A
Novel
by Smcallis
This is a work of fiction. No similarities between any person living or dead is intended, and any such similarity is purely coincidental. All characters © 2007 by Smcallis.
PRELUDE TO DISASTER
THE SUMMER OF 1878 brought many changes in my life, some good, some bad, some so utterly horrible that even to this day I still can’t bear to contemplate them. I was growing taller, that was a good thing I guess. The bad part was I was now too large to crawl into the small spaces under the machinery, and was summarily relegated to the loom floor. I hated it. I watched with a certain amount of reticent envy as the younger girls scuttled back and forth under my feet. They were at least free. There I stood, under the watchful eye of the Foreman, twelve hours a day, my work dictated by the relentless rhythm of the steam engine.The loom floor was a cacophony of noise, clacking machinery and swirling cotton dust. It was always hot and suffocating; the summer of 1878 came early, and was unusually warm and humid. The loom floor became a stifling sort of hell. It was so hot; some girls even fainted on the factory floor. If you wanted a drink or worse yet had to use the loo, you had to signal to the Foreman. This was a risky proposition; there could be no interruption in production. You had to wait for relief, which could sometimes take an hour. If you left your machine unattended, that was a guaranteed invitation to a beating. I always seemed to run afoul of the rules. I may have been a prisoner of WSPFS, but they didn’t own me, they were not going to break my spirit.
On this particular shift, I had to go to the toilet. I signaled to the Foreman but he ignored me. A whole hour past, by this time I was sincerely beginning to regret that second cup of tea at dinnertime. By three O’clock, I thought my bladder was going to burst. I signaled to the Foreman again. Mr. Crowley, I think that was his name. This time he laughed at me, and sent a relief girl to the machine next to mine. I was so mad I stood there stock-legged, and watched with some satisfaction as the last of the thread wound off the bobbin. The loom ran dry. The machine continued to clack on maniacally, but with no cotton thread to feed it the fabric tore and the loom ground to a halt. I expect I ruined a couple of hundred yards of cloth.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING GIRL!” Mr. Crowley descended upon me; his face was purple with rage.
At least I got his attention.
I never felt so satisfied in all my life. I wasn't sorry, not even after Mr. Crowley turned me over a sawhorse and thrashed me. He laid into me with such vengance, with such fury that the first cane switch broke under the onslaught. He called for a second and beat me so savagely that if the Plant manager had not intervened, I expect he might have killed me.
At the time, I thought it was all worth it. I was sorry later. The unexpected consequence of my incontinence came crashing down, when Sunday afternoon arrived and it came time for Sally and me to go see Henry and Domino. Mr. Crowley blocked the lift way door; he held an ugly wooden truncheon, not a common cane switch. I’d seen them use those truncheons only once before, they used it to beat the hapless girl to death.
“Just where do you think you're going?" Mr. Crowley leered; his face was cruel and full of hate.
"Out." I stammered, "Its Sunday . . ."
"Not for you it isn't." He prodded my chest with the truncheon. "You're a dirty little girl! I'll learn you not to make a mess on my factory floor!"
I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I squeezed Sally's hand to let her know it would be okay. To his credit, Mr. Crowley didn’t kill me, neither did he molest me. He put me to work cleaning the latrines. All that long Sunday afternoon, I cleaned up shit. My heart ached, I thought of my precious Henry and Domino.
That night, I resolved no matter what, Mr. Crowley could beat me to death I didn’t care. I was going to see Henry. I lay in bed and counted the hours as the clock struck eleven. I slipped out of bed, pulled up my knickers, and put on my smock.
“Tessa?” “Shhh, Sally. I’ll be back, don’t worry, work bell doesn’t strike until six―I’ll be back by then."
“To see Henry.”
“Girl, you’re crazy . . .”
That I was.
There was a window in the dustbin, which was neither barred nor locked. I found this out while shoveling shit for Mr. Crowley. Out side, the window was a drainpipe that ran the full length of the building. I wasn’t what you would call a particularly brave or careless person. Neither was I a trapeze artist or circus acrobat. The truth was I was terrified, but I was also determined and desperate.
I pushed open the window and gripped the drainpipe. It seemed solid enough; of course, I only weighed 94 lbs. ten storeys, the cobblestones loomed below me some 140 feet. I didn’t dare look down. I started to climb. I eventually found that I could sort of shimmy-slide down, almost like Henry had shown me on the fire pole. How I was ever going to get back up again, I didn’t know. I figured I’d solve that problem when the time came. If I was caught, if Mr. Crowley beat me, even if he killed me, it didn’t matter. I was determined to see Henry.
The streets of London were dark and scary by gas light. I had never seen the city after dark. The alleyways were full of unsavory personages, prostitutes, pickpockets, vagrants. I made my way quickly towards Wilmington Square Firehouse.
I was in luck. Henry was still awake. It was the midnight shift. As second assistant to the boiler engineer, it was Henry’s job to bank the coals and log the pressure on boiler no. 2.
Henry was so surprised he dropped the coal shovel; it made the most spectacular clattery-bang. At least Domino was glad to see me.
“Tessa? Oh―Tessa! It's only you. Gawd girl, you gave me quite a start! What on earth are you doing here? It’s past twelve O’clock.”
