Tangled Dynasty by Jean Chapman

Author:Jean Chapman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: eBookPartnership.com
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

By mid-May, Eleanor was amazed at just how much Henry had accomplished, not only were they comfortably established in their flat above the factory (complete with gramophone), but he had surveyed his newly leased property, analysed at least some of the reasons it might never have been a successful business in the past, and rectified them.

‘People have to be able to see to work properly! Mistakes take time to put right, and time’s money!’ The knitting machines had been duly dismantled for servicing, and reassembled on the first floor as near the windows as possible. The old work benches from the ground floor had been hauled up to the top floor to make a new examining and mending department on the opposite side of the staircase to their flat. Packaging, dispatch and, Henry’s office were now on the ground floor.

She enjoyed hearing the girls clattering up the stairs to work at their benches, particularly as her increasing pregnancy made her less nimble. She always looked in to say good morning, and when one day she found a girl working on her own, two being away sick, she was just about to take up a bundle of socks for examining, when Henry came upstairs. He seemed disconcerted to see her there, neither returning her smile, nor her greeting, merely nodding to the other girl and asking if he could speak to Eleanor in their private quarters. She was surprised to notice his hands shaking as he closed the flat door behind them.

‘I don’t want you to work,’ he said quietly, ‘not in the factory.’

‘But, I thought you would be pleased. ’ She could hardly believe that he could really mind. ‘Two of the girls.

‘I don’t want you to do it! It made me feel sick inside to see you at that workbench. I want something better than that for you.’

She was astonished to see how upset he was. ‘I wanted to help. You’ve done so much.’ She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness, but found it impossible to put into words the need she felt to compensate for her pregnancy. He had given no sign that he found her in any way unsightly, but to Eleanor the bulk of her pregnancy seemed grotesque, particularly so, she supposed, because it was not her husband’s child she carried.

‘Not doing the old things.’ He was so upset as to be curiously inarticulate. ‘Not mending.’ He took her hands. ‘You’re not discontented?’

‘I feel so useless. All around me, below me, across the stairs, there’s a hive of activity, you running about, up and down, racing across town — now even thinking of going to London for orders — and here I am, crocheting, and dusting and polishing things that don’t need it.’ She glanced around. The flat was as immaculate as she could make it, comfortable with the two easy chairs Henry had bought, the gramophone, and the nicest things from the cottage. Her print of the tethered unicorn hung near the window, and her mother’s dark green, ewer-shaped vases stood on the small, cast-iron mantelpiece.

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