A Bugle For The New Day

                                                              Chapter Two, part one.

 Richard Ragway gazed through the leaded trellis of his library window, feeling nothing for the sunlight dancing on the terrace pools or the massed elegance of the daffodils banking the lawns. All he felt was a gnawing ache in his stomach, a growling from his digestive system to match the mood he faced the world with these days.

He should admit that there was a necessity for him to avoid fried foods, particularly at breakfast time, but he considered this a denial he should not have to accept when the lowest of his minions could eat with impunity; if a fried breakfast could be thought one of life’s pleasures, it’s curtailment was inconceivable to him, conditioned as he was to the maxim that money bought everything, including good health or the rapid return to it when nature turned contrary. He would have to find another doctor; this local quack knew nothing.

He turned from the window, the dazzle on the water outside causing him to blink at the inner gloom in order to adjust his vision. He saw his books, row upon row of them, reaching from floor to ceiling, like an army assembled in immaculate formation, leather bound and storing centuries of knowledge from Darwin to Virgil. If dust had been allowed to gather, it would have covered their shame, for the books were unread, unconsulted, even though he knew them every one, and catalogued them in his mind along with his other assets. They were there for display only, but not just to fill wall space; they formed a library to rival the best in private hands, a source of knowledge always available to him, providing visible proof to all who came into the room that here was a man with the greatest of intellects on his side, who, being so armed, constituted an even more formidable opponent.

The room itself spoke of authority without any help from the books. The master’s desk was finest Sheraton satinwood with a Chippendale ribband-back chair, a mantelpiece of marble held an ornamental Adam clock and a central chandelier hung down in cut glass to augment scones of gilt pinewood. Ragway frequently congratulated himself on the tasteful way he had restored Culver Hall; although he himself had elaborated here and there, he had managed to avoid the Victorian weakness for ostentation verging on the vulgarity, but that was only his opinion and future purists would view it differently.

He had travelled far, this self-made industrialist, financier, landowner-far from that squalid street in Ancoats. He often reviewed his own life, as a sort of balance sheet on himself, and he found it unbelievable that he had achieved so much, and all from nothing, although he had a notion, in his backside-out-of-his-trousers days, that his pockets were destined to jingle with money. He couldn’t explain how, or why, he just knew….

Maybe he had the feel for grandeur his Grandmother had, especially when she was drunk, which was quite often he recalled. His grandfather had been a Luddite who went around wrecking machines because they were taking away his living, and his father, he was always chasing rainbows, finally disappearing in California looking for gold. His Mother was the only one he remembered with affection and she seemed to be forever shrouded in steam, great engulfing clouds rising about her like unanswered prayers. By his reckoning, his mother must have taken in washing from every house in Manchester and in the end she washed herself away.

Though he had already become a powerful man, he needed to acquire respectability, and this was when he saw the opportunity to marry Flora Clayton. They were high among the elite families of Lancashire, the Claytons, and they would give him the standing denied him by a society always seeing him as a snotty-nosed kid who had climbed his particular heap with a bit of luck. So he had pursued the doll-like Flora, who was ten years younger, with an ardour and a determination sufficient to persuade the girl’s father that he was the right man to provide for her in the manner to which she was accustomed. The fact that she was three months pregnant with Hayden may also have had something to do with it.

The union had produced, two years later, a girl, Sarah, but her grandfather hardly had time to bounce her on his knee before the Clayton empire collapsed in ruins and the old man himself shot himself. Richard Ragway could have been mortified, resentful that Clayton had been aware of the state of affairs and needed his jumped-up-son-in-law as much as the pretended sought social influence. But he had accepted the downfall in true Ragway style, seeing it as yet another fight on his hands and taking up the Clayton reins with a refusal to admit defeat. Sacrificing all else with a single-mindedness of purpose, he worked ceaselessly to salvage and rebuild from the ashes, and he had triumphed in the end, emerging from the adversity stronger than ever, with woolen mills, foundries and steelworks among the industries under his control.

He had, it seemed, reached the pinnacle; no more did he have to prove anything. His running nose had been wiped clean by his achievements but, although he had to be accepted now, if grudgingly, by his one-time superiors, he still imagined that people whispered darkly behind his back and he knew that he would never know peace of mind, not truly, until he found reassurence that he had sprung from somewhere higher than the gutter.

Relief had come for him through one of those happenings called more predestined than fortuitous. He had been about to toss away a newspaper when an advertisment caught his eye and in particular a name:Radway, sufficiently close to his own to cause his heart to miss a beat. It belonged to a Cavelier who had fled the battlefield at Nasby and sought refuse from Puritan persecution in an Elizabethan manor, Culver Hall, now up for sale somewhere in Wales. His inebriate grandmother had often babbled about connections in Wales and her vague references to nobility had always raised a laugh. Now at last he had an ancestor to fit his image….