“How did you get here?”
“I ran away, I climbed down the drainpipe. I came to see you Henry. Aren't you glad to see me?”
Henry feigned a weak smile. “That you did Tessa. You are full of surprises.” Henry eyed me critically; I pulled my smock down lower, trying to hide the switch marks on my legs.
“What have they done to you?"
"Nothing . . . they beat us all the time."
Henry summarily jerked my smock away from my legs. He pulled the fabric up well past my naked bottom, there was nothing prurient about his inspection, it was more like parent and child, he examined the livid welts on my legs and backside. For the first time he knew the truth.
For the first time Henry used “We” I knew we were together.
“I got no where to put you."
"Henry, please . . . I can't go back, I just can't."
"*Sigh* I suppose, if you don’t mind sleeping down here with the horses, you can flop on this cot."
I nodded my head.
“I’ve got to get off to bed; I have a lot of work to do in the morning. You’ll be okay down here I expect. Domino will take care of you."
"Henry . . . can’t you stay with me, just a little while longer.” I’ll admit, I did whine.
Henry smiled, “Just one night, just this one time.” He climbed into the cot along side me, but not before meticulously positioning a blanket between us. I snuggled up against him, satisfied.
“Henry?”
“Mmm.”
“The day Mr. Squeer’s dragged me away―the day I lay under the no. 64 Cartwright, the day Lilly died, I prayed. I prayed for Mr. Squeers, I prayed for Mr. Smith. I prayed for poor Lilly.” I lay on the cot beside Henry, I could feel his warmth as I laid my head on his chest, and I could smell the earthy smell of the clean hay and the horses’ breath.
“. . . but mostly I prayed for myself. That was the day I found the shilling. Henry, I think I love you.”
Henry, I expect didn’t know quite what to say, we were in fact in bed. Even though there was a blanket between us, there was no denying that, we were a couple. My head rested on his chest, while his arm held my shoulder, his other hand stroked my hair.
"Tessa, if there was more love in the world . . . I expect there’d probably be a whole lot less cruelty.”
“Henry, if I practice loving for a little while longer, will you teach me the other? I’ll be fourteen in April.”
"Tessa, please . . . it’s not possible.”
"Will you teach me then?”
“No.”
"Why not?"
“Shhh, Tessa, listen to me, you’re just a young girl.” Henry sat up and grabbed me by the chin. He looked me straight in the eye. “You’re desperate; a girl like you, a girl in your situation would lie, cheat, steal, you might even kill. I think you’d do whatever it took to get out of that factory, if that included sleeping with me. Well, I for one am not going to take advantage. Tessa, I’m very fond of you. I love you; I’d do anything in the world for you. You’re one terrific kid, but I’m seventeen, you’re just thirteen-years-old. That’s the problem; you’re still just a kid.”
Suddenly I felt wholly inadequate; any aspiration I might have ever had of attaining womanhood came crashing down upon me in the form of a stick-figured scrawny little girl, trying to seduce a grown man.
“It’s my boobs isn’t it?” I sat up in bed and pulled Henry’s hand to my chest, all that separated his broad firefighter hand from my flesh was the thin cotton fabric of my camisole. My heart beat hard, I felt flushed with rage and passion.
"It's because I don’t have big boobs like Sally. You like Sally better than me! I don’t understand, don’t you love me?”
Henry jerked his hand away as if my breasts were on fire. I knew then in that moment that he really did want me. “Tessa! Don’t ever do that again!” Then to emphasize the point, Henry pushed me off the cot. I landed unceremoniously, hard on the stable floor, I sat there quite surprised, not sure how to interpret Henry’s rejection. I scrunched up my face up and started to ball. Tears rolled down my cheeks like horse turds.
"Tessa, don't cry, please don't cry love." Henry realized how much his little prank had hurt my feelings. He dusted the straw off that clung to my bum. We sat together on the edge of the cot. "Tessa, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. If you only knew how much I love you. I love you more than life itself, that’s why I can't.”
"I don’t believe you. It isn’t fair." I sobbed and sniffed. "You do love me! Henry, please, why won’t you love me?”
“Tessa, I do love you. Just not the way you want. This is no way to pass the test.” “Test?” “Trust. If you love someone . . . you trust what they say is true.
“Does this mean we can’t be together?”
“No, Tessa, what it means is, I want you to go to sleep. It means we’re still just mates.”
“Henry, are we really mates?”
“Go to sleep, Tessa."
ON THAT FATEFUL DAY, in June, in the summer of 1878, at the end of the shift, I saw Mr. Squeers again for the first time. Two years had past; he still had the same hunched over boney character, cloaked all in black, decked with a fashionable beaver top hat. He was still the same self-absorbed, self-serving, money-grubbing skinflint that I remembered. When Mr. Squeers came on to the factory floor, all work stopped, overhead shafts screeched and hissed the mill went silent. Mr. Squeers ordered the doors of the factory locked. He ordered the downstairs exits chained as well. It seemed workers were sneaking out and taking smoking breaks. This he was determined to put and end to such slovenly employee behavior. Before he left, Mr. Squeers seized a paintbrush. He wrote on a chunk of cardboard, in fat sloppy letters. Mr. Crowley scrambled to hang the sign in the main factory way:
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