, enclosed by a stone wall under which the steep, tortuous Wallgate led down to the cattle market and railway station below.
The three main streets, Rivergate, Wallgate and Churchgate, were busy thoroughfares, noisy with the passage of coaches and carts whose iron-clad wheels clanged against the stone setts and where the metal-on-metal screech of heavy brakes added to the din.
Oliver entered the town at dawn where the main road became Rivergate, beyond the bridge over the same river Hollin which meandered carelessly through the estate at Suttonford. By the time it reached Middlefield the river had become swollen from tributaries on the way and was a fast-flowing river that cut swiftly through the town, bringing with it the power to turn the machinery of the cotton mills lining its banks.
He felt excitement stirring within him at the clatter of heavy clogs on the little streets leading to the cotton mills. The mills lined the fortified walls of the Hollin and stood edge to edge with it, overpowering it and making it a dark rush of menacing waterway.
He found shops interspersed with taverns along the main street. There were entries – covered alleyways leading to flagged courtyards and damp workers’ cottages and all were disgorging their occupants who, at six o’clock on this blue summer morning, appeared lively, even eager, to reach their workplaces.
Throwsters, spinners and weavers all made their way to the mills. Men shouted across the streets to each other, making ribald comments about the girls in bright cotton dresses who, in twos and threes, arms tucked into one another’s, gave as good as they got, laughing and shrieking at the more outrageous remarks.
It was going to be another hot day. Oliver watched a farmer delivering milk from his cart, lugging the can through the alleyways to the shared yards where old women brought jugs and basins to be filled. The man carried a long-handled measuring can under his arm and there was a second ladle on the side sill of the cart beside another churn. Oliver waited until the man disappeared from sight and, ignoring the protesting snorts of the horse, clambered over the side and drank deeply, ladling himself gill after gill of its creamy freshness.
He reached the market square and watched the stallholders setting up. He saw that the established ones got the best sites. The middlers took what came and casuals, men with laden ponies and donkeys, were given what was left. Latecomers had to find a space, clinging to the fringes, setting out their wares on the smooth brown cobblestones.
He