‘Morwen’s a slip of a girl—’
‘But she talks sense.’ Ben hadn’t meant Morwen’s name to become an issue in all this. ‘Listen to me, Father. Bultimore and Vine’s have got rail tracks, and they’re an undoubted asset. It puts up their status as a forward-looking business, and it labels us as old-fashioned for sticking to the old methods. How long do you think it will be before there are petitions from St Austell because of the way the clay waggons break up the streets and create havoc and danger to the townsfolk? You’re an ostrich, Father, with your head in the sand.’
‘And I suppose when you take over, the first thing you’ll do is provide these rail tracks and put Killigrew Clay in the bankruptcy court,’ Charles growled. ‘Is that the legacy I’m leaving to you?’
‘There won’t be any legacy to leave if we don’t act now!’ Ben held his patience with a gigantic effort.
‘Where’s the money to come from? Tell me that!’
‘You know there’s enough. We both have stocks and shares to sell if need be. I’m willing to risk mine—’
‘We could always delay the wage rises, of course,’ Charles said sarcastically. ‘Let the clayworkers have their little share in providing the luxury of rail tracks. How about that idea, Ben? If they want tracks so badly, let ’em help pay for them!’
‘That’s the daftest thing I’ve heard yet,’ Ben snapped. ‘You made a promise, and a Killigrew never goes back on a promise.’
‘Remember those words, m’ boy. Now you can tell Mrs Horn I want my dinner in my room, for you’ve tired me out with your arguments. ’
Charles leaned back in his leather chair. Despite the heated words, he was well pleased in the way Ben was taking the clay business so much to heart. It cheered him more than his son knew. Maybe Ben saw the distinct possibility of holding the reins himself in the not too distant future, and wanted to be ready when the day came. But it wasn’t due yet.
Charles’s heart would give out one of these fine days, but he intended going out still roaring like a lion. It didn’t do to give in to new-fangled ideas too quickly. Let the boy think he had to fight for his cause, and it would be all the dearer to him when he won. It was a philosophy Charles firmly believed in.
All Ben saw was the satisfied smile on his father’s face, and stormed out of his room, feeling he’d got nowhere. If anything, he may have made matters worse. To delay the men their wage rises would be certain disaster. Only one thing was clear to him now. For better or worse, he’d staked himself firmly in Killigrew Clay’s business. He was a part of it.
* * *
Charles was away from the house most of the next day, but by late afternoon Morwen sought him out in his study. There were two things she needed to know. One was if Charles meant to stick to his word and offer the new house to her parents. The other was about the delay in the clayworkers’ wage rises. A woman didn’t normally concern herself with such things, particularly a lowly bal maiden, but she was no longer a bal maiden, and it was important to her to know how things stood. She knocked at Charles’s study with a fast-beating heart, and was told to come inside and close the door, for the day was cool and the house was draughty.
Morwen thought wryly that these fine folk didn’t know the meaning of draughts while they had a roof over their heads that didn’t let in the damp and the cold. She squared her shoulders as Charles looked up at her from his big desk, and spoke quickly.
‘I wanted to ask you about the house for my family, Mr Killigrew. Our Sam’s set the wedding date, and ’twill be a crush for ’em all in the cottage. I’ve said nothing about it, and ’twould be best if it came from you—’
Charles liked the girl’s spirit. She was bold, but not too bold, and he could see the pulse beating at her throat. He smiled benignly.
‘Well, m’dear, the house is vacant, and since I’m well pleased with your duties here, your father may move into it when it suits him. But you may tell your family whenever you wish, and then you’ll believe it’s true! Does that please you?’
‘It does, Mr Killigrew!’ She hesitated, wondering whether to leave it there, rather than stir up more trouble than she wanted. If she didn’t know for certain that he didn’t mean to delay the wage rises, or even stop them, then she needn’t worry her head about it. But that was the coward’s way out… and besides, Charles seemed aware that there was something more on her mind.
