The Loom (6 page)

She’ll have to pay
them
soon, Leah thought in exasperation. She signalled to Janey to get a move on. Janey deliberately ignored her. Calling to her was a waste of time. The weaving shed was enormous and housed almost a thousand looms. The noise was horrendous. The weavers employed a kind of sign language to communicate. The mill complex itself was huge; three storeys and numerous smaller buildings and a large weaving shed. The mill was surrounded on all sides by high stone walls and on the far side was a reservoir of water called a ‘lodge’, which supplied the mills with steam power.

The weaving shed had a cement floor and pipes running around the sides, which every now and then let off jets of steam. This prevented the cotton from becoming too brittle. Even in cold weather the workers shed all but light clothing because of the high humidity. Most of the people at the looms were women, except for a few older men.

Leah ran two looms, efficiently for her age. She was good at weaving. Janey ran one because she was on half time, although she had trouble with one at times because she was so slow. ‘They’re like chalk and cheese, my two,’ Emma would say.

‘I hate weaving,’ Janey complained the first week. ‘It gives me a headache. All that noise. I don’t know how you’ve stood it all this time, Mam.’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Emma said. She couldn’t weaken with Janey or she’d sit home on her bum all day looking at movie star magazines.

The older women had their hair severely scraped back into a huge bun.

‘
That’s enough to give you a headache, without the noise’, Emma would say, ‘some of ‘em must weigh a ton’.

The young girls wore theirs in plaits, although some had it tied back in a ribbon.

Leah could see Alf Tatler in the distance changing a loom. She liked Alf. He was also responsible for the maintenance of the looms and always had a friendly word and wave for her.

‘
You’re a good little weaver, Leah lass,’ he would say as he watched her quick movements with the shuttle. ‘Some of ‘em are always getting cotton in a mash or break t’cotton a hundred times a day.’

At the end of the week Leah took home six shillings for her five and half days and Emma, who ran four looms, one pound. Emma complained incessantly of the unfairness that men got double that of a woman. Sometimes she had been at her wit’s end to make do on that one wage. Now they were all working it was a lot easier.

Leah saw Alf walk towards Janey and hand her a piece of paper. Not again, Leah thought. She made sure her loom was running smoothly and then went over to Janey.

‘You didn’t get another one?’ she said.

Janey nodded glumly. ‘I’m sick of ‘em. Have a look.’ She held out the scrap of paper. Leah read ‘report to Ted Hindley’.

Leah handed the note back. ‘At least it’s Ted, not Ben Gribble. Anyway, Janey, you should be more careful with your weaving. You’re too sloppy.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ Janey retorted. ‘You like it and you’re good at it. I hate it. One day I’ll get out of here and do something else, see if I don’t.’

‘Now don’t get in a huff. Just go and see him at lunch time.’ Leah said. Janey was almost in tears and it would be just like her to leave her looms and run home.

‘
I’ve had of few of them meself and at least you’ve never had them from that horrible Ben.’

Leah went back to her loom deep in thought. As Janey said she did like weaving, enjoyed the precision of it, the shuttle flying backwards and forwards, the picking sticks swinging. The picking sticks could be dangerous if you weren’t careful. She would brush under the loom as the huge iron bars swung. If they caught her broom they could break her arm. Her Mam would have a fit if she knew.

She watched the shuttle flying backwards and forwards across the loom for a few minutes, remembering how she’d almost ended up in hospital because of that shuttle. You had to suck at the two holes in the top to get the thread through, often ending up with a mouthful of dust. On this particular occasion she sucked so hard the cotton caught round her tonsils. No amount of tugging or pulling had been able to dislodge the thread.

Her Mam had been called from the Premier Mill and she’d taken Leah to the infirmary at Blackburn, as Dr. Warrington was ill at the time. They went all the way by train, the two bits of thread hanging from her mouth. Must have looked real gormless, she thought, her mouth twitching as she remembered. Why on earth hadn’t she cut the threads or at least put them in her mouth so that people couldn’t see.