  © Mark Pearson 2007.

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 ”Window” image by tree_climberof flickr, “Library”  by MelanieSchmidt of flickr.

Chapter one, part nine.

Geriant looked at his son, saw an eagerness in his face he had only known when the natural world was involved, and he took it as a sign that his youngest was growing up at last and accepting the less romantic side of life.

“At Bethesda,” recounted Geriant, “a battle is going on. For years now. Between the men at the quarry and this Lord Penrhyn. Twenty years  and more now the men have had the union, but this Lord he refuses to recognise it. The same union it is for us and a Penrhyn of our own have we got. For six months now this god almighty has shut the gates on men who want to work-locked them out. Starving them to their knees he is. And succeeding, too, for going back they are under Penrhyn’s terms, a trickle turning into a flood with the union nowhere. In tatters, it is, and running.”

They had reached the Barracks and fatigue came on Geriant suddenly, sounding in his voice. “Not Diogel maybe, but home it is till Friday night.”

The front door, stout enough for a fortress, opened into a small hallway with a staircase leading to the sleeping quarters at the end of it. Through an open doorway beside them came the smell of polish and the crackle of fire with it’s welcome warmth reaching out to them.

A girl of about sixteen was dusting a long table surrounded by straight backed chairs standing at attention as though awaiting orders. She looked up and gave them a smile. “Mam’s upstairs. Good morning,” she said, strangely, thought Glyn, like Miss Tranter, the school mistress.

“Morning, Lowri,” replied Geriant, off with his cap. “This is my son, Glyn. Starting today.”

The girl flashed another smile and went back to her dusting. Glyn looked in vain for the buck teeth and the freckles; she had indeed grown up since the last time he had seen her, but that had been some years ago, and he viewed girls differently then. She was tall now, drawn up like a bean and he had to look up to her. Hair was dark, but not as intense as his sister’s, and more under control, caught up in a bob and comb in the way of older girls. Although her face was pale and thin, as though the extent of her growth had drained her, she had high cheek bones that gave her a touch of regality and her chin spoke of authority; If not achieving it, at least trying.

Lowri dusted her way nearer to them, extending a thin arm to shake the newcomer’s hand. “Glyn, is it?” she said, again with the smile, her teeth mysteriously even. “Late today, Mr. Owen. I’ll be taking your things up if you like. Just drop them down there.”

Glyn felt all of six inches tall, thankful for his new corduroys standing up on their own and betraying nothing of what went on underneath. Lost he was already, a prisoner of that porcelain face, the harsh reality of the quarry forgotten. He even managed to smile.

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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Image by johnybes of flickr.

Chapter one, part eight.

“Mrs. Lewis,” said Geraint, breaking into the darkness of his thoughts, “waiting for us she will be. And Lowri-remember Lowri, Glyn?”

“Buck teeth and freckles,” muttered Glyn, three steps to one following his Father down the hill.

“A shock for you, boy. Soon into a fine woman that one.”

They were nearing the gates, Rhys and Ifor waiting impatiently for them.

“Half a shift behind, you two,” welcomed Rhys as they came into the yard.

“sending for the troops, me,” said Ifor.

The seven o’clock bell began to signal the closing of the gates, threatening deafness to everyone already inside, a clamour the timekeeper would continue with mounting frenzy on the clapper rope until he saw the last straggler scramble over the boundary wall and there was no one to carpet before the manager.

Geraint shouted above the din: “The Irish are with us again.”

Ifor’s brow furrowed. “Tom Gippo?” he yelled.

Rhys clenched his sack-of-coal fists, muttered something, then bellowed: “…that Irish bastard,” the timekeeper deciding to call it a day just before the last word, so that the expletive sounded out in the sudden quiet and a dozen heads turned to enquire who it was being called such a name.

The two elder brothers looked innocently at each other and slipped away, taking the path leading to B gallery, number six chamber. Geriant shepherding the latest recruit in the direction of the Barracks, having to pass the managers office, where they found the doorway entirely filled by the corpulent figure of the incumbent himself, Joshua Phillips, Quarry agent for Brynllech to give him his official title, a veritable barrel of a man, as much in circumference as in height. Ginger hair covered his face almost completely, falling on his collar and shrouding his eyes, hiding all else behind a profusion of whiskers, the only protrusions a hooked nose and cheeks puffed out like over ripe plums, giving the impression that, together with his distended shape, he was about to explode.

In his hand he swung a thick gold chain with a figured half hunter on the end of it, the flashing orbit drawing Glyn’s eyes with hypnotic power until Phillips buried his watch expertly in a waist coat pocket without looking or slackening momentum, a manoeuvre of sufficient renown to earn the Manager the incongruous nickname of “Dead-eye-Dick”

“Morning, Owen,” blustered Phillips, still fingering his chain. “This your youngest then?”