‘Was there something else, Morwen?’ Charles asked. ‘I have a busy morning with these papers—’
‘The wage rises, sir,’ she blurted out. ‘Ben – your son spoke of some delay in paying them – and of a discussion between you about rail tracks—’
Charles laughed. ‘A discussion, you say? Is that how Ben described it? More like a battlefield of words, I’d say, with neither the victor—’
‘And meanwhile the wage rises are put on one side, are they?’ Morwen was appalled to hear her own shrill voice, but having begun, she plunged on. ‘Do you have any notion of how much those pennies mean to clayworkers, Mr Killigrew? To folk who have little or nothing, they mean as much as your precious silver ornaments to you! Think on it, Mr Killigrew, when you dine off fine china, what a price the clayworkers have to pay to produce your riches. Excuse me, please. I have work to do!’
She spun round while his eyes were still widening at this tirade, but his voice stopped her.
‘I’m sick of hearing about these blasted rail tracks that you and Ben seem to find so all-important,’ he bellowed at her. ‘I keep my men in full employment, don’t I? Other pits have installed new machinery and cut man-power. Is that what you’d prefer for Killigrew Clay? It can easily be arranged—’
Morwen’s eyes were filled with bitterness. ‘And you’d threaten them with that, wouldn’t you? You have a fine way with blackmail, Mr Killigrew.’
She ducked out of the study before he could say any more to her. The house was stifling her, and she had to get out of it. Regardless of her duties, she fetched a shawl from her room and slipped out of a back door, and used the same pony and trap as before without asking. It was a crisp afternoon, but Morwen noticed none of it as she urged the pony up over the moors towards the clay works. Her Daddy would still be working his shift, and she would find him in his pit captain’s hut. Hal looked up in pleased surprise as his daughter burst in on him, but one look and he knew that this wasn’t merely a social call.
* * *
‘You’re sure about all this, Morwen?’ Hal said sharply, when she’d finished her garbled tale. He couldn’t believe the boss would be so reckless as to stop the miniscule wage rises, or delay them even further. In other pits, such happenings had resulted in an immediate strike and then everybody suffered. And with winter coming on…
‘I’m quite sure,’ Morwen said unsteadily. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be repeating it to you, but I felt ’twas my duty to my family. I needed your advice, Daddy, but ’tis true enough. Both Ben and his father have said so.’
‘The men have a right to know of it too.’ Morwen heard the simmering anger in her father’s voice now. ‘Who’s to put food in their children’s bellies if they’re forced to strike? And their pride will see to it that they strike, Morwen, have no fear of it.’
‘Maybe Mr Killigrew will reconsider, Daddy. He’s not a heartless man—’ Morwen said anxiously, remembering his kindness to her.
‘And what of the son? We know nothing of his heart, girl. When he takes over, he could be ruthless. He knows none of us personally the way his father does, and he cares even less, since ’tis his ways he’s trying to push on to his father from what you told me.’
‘Ben’s taking an interest in the works, Daddy, and rail tracks are his idea. You’ve always agreed with that—’
‘I don’t agree with the son seeing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and the likes of us paying for it all,’ Hal said grimly.
Morwen wondered what she had accomplished in coming here. She’d wanted her father’s advice, but he seemed as dogged in his way as
Charles and Ben had been in theirs.
‘You won’t let on that I’ve come here with this information, will you, Daddy?’ she said awkwardly. ‘My loyalty’s to both of you, but it was too much to keep all to myself.’ Hal smiled briefly for a moment.
‘You know I’d never be so indiscreet, my love, and ’tis not my way. I’ll go to Killigrew myself and demand to know why the delay in payment, and see what he has to say.’
Neither was aware that there was a small eavesdropper outside the hut. Neither saw young Freddie Tremayne skim over the damp ground, feet squelching, to catch up with the other kiddley boys sent to gather moss for ramming in nooks and crannies of the pit buildings to keep out some of the end of the year winds and rains. To be met with j eers and cat-calls for being last in the stream of small boys heading for the moors.
‘Don’t matter ’bout being last,’ Freddie said importantly. ‘Not when I know summat as you don’t!’
‘What could you know, Freddie snot-nosed Tremayne?’ a son of Eric Leeman, the kiln worker, taunted him.
