Woven Threads

By Helen Jones - Lathbury

Woven Thread is a story of four women’s transition from girlhood to woman hood during second half of the nineteenth century. Clara is determined that she will not follow her sisters into service and persuades her parents to allow her to become a pupil teacher. The sudden death of her father means an end to her ambitions.
Though forced through necessity to become a domestic service Clara continues to rebel against convention. As a mother she projects her own ambitions onto first her daughter, then her grand-daughter. Through tellig the story of these three women the novel examines issues which concern us still today, namely education, the glass ceiling, mental health, same sex attraction and overriding financial constraints faced by women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781678107307

Book preview

Prologue

November 1938

All Hallows, a fitting day.  The bells of St Francis tolled.  From the apartment window I watched a straggle of families making their way to five o’clock mass. My attention was caught by a little girl in a red coat and rolled down socks, dancing her way along the street while her mother followed behind, gabardine coat mackintosh tightly belted, handbag looped over her arm. Once upon a time, my mother and I had progressed in similar style. An age ago.

I turned from the window. The telegram lay on the coffee table. ‘Regret to tell you stop. Catherine died early hours stop. Harriet stop.’

I should go to her. She had cared for my mother for the last twenty years. William’s key turned in the lock. He breezed in, flung The Times onto the coffee table.

‘The PM has put Sir John Anderson in charge of air raid

defence preparations. The cabinet is taking this latest German claim on Danzig very seriously. The main topic of conversation on the street is Sunday’s War of the Worlds. Would you people actually called the BBC in a panic thinking an invasion by aliens had taken place! What’s this?’ He had noticed the telegram. ‘May I?’

I assented and he took it from the envelope.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I should go to Harriet. I’ll telephone the hospital, rearrange

my appointment.’

‘Would you like me to come with you?’

‘Thank you, but no. The Cabinet needs you. William, do

you honestly think there will be another war?’

‘I pray not, but with Herr Hitler throwing his weight around, who knows?’

‘Thank God that Fran is a girl. It is so terrible when Eddie is killed. I couldn’t bear to lose a child.’  Eddie, my little brother had lost his life to the east of Malplaquet, aged eighteen, in the dying days of the war to end all wars. It was his death that killed my grandmother; all the fight went out of her afterwards. She succumbed to influenza during the winter of nineteen nineteen.

‘I should let Fran know. I’ll telephone her this evening.’

Just a few days later I joined the small party of mourners around the graveside as my mother was laid to rest. She lay beside my grandmother, Clara.

Chapter 1

‘Clara, Clara, where are you child? Why are you never in earshot when you’re needed?’Clara crouched in the dusty hollow beneath the lavender, pretending not to hear her mother’s call. An unseasonably cool early summer had at last culminated in heat filled days. Clara, sun on her back, busily traced with a twig in the dry earth, tongue peeping between her lips, CLARA ELIZABETH WHEATLEY AGED 11 YEARS, THREE MONTHS, AUGUST 25TH, THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1862’. She glanced up towards the open door of the forge.  Her father, Joe, a powerful presence, winked at her from within. He wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand and retied the thongs of his cracked, leather apron. Clara’s brother, Henry methodically looped horseshoes over nails which had been haphazardly banged into the door jamb.

Clara sniffed the hot air. Joe pumped the bellows at the far end of the forge causing the flames to shoot upwards in a burst of orange heat. The coals had a smell of their own, different to those which burnt in the parlour hearth. Can you smell heat? Clara wondered. Once upon a time the furnace terrified her; she is afraid of stumbling into the searing heat and kept well away; now she was older fear had become merely a healthy respect. From the cover of the lavender Clara peered through the doorway and watched the dancers in the flames, listened to the percussion of hammer on anvil, the metallic music building to a crescendo before the hissing finale as the red hot iron seared the water. Clara wriggled out of the bush, stood upright and brushed dust from her pinafore before sliding into the other world of the forge.

‘Almost done,’ her father smiled, seeing her approach. He

took another strip of iron and held it to the flames with long-handled tongs.  Clara watched as the dull grey metal transformed into a fiery orange ribbon. Joe struck it once, twice, three times, passed Clara the hammer  Joe steadied the glowing, inchoate shoe while Clara, with the same concentration that she gave to all tasks, lifted the weighty hammer with both hands. Brow furrowed, she raised both arms. The mallet hovered, then fell and struck the rim of the shoe. Joe passed her the long-handled tongs with which to lift the newly fashioned shoe.  She plunged her handiwork into the depths of the water barrel, enthralled by the hissing, spitting rush of steam.

