Dying in the Wool (12 page)

‘Where’s Dad? Where’s Uncle Neville? What’s wrong?’

‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ her mother said wearily. ‘Something’s happened. We had a bit of bother over the
weekend with your father. Now he’s disappeared.’

‘What do you mean “bother”, what kind of bother? What’s happened? Where’s Dad gone?’

There was a frantic edge to her mother’s voice when she said, ‘Neville’s out looking for him.’

When meeting someone for the first time, it’s good to have a little information about them. All I knew about Tabitha’s Uncle Neville Stoddard was that unless Tabitha’s miracle happened and Joshua Braithwaite was found alive and well, Tabitha would walk down the aisle on Uncle Neville’s arm. I also guessed that without Uncle Neville’s steady hand on the tiller, Braithwaites Mill would have sunk.

Neville Stoddard’s office held a table containing books illustrating what the well-dressed gent would be wearing next season, a large desk, at which he sat, on the telephone, and shelves stacked with rolls of fabrics, grey blanket material with a red stripe, plaid rug and uniform-style navy. I examined the fabrics while waiting for his call to end. When it did, he put down the receiver and offered me his hand with a disarmingly friendly smile.

He pulled out a chair for me. ‘Tabitha’s told me why you’re here. How are you getting on with your investigations?’

‘Not very well, so far.’

‘Thanks for bringing your photographic stuff. And a tripod too.’ He picked up a bobbin, rolling it on the desk, like a child might play with a toy car. ‘I used to dabble in photography a little myself. The camera will be useful.’

‘Oh?’ I was curious as to why he had asked me to bring a camera.

‘Thing is, I’d rather not stir up a hornet’s nest of speculation
over Joshua. The workers will look at you and see a lady photographer, interested in mills and weavers.’

I smiled at this. ‘As it happens I intend to enter the All British Photographic Competition. I hope to find an unusual subject.’

He slapped his hands on the desk. ‘That’s settled then.’

‘Does that mean you don’t want me to talk to your employees?’ I added hastily. He wasn’t to know that Sykes would do that for me. But Sykes would only be able to talk to men in pubs. There must be female employees who might have something useful to say.

He shook his head emphatically. ‘Nothing to be gained from upsetting the workers. Rule out that line of enquiry, save yourself some time.’

He leaned back in his chair, rather precariously, looking at me with what seemed like admiration. For a moment I feared for the back of his head against the window sill. At school when I had broken my arm, I leaned back on my chair and couldn’t manage to lever myself up again. Ever since that day, seeing someone tilt a chair gives me the collywobbles.

‘Tabitha tells me you’d like a tour of the mill?’

‘Yes. I’ve never visited a mill.’

‘Then you’ve missed a great deal of muck, a lot of stink and enough noise to blow down Buckingham Palace. Let’s start here.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘This is Joshua Braithwaite’s office, and I make no apologies for purloining it. I’m holding the fort until he returns.’

He said it as if the words were meant to ward off further questions. I stayed put.

He sat down opposite me, in the second of the visitors’ chairs. ‘Whatever anyone else says, Mrs Shackleton, I choose to believe that Joshua has gone to warmer climes, for his health, and will return. I say it at the Wool Exchange. I say it to customers, and I say it in the Mechanics’ Institute. I needn’t say it at the chapel,
because folk there have the courtesy not to ask.’

‘And do you believe what you say?’

‘My job’s not belief, except when it comes to The Almighty. My job’s to run a mill to the best of my ability.’ He reached for the bobbin from his desk and spun it between his palms. ‘We were all flummoxed by his disappearance, didn’t know what to make of it. You can’t pluck an explanation out of thin air when there isn’t one. I decided to shut up the questions with my warmer climes remark. If you say something loud enough and often enough, folk stop asking.’

‘It must have been hard for you when he left.’

