The Wild Dark Flowers by Elizabeth Cooke Page A

ask, sir, if your father will ensure that no more are taken?” he said. “We’ve one other, but it is needed. It is so much faster than the horses.”
    “I’m sure that my mother will ensure that herself,” Harry replied.
    This time, Ferrow merely grunted.
    “Have any more men enlisted since last month?” she asked.
    “Twenty-two, ma’am.”
    “His lordship has made a case to be presented in Parliament to let no more experienced men go from mills,” she told him. “We hope it shall be considered. I don’t like taking the women from their children in order to replace them.”
    “The women work well,” Ferrow replied.
    Octavia remembered the Sunday that the most recent of the men had left, two months ago in March. She and William had come down from Rutherford to stand on a makeshift stage and wave their own good-bye. They felt it was their duty. There had been flags and a brass marching band, and the men sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” as they passed by, each face looking up at her and William broadly smiling. Laughing even, swinging their arms. It had happened all over the country, but especially in the Lancashire and Yorkshire mill towns. Mill towns and factory towns like theirs, emptying of men. Even London offices—government offices. And shops, and railways. And the universities. It made one sick to think of it—those optimistic men in their hundreds of thousands leaving home. Young men and family men who could not be spared by their wives or their employers. And yet they had gone, and continued to go.
    The three of them walked on, out of the gates, and turned towards the long street of narrow houses that careered down the incline, so close together that they seemed to be toppling one on the other. In the gutters, grimy children played in the sun. On the doorsteps, old women looked up the street towards her.
    Octavia turned to Ferrow. “Mr. Ferrow, I’m aware that you would rather his lordship came to see you rather than myself,” she said.
    “Not at all, ma’am. . . .”
    She waved the lie away. “But you know, I spent my whole childhood listening to my father detailing the workings of the mill.” She looked pointedly at him; Ferrow himself—his shortcomings, his abilities—had been discussed on more than one occasion. Ferrow blushed. This, at least, had hit its mark. “So you understand,” she continued quietly, “that when his lordship is not available, I shall come in his place, and I shall be fully aware of everything that needs to be attended to.”
    Ferrow nodded silently.
    “It’s not only the women here who have to lend a hand,” she said. “I must be involved, just as they are.”
    The manager shuffled along beside her, but did not reply. He half turned to go.
    “Do you know a man called Richards?” she asked.
    He stopped, perplexed. “Richards? In the mill?”
    “No,” she said. “He doesn’t work in the mill anymore. He used to, before he was injured and his boy killed. He would, I suppose, be in his fifties now.”
    Light dawned on Ferrow’s face. “Francis Richards?”
    “Yes. His daughter Mary is one of our maids.”
    Ferrow nodded. “He sweeps the yards. Does odd jobs for us.”
    “Is he reliable?”
    “About as reliable as any broken-down man can be.”
    She looked at Ferrow keenly. “I see,” she said. “Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Ferrow.”
    *   *   *
    O n the way home, she asked Harry to stop his car on the ridge before the moors.
    They sat looking back at the belching chimneys of the mills and the towns huddled beyond them. It was hard to believe that only on the other side of the moors, Rutherford lay in such peaceful glory.
    “Do you miss it?” she asked Harry now. “England, I mean. Home.”
    “Every moment.”
    “Is it . . . very bad?” She paused. “The newspapers talk of victories, but I don’t believe it, Harry.”
    “Yes,” he said at last. “It is very bad.”
    She was very thankful that he could be