“Good morning Mr. Phillips,” Geriant dutifully touched his cap. “This is Glyn, starting with us today.”

Phillips squinted through his fiery foliage and appraised the lad before him. “Well, young feller, joining the rest of your family, eh? Another for that union of yours, Owen.”

“A worker he will be, that I can promise you.” said Geriant, firmness in the eye.

The manager looked down where his feet should be and gave a shuffle to confirm they were still there. “You know my opinion of unions,” he said gruffly. Only trouble in that direction. Anarchy is what they lead to. In the wrong hands, anarchy.”

Geriant was not being drawn and he made to move away. Phillips seemed to smirk, but it was only his whiskers twitching to make room for his voice. “You have heard the news from Bethesda?”

“Aye,” said Geriant  sadly, his shoulders drooping. “Penrhyn showing what a big man he is. But it will come. One voice it will be, Mr. Phillips. You will see.” He turned to Glyn and adjusted his pack. “On our way boy. Bellies are rumbling.”

Phillips watched them go, the man striding out with purpose, the boy scurrying along beside him, just as he himself had done so many years before. His Father had been a fighter of lost causes, and in Geriant he saw  the same beliefs, the same obstacles, and he knew in all practicality that the same fate awaited the Welshman. Apathy and suspicion would drag him down to die in despair with nothing altered, for the forces to be overcome were too powerful and too efficient at closing ranks to succumb to the demands of what would always be a little fish fighting out of it’s depth with an invincible predator. And because he had recognised this unchangeable fact early in his working life, he had joined the predators, but not entirely had he lost sight of all his Father had dreamed.

Glyn was anxious to know of Bethesda. It was a name he had heard often around the house, but to him it was an obscure place somewhere in the mountains in the North.

“Dada,” he panted. “Bethesda….what has happened?”

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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Chapter one, part seven.

“Brynllech!” Proclaimed Geriant with a sweep of his arm grand enough to herald their arrival in the promised land, but indicating in reality a vista of depredation and upheaval on a scale suggestive of a planet lost in space and ravaged by meteorites. The broad shallow valley below them and the lower slopes of the hills beyond had been subjected to decades of tearing at the earth in search of the blue-grey treasure of slate, resulting in a proliferation of spoil heaps, menacing mountains of waste tumbling in precarious falls of debris, ever advancing, as though the unwanted dross sought to engulf those responsible for the violation.

The actual workings in the narrow vein, where the slate rock struggled to reach a thickness of sixty feet, could only be seen as openings to tunnels honeycombing the hillsides and leading underground to chambers where the slate was mined and transported to the surface on a maze of tramway lines. Open quarrying was carried out in gaping holes staring blindly at the sky like empty eyes, these marking the run of the deep vein with a cleavage of a thousand feet and more.

Standing out among the buildings on the floor of the valley, was a large sombre structure shouldering it’s imperious bulk above a shabby collection of tin sheds and ramshackle workshops housing the machinery necessary to dress the slate to the requirements of the world outside. This dreary looking place, home for the working week to the Owens and the rest of the journeying quarrymen, presented a depressing prospect when viewed from Glyn’s vantage point, but closer inspection would reveal that attempts had been made to mitigate the impression given by the severity of it’s name, The Barracks. The slab walls, it would be found, were of dressed stone-nothing out of shape or ill-placed here- the sills planed and imposing, the roof purlins extended beyond the walls with ogee-carved ends and the windows always gay with floral curtains. Trellis-work framed the front door with climbing roses, colourful in the summer, and there was a small garden with primulas and raspberries attended by the quarrymen. But a greyness hung on everything, the quarry a pervading force not to be denied.

Rising at the far end of the valley, effectively hiding the drab scene from the rest of the world, rocky buttresses thrust against the sky and water glinted in the morning light. It was here that the Nant Sarn stream began it’s journey to the sea, forming on the lower slope a man made reservoir complete with dam and valve tower to provide the source of power for the quarry machinery. Wooden paddle wheels, stationed at points where energy was required, had the water fed to them through a system of slate lined channels, the main culvert running alongside a rough road leading from a derelict farm and a collection of cottages with walls of slate enclosing tidy gardens encouraging spring flowers and a hint of first fruit blossom.

Various places were pointed out to Glyn, including the Manager’s house and his office and the powder magazines, but nothing the young boy saw raised his spirits higher than his bootlaces. He had seen Brynllech many times, running errands for his Mam, carrying messages and tit-bits hot from the oven, but then, in the imaginative childhood he had to leave behind, the quarry seemed to have a rosy glow of an adventurous place where grown ups fought the earth and won. Now he knew differently; he saw it with new eyes and he saw it as a prison, a place of incarceration where he would spend the rest of his days going on for ever and ever.

