Page 66 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

Despite ‘dressing plainly’, they were attracting attention. The drivers of passing drays threw fortunately unintelligible comments, idlers paused in their mooching, smokers leaning against walls turned their heads after them, and women in sacking aprons came to their doors to stare. Mrs Crane, moving briskly, ignored them all. She stopped at last and turned, and the other three crowded up close to her. A boy ran past, and over her shoulder Nina saw him scuttle down a narrow passage at the end of the building.

‘About a quarter of the workers are women,’ Mrs Crane said. Her eyes were bright and fierce, her expression grim. ‘And while they don’t carry out the very worst of the tasks, I think you’ll find what they do quite unpleasant enough.’

‘What is that smell?’ Nina couldn’t help asking.

‘The animal skins are put through various processes – boiling and liming, fleshing and bating, and so on. Part of the process involves soaking in dog faeces. Yes,’ she said, to their appalled expressions, ‘quite true. Oh, and the scraps of the skins that are too small for use are put in a vat of water and left to rot for several weeks, for making into glue.’

Clemmie had turned a little pale. ‘It must be dreadful in there. But you’re right, we ought to see for ourselves.’

‘I’m afraid we won’t be welcome,’ Mrs Crane said, setting her jaw. ‘Understandably, they don’t like outsiders to see what goes on. But we must badger our way in. We must be resolute, ladies. It is our duty—’

‘Wait,’ said Nina. ‘You mean they haven’t invited us? I thought when you said “visit” it was something you’d arranged.’

‘No, no, we must slip in and see all we can before they turn us out,’ Mrs Crane said impatiently. ‘There is a door round the side that leads into an unfrequented area – storage rooms mostly – and from there we can get onto the main factory floor.’

Lepida and Nina exchanged an alarmed look, but Clemmie had perhaps done this sort of thing before, because she was nodding as if this was understood. She and Mrs Crane went in front, the other two followed reluctantly. But when they reached the narrow passage that went down the side of the factory, they found it blocked by a large man in a leather apron. His face was very dirty, except for white creases radiating out from his eye corners. His hands were black and shiny with whatever he had been handling, and he wore a grimy cap pulled down hard on his head. He glowered at them from under the peak.

‘Oh, it’s you again, is it?’ he said to Mrs Crane. ‘Now, then, you know better than this. The guv’nor’s said he doesn’t want any busybodies spannelling about his fac’try, upsetting his workers.’

Mrs Crane drew herself up. ‘Just step aside, my man. We will see what we have come to see.’ And she flourished the umbrella like a sword.

Whether it was the umbrella, or that he just didn’t like being called ‘my man’, his face darkened. ‘You’re not coming in, and that’s that.’

‘Who is to stop me?’ she said scornfully.

‘The guv’nor put me here to do it, and I’ll do it. We knew you was coming.’ The boy who’d run past, Nina thought. ‘So clear off, or it’ll be the worse for you.’ He looked at the other three and said, ‘I’m surprised at you, nice ladies like you.’ Nina felt herself blushing.

Behind the angry man, another appeared, coming out of the factory door: a middle-aged bald-pate in a rather shabby suit.

‘What’s going on here, Bates?’ he demanded.

‘It’s her again, Mr Bleaker – the do-good. Got her friends with her this time.’

He moved aside to allow Bleaker room, and the factory owner stared contemptuously down his nose at the women. ‘What do you want?’ he asked coldly.

‘We would like to inspect your factory, if you please,’ said Mrs Crane, with a smile like a slap.

‘Well, I don’t please. So just turn around and go about your business, and nobody has to get unpleasant,’ said Bleaker.

‘This is our business,’ said Mrs Crane sternly, ‘and the business of every decent person. The conditions under which your workers have to toil are a disgrace.’

Bleaker rolled his eyes. ‘This is a tannery. Do you know how to tan a hide? No, but I do. It’s not nice. It’s nasty. It smells bad. What are you going to do about it? Change the laws of nature?’

Clemmie spoke up at that point, her voice light as a dried leaf on the noisy air, her accent clear as cut crystal. ‘We don’t mean to make trouble for anyone,’ she said. ‘We are interested in factory conditions, and just want to look around. We shan’t get in anyone’s way.’

Bleaker looked at her with irony. ‘No, I guarantee you shan’t,’ he mocked. ‘Because you’re not coming in here. This is my factory, which I own lawfully, and I say who comes in and who doesn’t. One more step down this alley and it’s trespass, and I shall send for a constable and have you taken up. What’d your husbands or your fathers have to say about that, eh? If you have respectable husbands and fathers – which I doubt.’

‘Why do you have to be so unpleasant about it?’ Lepida asked, quite mildly in the circumstances,.

But he turned on her with a goaded air. ‘Unpleasant? I am going about my lawful concerns, and you – ladies – come along here uninvited and stick your damned noses in and try to stop me running my own business! You want to poke about and tut and upset my workers and close down my factory and put my employees out of a job. I’ll give you unpleasant! If you were a man I’d knock you down!’

‘Well, really!’ Mrs Crane exclaimed.

Bleaker rounded on her. ‘I know your sort,’ he said. ‘Not enough to do, sitting in your big house all day, fancying yourself better than everyone else, so you’ve got to go out and interfere with honest folk trying to earn a living. I’ll just tell you one last time to clear off. Go back to where you belong. Go on, all of you! Because I don’t like getting rough with females, but by God I will if I have to. You young ’uns look like ladies, but it’d be a pleasure to teach this old boiler hen a lesson.’

Two other men had come out of the door down the alley, and a crowd was beginning to gather in the road. Nina, who had been feeling hot with mortification, never having heard angry language like that in her life, now began to feel afraid. The idea of any man rough-handling a lady had never occurred to her as a possibility, but they were far out of their proper sphere, and who knew what the rules were here? She thought longingly of the jarvey, hoped desperately that he had waited. She plucked anxiously at Mrs Crane’s sleeve. ‘Come away,’ she said, low and urgently.

Mrs Crane didn’t seem at all put out by the hostility. Indeed, it seemed to have stimulated her. But when Clemmie also took her arm, she allowed herself to be drawn a step back. She waved her umbrella under Bleaker’s nose, and said, ‘You haven’t heard the last of me!’ And she turned and strutted away with her head high.