o’ those silly overpaid women you call designers to shame, she does. And if you take my advice you’ll give ’er a chance!’
Then without so much as a backward glance she was gone, the door banging resoundingly behind her, leaving Amy to stare after her open-mouthed.
Chapter Eight
1848
‘Will you be late home, lass?’ Molly asked as she walked Amy to the door.
‘No, Gran, I should be home for about six tonight.’ Amy planted a warm kiss on her cheek as the old woman nodded.
‘Good, just see as yer get straight back, mind, and don’t get talkin’ to none of them damn weird folk that’s hangin’ about.’
Amy chuckled happily. The coming of the railway the year before had caused great excitement in the town. She had taken Molly to see the first steam engine chug into the newly built Trent Valley railway station, but Molly was not as impressed with the new form of transport as Amy was.
‘Newfangled dirty things,’ she had said scornfully. ‘Chuckin’ all that muck an’ smoke out. Can’t see what’s wrong wi’ a horse an’ cart meself. They’ve always been good enough before but then happen this is progress.’
Amy had found her gran’s attitude highly amusing. She was very set in her ways was Molly Ernshaw, and not one for change.
The weird folk her gran referred to were actually a small group of people called Mormons who had travelled from America to preach their religion and eventually arrived by train in Nuneaton.
From the little she had seen of them, Amy found them to be extremely polite but she was in a minority and on the whole, the townfolk were not accepting the strangers at all. When it was discovered that the Mormons could and often did have more than one wife, the menfolk became angry and convinced that they had come to take their women. This was a view that was shared by Molly.
‘It ain’t natural,’ she had spluttered. ‘A man should keep ’imself to one woman. Why, it’s immoral, so it is.’
Her indignation had caused Amy and Toby to fall about laughing. But nothing they said in the Mormons’ defence would cause Molly to change her mind and eventually they stopped trying.
In truth, the Mormons were leaving the town already. Only last week two of them had been dragged from the Temperance Hotel whilst still in their beds by irate menfolk, claiming that the Americans had come to steal their daughters. The poor men had been severely beaten in full view in the marketplace, then tarred and feathered and donkeyed from the town.
Amy felt deeply sorry for them, but Molly was in full agreement of their treatment.
‘Serves ’em bloody well right,’ she had stated. ‘Decent women won’t rest easy in their beds till every last one of ’em is gone.’
Sighing deeply, Amy had let her rant on, knowing only too well that once Molly had made her mind up about something, nothing and no one would change it. Stubborn as a mule she was, but Amy loved her nonetheless.
As she set off for work there was a spring in her step. It was a beautiful March morning and from beneath the hedgerows the early flowering primroses peeped out at her. The birds were awakening and chirping their dawn chorus to the sun that was just beginning to rise from the gently moving clouds. It was the sort of morning that made her glad to be alive; the sort of morning when the problems of the past year slipped into the back of her mind, and she found herself humming as she hurried along.
It was over a year now since she had started work in the design department following her first eventful visit to Forrester’s Folly, and what a year it had turned out to be.
It had been a long hard slog to become accepted in her new role. Not just by the other designers but by the people on the shop floor too. Her sudden promotion had caused a stir to say the very least, for after all, who had ever heard of a menial cleaner suddenly becoming a designer? It was a position that took most designers years to achieve and here was Amy, a humble cottage-dweller, suddenly promoted overnight.
Sometimes as she passed the workers on the shop floor a snide comment would reach her ears. ‘Huh, look at little Miss High an’ Mighty, thinks she’s a cut above us now she does,’ they would mutter, or, ‘It’ll all end in tears, you’ll see. Yer can’t