She thought about Janey and her note and her own last one from Ben Gribble. Horrible man! She’d gone to his office with that knotty feeling in the pit of her stomach. His weazily, narrow face and fawning, sly manner always made her shiver. ‘Aye, I know him,’ Emma said when she’d told her what happened. ‘He should be locked up.’

He’d cornered her behind the desk, leaning over her, his breath smelling of onions. Tufts of gray hair sprouted from his nose. He reeked of stale tobacco.

‘If you’re nice to me, lass,’ he said, ‘You’ll get no more notes.’

He had almost frightened her to death, and her teeth had chattered so hard, she was sure they could hear her in the weaving room. She pushed passed him. ‘Don’t you touch me, you dirty old bugger,’ she yelled. ‘I’ll tell me Mam, I will that.’

When Leah told Emma this story she had been incensed, had flung a shawl around her and gone to see Ben Gribble who lived just up the street from them. She wouldn’t tell Leah what she’d said to him, but he hadn’t bothered her since.

Dora Baker and Kitty had looms on the other side of Leah. Kitty was the nearest and Leah watched her as she put her shuttle in. She thought about Kitty and Darkie. Of how much Darkie liked Kitty.

‘
Besotted, he is,’ Emma would say fondly, as Darkie would shoot out of the house in a clean shirt, hair neatly combed. No wonder, Leah thought, she is bonny.

Kitty had her hair tied back with a blue satin ribbon, the colour of her eyes. Leah knew that she was meeting Darkie after work and that was why she’d not plaited it. Instead it fell in waves and curls almost to her waist. Leah felt uneasy for an instant.

Loose hair could be dangerous, though! She suddenly wanted to call to Kitty, to shout a warning. She watched Kitty bend forward and lean over the picking sticks. Her hair gleamed in the overhead lights, blue-black. She couldn’t get the words out and she began to run before the unearthly scream began. The scream resounded even above the noise of the looms.

Leah stood over Kitty. Kitty’s hair hung grotesquely on the picking sticks, swinging backwards and forwards. Each time they swung the hair became more and more tangled. Where the hair had been was a bloody, pulpy mess. Kitty lay on the floor, her mouth open in a continuous scream, now drowned by the clacking of the looms.

Leah felt the vomit rise, heard voices and then the blackness descended.

She could hear nothing but the noise of looms. She was much smaller, tied to a loom, which looked like a gigantic building to her. She dragged the rope around the loom as she swept and cleaned, darting underneath to get at the dust. There was a man with a whip. She darted away so that he couldn’t hit her, still dragging the rope.

This scene faded and Kitty’s face with its open mouth reappeared. A red haze enveloped her. She felt herself falling.

The next thing she knew she was in one of those new fangled things they called an ambulance, which ran without a horse. She’d always wanted to ride in one of them, but not this way. She was aware of Janey’s face leaning anxiously over her.

‘
Are you all right?’ Janey’s face was white as a plate. Her black eyes seemed enormous in her white face.

Leah nodded. ‘Kitty?’

Janey started visibly. She looked over to the other side of the ambulance. There was someone in the bed wrapped in a gray blanket. The head was wrapped in bandages.

‘Is she…?’

‘No…I don’t think so. Oh, it was so horrible. There was blood everywhere.’

Janey began to cry.

**********

Darkie stood waiting outside the mill gates. He watched as the workers, weary and strained with the day’s work hurried to get to the warmth and comfort of their homes.

The sun shone intermittently, brightening, just for a moment, the grim scene of the mill. Then it disappeared behind a cloud and the rain began. Big drops splattered on the pavements like giant pennies.

For some reason Darkie’s feeling of elation had evaporated with the disappearance of the sun. The high forbidding walls appeared dismal and depressing. What a sight, he thought with distaste as he gazed at the gloomy outline of the weaving shed, now almost obliterated by the teeming rain. A feeling of despondency settled on him. Funny, but a few minutes ago he’d been buoyed up with the anticipation of seeing Kitty. Now he felt uneasy. He seemed to have been waiting a long time for her. The stream of workers had diminished. They were now coming out in ones and twos. Where was Kitty? He turned up his coat collar and pushed his hands deeper into his coat pockets, shivering in the night air.

