Lynne Francis - Alice’s Secret - A gripping story of love, loss and a historical mystery finally revealed

Alice found her voice at last. ‘I’m not sure.’ She was doubtful. ‘She’s rather large. I think some of the smaller ones might be afeared.’ As the words came out, Alice wondered at herself for slipping into the local dialect. Was it an instinctive reaction to the ‘lord-and-master’ situation? She fingered the brooch that pinned her shawl together, a gesture she used to calm herself. Without a doubt, ‘Father’ must be James Weatherall, the mill owner, and Richard must be his eldest son, recently returned from Cambridge and not proving to be the enthusiastic businessman that his father had hoped for, or so it was rumoured. Rather, he loved to walk the hills, play the piano with his mother and sisters, and write poetry. At least so said Louisa, their neighbour in Northwaite, who was a maid at the big house.

For his part, Richard saw a pale, slim girl with a mass of reddish-brown curls that her work cap failed to contain, dressed in the usual working uniform of the mill girls: a rough long wool skirt and a shirt of a nondescript colour, faded from numerous washes, topped with a knitted shawl pinned tightly at the front. The brooch that held the shawl wasn’t the usual cheap and shiny affair, though, but a rather fine enamelled sprig of lavender. Her eyes, first glimpsed when she raised them directly to him whilst fondling Lucy’s ears, were the most extraordinary green. Or were they blue? He was fascinated. They seemed to subtly change colour as he looked. Then she blushed again, and he realised that he was staring, as well as babbling some nonsense about the dog.

‘I should get back to my class,’ said Alice. ‘You’d better come and meet them. I set them some reading to get on with.’ They would probably have lost interest by now, she reflected, stumbling over difficult words, one or two of them taking the chance for a nap, Charlie Wilmott no doubt teasing Edith Parker and then sulking when she cut him off with a clever remark that earned her the laughter of her classmates at his expense.

Richard signalled to Lucy to return to her fireside spot, then followed Alice down the narrow corridor, away from the peace of Ramsay’s office, past the noisy hubbub of the mill floor, revealed in a flash as a door opened, then hidden again just as quickly as the door snapped shut. Richard suppressed a shudder. The brooding presence of the mill in the valley filled his every day. No matter how far he walked over the moors and through the woods, the chimneys of the valley mills seemed to be always in his sight, even from his bedroom window. Each evening, Father would inform the dinner table of some mill problem or success, of the fluctuating price of cloth, of the need to update the machinery, glancing at Richard to see if he was listening, involved, interested. Richard knew that he was a disappointment. In effect, the mill had paid for his education and was keeping the family in comfort, and his father looked to him to carry on the tradition. But the education that was meant to have prepared him to step into his father’s shoes had simply driven him as far as possible in the opposite direction.

‘Esther would be far better suited to running the business,’ thought Richard ruefully. Trained in the art of home management by her mother, his sister Esther was immensely capable, practical and forward thinking. Richard possessed none of these qualities – his thoughts as he roamed the countryside with Lucy were of a more philosophical nature, and he was far more likely to return home and write poetry than to draw up a plan for the future expansion of the mill. Getting him to teach in the schoolroom was his father’s last despairing attempt at getting Richard involved. Mr Weatherall was only too aware that Richard shied away from contact with the workers and locals, nervous of their roughness and down-to-earth demeanour after the rarefied atmosphere of Cambridge. Perhaps meeting the children would help him to understand the mill life a little better?

The chatter from the schoolroom, clearly audible outside, stilled the moment that Alice turned the doorknob. She pushed the door open and stood aside to let Richard enter. Stepping forward, he faced rows of inquisitive faces, feeling his heart sink as he did so. He felt no more connection with the schoolroom than he did with the rest of the mill, but Alice was already introducing him.

‘Children, I want you to meet Mr Weatherall. He will be your teacher for arithmetic, starting tomorrow. He will sit with us for the rest of the morning, so he can get to know you a little.’ Alice took the teacher’s chair from behind the desk and set it at the front of the room, indicating that Richard should sit down. She then stood behind the desk and Richard found himself watching her, rather than the children, as she instructed them on a handwriting exercise, then moved around the room, pointing out lazy loops and sloping verticals, crouching down to a child’s level to show how a different way of holding the chalk and the slate would make a difference to the final result. By the end of the hour, Richard had an inkling of the skill involved in teaching a class, and of the love and respect that the children had for Alice. He feared that he would be of very little use in the classroom – he had never taught and had no experience in dealing with children – but his father expected it of him and so it must be.

Alice had been wary of Richard at first, worried that he had been sent by his father to spy on her, to make sure that she was fulfilling her duties in the classroom and teaching the children to a proper standard. She was painfully conscious of her deficiencies when she compared herself to Master Richard, and his fancy education, the likes of which she could barely comprehend. It hadn’t taken her long, however, to discover that, fancy education or not, he was totally at sea in the classroom and, it would seem, in life in general.

‘Could you help me hand out the slates?’ Alice said. Within two days, she had had enough of Richard helplessly watching her, or following her around the schoolroom, hanging on her every word. She no longer worried that he had been sent to report back: rather, she feared she was minding him until James Weatherall had decided what to do for the best with regard to his future in the mill. Alice’s time with the children was limited and precious, and she resented having to waste any of it on Master Richard. She was going to have to come up with a plan.

‘Today, Master Richard will work on arithmetic with half the class, while I work on handwriting with the rest of you.’

The children started to mutter their discontent. They wanted nothing to do with either arithmetic or Master Richard.

‘Then, halfway through the morning, we will change over,’ Alice announced firmly. ‘I want you all to listen very carefully to Master Richard. We are very lucky to have him here to help.’

She’d felt shy at first, suggesting that he might devise a lesson, thinking herself presumptuous and hoping he wouldn’t take her request amiss. It didn’t take her long to discover that he had as little experience of teaching as she had of life at Cambridge. The noise from his group swiftly reached such levels that she had to break off, leaving her group to practise the loops of their ‘g’s’ and ‘f’s’ and intercede before it got too far out of hand.

‘I wonder if you might start with something a little more basic?’ she suggested, once she realised that Richard had set himself the challenge of explaining long division to his group. Richard looked blank.

‘Perhaps if you went back to simple addition or subtraction you could build on that to show how multiplication and division work?’

Richard looked embarrassed and hopeful at the same time. Alice could see he was wondering whether she would step in and take over.