‘Summat as our Morwen told my Daddy, see? ’Twill cost ’ee a ha ’penny to tell ’ee—’
He howled as the rest of them set on him, finding himself beneath a tangle of arms and legs. A circle of white clay-grimed moon-faces loomed over him and threatened to tear his breeches off and tan his arse if he didn’t tell immediately what he knew. And Freddie, as always, gave in.
* * *
Morwen was glad to leave the clay pit and her Daddy’s worried face, and to pay a brief visit on her mother. Twice in two days! And this time without Charles Killigrew’s permission. And she didn’t give a rap for it. She had news for Bess, and she related it quickly. Bess’s face was astonished as she listened.
‘A house for us, Morwen? Are you certain? A house with no other attached to it for warmth?’
Morwen laughed. ‘Killigrew House has no other attached to it, does it, Mammie? It won’t be as grand as that, mind, but ’tis a step up in the world, isn’t it? You’re pleased, aren’t you? Mr Killigrew said that Sam and Dora could have this cottage, and ’twould be fitting for a newly-wed couple to be on their own—’
‘So it would.’ Bess remembered the day she and Hal had come to this very cottage, when she had been as radiant a bride as Dora would be. So long ago, yet no more than a heartbeat in time, and the love they shared still burned bright. It was right that Sam and Dora should begin in the same way, though Bess would have pangs at leaving this little cottage. But she was ever practical, and became brisk.
‘Your Daddy should see Mr Killigrew about all this, Morwen—’
‘I think Daddy will be seeing Mr Killigrew very soon, Mammie,’ Morwen said quickly. She had no intention of saying any more about the other business. But she was reluctant to leave, and was still there, discussing curtains and bedspreads for the new house, when Hal came storming in.
‘Has our Morwen told ’ee, dar?’ he said at once.
Bess smiled, misunderstanding. ‘Of course. Isn’t it wonderful, Hal?’
His slow anger erupted in disbelief.
‘Wonderful? Have you lost your senses, woman?’
He saw immediately that she didn’t know all of it, and told her Morwen’s news in short, staccato sentences. Bess rounded on her daughter.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’
‘I – I wanted to tell you the other news, Mammie—’
‘What other news?’ Hal barked. ‘It had best be summat good to offset all this!’
Morwen told him quickly, and heard him laugh shortly.
‘Oh ah, and ’twould be a right time for we Tremaynes to move into a new house, wouldn’t it? Right into a snug little house the boss puts at our disposal, so we’re on easy street while the rest of the clayworkers exist as best they can on strike money from the fund!’
Bess’s face whitened. ‘You speak as though a strike’s a certainty, Hal—’
‘If the rest be true, then don’t ’ee doubt it, woman,’ he growled. ‘And you can say goodbye to any notions of moving out o’ here until ’tis all settled.’
Morwen could see the sick disappointment on her mother’s face, and shared it with her.
‘Mr Killigrew will find a way out of it, Daddy—’
‘With his clever son talking about bringing in new machinery and throwing workers out of their jobs?’ Hal was in no mood to listen to reason. ‘This is the thin end o’ the wedge, you’ll see.’
‘With rail tracks, there’ll be more work in digging out and laying tracks, won’t there? You always said the waggons needed replacing wi’ rail tracks for the mens’ safety—’
‘Whose side are you on, Morwen?’ Hal snapped.
Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I’m on nobody’s side!’
‘’Tis time you chose, then. You can’t sit on both sides o’ the fence at the same time—’
Morwen jumped to her feet, her voice tight with fury.
‘I seem to have become the scapegoat in all this! I came here with some news for you and I wanted to make Mammie pleased about the house, and it was for our Sam and Dora too. It was because of the house that I agreed to work for Charles Killigrew! It was for all of you. You know I didn’t want to go there!’
Bess and Hal glanced at one another, and Bess put her arm round Morwen’s shoulder.
‘Don’t take on so, my lamb. When tempers have cooled, your Daddy will see that you did what you thought was right. As for the house, it was kind of Mr Killigrew, though I don’t like the thought of my girl taking bribes. We’ll have to see how things go on before we decide.’
