A Woman of Substance. Barbara Taylor Bradford
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in the world, and if some people could be rich then obviously so could others, she reasoned. Her father always said it was a question of birth and of luck. Emma was scornful of these ready answers, for she doubted their veracity, and so she refused to accept them. If a person came up with a brilliant plan and worked hard, harder than anyone else, then surely that person could earn money. Lots of it. A fortune perhaps. Emma had kept her eye on this goal for some time, never wavering, never truly discouraged, for what she lacked in experience of life she made up for with traits perhaps of greater value – intuition, imagination, and ambition. Instinctively Emma understood many things, and one of these was the cold hard fact that money was not necessarily always inherited or acquired by chance. She knew, in spite of what her father said, that there were other ways to amass a fortune. She sighed. It seemed to Emma, as she hurried along, chilled to the bone and full of despair about her mother, that she was all alone and friendless, battling the world without a helping hand or an encouraging word from anyone. But she had determined months ago that she would not let this defeat her. She would find a way to make money, lots of it, for only then would they be safe.
Her feet followed the narrow path and in spite of the denseness of the fog, she knew she was reaching the top of the lower slope, for she was panting and her legs were aching from climbing. She shivered under the rising wind that whistled down from the high fells, and pulled up the collar of her coat. Her hands were frozen stiff, but her feet were warm. Her father had repaired her boots just the week before, buying strong leather from the tannery and thick felt for the inner soles. She had stood by him and watched as he had cut the soles and hammered them firmly on to the worn uppers, cobbling the boots on the old iron last in the kitchen. She thought, too, of the steaming hot broth Cook would have waiting for her, and the warmth of the huge kitchen at the Hall, and these incentives made her hurry.
A few skeletal trees loomed up in front of her in the relentless environment, stark and spectral against the glassy green sky. Her heart began to pound rapidly, partially from exertion, but also from dread, for beyond these lone trees the path plummeted down into Ramsden Ghyll, a dell between the hills. The Ghyll was the spot Emma hated most on her journey to the Hall, for it was an eerie place, filled with grotesque rock formations and blasted tree stumps. The mist, trapped as it was between the twin peaks that soared above the dell, gathered and coagulated into heavy grey darkness that was almost impassable.
Emma was nervous of this place, but nonetheless she hurried on, chiding herself for her nervousness as she plunged down the path into the Ghyll. She was afraid of the beasties and the goblins and the spectres of the moor which seemed to float vapour-like, yet so threateningly, amongst these great rocks formed of millstone grit. She was afraid, too, of the lost souls the villagers superstitiously said haunted the Ghyll. To block out the images of goblins and monsters and lost souls, she began to sing in her head. She never sang aloud at this hour on the moors, for fear of waking the dead. She did not know many songs, except for the few they had all learned at school, and she found these insipid and childish. So instead she sang ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’, forming the words silently and marching bravely along to the rhythmic beat that ran through her head.
She was halfway across the Ghyll when the words were suddenly swept away. Emma stopped tramping and stood perfectly still. She was transfixed, listening acutely. Just below the level of the wind she heard it, a low lumbering sound as if something huge and powerful, and propelled by immense force, was coming down the path from the other side of the Ghyll. She shrank back against a formation of rocks and held her breath, fear trickling through her like icy water. And then he was standing there before her, not an inchoate monster like a rock or a tree, but a wholly formed monster, a man, who was enormously tall and who peered down to stare at her through the swirling fog.
Emma sucked in her breath and clenched her fists in her pockets. She wondered frantically whether she should dart out in front of him and run back along the path, but she was so paralysed with terror she could not move. And then the monster spoke and terrified her even more.
‘Faith and if it’s not me good fortune, to be sure, to be meeting a spry young colleen on these blasted moors at this ungodly hour. ’Tis the Divil’s own place, I am thinking, and no fit land to be a-wandering in, on this cold morning.’
Emma was speechless. She looked up at the man who towered above her, but she was unable to distinguish his features in the murky light. She pressed herself closer into a crevice between the rocks, wishing she could dissolve into it, her eyes starting out of her head in alarm.
The man spoke again, his voice ghostly and disembodied coming to her through the mist. ‘Ah, and ’tis afeared the little colleen is, and no wonder, a startling ye like I did. But it’s only a stupid man that I am to be sure, that has lost himself in this blasted fog on his way to Fairley Hall. Can ye be pointing me in the right direction and I’ll be on me way?’
Her heart beat less frenziedly, but Emma was still trembling and afraid, for a stranger on these moors – and he was indeed a stranger – could be just as dangerous as any monster. Her father had warned her never to talk to anyone she did not know, who was not from the valley, and who was therefore a ‘foreigner’ in the parts, and suspect. She flattened herself against the rocks, wishing he would go away, pressing her lips firmly together. Perhaps if she did not respond to his questions he would disappear as suddenly as he had appeared.
‘Faith and I am thinking that the cat’s got her tongue. Sure and that’s it,’ the man continued, as if addressing a third person. Emma bit her lip and looked about her anxiously. There seemed to be no one else there, although it was hard to tell in the greying light.
‘I won’t be harming ye, little colleen,’ the strange voice went on. ‘Just show me the way to Fairley Hall and I’ll be on me way, to be sure I will.’
Emma still could not see the man’s face, for it was lost in the mist that engulfed them both. She looked down. She could make out his great feet encased in hobnail boots and the bottoms of his trousers. He had not moved a fraction from the spot where he had first stopped, but had remained stationary, as if he sensed that any sudden movement on his part would send her scurrying out of her hiding place, such as it was, and off into the fog in terror.
He cleared his throat and said again, more softly, ‘I won’t be a-harming ye, little one. Don’t be afeared of me.’
There was something in the tone of his voice that made Emma relax her taut muscles. Slowly the quivering in her limbs began to subside. He had a strange voice, but it was lovely, musical and lilting, and different from any voice she had ever heard before. And then Emma, listening acutely, and with all of her senses alerted in anticipation of trouble, realized how gentle his voice was, recognized with a sudden rush of clarity that it was filled with kindness and warmth. Still, he was a stranger. Then much to her horror and with some surprise, Emma found herself asking involuntarily, ‘Why do yer want ter go ter the Hall then?’ She was so angry with herself she could have bitten her tongue off.
‘I be going there to repair the chimneys and the flues. It was himself who came to see me last week. Squire Fairley. Yes, indeed, himself came to visit me in Leeds and was kind enough and generous, too, he was, I might be adding, to be offering me the job.’
Emma eyed the man suspiciously, lifting her damp face to peer at him through the mist. He was the tallest man she had ever seen and he was roughly dressed in workman’s clothes and he had a sack slung over his shoulder.
‘Are yer a navvy then?’ she now asked with some caution, for she had just remembered that Cook had told her that a navvy had been engaged to do repair work and bricklaying at the Hall.
The man roared with laughter, a deep belly laugh that shook his whole vast frame. ‘I am that, to be sure. Shane O’Neill’s the name, but the whole world calls me Blackie.’
Emma squinted up at him again, trying to examine his face in the dim and vaporous air. ‘Yer not a blackamoor, are yer?’ she asked tremulously, and then rebuked herself for her stupidity. O’Neill was an Irish name and that explained his singsong speech, which was so unfamiliar to her. But she had heard of the Irish brogue and surely this was it.
Her question seemed to tickle this giant even more and he laughed