A fleeting look of hurt altered his expression, making him look suddenly younger than his fifty-something years. ‘It was hard. To be frank, it was terrible. We did everything together, from about the age of fifteen when I came to live here. Technical college – sitting exams together, learning the trade together. Having fun too. We used to run, when we were younger, take part in the fell races. I miss him, very much.’

I’m not here to pity him, I told myself, though in that moment I did.

‘I understand the official explanation you give. I’d probably do the same. But I can’t really work out what happened. What was Mr Braithwaite’s state of mind?’

‘He was feeling low-spirited, heartbroken over Edmund’s death.’ He sighed. ‘And Tabitha was away from home, of course, doing her bit in the VAD. I believe that’s where you met?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m glad she’s got a friend to stay. To tell you the truth, I think that’s what she needs more than anything, a female friend. Joshua isn’t going to turn up for her.’

‘Were there any business worries?’

‘Come on, let me show you round. You can get a feeling of how good business is – and believe me, it was even
better in 1916. That was our best year in decades. Bring your camera and choose a view. There’s plenty of light in the weaving room. If you can bear the racket, you might get a good photograph. Make an extra copy for the office, and the village hall, and you’ll have friends in Bridgestead for life.’

In each office, he told me what work took place there: Purchasing, Sales, Invoicing.

On the corridor, I asked, ‘What do you purchase?’

‘Yarn, from the worsted spinners. We’re weavers and dyers. Joshua was a good businessman. He left the firm in great shape and I’ve ensured it stays that way.’

One office was Quality Control, another Wages. ‘I’m very popular on Fridays. I take the wages around myself. Keeps ’em on their toes.’

I noticed that although he had the local accent, similar to Evelyn Braithwaite’s, now and then his vowels would lengthen, as if he had spent his early life somewhere else.

On the stairs, he said, ‘We were exceptionally busy during the war.’

I listened carefully. Would this be his roundabout way of talking about Joshua,
during the war
?

‘Be careful, Mrs Shackleton. It’s slippery just here. Someone’s come up in muddy boots.’

‘You were exceptionally busy during the war,’ I prompted.

‘We had to increase wages to keep our staff. Some of the men had answered the call to enlist. We needed to find overlookers – the machines have to be kept running. That was when it paid off that we had a loyal workforce. Look after them and they’ll look after you. We took work from firms in Leeds, where men had more choice of employment. A lot of owners were still lagging behind in their outlook. Prepare your ears for a shock.’

I could already hear deafening noises, slamming and banging and the roar of machinery.

He raised his voice, ‘Don’t expect to hear a thing on this floor. It’s full of looms all going flat out. We were down for a few hours yesterday, waiting for yarn. We’re making up for it today.’

Before he opened the door, the choking stench of engine oil filled my nose and throat. I made a deliberate attempt not to stagger back when he opened the door as the smell, although it hardly seemed possible, grew even more overpowering.

The noise was literally deafening. No wonder Mrs Kellett asked me to face her for my fortune-telling, so that she could read my lips. I had all on not to put my hands over my ears. Small wonder she had become ‘half-deaf’ as she put it. At the far end of the room a thundering roller moved the woven cloth to a workshop on the floor above. I caught sight of Mrs Kellett. With a barely perceptible movement, she nodded to me.

Stoddard hadn’t noticed Mrs Kellett’s greeting, which I guessed was what she intended.

At that moment, Stoddard was speaking to the manager. Neither could possibly hear a word the other said. The conversation was conducted entirely by each watching the other’s lips.

The women, faces alive and expressive, were mouthing conversations across the frames. Sometimes they would laugh, but not a human sound could be heard, only the clatter, crash and clang of the looms with their monstrous metal teeth, shuddering wheels and moving belts.

Everything about this mill felt dangerous. If a man wanted to commit suicide, he could do it here. And if that man were rightfully entitled to enter walkways, climb steep open stairs, cross floors where rattling machinery might crush the unwary, a death could look like an accident. Though it would be a horrible way to die.