‘Well done girl. Happen if she were a boy I’d make a good blacksmith out of her,’ Joe called to Henry.

‘But she’s not a boy is she. Anyway, Clara, I can hear our

Mam shouting.’

Joe patted her shoulder. Reluctantly Clara trailed outside

into the sunlight, blinking as her eyes adjusted. She crossed the dusty yard and loped around the corner of the redbrick cottage, pausing to partially scrub out her epitaph with the toe of her boot; her mother was hanging washing on a rough line in the backyard, clothes pegs protruding from the corners of her mouth.  In the late morning heat a sour stench arose from the privy. Clara pinched her nose;

‘Yes Mam? Her mother removed the pegs to speak.

‘Mind your baby sister awhile, would you. I must get the ribbons done before the day is over.’

‘Can’t Betsey……?’

‘No, Betsey can’t, I need her to wind for me. She’s defter than you, even though she’s a year younger.’

Clara shrugged and gently pushed the cradle with the toe of her boot, causing it to swing in a shallow arc. The baby, Fanny, gurgled and kicked her fat six month old legs as vigorously as the strictures of her cambric gown allowed. 

Though Mam always wanted Betsey to help with the weaving, Clara didn’t much care. She hated the task anyway, perched, on a high stool, beneath the eaves, winding incessant thread onto a spool, while the sun streamed into the room, catching dust particles in its light. Minding Fanny was the better option. She pulled a stalk of coarse grass and tickled the baby’s red cheek. Perhaps she couldn’t wind as neatly nor as quickly as Betsey, but she could hammer out a shoe as well, if not better, than Henry. Her Dad had said so.

#

The end of the long summer school holiday neared, thank goodness.  Clara was bored. She missed Mary, the sister next in age, who had recently taken up her first live-in position in a neighbouring village. Mary had no choice in the matter; too many mouths to feed, Mam said, and anyroad, the best thing for girls once they reached thirteen was to learn housekeeping. A man liked a woman who could keep a good house. Mary was the third sister to have left home, the two eldest having left long ago. Ann, who was twenty, worked as a dressmaker in town, living above the workshop with her employer. Louisa at sixteen put on airs and graces because she was up at the Big House and walking out with one of the valets. Pondering this, Clara dared to speak.

‘Mam,’ she said hesitantly as her mother turned to go indoors, 

‘What is it? Quick, out with it, I need to get started.’  Clara took a deep breath.

‘When I’m thirteen, must I leave school and go into service?’ Her mother looked at her quizzically.

‘Like as not. That’s the way it is. Grown girls have to earn their keep and I can’t see you being good with a needle the way our Annie is. Now you finish hanging up these pinafores. Count yourself lucky you’ve had this long at school. There’s a good many girls younger than you already out earning a living – and if I haven’t got these ribbons finished by the time the carrier arrives I won’t have the school pennies for you to go back next week. Fanny’s milk is on the top shelf in the larder and there’s some Mother Bailey’s in the cupboard if she doesn’t settle afterwards.’

#

August was usurped by September with its crisper, crunchier mornings, though the drowsy, faded afternoons continued.  The new school year began. On mornings such as these Clara did not mind the two mile walk to school in the village. Down the hill to the farm, the air rent with squeals on slaughtering days; past the Red Lion, which doubled as the Post Office; then came the row of half timbered cottages which housed Mr Thomas the Butcher, Dell’s Bakery and Mr Daniel’s ironmongery. The latter displayed an array of her dad’s shovels and fire-dogs in the window. The National School, built of the same local redbrick as the family’s cottage stood solidly alongside the church with its stubby tower. Green iron railings separated the cinder playground from the churchyard with its yew tree and lichened headstones.

Clara was the first to arrive at the start of this new term, having sprinted ahead of Betsey and their friend Emma.  The schoolroom door was closed but Mr Edmond’s bicycle leant against the wall. Clara turned the iron ring and felt the latch behind lift. The oak door needed a kick at the bottom, where the damp had caused it to warp and stick. This first morning of term the school room was unusually tidy and smelt of beeswax polish. 

Mr Edmonds had his back towards her, writing the date in his copper plate hand on the board. On hearing the door open, he turned and welcomed her.

‘Clara, you are early today.’

‘I’ve brought these,’ she proffered a bunch of late flowering cornflowers which she had picked from the field bank, ‘for the nature table.’

‘Thank you. That is thoughtful. Put them in water. You will find a jar in the lobby.’

