A Green Bay Tree Read online

  He hit her on the palms of her hands, reopening some already festering welts, and bringing tears to her eyes. Coolly and methodically, he gave her six stinging cuts, then told her go and sit down.

  She looked at him. The injustice of his words and actions now burned stripes into her very soul. Her spirit was roused in earnest. ‘No,’ she cried, ‘I won't!’

  ‘What?’ Mr Harker stared.

  ‘I'll never sit down in this place again!’

  ‘Searle, go back to your desk!’ Nonplussed, the master glared at her. ‘Sit down!’ he repeated. For added emphasis, he rapped the cane across his desk. ‘Do as I say!’

  Rebecca went back to her desk, but not to sit down. With hands which felt as if they were on fire, she picked up her books. She strapped them together. Aware that twenty pairs of childish eyes were goggling at her in awe and disbelief, she kept her own gaze on the master. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said. Then, her head held high, she walked out of the classroom and out of the school.

  On the way home she took the burrs out of her clothes and threw them into the road, where a passing donkey ate them. Reaching the factory, she went straight to Jeremy's little office. She sat down. But now she felt somewhat apprehensive. That sense of elation created by defying Mr Harker gave way to a nervous fear of Jeremy Searle's wrath.

  Her grandfather was doing some paperwork. Glancing up, he blinked at her in surprise. He looked at the ancient pewter fob watch which always lay on his desk. ‘Well, my maid?’ Kindly, he smiled. ‘Why are you home so early?’

  Rebecca opened her mouth to speak. But now, the tears behind her eyelids spilled over. She heard herself sob. She held out her hands, turning them over to expose the palms. Jeremy stared in horror at the damage Mr Harker had done.

  He left the office at once, returning a few minutes later with a basin of hot water and a handful of clean cotton waste. He held out one huge, gnarled paw. ‘Left hand first,’ he said. He wrung out the wadding. ‘I'll try not to hurt you.’

  Later that day, Jeremy jammed on his wig, brushed his best coat, and went out. He returned an hour later red in the face, his mouth set in the most terrific scowl Rebecca had ever seen. Lyddy kept out of his way for the rest of the evening.

  Rebecca did not go back to school.

  * * * *

  By the time Rebecca was fifteen, Jeremy regularly employed upwards of seventy men. Engaged in a huge variety of operations — for Jeremy would try anything which promised to yield a profit — his workforce was of all ages and abilities. At one end of the scale, he had children turning out nails, bolts, screws and buttons. At the other, he employed a dozen highly–skilled craftsmen, who made the most delicately wrought brass, iron and copperware for a growing and discriminating clientèle.

  Rebecca's own training began when she was a very small child. Hand in hand with her grandfather, she went in and out of all the workshops and into all the sheds, courts and yards. Her childish ears accustomed to the most horrendous din, she watched the processes from beginning to completion. Say what he might about the value of studying the Scriptures, Jeremy knew perfectly well that it was in the factory Rebecca's real education took place.

  When she was very small, he carried her on his shoulders. ‘What's he doing, Granda?’ she asked from her lofty eminence, as she watched a man punch holes in metal discs.

  ‘Well child, what do you think?’

  ‘Is he making buttons?’

  ‘Indeed he is, my maid.’ Jeremy grinned. ‘Birmingham buttons, the best there are! Now, see these two fellows here? They're making buttons too, but the operation is quite different. Watch closely, and learn how it's done.’

  Rebecca spent all her free time amidst the rattle and commotion of the factory. She studied brass–founding, general casting and iron–smithing, she watched plating, gilding and embossing. She learned how Jeremy co–ordinated and managed his workforce. She met his suppliers, customers and fellow manufacturers, too.

  ‘You'll be a manufacturer in your own right by the time you're sixteen,’ said Jeremy, grinning as she pointed out a defect in a new type of door hinge, then went on to suggest how a change in soldering technique could correct the fault. ‘If I didn't know otherwise, I'd have said you were a master craftsman yourself. That you'd worked your way up from ‘prentice boy, and laboured at the furnace with the other little hinds.’

  ‘Would you?’ Rebecca shrugged. ‘Don't dismiss Jonas Trotter,’ she said, referring to the journeyman who'd spent the past week wasting both expensive materials and his own time, together with that of three apprentices. Hundreds of hinges would now have to be scrapped. ‘He's a good workman. This particular fault is hardly obvious, after all.’