‘There’s no decision to be made,’ Hal snapped. ‘I’ll not be called a boss’s man.’
Bess sighed, but she was more concerned right now with her daughter’s distraught face.
‘Tell me the truth, Morwen. Is it so awful at Killigrew House? If so, then you must come home at once. You always have a place here with us.’
Morwen swallowed. No, it wasn’t awful there. She wasn’t unhappy, but neither was she particularly happy, except at certain times… she wouldn’t think of those now. She tried to weigh up the good and bad in seconds, while her mother waited for her answer.
She had so much at Killigrew House. Status and pride, a good home with no worries. Clothes on her back and payment enough to buy little feminine trinkets she’d never owned before. She was Miss Morwen to the kitchen staff. She slept in a large room of her own, and if the sheets weren’t quite silk, then they were soft to her skin. She knew she could never return here. It was a lesson poignantly learned. You could never go back…
She hugged her mother so that she wouldn’t see the truth in her eyes.
‘I’m all right, Mammie,’ she said huskily. ‘Mr Killigrew’s been very kind to me. I just wish everyone knew him like I do—’
‘Everyone’s going to see un in a very different light if this tale of yourn gets about,’ Hal said grimly. ‘We’ll pray to God it stays buttoned up for the present, and comes to nothing.’
* * *
He discovered the futility of his prayers a few hours after Morwen had left for Killigrew House. Sam and the younger boys were indoors by then, the story told to them, and Hal was pacing the cottage floor like a cat walking on hot coals. Every nerve-end was tensed, as though he waited for he knew not what to happen.
They all became aware of the fast-growing noise outside at the same time. He and Sam reached the window together, recoiling at the jostling band of men heading for the Tremayne cottage, faces black with fury.
‘Christ Almighty!’ Hal didn’t often blaspheme, but this visitation warranted it. The crowd was led by Gilbert Dark and the captains from Number Three and Four clay works. Hal knew instantly that somehow the story had leaked out. He threw open his cottage door before he had the indignity of having it battered down. Gil Dark roared out at him above the shouting of the clayworkers.
‘Now then Hal Tremayne, it seems you be in the boss’s ear-hole from your young whipper-snapper’s tale
s. What’s all this talk of rail tracks doin’ the waggoners out o’ their jobs, and new machinery coming in and making half the workers idle? And if Killigrew means to stop the wage rises, then we mean to stop working for un, and that’s a promise! ’
The bellows of approval from the others drowned out any more words, while Hal was still taking in the fact that Freddie must have heard himself and Morwen talking and got puffed up with his own importance at relaying the tale. And getting half of it wrong… the boy needed a thrashing, but that could wait. It was more urgent to calm down the men.
Gil Dark was a strike-monger. Hal could see he’d already whipped the clayworkers up into a frenzy. If the men had got so incensed on the march to town about the slowness of the wage rises, it was nothing to their fury if the money didn’t appear at all.
‘I know no more than the rest of you,’ Hal shouted, to be immediately hollered down in disbelief.
‘Why don’t you bastards shut up and let my Daddy speak?’ Sam roared back. ‘You came here to hear him speak, so listen, damn you all!’
Gil Dark flapped his hands for quiet, and the shouts died to a growl as he taunted Hal and his eldest son.
‘All right, boss’s man. We’re listening!’
Bess knew how Hal would hate the insult. Her heart beat like a drum as she heard the vibrato in Hal’s normally quiet voice, and knew he’d be sick to his gut at being forced into this, when it was none of his doing. She saw how Freddie cowered at the back of the cottage, and would personally box his ears later, she thought grimly.
‘I’ve been told nothing by Killigrew, and ’tis only rumours—’ Hal was shouted down at once.
‘Rumours be mighty powerful bedfellows! We want the truth on it. We want our jobs and fair pay for a fair day’s graft, and you can tell Killigrew our terms or we strike —’
Roars of agreement followed.
‘What good will it do to strike?’ Hal was as white-hot as the rest of them now. ‘Strikes never won anything, and the bosses allus come out best. Any fool knows that—’
Killigrew Clay Page 17