Clara filled a jar from the bucket of drinking water kept in the lobby, enjoying the rush of water and flurry of bubbles as she submerged the jar. Water trickled under her dress sleeve and down her arm. She thrust the flowers haphazardly and carried them into the classroom.

‘Is Mary happy with the Lamberts?’

‘I think so.’ Clara lingered, summoning up the courage to speak, not quite knowing what she wanted to say. Finally,

‘Mr Edmonds,’

‘Yes Clara.’

‘Not everyone leaves school when they get to thirteen, do they?  Laura Collins is quite grown up.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Could I stay?’  He considered the question.

‘If you prove able, and you are, there is no doubt about that, there is no reason why you shouldn’t remain.’ Mr Edmonds, sensible to the financial constraints prevented pupils from entering the upper standards, continued, ‘You could perhaps  work as a pupil teacher in exchange for a small fee  then continue to study for a full teaching certificate, perhaps even sit the Queen’s Scholarship for entry to a training college.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’  He nodded gravely, taking a silver watch out of his waistcoat pocket.

‘Goodness. Almost nine o’clock. Run along and join the others. You may take the bell. Count to sixty and then ring it.’ He watched her skip through the door. ‘I must have a word with Joe Wheatley,’ he murmured.

#

The forge and loom lay sleeping. The family, replete from the evening meal, gathered in the living room. Near the window in the last of the light Betsy stitched a lace collar to an infant’s gown. Eliza rocked back and forth, the baby at her breast, while Henry busied himself teasing Floss, the terrier, with a length of knotted rope. Clara read aloud passages from the Leicester Chronicle, cautionary tales of fines imposed for disorderly behaviour, the Board of Health’s proposal to install privies into all new houses and an account of a pianoforte recital at the town hall. Joe listened attentively to his daughter. Clara turned the flimsy broadsheet.  ‘The trial of Maria Carter.’  She read aloud.

‘What does it say?’  Eliza asked.

‘Maria Carter, aged seventeen, is this day indicted for the willful murder of her husband, Josiah Carter, by poisoning’.

‘God have mercy on her.’  Eliza shook her head sadly.  Maria Carter hailed from the

next village. Her husband, several years her senior, is known by many to be a violent man. 

‘Read on, Clara,’ Joe said.

‘The aforesaid Maria Carter admitted mixing arsenic into her husband’s gruel. Mr. Justice Blackman pronounced sentence of death by hanging but recommended the jury to show mercy on account of her insanity brought about by childbirth.’  Clara shivered.

‘Will she really be hanged, Dad?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so. Most likely the jury will indeed show mercy and she will be transported to the lands far away or else sent to the mad house on account of insanity,’ Joe reassured her.

‘Not a good end for the girl either way,’ Eliza said dourly. 

‘Better than swinging, ‘Joe replied.

‘What will happen to her baby?’ asked Clara.

‘The poor little mite will be put in the workhouse orphanage if there are no relatives to take it in,’ her mother told her.

A sombre silence hung in the air, broken by a gentle mew as the baby turned from her mother’s breast and drifted into slumber.  Gently, slowly, with more tenderness than she displayed towards her grown offspring, Eliza carried the sleeping baby up the open stairs to the cradle, now in the room above. An owl hooted from the fields beyond, the sun dipped beneath the trees, and Betsey, who had remained silent, head bent over her needlework, throughout the discourse, folded the gown, lodged the needle firmly into the material for safety and placed it in the wicker basket beside her stool.

‘You read real well, Clara,’ Joe said admiringly. ‘I know,’ Clara said.

‘Show off,’ hissed Henry.

Ignoring him, Clara clambered onto her father’s solid thighs, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

‘Mr Edmonds says I’m the best reader in the school. He said today that I don’t have to leave school when I’m thirteen. He said I could learn to be a teacher and take exams and he says when I’m eighteen.’

‘Does he now? Well that would be something, a teacher in the family, wouldn’t it Mother?’  Eliza reappeared from upstairs as he spoke.

‘You shouldn’t be encouraging her daft ideas,’ Eliza bristled, ‘she’ll only be disappointed. Girls from the likes of us don’t become teachers.  Staying at school won’t get her a place in a good household or learn her how to run a home, will it?’

Clara felt her fathers’ fingers running through her tangled hair before he gently disengaged her arms and lifted her to the floor.

‘Perhaps your Mam’s right,’ he sighed, ‘but where’s the harm in dreaming.’