Stoddard nodded encouragingly, expecting me to photograph one of the looms. The noise shuddered its way
into my being, setting every part of me on edge as I found a good spot to stand. Light flooding in from the windows behind, I focused the picture – a single loom and its operator.

Stoddard waited until I had taken a photograph.

He spoke to me on the stairs, on the way to the floor above, but the noise still rang in my ears and I could not make out what he said.

I told him that I would like to take a photograph when the machines were still. It would be like catching a lion as it snoozed.

On the top floor there were more looms. He pointed to a loading door in the wall. The crane had been hoisted up from the floor below. A worker leaned out of the door to draw in a cart that swayed in the air outside, a dizzying height above the ground. As the man held the cart, Stoddard stooped and leaned in to help, unhooking the cart from the crane. Carts of folded cloth stood by the wall. High rods just below the ceiling level ran the width of the room. On two of the rods tents of cloth were drawn down by eagle-eyed women who caressed the cloth into folds.

‘They’re inspecting and marking it,’ Stoddard said. ‘From here it goes to the burlers and menders.’ He nodded to workers in the centre of the room. ‘They pick up the flaws and put them right.’ Stoddard spoke briefly to one of the women who wielded her needle at a piece of cloth.

He watched my lips as I said, ‘It seems to me you’re a bit of a burler and mender yourself, Mr Stoddard.’

He laughed and on the landing said, ‘You’re a smart lass. I don’t know why you’re wasting your time trying to do the police out of a job.’

On another floor was the packing and despatch department. Parcels of cloth were fastened with string, loaded onto carts and wheeled across to the door in the outside wall where once again the crane came into operation.

‘Well?’ he asked as we walked back to the main doors on the ground floor. ‘What do you think to the place?’

‘Impressive.’

In the yard, I stepped carefully round puddles of coloured rain. A small, wiry man with huge arms manoeuvred a large bogie, loaded with yarn. Stoddard beckoned me to look. ‘This yarn we’re just taking delivery of, it’s dyed in the wool – pre-dyed. What you’ll see next is our own dyehouse. This is where we do piece dyeing, after the cloth’s been woven.’

In the doorway of the dyehouse, he said, ‘Now you best just put your head round and take a peep. It’s filthy, foggy, it stinks and the dye flies everywhere – onto your skin, into your hair and clothes.’

‘And you don’t have women working in here?’

‘It’d be a rare woman that’d have the muscles for it. Looks messy and haphazard, but there’s a high level of skill involved in achieving consistent colour. These workers have served a long apprenticeship.’ He nodded towards a man wearing a flat cap and another with a shock of red hair. ‘They’re father and son.’

The man whipped off his cap, then scuttled away so as not to have to speak to me.

Stoddard called another man who seemed less shy. ‘Kellett!’ He introduced me. ‘Tell Mrs Shackleton what we do here.’

Kellett stepped to the doorway, whipping off his cap. So this was Lizzie Luck’s husband. He was stocky, pugnacious and had a claw of a hand. Industrial injury, or war wound?

‘Good afternoon.’ He fixed me with a bold stare, as if asserting his authority over this, his world.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Kellett.’

He waved his arms to the great shed of a room where Stoddard went to seek out one of the workers. ‘This is the dyehouse. In some places they call it a shed. We all know
it as well as we know our own house, so dyehouse is a good term for it. Every man jack here has served his apprenticeship and knows his work – or he wouldn’t last two minutes. Our first job is to make the stuff stable like. That’s why it’s hotter than hell in there, begging your pardon. We scour the cloth to shift muck and grease, any other whatnot picked up as it’s gone along. Then we dye and dry the fabric – tentering that’s called. Looms was down yesterday and so we’re behind-hand. Someone’ll be working late tomorrer night to finish off – and that someone’ll be me because I’m foreman.’

Beyond him inside the dyehouse were wooden structures, with rails above them. Some looked as if they could double as bathing huts. There were deep oblong vessels with cloth suspended from a contraption above.

‘I expected great half barrels.’ I didn’t add that I’d also thought to see giant wooden spoons.