Chapter 10 #3
It was the one that pleased her too. She realized then that she didn’t want to leave Manchester, or sell the mills or his house, and become a recluse in London.
She wanted to stay and live up to what he thought she could do.
She wanted to at least try. She could hardly wait to come back the next day.
She felt fully alive again having made the decision.
She drove home, thinking about everything she had to do, and stopped in to see Mrs. Kelly in her little office off the kitchen when she got home.
She was smiling as she hadn’t smiled in the three months since Bert had died.
She felt closer to him, knowing that she would be following his wishes and keeping his mills and factories alive.
He had taught her a lot, but she had so much more to learn now.
She knew there would be resistance at every level, but she wanted to make it work and to make Bert proud of her, wherever he was now.
She hoped he was with her father and they were smoking cigars.
She liked the image of that. The two men she had loved, together now.
She was going to do everything she could to learn what she had to do, as quickly as she could.
She was grateful to have Hubert Maddox to teach her.
“You look happy,” Mrs. Kelly said, as Victoria stood in her tiny office, with a desk piled high with notepads and schedules and all the things Mrs. Kelly took care of to keep the house running smoothly.
She was pleased to see Victoria looking better.
She had her usual energy back, which was a relief to see.
“I am. I’m not leaving. I’m staying, and I’m not selling the house.” Mrs. Kelly broke into a broad smile in response.
“Now that is good news.” Victoria smiled back and left her then. She had lots to do.
* * *
She was up at six the next day, and ready by seven-thirty.
She got to Hubert’s office by eight. She walked down the hall to Bert’s office.
It was unchanged. The lights were off, everything was orderly, and it made her sad to see it.
One day, she thought, if she deserved it, that office might be hers.
Mrs. Emerson was still coming in a few days a week to answer mail that was still coming in for Bert.
Victoria was waiting for Hubert when he got to work. He had a quick cup of coffee, and they set off to the first factory they were going to visit. She had been there often with Bert, and she knew it well. It was the one where Thor Lindqvist worked, and she wondered if they would run into him.
Hubert stopped and talked to several of the men, and asked them how the new looms were working.
The men had a number of comments about them, and she listened carefully.
In each case, the men glanced at her, surprised to see her there with Hubert instead of with Bert.
She seemed like more than just an interested visitor this time.
She was making notes and seemed eager to hear their concerns.
They had never seen her with the administrator before, and wondered what it meant.
They wondered if she was selling the factories.
There had been rumors about it since June.
It would make sense if she did. It wasn’t her business, it was Bert’s.
They wondered if now it was hers, although that didn’t seem likely.
Even if she owned it, she wasn’t going to run it.
But in that case, who was? There hadn’t been any visible changes so far since Bert’s death three months before.
It was September and he had died in June.
She saw Thor Lindqvist then, out of the corner of her eye. He was watching them intently, curious about what she was doing there. He didn’t come over to greet them, and Hubert doubled back to see him. Thor was working an enormous loom with his jacket off, and he had powerful arms.
“Morning, Lindqvist,” Hubert Maddox said easily, and the young Swede muttered some kind of inaudible greeting, after glancing darkly at Victoria.
As usual, Thor made her feel uncomfortable, which was intentional.
He wanted her to feel unwelcome and stay away.
He thought it was bad luck to have a woman in the factory, but she refused to be daunted by him.
It was more important now that she not allow him to intimidate her.
“What are you doing here?” he said rudely and barely audibly under his breath.
“I’m touring the factories with the administrator,” she said calmly. Thor looked agitated, and his mood was dark.
“Why?” Thor conducted the entire exchange without looking at her, still working, and she was looking straight at him.
Then finally, he raised his eyes to hers.
She saw anger there, and fear. She wondered what he was afraid of.
If she was selling the place or keeping it?
He wasn’t sure which would be worse, but at least if Maddox was there, he knew the place would be decently run.
“I want to know what you do here, all of it. I want to understand it better. Mr. Maddox is explaining it to me.”
“If you want to understand, you should know that we’re not paid enough for what we do. We have a union now, and you won’t get away with it like you used to.”
She looked into his ice blue eyes. “I agree with you. And we don’t want to ‘get away with’ anything. We want a fair deal with our employees, fair to both of us, not just to you.” She spoke to him as she would a child, honestly and clearly.
“What difference does it make to you? You’re rich.
But we aren’t. We’re poor, and we’re going to stay that way all our lives, because most of the men here don’t have an education.
” She noticed he didn’t include himself.
“But we’re not your slaves.” He spoke harshly to her, and Maddox was listening carefully.
She noticed then that some of the other men were watching them too.
They couldn’t figure out what Victoria and Thor were saying to each other, as they were speaking in low tones, but it looked aggressive, from the expression on Thor’s face, and his angry eyes.
He wasn’t going to kowtow to a woman, and he wanted his co-workers to know it.
For now, it was just a warning, but he looked intense.
Bert had always said that Thor had a powerful influence over the other men.
If she could win him over eventually, she could win the others.
She had a long way to go. “We don’t need you to come and watch us here while we’re working.
This isn’t a zoo, and we’re not the animals. ”
“I think you’re highly experienced capable men, especially you,” she said pointedly, directly to him. Thor didn’t answer her, and Maddox gave him a message he thought he needed to know.
“She owns the factories now, Lindqvist. She owns the business. Bert left it to her.” Thor looked at Victoria long and hard. That explained everything to him. He thought it was the worst news of his life.
“Don’t interfere with us, and we’ll get along.
We know what we’re doing.” He almost spat the words at her, and a few minutes later he walked away to talk to one of the men.
She was sure the jungle drums would be beating from this moment on with the news that she was the new owner, but they had to know.
They didn’t need to know that she wanted to run the entire operation, but they should at least know who they were working for, and now they did.
And the fact that the new owner was a woman would not be good news.
“The news will be all through the operation by lunchtime,” Maddox said.
He wasn’t daunted by the staunch stubbornness of the men in not dealing with a woman, but the look of fury in Thor’s eyes haunted Victoria for the rest of the day.
She had a hard road ahead of her, and she knew it.
But Bert’s faith in her would have to carry her through.
She couldn’t let anyone stop her, not even an angry Swede.