#

Clara sat at her Father’s feet twisting loose strands of wool from the hearth rug between her fingers, pondering his words, her future and Maria’s fate.

‘Where’s the madhouse, Dad?’ she asked after a while. Her mother supplied the answer.

‘On the edge of Wigborough. A great grey building it is, behind six foot gates. They do say as once you get taken there you never get out!’

Clara tugged a loose thread of wool. Suddenly her mother’s hand clipped the side of her head, a cuff not too hard yet sharp enough to cause Clara to cease the activity.

‘Stop picking at the rug like that,’ Eliza chided, settling back into her chair. ‘You’ll make a great hole and it will be me who has mend it and The Lord above knows I have enough to do as it is, weaving ribbons and looking after you lot. I swear it’s enough to drive me to Wigborough.’

Chapter 2

The warm, dry summer yielded a fruitful harvest.  Corn dollies were carried into Church, thanks given to God for his bounty, the harvest supper eaten in the barn adjoining the farm. The children continued to play in the lane after school, daring one another to climb higher, jump further from the branches of the oak tree which overhung the ford.

September gave way to October and the fine weather broke.  Rivulets ran down Anker Hill, pooling at the bottom; the ford became too deep to wade, wood piles damp, wheat stalks sodden, brown loam heavy. November brought frequent hailstorms. Clara was fortunate in that she wore thick woollen dresses while less fortunate schoolmates shivered in worn, inadequate clothing.

The cacophony of looms, once heard constantly in the village, became little more than a murmur as expensive homespun ribbon was shunned in favour of foreign imports. The village women, most of whom spun silk in order to compensate for the winter drop in men’s wages while the land lay fallow, were short of work. Clara noticed concern in adult voices.

‘At least there’s been a good harvest. I remember the forties. Terrible time, that were. we were fair clammed.’

‘Three years running it rained and rained all spring, and the summers were so cold we were still in our woollen clouts come August’

‘The wheat was ruined in ’46. What little bread there is cost more than most folk earned in a week.’

‘I remember being so desperate I gave the children crammings,’ Eliza reminisced.

‘Chicken food!’  Clara wrinkled her nose.

‘Yes, chicken food. bran husk, water and a bit of lard is what I fed Ann and Henry. At least it filled their bellies so that they could sleep at night!  Them crammings were so hard that when your grand-dad tried them he broke one of his front teeth.’ Eliza laughed wryly at the memory. ‘Still’ she continued briskly, ‘we survived. Your father was always a hard worker, thank The Lord, and he’d built up a good trade by then. We were luckier than most. Horses always need shoes. Mind you, Clara, we might not have the money for you and Betsey to go to school if I don’t get any weaving work this week. It’s already Wednesday and the silk carrier hasn’t arrived’.

‘Why?’

‘Not enough shopkeepers buying English ribbons. Too many cheap ones coming in from France now the government has lifted the tax.  Don’t marry a labourer, Clara. make sure you marry someone with a good trade, one that’ll always be needed. I’m so glad our Louisa’s stepping out with Edward. They’ll always be a call for a good valet. Marry for love but love where the money is. That’s what my mam always said to me.’

‘Do I have to get wed?’

‘I don’t know what’ll happen to you if you don’t.  Our Ann should be thinking of settling down. Too choosy by far, she is.  She’ll miss her chance if she don’t settle on someone soon.’  Eliza laughed at the frown on Clara’s face.

‘Don’t fret child. When you’re a bit older you’ll want to be wed, mark my words.’

#

Three evenings later, no silk having arrived, Clara, prostrate, belly down on the bedroom floor, pressed an ear to the boards. Betsey’s steady breathing competed with the murmuring voices which drifted up from the room below. She strained to catch meaning in the muffled words. Occasionally she heard the clink of a coin or two dropping into a stone pot.  Saturday night was the time when Mam and Dad apportioned Joe’s weekly takings; so much for the rent, so much for the baker, so much for the clothing club. 

‘Please God, let there be enough for school,’ Clara prayed. 

At last the conversation ceased. The door of the cupboard in the alcove beside the chimney creaked open. Clara knew that Mam would be putting the money pots safely on the top shelf while Dad damped down the fire for the night. The iron door of the main oven closed with a metallic clang. Clara scrambled to her knees and scooted into the warm space beneath the blanket. Betsey always radiated a great deal of heat when asleep and always woke slightly pink and damp, even on the coldest of mornings. Clara nestles in and slept.

