Road to Berry Edge, The by Elizabeth Gill Page A

was very young, and it was rumoured that not only did he not care for the aristocratic idlers but that they would have little to do with him. Sarah Shaw, his only daughter, was admired, had come out in London and become engaged to the kind of man her father most deplored. Rob was eager to catch even a glance of any member of the family and he walked slowly around the house taking in everything he saw.
    In one of the rooms there was a painting over the fireplace. Rob was drawn to it, having seen it from thehall, and as he went nearer the painting seemed to come alive. It was a country scene, a farmhouse and the fields, a man with a sheepdog and some sheep, quite a simple painting but it reminded Rob so much of the countryside around Berry Edge that he felt sick to go home.
    â€˜What are you doing in here?’
    Startled by the sharp voice, Rob stepped back and Vincent Shaw came into the room.
    â€˜Stealing, are you, boy? Turn your pockets out.’
    Rob knew very well that he didn’t look his twenty two years. He was thin, the suit he wore was old and shiny with use, and his hair was too long. Under Vincent Shaw’s steel gaze Rob turned out his money and a handkerchief.
    â€˜Is that all?’ Vincent roared.
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜So you work for me, do you, boy?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜And what great service do you render me?’
    â€˜I’m a moulder, sir, in the foundry.’
    Vincent laughed. Rob watched him.
    â€˜A moulder? You’re a bloody liar, boy. You’re not old enough to use a bloody wheelbarrow. The moulders in my foundries are clever, skilled men, not pathetic little lads. Get out of my house, and keep your bloody hands in your pockets!’
    It was cold outside. Rob hadn’t eaten anything and it was a long walk back to his lodgings. It snowed. It always snowed, Rob thought. Any time when you’d had enough, it snowed and made things worse.
    On the Tuesday of that week he was called into the offices. Rob had never been in the office building and it was sumptuous. Up where the important people were, there was a thick red carpet and chandeliers, and a lot of shiny wood; and above all the rest, at the end of a long corridor, was a huge office with a big desk and a view that seemed to him to take in most of Nottingham. Rob couldn’t helpbut think that Vincent Shaw could have spent less money on his offices and a great deal more on his factories. He stood behind the desk.
    â€˜Robert Berkeley,’ he said.
    Rob felt sick. He didn’t understand what he was doing here. Vincent Shaw didn’t dismiss his workmen himself and there could be no other reason for his being here. Rob liked Nottingham, he wanted to stay there. All he had now was his work.
    â€˜I didn’t do it,’ he said.
    â€˜What didn’t you do?’
    â€˜Anything. I didn’t … I didn’t do anything.’
    â€˜Is somebody accusing you of something? My man in the works who tells me these things tells me that you are in fact a moulder, that you are not the pathetic little runt I thought you were. In fact you even seem bigger than I thought you were. I understand that you are the best moulder we possess. I apologise, Robert Berkeley, from the bottom of my rather shallow soul. Where did you learn?’
    â€˜Durham, sir.’
    â€˜And you speak the Queen’s English, other than that appalling accent. How interesting. What have you run from, I wonder? A woman? A baby? A prison sentence?’
    â€˜I left home.’
    â€˜And what did you do to occasion this leaving?’
    â€˜My brother died. We had an argument, a fight. He drowned. People blamed me.’
    Vincent Shaw said nothing. Rob listened to the silence in the room and he thought of his work in Vincent’s foundry and the losing of it. He had never told anyone before what had happened, he had not expected that he would tell a man like this, a pompous, unfeeling, bombastic master