A Woman of Substance. Barbara Taylor Bradford
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This great plateau of moorland stretches across countless untenanted miles towards Shipley and the vigorous industrial city of Leeds beyond. It is amazingly featureless, except for occasional soaring crags, a few blackened trees, shrivelled thorns, and abandoned ruined cottages that barely punctuate its cold and empty spaces. Perpetual mists, pervasive and thick, float over the rugged landscape, obscuring the highest peaks and demolishing the foothills, so that land and sky merge in an endless mass of grey that is dank and enveloping, and everything is diffused, without motion, wrapped in unearthly solitude. There is little evidence here of humanity, little to invite man into this inhospitable land at this time of year, and few venture out into its stark and lonely reaches.
But it was towards this harsh moorland that Emma so stoically marched on this icy February morning in 1904. The narrow winding road that snaked its way across the hills was the quickest route to Fairley Hall and Emma had to brave the moors in all seasons of the year and at all hours.
She shivered as she hurried along, and huddled further into her coat, which was a castoff from the Hall and offered as much protection as paper, threadbare and patched as it was. It had already been a sorry, worn-out bit of clothing when Cook had given it to her in the summer, but Emma had received it gratefully and she had patiently darned the holes and lengthened the hem and sewn on new buttons. She had outgrown it all too quickly, and it stretched across her back tightly. The sleeves were too short and her thin arms poked out pathetically in scarecrow fashion, exposing childish wrists to the elements. The wind bit treacherously through the meagre coat and the damp air drenched her, penetrating into her bones, so that her legs felt numbed and without life. She pulled her scarf more securely around her head and then thrust her chapped hands back into her pockets quickly. Her teeth chattered and her eyes watered from the icy blasts and she fervently wished she was already at the Hall, as much as she disliked that place.
By the time Emma reached the stone-walled field that led out to the moors she was breathless. She rested against the stile for a moment, her breathing still laboured, her heart thundering in her chest. She looked down the steep road she had just traversed. Below her the fog was patchy, clearing in parts, and in the distance she could see the twinkling lights now burning brightly in all the cottages, as the village awakened. Beyond, in the valley, there was a faint dim glow that told her that the Fairley mill was preparing for its daily business. Soon the shrill mill whistle would start to hoot, breaking the silence with its strident tones, announcing the opening of the gates. In a short time, the men and women of Fairley would be hurrying down to clock in and start another day of drudgery, combing the raw wool, spinning the fine woollens and worsted cloths that were shipped all over the world.
Emma looked lingeringly at the village where her mother lay, and which was also the last sign of life until she reached the Hall, and then she turned abruptly. She had rested long enough and now she must hurry if she was to reach the Hall by six o’clock, which was when Cook expected her. Emma hitched up her skirts, climbed over the stile, and jumped down into the field with agility. The ground under her feet was unyielding with frost and the mist floated and rolled in front of her, obliterating the dead gorse bushes and the few paltry, frost-bitten trees as it drifted over the landscape. Now and then banks of snow became visible, the fantastic glistening shapes illusory in the vaporous air, and to Emma there was something fearful, almost menacing about the moors at this hour. She shuddered but she pressed on bravely. She could hardly see the path, but she had been working at the Hall for two years now, and she knew it well, and her feet followed it with a degree of sureness. The crunching of her footsteps on the frosty earth was the only sound in the early-morning air.
Her thoughts turned to her father as she tramped along. Emma loved her father and understood the nature of him, but he had disturbed her not a little in the last few months. Her dad just wasn’t the same since he had returned from the Boer War. It seemed to Emma that all the spirit had ebbed out of him, and he was given to quiet withdrawn moods, yet conversely, he would often erupt into sudden almost uncontrollable anger, when Winston, or anyone other than herself or her mother, exasperated him.
These inconsistencies in her father’s behaviour and his wildly contrasting moods baffled Emma, and when he stared at her vacantly he seemed like a lost child. Sometimes she wanted to grab hold of him and shake him vigorously, in an effort to rouse him to renewed life. She was too small and fragile for that, so instead she would attempt to shake him out of his dejection with her questions, badgering him about money, reminding him of her mother’s sickness. His face always remained immobile and closed, but his eyes filled with pain. It was Elizabeth’s sickness and his sorrow for his wife that had changed Jack Harte and petrified his spirit, and rendered him virtually useless; it was not the war which had wrought the drastic upheaval in his nature.
But Emma, in her youthful naïveté, did not fully comprehend this. Passionately devoted to one singular pursuit, that of changing the constrained circumstances in which they lived, she was solely concerned with their survival, and this blinded her to anything else. All she knew was that her dad had no answers for her, no solutions to their problems. In an effort to placate her he would resort to the same old phrase he employed so often lately. ‘Things’ll get better soon, luv,’ he would say. Her brother Winston was always duped by this confident and optimistic mood of their father’s and his eyes would instantly shine with anticipation of better days. He would ask excitedly, ‘When, Dad? When?’ Emma’s pragmatic brain would scream, ‘How, Dad? How?’ although she never uttered a word. She was afraid to throw out this challenge when her father was attempting to reassure Winston and she also knew, unquestioningly and from past experience, that there would be no genuine response and that no practical ideas would be proffered. Emma, realist that she was, had acknowledged this inevitability months ago and she had come to accept it with resignation, since she did not know how to combat her father’s inertia and impotence, his procrastination and his lack of enterprise.
‘Nowt ever happens ter change our lot because me dad never does owt ter change it!’ Emma said aloud and with vehemence, as she scrambled over the low wall and out on to the moorland path beyond the field. Emma had not yet come to understand that when hope is taken away from a man he is left with nothing, sometimes not even the will to live. And all the hope had been kicked out of Jack Harte long ago.
She blew on her frozen hands and then pushed them back into her pockets, as she began her ascent up the lower slope that would lead her to Ramsden Ghyll and then on upwards, to the top of the moors and the road to Fairley Hall. Emma had not mentioned money to her father lately, but it never left her thoughts. They must have more money if they were to survive, if her mother was to regain her strength and her health. Emma knew that without money you were nothing, just a powerless and oppressed victim of the ruling class, a yoked and shackled beast of burden destined to a life of mindless drudgery, and an existence so wretched and so without hope, so filled with terror and despair that it was hardly worth the contemplation let alone the living. Without money you were susceptible to all the capricious whims and moods and fancies of the careless, thoughtless rich, to all the vicissitudes of life. Without money you were vulnerable to the world.
Since she had worked at Fairley Hall, Emma had come to understand many things. Blessed with acute observation, she was also innately shrewd and amazingly perceptive for her years. She had quickly seen and noted the outrageous and monstrous discrepancies between life at Fairley Hall and life in the village. The Fairleys lived in luxury, even splendour, pampered and totally isolated from the harsh realities of the lives of the workers, whose pitiless and endless toil financed their velvet-lined world of ease and privilege.
Observing the Fairleys and the way they lived, Emma had begun to comprehend that money did not only buy necessities, but so much else as well. She had come to realize that the possessor of money also possessed power, a most desirable asset to Emma, because she knew now that power made you invulnerable. It made you safe. By the same token, Emma had come to bitterly accept the fact that there was no justice or liberty for the poor. But she suspected, with the beginning of cynicism, that you could buy both quite easily. Just as easily as you could buy the medicines and nourishing food they needed for her mother, providing you had the right amount of shillings to place on the counter. Yes, she thought, money is the answer to everything.
There must be a way for me to earn more money,