He saw May Wilkins, a friend of Kitty’s, hurry through the gates. Seeing Darkie she paused and then hesitantly raised her hand. She turned to say something to her sister, Annie. They both looked at Darkie as though rooted to the spot. He called out.

‘
Have you seen Kitty, May?’ They began to walk slowly towards him. His unease increased. There was something strange going on, he could feel it. Where the hell was Kitty?

‘There’s been an accident, Darkie,’ May said, ‘Kitty…Kitty had an accident. She’s been taken to the hospital in Blackburn.’

‘What do you mean, an accident; don’t just stand there, tell me what happened, for God’s sake.’

‘It’s her hair. Kitty’s got no hair,’ Annie blurted.

‘Shut your gob, our Annie!’ said May sharply.

Darkie looked from one to the other. ‘What do you mean, she’s got no hair?

‘Just what Annie said, Darkie; Kitty’s hair got caught in the loom. Pulled the lot off, it did.’ Remembering the scene May began to cry and Annie joined in.

‘
Oh, it was that awful, Darkie. Leah saw it happen and she got such a fright that she fainted and had to be taken in the ambulance as well. They’ve all gone to the hospital.’

Darkie stared at the two girls for a moment, then turned and began to run down the street. He called back.

‘
Tell me Mam I’ve gone to Blackburn.’

Darkie ran the five miles to Blackburn without even being aware of it. He was oblivious to anything save his own thoughts. It couldn’t happen! Not to Kitty! Not to Kitty, and her beautiful hair. He’d get to Blackburn to find it had all been a mistake! On and on he ran, the sweat streaming out of every pore, his hair plastered to his head, for by now the rain was coming down in sheets.

When he reached the outskirts of Blackburn he stopped once to ask a passerby the way to the hospital.

‘
Just go straight down t’street and at the end turn left and it’s there, lad.’

The man looked at the drenched, heaving boy curiously. Before the sentence was finished Darkie was off again. Following the directions he saw the hospital in the distance. As he reached the main entrance Shamus and Mara O’Shea walked down the steps and behind them Leah and Janey; they were all crying.

‘
It’s no use Darkie, lad, she’s gone, she’s gone,’

Shamus said, lifting his tear-stained face to the gasping, drenched boy standing in front of him.

Darkie gazed for a moment at the grief-stricken people before him. The words seared through his brain. Without a word he turned and walked slowly away. He was unaware of the people passing by, of the cries from Leah and Janey, of his face wet with tears and mixing with the teeming rain.

He was aware of nothing except his pain, his anguish and his despair.

***********

It had been four weeks since Kitty’s death. Darkie felt as though he’d aged forty years in that time. When he looked at his surroundings they seemed cloaked in a gray haze. Harwood had never been a particularly bright place. Now it seemed thoroughly dismal and depressing.

He had not gone to the Mass for Kitty. He couldn’t. Neither could he talk about it. Not like the O’Shea’s, who seemed to get relief from sharing their grief. He wished he could. He avoided walking to the mine with Paddy because of this. Paddy was hurt, but said nothing.

Darkie walked towards the pit, bait tin in hand. The grayness of the day, the bleak surroundings of the pit, the slag heaps and stark bareness of it added to his depression. Bloody horrible place, he thought. I’m going to be out of this soon. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll be out of it. He could see the men gathering at the shaft head where the cage took them deep into the bowels of the earth. Paddy was there and he lifted his hand when he saw Darkie. Darkie returned the wave half-heartedly.

Ed Beasely, his pale, weasel face settled into its usual irritable scowl, called out.

‘
All right you lot, get a move on. We haven’t got all day.’

There were a few disparaging remarks, kept in low key because Ed was in charge of the shift and he could be a nasty bugger. They crowded into the cage and it began its descent. Most were used to this daily ritual, but Darkie still couldn’t rid himself of the sickening sensation as his stomach seemed to lift almost out of his body as the train dropped like a train into hell.