  ‘Trotter's task is to make things fit for the purpose. It was his responsibility to see the hinge worked.’ Jeremy tossed the offending artifact aside. ‘So, Becky. My little maid. Will you like to be an ironmaster?’

  Rebecca frowned. ‘You're the master,’ she replied. ‘The men would never take orders from me.’

  ‘Of course they will. They see you understand the processes. They know you're a clever lass. They have as much respect for your opinion as they do for mine.’ Wryly, Jeremy grimaced. ‘Perhaps more.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘You don't hear what I hear.’ Jeremy's sour–featured face creased into a smile. ‘You must learn to trust yourself,’ he said. ‘To be ruthless. To believe you know best. Never pity the incompetents, and don't keep the idle in your employ. Womanish compassion has no place in business.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘So harden your heart. Then you'll be a match for all of them, competitors and employees alike.’

  * * * *

  Months went by. Year followed year into oblivion. Jeremy made his will, leaving everything he possessed to Rebecca. ‘Yes, yes, I trust you to provide for your grandmother and aunt,’ he muttered testily, when Rebecca objected that the older women had rather more right to inherit than she herself did. ‘You won't prove unworthy of my faith in you. I know that.’

  Rebecca did not have the chance to provide for her grandmother. On hearing the details of her husband's will, the old woman took to her bed, and five days later she died. Jeremy did not appear to care. He arranged the most perfunctory of funerals. Brushing aside all sympathy, and leaving his daughter and grand–daughter to listen to the condolences of neighbours and friends, he was back in his office before the sexton had finished shovelling soil over his wife's grave.

  One fine spring morning he came downstairs to breakfast, glared at his daughter, smiled at Rebecca — then dropped his bombshell. ‘I intend to take the maid on a jaunt,’ he announced. He stirred his chocolate, then broke some bread. He dipped the crust in his drink.

  Lyddy stared at him. Jeremy never took holidays. His only respite from work was the sabbath day, when he stood before his Lord for eight hours at a stretch. ‘A jaunt?’ she asked. Fearful of annoying him, she hardly raised her voice above a whisper. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

  ‘What I say.’ Jeremy drained his cup. ‘Cuthbertson can oversee the factory for a week. The clerks know their business well enough. Becky and I deserve a holiday.’

  * * * *

  Although rather sorry to leave her aunt behind in the dirty town while she rode through the pleasant spring sunshine in a comfortable hired coach, Rebecca was nevertheless determined to enjoy herself. The sensation of travelling was so new, so delightful and so interesting that it gave a glow to her complexion and kindled such a sparkle in her blue eyes that even her grandfather, who affected to despise personal beauty, grinned complacently whenever he chanced to look at her.

  She had no idea where they were going. When she asked Jeremy where he was taking her, the old man merely looked foxy and replied she would see soon enough.

  They were now in Shropshire. Two days and two nights of easy travelling brought them, at dusk, to the Severn Gorge and the bleak, industrial landscape of Coalbrookdale. Here, so much iron was
smelted that the countryside for miles around was barren, blackened and dead. The noise from the forges and mills, together with the sight of scarlet– orange flames bursting from the hundreds upon hundreds of furnaces all around, made the night hideous. Rebecca wondered why her grandfather had come to such a place. Merely to exchange the sights and sounds of one pandemonium for another?

  Jeremy would not say. After taking a leisurely supper at a comfortable inn, he grinned and told her not to ask so many questions, that persistent curiosity did not become a virgin of her tender years. ‘Wait until morning,’ he said. ‘Then you'll see.’

  ‘See what?’ Engagingly, Rebecca smiled. ‘What is this great wonder, which you've brought me so far to gaze upon? Or is there nothing here at all?’

  ‘Don't be saucy.’ Jeremy's bushy grey eyebrows came together. ‘You're not too old to be whipped.’

  ‘I'm sorry.’ Rebecca stroked his hand. ‘Can't you tell me tonight?’ she wheedled.

  ‘No. You must wait and see.’ Jeremy grimaced. ‘You've never had any patience,’ he muttered. ‘Even from a babe, you've known neither forebearance nor restraint.’

