Alice’s Secret: A gripping story of love, loss and a historical mystery finally revealed. Lynne Francis
was not until a quiet Thursday, when tourists and locals alike were kept indoors by an afternoon where the rain streamed constantly from a leaden sky, that Alys picked up her phone and flicked idly through her photos in search of blue skies and sunshine.
‘Can I look?’ Moira peered over her shoulder. Never a fan of the mobile, she was nonetheless captivated by the myriad moments caught by Alys, from the sunny skies snapped from Claire’s garden in Nortonstall, to the Pennine crags and wooded valleys around Northwaite.
Alys scrolled through the photos until Moira suddenly called a halt.
‘What was that?’
Alys scrolled back. ‘Oh, just a gravestone that I spotted in the churchyard here. There was something about it that drew me to it – the carving, I think. I’d seen the same carving somewhere else in the village. And her age. She was so young when she died.’
Moira was quiet for a moment. ‘It’s odd that you should have fixed on this. She was actually a relative of yours.’
‘Of mine?’ Alys’s eyes widened. ‘Here? In Northwaite?’
‘Well, yes. The family’s originally from round here. You knew that?’
Alys frowned. ‘I thought we were from Leeds?’
‘We go back a long way around here,’ Moira said. ‘As far back as I’ve been able to trace. Your mum and I were brought up in the area as children, until Dad, your granddad, found work in Leeds when we were in our early teens. Our family had lived in Nortonstall until then, but before that our links were all with this village. My grandma Beth lived here in Northwaite, in the very house I live in now. We used to come and visit her from Nortonstall. Her mother, and her grandmother, had both lived here in a house up at the top of the village. My mum said there was some tragedy linked to the family, to do with Beth’s mother – your great-great-grandmother. She’s the one whose grave you saw. She died so young – I never knew her.’
Alys digested this news. How come she hadn’t known that Moira’s house was a family one? And that the family had roots in the village? Although that would explain Moira’s presence here.
‘What did the family do? Were they farmers?’ Alys asked.
‘No, the women mainly worked at the mill, or were weavers at home before the mills were built. Although one of our relatives, Sarah, was a herbalist – quite well-known locally, by all accounts.’
‘What about my great-great-grandma, Alice?’ Alys was peering at the photo of the gravestone on her phone again. ‘Did she work in the mill?’
Moira hesitated. ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘But then she had a baby, Elisabeth, and she didn’t carry on after that.’ Moira paused. ‘I’ve got a family tree somewhere that I started. Look, let’s shut up shop and get off home. It doesn’t look as though there’s any chance of the rain stopping. I’ll dig out that family tree tonight – it might help you to make sense of all those names.’
As they set about clearing up, Alys was thoughtful. Moira had mentioned a tragedy, but had seemed rather reticent. What had happened to Alice, and when? Was there a family mystery? She felt a sense of excitement: it all sounded rather intriguing. On top of that, she had now discovered that her roots were in this actual area, something that she had never suspected before. She was looking forward to finding out more.
Alys had been so impatient to see the family tree that when Moira finally placed it in front of her that evening, she felt a stab of disappointment. It had been roughly drawn up on a sheet of paper torn from a foolscap notebook. The names at the bottom of the page, Alys and her siblings George and Edward, and those of Moira and Kate, plus her father David were, of course, all familiar to her, along with Eileen: Kate and Moira’s mum. The generations above that included Elisabeth, Eileen’s mother, then Alice, Elisabeth’s mother, names new to Alys until this afternoon. She skimmed over dates and siblings. Elisabeth had none, but Alice was the eldest of five, born to Sarah and Joe Bancroft. No name was given for the father of Elisabeth, Alys noticed. Beyond that, the piece of paper frustratingly provided no further clues.
‘Do you mind if I hang onto this for a bit?’ Alys asked as they sat down to eat.
‘No, just take care of it. It’s the only copy,’ said Moira. She was feeling unaccountably tired today and looking forward to an early night. She was thankful yet again for Alys’s presence – without her she certainly couldn’t have kept the café running. Alys had gone way beyond the call of duty, not only proving herself to be a good baker, but also having a fine eye for how to enhance the business. It wouldn’t be long before she would be wanting to be on the move, Moira thought, and she was dreading the day, although she realised that it wasn’t fair to try to keep her here. She dragged herself out of her reverie as she became aware that Alys was speaking to her.
‘Are you okay?’ her niece was asking, concerned. ‘You’re looking a bit pale, you’ve barely said a word and you haven’t eaten very much.’
‘I’m fine,’ Moira said, and smiled. ‘Just a bit tired this evening. Think I need a long bath and an early night.’
‘Well, if you’re sure that’s all? I hope you’re not overdoing it.’ Alys rose from the table and started to clear away. She paused, then turned to Moira. ‘I’d like to find out more about the history of the area, the mills and such. Get a feel for what it might have been like to live here a hundred or so years ago, now that I’ve discovered we’re all from this area. Have you got any books about it?’
‘Local history, do you mean?’ Moira settled herself on the sofa. ‘No books I’m afraid, but there’s a little museum here in the village, and another one over in Nortonstall. There’s a lot in both of them about the area. You need to remember that it wouldn’t have been like this then.’ Moira winced and adjusted the cushions behind her back, which still played up if she had been on her feet all day. ‘It would have been an industrial landscape down in the valley, not the beautiful countryside we see now. I expect that the paths that you’ve been walking are much the same as in the past, though,’ she said. ‘The workers would have used them to get to the mill from all directions. Lots of children worked there, too. They were employed in the mills because they were small and had nimble fingers. They had to go under the machines to retrieve things, do jobs that adults were too big for. The hours and conditions were awful in the mid-nineteenth century. You should definitely take a look at the museums – you’ll learn a lot there. I found it all a bit upsetting, to be honest, but it’s worth knowing about, especially while you’re here.’
Alys’s next half-day off brought more dark clouds and bursts of heavy rain. The thought of exploring the countryside, her normal half-day occupation, didn’t appeal. So, she made her way over to Nortonstall and spent a few hours in the museum there. It was housed in an old mill, now mainly given over to workshops and studios, but it gave her an idea of the scale of the place, the forbidding walls and the towering chimney, all set in a cobbled courtyard that must once have rung with the clatter of clogs and the bustle of business. She was sure that the Industrial Revolution must have been on the curriculum at school, but clearly it hadn’t stuck in her memory. Now that she was in the landscape that was home to so much of it, her imagination was fired up. She pored over the old black-and-white photos of the area, staring hard at the people captured in them and wondering whether one of them was Alice. She devoured the information about the canals, the weavers’ cottages, the different kinds of mill in the area, how Northwaite had declined in importance as Nortonstall had grown, its importance fuelled by the arrival of the railways. She’d found the depiction of a typical working day particularly startling, especially the length of the journey that so many workers in the outlying parts undertook each morning and evening on foot, before they even started their ten-hour day. And once they were at work, they were under constant pressure, bullied by the overlookers to meet deadlines and targets. So that wasn’t a new thing,