As she ate her porridge the following morning Clara watched both adult faces expectantly. Would they tell her now, or wait until this evening to tell her brusquely,

‘No school tomorrow Clara. We don’t have the money.’ She couldn’t wait all day she had to ask.

‘Dad?’

Joe removed the pipe from his mouth, wiped it on his shirt sleeve and gave her his full attention.

‘What is it Clara?’

‘Can I go to school tomorrow?’

‘Of course you can. What a silly question. Why shouldn’t you?’

‘Mam said......’

‘What did Mam say?’  Eliza, at the stove, noisily scraped the remaining porridge from the sides of the pan. Clara stared at her back, accusingly.

‘Mam said I might not be able to go to school if she didn’t get any weaving work. and she didn’t, did she?’

‘Of course you can go to school, ‘Joe reassured her. ‘ We ain’t that hard up. Both you and Betsey can go to school until you finish standard five just like your sisters did and as Fanny will when her turn comes. That’s only fair. Mam is just a bit worried about money, but we are alright, don’t you fret.’

Clara had to be satisfied with that. She was already in standard five.

#

As November continued, with its bleak, dank weather, influenza and whooping cough struck the school; some days half the desks in the schoolroom stood empty.  The news spread that two little children and a nursing mother had died. Mr Edmonds made the decision to close the school for the Christmas holiday several days early. 

‘Very wise of him,’ Eliza approved.  ‘Some of those poor souls who rely on weaving for their livelihood are half starved and won’t have the strength to fight illness. Thank the Good Lord for your father’s trade. I heard at the bakers that the Tibbs family is having a hard time of it. One of the boys came in for some dole bread while I was there.’ Eliza had been taking extra dough to the communal bake house tagged onto the side of dell’s bakery; the surplus loaves distributed among the neediest.

Emma Tibbs was Clara’s deskmate at school. She huddled beside Clara, a shawl made from a cut down blanket pulled tightly around her for warmth. Clara noted with compassion the skimpy frock beneath. Two days before Christmas, Clara approached Eliza.

‘Mam,’

‘What is it?’

‘You know that chest of old clothes that were Mary’s and Louisa’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, they’re still too big for me and Betsey. couldn’t we give something to Emma? She’s bigger than me and she wouldn’t mind anyway if they were too big.’

Eliza hesitated. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, ‘that’s very thoughtful of you. We’ll look something out directly the dinner’s on the stove. We’ll find something of Fanny’s for that new babby of theirs too. You can walk down with them tomorrow and take them some Christmas pies as well. I’ve made more than enough for us.’

The following morning Clara woke with a sore throat. She blinked several times in an attempt to remove the grit from her eyes. Her ears ached. If she were to tell her mother she would be dosed up with goodness knows what and be prevented from going to Emma’s and she so wanted to do something to make Christmas a little more cheerful for her friend. Clara therefore dressed, splashed her face with cold water at the stone sink in the scullery and forced down her porridge.

Emma’s home was teeming with children,  shrouded with  damp linen, impossible to dry during the damp winter months; her mother took in washing, spent her days pounding linen with the dolly out the back. The smell of carbolic hung in the air. Clara ducked under a line strung across the room adorned with white shirts and pinafores. Emma was ironing and folding stiff, starched collars. ‘I’ll just finish these for Mam,’ she said. ‘Sit yourself down by the fire.’  The fire consisted of a single red coal. Clara sat close, holding the brown paper parcel on her knees.

‘What’s that then?’ Emma queried.

‘It’s for you.’      Clara held out the parcel.

Emma loosened the string and slipped it off, unwrapped the packet with a frown.

‘It’s a dress. Who’s it for?’

‘It’s for you Emma…..it’s too big for me .I thought you’d like it .There’s another, and two petticoats.’

‘Thanks.’ Emma flushed. I’ll show Mam’

Mrs. Tibbs came through from the scullery. Emma held up the first dress.

‘That will suit Emma very well .thank your mother kindly,’ Mrs Tibbs said. She coughed, patted her chest with the back of her hand, ‘terrible chest I’ve got and the all the children are full of cold. It’s having this damp washing hanging round, we’re all wheezing.’

‘Mam’s sent these for the babby and some pies.’

‘That’s real kind of her. Tell her Mrs. Tibbs is much obliged.’  The coughing resumed. Between fits, Mrs Tibbs gasped, ‘You’d better run along home, before you catch summat from us. Merry Christmas to you all.’

#

Clara trailed up Anker Hill, the walk from the Tibbs’ cottage seeming unusually long.  At dinner she managed to eat only a few mouthfuls of onion dumpling and left the