  Rising to his feet, he called for a candle, then went up to bed.

  * * * *

  ‘The iron was cast here, at Coalbrookdale.’ His grand– daughter by his side, Jeremy gazed. He shook his head. ‘I can hardly believe my own eyes.’

  ‘It's extraordinary.’ Rebecca gazed too. ‘I'd never have thought it possible.’

  ‘Possible or not, here it is.’

  ‘Yes.’ Now, Rebecca walked closer. ‘How high is it, would you say? Fifty feet? Fifty five?’

  ‘Nearer sixty, I'd guess. Out of the water, that is.’ Jeremy eyed the half–completed bridge. ‘Becky, we'll talk to the fellow in charge. We'll find out.’

  They picked their way through a mass of building materials, then hailed the foreman.

  By now, Mr Brading was used to tourists. This great arch spanning the Severn was the first iron bridge ever to be constructed, anywhere in the world. So, from aIl over the country, people had come to stare. To mutter privately that the whole thing was impossible. It would all fall into the water one day.

  ‘Well, master,’ began the foreman, ‘it's cast iron. Every last bit of it. All the parts have been made here. All levered into position by hand.’ Impressively, he pointed. ‘Those pieces over there weigh near on six ton.’

  ‘So the whole?’ asked Rebecca. ‘The whole weighs what?’

  The foreman scratched his head. ‘Well, at a rough computation, about five hundred ton.’ He grinned. ‘Yes, at least that.’

  ‘How is it all fixed together?’ Rebecca peered at the work. ‘Have new methods of construction had to be found? Here, I see, you have wood–working joints. This is a mortice, is it not? Over there — a dove–tail?’

  ‘Indeed it is.’ Surprised to find a woman had even heard of such things, Mr Brading nodded. ‘Come higher up the bank,’ he invited. ‘Step over the cordon here, and come with me. I'll show you how the rest of the work goes on.’

  Rebecca and Jeremy followed him.

  From their new vantage point, they could see everything. Awestruck, they gazed. So many ribs of iron! Such a glorious, soaring arch! So much weight, so much metal, all so elegantly poised, so effortlessly suspended over the wide gorge of the river. The daring of it took the breath away.

  Rebecca turned to her grandfather. His faded eyes met her much bluer ones. ‘That, my maid, is worship,’ he said. He took her hand. ‘That is the work of a living God, who has taught men to do the impossible.’

  Understanding perfectly, Rebecca agreed.

  * * * *

  Lyddy never understood why her father loved Becky so well. A loud and insistent critic of the whole female sex, he bullied Lyddy herself from morning to evening. There was no doubt at all that he'd worried and driven his own wife to her premature grave.

  But Becky was special. For one thing, she stood up to him. Rebecca spoke to him as if to an equal, always had done, ever since she could prattle. Somehow, the child had melted the cast–iron casing of Jeremy Searle's hard, Puritan heart, had discovered something soft and pliable inside. More than that, she commanded the old man's respect.

  Chapter 5

  When Alex had just turned twenty seven and been married long enough to cause his father some concern that no son — and no daughter either, for that matter — had been born to him, Henry Lowell took to his bed with his last illness. A slight summer cold, taken while out riding, turned to pneumonia. This weakened Mr Lowell so seriously that a physician was summoned, something almost unheard of in the Lowell household, where illness was simply not allowed to occur.

  The doctor examined his patient, looked grave, and said he was unable to offer much hope. The lungs were failing. The death rattle could be heard as plain as day. Soon, little groups of tenants and villagers stood at the lodge gates. Silently, they waited for the passing of the squire.

  * * * *

  ‘I wish to speak to you about the child.’ Summoning Alex to his bedside that fine June morning, Henry Lowell frowned. The effort to retain consciousness was exhausting him, and now he gripped Alex's wrist. ‘The girl,’ he croaked. ‘We must make provision for the girl.’

  ‘What girl?’ Annoyed to have been called so early in the day, Alex sighed. He raised his eyebrows in bored enquiry. ‘Come, sir. Which particular girl is this?’

  ‘My child, Alex!’ While his son watched impassively, Henry Lowell coughed. Hawking up great gobbets of phlegm, he groaned in disgust and pain. ‘My daughter, damn you!’

