‘I fell out with Betty Robson and her friends – they were calling me names,’ Lucy whispered.
‘So much for religion,’ Bill muttered.
‘You take no notice of them, Lucy. You give them back as much as they give you. Everybody’s the same on this earth; we all have the same habits and needs.’ Dorothy turned and went to the drawer where the cutlery was kept and started to lay the kitchen table for dinner.
‘Father, I walked back from Sunday school with Archie Robinson today. He’d no shoes on his feet, as they can’t afford any. Could you make him some, do you think? We’ve plenty of scraps of leather about the place.’ Lucy looked up at her father, hoping he’d say yes.
‘Nay, lass, I can’t make shoes; he needs a cobbler, and brass, and you should know that.’ Bill shook his head.
‘Then will you take him on in the yard this back-end? He’ll be old enough to work for you then – he’ll be eleven in September.’ Lucy was going to help her friend out, one way or another, of that she was determined.
‘We’ll see. I can’t promise, but we will see.’ Bill looked at Dorothy. The Robinson family had fallen on hard times, but they weren’t the only ones who were struggling in the bleak surroundings of the Worth valley. Bill and his family were just scraping by, but at least there was always food on the table, and his family were dressed and shod so far.
‘Go and get changed out of your Sunday best, Lucy, and then come down for your dinner,’ Dorothy said to her caring daughter as she checked the pan of boiling potatoes on the hearth.
Lucy got up from sitting next to her father and gave him a quick hug, before climbing the stairs to her room. She loved her father; even though he drank he was always there for her, whereas her mother was always nagging or chastising her. Once there, she sat on her bed and looked out of her bedroom window at the flay-pits and tannery that blighted all their lives with their smell and filth.
She hated where she lived, and she hated being the lass from the flay-pits; when she said where she was from, people wrinkled their noses and pulled a face at her. One day she would be free of this place. She would meet a wealthy man and marry him, and then she would breathe in clear air and would have pretty dresses and ribbons in her hair, just like Betty Robson. Yes, of that she was sure: a dashing, good-looking man, with a clean home to call her own and, hopefully, money in the bank – after all, that was not a lot to ask. She didn’t know how, but that was her dream, and nobody was going to take it away from her, not even Betty Robson and her shallow friends. However, right now she was the smelly lass from the flay-pits, whom nobody gave the time of day to, and her dreams were simply that: dreams with no substance.
2
Flappit Springs, 1857
Adam Brooksbank looked around him and questioned why he had returned to the godforsaken wilderness that used to be his home. The rain was coming down in stair-rods and the wind was blowing so fiercely that the sign of The Fleece, the hostelry that he and the hauliers had just passed on their way to his family farm, creaked and groaned, trying its best to break free from its hinges.
He’d forgotten how dark and foreboding the moors between Keighley and Halifax were, and how repressive on a day like this. Yet they were wild, with a strange attraction that pulled you into them and enveloped your very soul, if you let them. He stood and looked back down into the Worth valley and watched as candles and lamps were lit in the windows of houses, in readiness for the coming evening. The smoke from the industrial towns of Keighley and Thornton wasn’t reaching the moorland today; instead the wind was driving it down the valleys, making visibility into the surrounding mill towns impossible, despite the howling gale. Adam shook his head. Poor buggers, he thought; he’d rather be sodden and frozen up here, where the wind blew free, than slogging his life out in a cotton or steel mill – a life of drudgery and toil. And what for? A back-street house that belonged to the mill owner, and a privy shared by all the street. No wonder there was so much crime and discontent in both towns.
He swore again as a large drip slid down his neck, and the wind blew more fiercely as he put his head down and walked up the long-derelict path to his ancestral home of Black Moss Farm. The hauliers, with his earthly possessions piled high upon their horse and cart, followed him, cursing at such a place on such a wild night. The farm looked even more desolate and wild than he remembered it, as he glanced up and saw the familiar outline of the low-roofed house set under the moorland tor, and the dark silhouette of the sycamore tree that he had played in and around as a child.
Memories of his childhood came back as he stood in the once spotlessly whitewashed porch and put the key into the heavy, locked oak door. He had to twist it a time or two before the door yielded, but on entering the old farmhouse, Adam’s heart beat fast, as his mother’s and father’s faces came rushing back into his memory – as if it was only yesterday that he had said goodbye to them both. He glanced around for an oil lamp to throw light upon the old home, lighting the one that hung from a
