Cat's Cradle (15 page)

She gave a nod, letting the matter drop. ‘I have yer cloots here; ye'll want to keep yer others for Sunday.' She gestured to my London clothes. ‘Too fine for the mill.'

‘Thank you.' I took the bundle of cotton and wool from her.

‘Now to yer bed. There's room here wi' Martha.'

I stifled a groan. My stout enemy – she of the flea insults – was in sole possession of the bed I had dared rest on earlier. A great round mound of blankets, she was lying in the centre, pretending to be asleep. The image came to mind that Martha was like some rampant form of weed who had gained control of this particular cot by crowding out all other forms of life.

‘Hurry up, hen. I want to douse the light.' The goodwife gave me a little push towards the bed.

Placing my new clothes on top of my boots, I quickly stripped down to my shift and climbed in. Martha made no concession to my presence so I found myself clinging to the edge with the blanket flapping halfway down my back. I was sorely tempted to pinch her to make her move over but instead opted for the path of least resistance. Burrowing to the other end of the blanket, I lay down, top to her tail. The goodwife blew out the last candle and left.

‘I dinna want yer smelly feet in my face,' growled Martha, giving me a kick.

Little did she know it but she'd picked the wrong person to bully. I'd stood up to Westminster schoolboys, sailors and slave-owners; one mill girl would not bother me.

‘If you do that again, I'll punch you,' I growled.

She snorted and moved her foot back in preparation for another strike. I caught it in my fist and squeezed her ankle.

‘My best friend in London is a boxing champion and he's shown me a trick or too. Do you want to find out how we English lasses fight?'

That gave her pause. ‘I'm no scared o' ye.' But her voice was thin and her foot moved further back.

‘Good. And I'm not scared of you. Understood?'

Silence.

‘Well, then. Sleep tight.'

A bell rang while it was still dark, summoning us to work. With practised ease, the girls rolled out of bed and donned their clothes without the aid of a light. The dormitory was chill; no place to linger. I had a little more difficulty dressing, not having put on the uniform before, but Annie came to my rescue, untangling apron strings and helping me find my boots which had mysteriously migrated under another bed. A morning gift from Martha, no doubt.

‘I'll take ye to the overseer,' Annie told me, dragging on my hand to make me hurry. I was still tucking my hair under my cap so that not a strand was showing. Annie had explained it could get caught in the machines. ‘He'll tell ye where ye are to go. We must be gleg though, else I'll be in trouble wi' my spinner.'

With a quick splash of icy water on my face, I followed her down the stairs once more. We passed
the dining room but the fires were not yet lit – hours yet until we could break our fast. My stomach grumbled at the thought.

Out into the soft grey damp of a late autumn morning, the workers were hurrying to their tasks. The overhanging trees on the opposite bank of the river looked rusty brown in the drizzle; they were gently dropping leaves on to the indigo silk water, releasing them to bob away like tiny ships of the line bound for the sea. That wood belonged to a different world to the cobble and iron of the mill yard where we were on our way to work. Annie marched me to an office in Mill One and abandoned me, scurrying off to her duties with a hasty farewell until she too was swallowed by the unseen mechanical beast that lurked behind the blank facade of the buildings. The great human machine of the cotton mill was swinging into action again, each cog turning in his or her place – I longed to see what this looked like, finding the boom-clatter noise of the looms both terrifying and enticing. I felt rather like Saint George waiting outside the dragon's cave, listening to the rumbles
and groans of a beast made all the more fearful for being out of sight.

The overseer had not yet arrived but I didn't have to wait on my own for long as Bridgit joined me. She looked annoyingly well groomed and rested, thanks to her stay in a proper bedroom at the home of the kindly teacher. I snuffed out the spark of jealousy before it could make my got-outof-the-wrong-side-of-bed morning temper worse. But then, there was no right side to a bed shared with Martha.

‘Cat, my dear!' Bridgit gave me a sisterly hug. She looked genuinely pleased to see me, which went a long way to improving my temper. ‘How are you this morning? Was the dormitory comfortable?'

I returned her hug.

‘It's not so bad. The food's good, my bed mate is learning fast not to kick me, and I've been promoted to teacher already.'

She laughed as she absent-mindedly straightened my collar. ‘So I heard. And I have hopes that you will be impressed to hear that I've
not been idle either. I think you'll be fair proud of me.'

I smiled at her cat-in-cream expression. ‘Oh, yes? What wonders have you performed, Oh So Clever One?'

‘Last night I made the acquaintance of my neighbour, one Mrs Moir.'

‘Gracious!' I hadn't thought that Bridgit could do my job for me. In many ways this was so much better as there was no chance of Mrs Moir guessing our interest. A little trill of anticipation thrummed through me like a flute tuning up for the overture. ‘How did you manage that so quickly?'

‘Oh, I went to borrow a hot coal for the fire, claiming I'd let ours go out.'

‘And?'

Bridgit shrugged. ‘She gave it to me – a little grudging but she did stir herself to help me eventually.'

‘That's not what I meant!' I was almost beside myself to hear her verdict.

‘Then what did you mean?'

‘
Could she be my mother?
' The words were out
before I had a chance to recall them. I hadn't wanted to state my question so baldly, but of course that was what I was thinking.

Bridgit took my hand sympathetically. ‘I don't know. How could I so soon?' She squinted into my face. ‘She looks a little like you, I suppose. Her hair is no longer such a flaming red, but it might have been when she was younger. I didn't really get much of a chance to study her – she was busy with her ironing. I'll say one thing for her: she keeps a tidy house.'