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ Alex had forgotten all about her, that little by–blow whose conception had undoubtedly hastened — or perhaps even caused — his own mother's demise. ‘Well sir, what did you wish to say?’

  His father grimaced. ‘God,’ he muttered. ‘Great God in heaven. If this isn't the very pattern of a death–bed. Here's old sinner, confessing his crimes. Here's the son in tears at the bed's head. But you're not in tears, are you, boy? Far from it!’

  Alex shrugged. He tried to look concerned. ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘before I came in, I spoke to your physician. He is most optimistic today. He is sanguine — ’

  ‘Sanguine?’ Henry shook his head. ‘The man's a fool. He cups me, he bleeds me, nods, looks wise — he's an entertainment, I'll admit. But he's no Saint Luke.

  ‘Listen to me, boy. That child of mine, my flesh and blood, I want to provide for her. I've seen my lawyer. He's taken my affidavit on the circumstances of her birth. When I die, I want you to set aside some cash. For her. Use the interest by all means, but keep the capital in trust for her.’

  ‘But where is this girl to be found?’ Alex grimaced in irritation. ‘Why leave her money in trust to me? Why not simply make a bequest, in the normal way?’

  ‘There's no point in tying up cash in perpetuity.’ Henry Lowell coughed again. ‘All I ask of you, is that you make a few enquiries. Give yourself five years or so. If you find the girl, give her a couple of thousand pounds. Two thousand, three — that's all. It won't make much of a dent in what you'll receive.’

  ‘But sir, why — ’

  ‘Why indeed.’ Henry Lowell sighed. ‘Why should you decrease your inheritance, for the sake of some harlot's bastard?’

  ‘It's not that, sir. I don't begrudge the woman a legacy, not in the least. As you say yourself, it's a trivial sum indeed. But is she still living? If so, how am I to discover her? Where should I look?’

  ‘I don't know. Just before the child was expected, the whole family moved away from here. I last heard of them in Warwick, but God knows where they are now. Their name was Searle.’ Henry Lowell glared. ‘Say it!’

  ‘Searle,’ repeated Alex.

  ‘So try to find her, won't you?’ The old man shook his son's arm. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I promise.’ Alex prised the yellow fingers from his sleeve. He went downstairs to find the doctor, who was anxious to bleed his patient yet again.

  Alex the
n went to look for his wife. As he'd expected, Lalage laughed immoderately when she heard the details of her father–in–law's last request. ‘But that's charming,’ she cried. ‘Like something out of a romance! So, you will discover this slattern's brat. You will raise her from the gutter, clothe her in silks and satins, and bring her home again. Oh, darling! Imagine the pathos of the scene. We'll invite all the neighbours round, to watch.’

  ‘Do be quiet, Lally.’ Alex grinned. ‘I knew you'd laugh.’

  ‘I'm not laughing, darling.’

  ‘You are.’ Alex sighed and shook his head. ‘Well, then. I asked where I should look for this woman, girl — whatever she is.’

  ‘What did your father say to that?’

  ‘Very little. He knows the family went to Warwick. That the slut he seduced had a baby daughter. After that, he lost sight of them completely.’

  ‘What a pity.’ Lally slipped her hand into her husband's. ‘There are some strawberries today,’ she said. ‘The very first, fresh out of the frames. I've told my maid to dress them with orange juice and sugar. Then take a bowlful up to my room.’

  ‘A little private banquet, darling?’

  ‘Yes. For just the two of us.’

  ‘Ah. Then dress can be informal.’

  ‘Or optional.’ Lalage bit Alex's ear. ‘Do you remember when we had all those peaches? You used my lap as your plate. I made you lick up the juice.’

  ‘It ran everywhere.’

  ‘So it did.’

  ‘Come on, darling. Let's go inside.’

  They ran across the bright summer lawns towards the house. They clattered noisily upstairs and into Lalage's room. They were still gorging on strawberries and each other when Henry Lowell finally breathed his last.

  * * * *

  ‘Do you happen to remember that time my father disgraced himself and his family by siring a child on one of the peasants?’ Riding with Ellis along the southern perimeter of the Easton estate, Alex was disposed to chat. ‘The creature bore him a daughter. Or so he said.’