 Clouds of dust would blot out the sun and the bowels of the earth and sky, machinery would throb to the hiss of steam and the song of the birds would be drowned and gone. For him, that really was the end of the world…..

To be continued.

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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Chapter One, Part Six.

“Sore your own backside would be,” she found herself saying, “if out of it I had just pulled a thistle.”

He stared at her, his mouth open again. Before he could say a word, she was babbling: “Something to put on….for the soreness…wait now…” and she was gone in a flurry, the birds scattering, the gate now protesting behind her.

He stood motionless, as though she had turned him into a statue, until the cob neighed and seemed to call her back and the spell was broken. Startled into reality, the befuddled young man let his eyes focus on the cottage where the disturbing girl lived, and he noted the roughness of the stone walls contrasting with the geometric neatness of the tiled roof, and the parade of clothes on the washing line drawing his attention to their impoverished state. She returned and caught him staring absently at the female underwear and he quickly averted his eyes, focusing on the small bottle she was carrying.

“To take the sting away,” she said. “A bit of this, a bit of that.”

She took a piece of rag from her pocket, dabbed it with the solution from the bottle, and approached the horse with a renewal of the mystical conversation. As before, the cob listened with a cocked ear and glistening eye as she stroked him with her  dulcifying touch, but he flinched and snorted as she found the injured flesh with the curious concoction. Apparently satisfied, she corked the bottle and unhitched the reins from the tethering bush and proceeded to walk the horse a few tentative steps tp the accompaniment of murmured encouragement.

When she turned to the rider and handed him the reins, he could see that the promising light had gone from her eyes and the curtain had come down again. Had he been able to surmise from the signs available to him, he would have discovered that her armour was in place again and the resolution that had deserted her for an unguarded moment was as strong and impregnable as ever, a barrier against him and all he stood for.

“Take him now.”she said tersely. “And that leg-see to it. A dose of weed and really lame he will be.” He climbed gingerly into the saddle, fully expecting to be thrown over the wall, but the horse accepted him and he had no doubt that this was due to the girl intervening on his behalf.

He could linger no longer; she was already moving towards the cottage. “Your name,” he called out to her. “I do not know your name.”

At the gate she paused and turned to him slowly. “Rowena,” she said simply, with a lift to her chin, and with that she went inside.

Realising that he had been dismissed, he cried out: “Sultan, he thanks you, too,” and hesitating for a moment as though expecting an answer, he turned the horse and began a gentle trot down the lane in the opposite direction to that taken by the quarrymen, soon becoming lost amid the huddle of houses.

Rowena put up a hand to test her washing and listened to the hoof-beats retreating into the distance. Sultan, she thought, suits him that.

“Keeping company at last, is it?” Her Mam was beside her, flour up to her elbows, curiosity twitching her ears.

“A horse…gone lame,” said Rowena, innocently.

“On it’s own, was it?”

“Had an eyeful, eh, Mam?”

“Some eyeful. Know who that was, girl?”

“No. A stranger to me.”

The breath went out of Mam and the flour on her hands gave a puff of exasperation with her. “Haden Ragway-that is who it was. No Less!”

Rowena showed only a disdainful curl of her lip. ” A curtsy I should have dropped then?” Another feel of her washing, strangling it this time. “And and how would you be knowing it was he-Mister High and Mighty?”

“Saw him with my own eyes did I not? When he came home from that university. With his Mother he was.”

Rowena gave a scornful laugh and went into the house, her Mother following her with little urgent steps. “Despair I do with you,” panted Megan. “Tell gentry, you can do that surely?”

“So, Richard Ragway is his Father.” Rowena turned on her Mother with her cheeks flaming. “And it is he who owns the quarry where my family sweat their lives away. That gives him the right to be heartless, does it now? Well, it’s sorry I am. For the horse-for having that jumped up-popinjay on his back.”

“Told him that did you? No doubt you did, knowing you. Forgetting it is his Father who puts the bread on our table, and can take it off again.” Megan’s lips were as tight as her principles.

Rowena’s eyes had grown large and wild, fire scorching through the mists, but cutting no ice with Megan, who was accustomed to her daughter’s fancies.

“It is my own Da who puts the food on our table,” stormed Rowena. Forgotten that have you, Mam? Up there he is now, in that God-forsaken hole in the ground. Breaking his back, and my brothers with him. And another taken this day.”

Tears were coming down now and she hurried from the house, anxious that the weakness should not be seen, pausing only to cry over her shoulder: “A jumped-up-popinjay he is. I say it again. That is what I think of him and that old goat he can tell.”

Dearie me, thought Mam, touched something that boy has….

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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