My spirits swooped down to my boots. It had been unreasonable of me to expect an answer. Mrs Moir was hardly likely to throw into the conversation, ‘Oh, by the way, let me tell you about the child I abandoned in London.' But I was starving for a family, eager for any crumbs Bridgit could feed me. ‘Anything else you can tell me?'

‘I found out that she's got four children – a girl of seventeen, boys of fifteen and thirteen and a little girl of six.'

‘Fifteen and thirteen.' I rubbed my hand over my brow.

Bridgit guessed the direction of my thoughts. ‘How old are you, Cat?'

‘I've never been sure – no more than fifteen, I guess. Mr Sheridan said I was an infant, not a tiny baby, when I was found – a toddling two-year-old or thereabouts. I suppose that rules her out as my mother.'

‘Not necessarily.'

I cocked an eyebrow.

‘Twins. Or you might fall between the two boys.'

I shook my head. ‘The chance of that is very slight. She never claimed to be my mother in her letter after all. And I'm not sure I'd want her to be if she's managed to keep all her other children with her except me.'

Bridgit squeezed my hand comfortingly. ‘Still, it is a possibility.'

Our discussion was brought to an end by the arrival of Overseer Shaw. A large man in a brown suit, he walked with the air of someone with much to do and too little time to accomplish it – a busy bear with a pocket watch.

‘Mr Dale's new lasses?' he asked us briskly.

‘Yes, sir.' We both bobbed curtseys.

‘Follow me, then.' He strode towards Mill Two with us jogging along at his heels. ‘The maister explained that he wanted ye to start in this mill. The wee lass will be a piecer – always need of nimble fingers in the spinning room. And ye, lass,' he nodded at Bridgit, ‘are to be placed in the carding room, working as a tenter. Mr Dale suggested Moir look after ye – he's one o' our most experienced hands.'

Mr Dale had not forgotten our quest – this would give Bridgit a chance to get to know another of the family.

‘The carding room,' announced the overseer.

He had opened the door on to a chamber filled with rumbling machines that resembled nothing more than two-humped iron monsters, the inner workings hidden by their metal casing. I'd never seen anything like it, not on this scale – the room seemed to stretch on and on. At one end of each beast stood barrels of raw cotton with women feeding the white fluff into the steely mouth of the carding contraptions; at the other, children were
gathering the straightened fibres into containers to take them to the next stage in the spinning process. Stray cotton wafted in the air like dandelion seeds, catching on clothes and machines in an indiscriminate snowfall. Strange to think that this ghostly stuff came from fields on the other side of the world worked by slaves. Black slaves, white workers – we were all linked by the same thread.

Once the first shock of seeing the vast scale of the factory passed I studied the machinery more closely, trying to fathom what made it all work. Stout straps linked the wheel turning the mechanism to a revolving pole that ran the length of the room.

Seeing my interest, the overseer pointed upwards. ‘There lies the secret of New Lanark. The waterwheel outside turns that shaft up there and that in turn powers all the machines on this floor.' He rubbed his hands for a moment, enjoying the spectacle of the world's most advanced technology. ‘Nature harnessed by man – an inspiration to us all.'

‘And what do these machines do, sir?' asked Bridgit.

‘Have ye used a carder at home, lass?'

‘Yes, sir, but they were two little paddles with spikes on – nothing like this.'

‘Believe it or no, lass, but these machines are just a big version o' that. The cotton is tumbled inside until it comes out all combed straight and ready to turn into thread.'

He led Bridgit over to a man on the second machine. ‘Moir, I have a new lass for ye.'

A skinny brown-haired man with an unhealthy pallor nodded at Bridgit. ‘Pleased to meet ye, lass.' His attention immediately returned to his machine like a chef fearing his sauce might burn if he spared a moment to look away.

‘I'll leave her in yer capable hands, Moir.'

‘Aye, sir. Here, lass, I'll show ye where to put the raw cotton. It's simple enough.'

Leaving Bridgit to get accustomed to her new role, I followed the overseer up to the next floor. This room was also filled with machines, but these looked very different from the hump-backed carders, being made of open iron and wood frames suited to the delicate spinning of such fine
threads. I tried to find something to compare them with and decided they were a little like giant pianofortes with a front section that moved out to transform them to a grand before retreating back to more modest proportions. Rows of bobbins sat on the top like a cluster of white doves watching the musician at play.

As we stood in the doorway, the front part of the loom rolled forward again, drawing out hundreds of white threads from bobbins of combed cotton, twisting as it went. Once it reached its limit the process reversed, but this time the threads were wound on to spindles, neatly combining the two processes of spinning and winding in one action. I found the sight mesmerizing; it looked like a vast game of cat's cradle played over and over by the machines.

Only then did I notice the people. Men and women tended the machines with anxious care, watching each bobbin and spindle. Occasionally one would shout over the din to a child-worker, pointing at the threads. The child would dive under the machine and next their fingers would be
seen twisting together a broken thread from beneath. Work had to pause while they did this, but as soon as they were clear the machine would trundle back. No wonder Annie said you had to be quick.

The overseer took me to a woman standing with her back to us.

‘Mrs Moir, I have a new piecer for ye.'

I gulped, my thoughts stunned as if I'd just been clubbed over the head with one of those bobbins. I hadn't been expecting to be working with her. Mr Dale was nothing if not direct in his approach.

The woman turned round and bobbed a curtsey to the overseer. I stared at her face, drinking it in, trying to memorize the details for later contemplation. Her hair was hidden by a cap, her nose freckled, skin pale. She turned her eyes on me and I swiftly dropped my gaze. For a moment, it had been like looking in a mirror: green eyes rimmed with my own reddish-blonde lashes.

‘Get one of the other lasses to show her what to do,' the overseer continued.

‘Aye, sir.'

‘Good luck, lass.'