‘I’d rather be here with you,’ she lied, but she didn’t meet her mother’s eyes as she spoke.
‘Let’s get these potatoes ready for the soup,’ Bess said briskly. ‘There’s bread to dip in it, so let’s be thankful for what we’ve got. I hope our Matt’s faring as well, wherever he is. I suppose we should be glad we’ve one less mouth to feed in these hard times.’
Morwen guessed that her mother’s thoughts were very mixed on that score. Bess missed Matthew more than she admitted, and Morwen gave her mother a quick hug.
‘He’ll be all right if I know our Matt,’ she said huskily. ‘He’ll come home the fine gentleman one of these days, you’ll see, Mammie!’
She didn’t altogether believe it, any more than Bess did, but neither of them would admit it.
* * *
They would have been even more alarmed if they had heard the waves of excitement in Falmouth that night. From kiddleywink to kiddleywink the word spread like forest flames. A ship had been sighted down the coast a little way, heaving and rolling, and listing heavily to starboard as the gales pushed her nearer and nearer to the jagged black rocks. There was going to be a wrecking, and Jude Pascoe’s greedy little eyes were alight with thoughts of it.
‘This is it, Matt! By the end o’ the night, we’ll be rich! No more grubbing about on filthy trawler decks. We can live the good life for a while.’
‘What about the poor devils on the ship?’
Jude shrugged. ‘They’re no concern of ours. Spoils of the sea are there for the taking, and ’tis you and me who’ll be in on the taking this time. Unless you’re turning chicken, o’ course!’
‘Nobody calls me chicken,’ Matt snapped.
‘Then let’s get some sacking to put round ourselves and be on our way. We’re in for a cold wet night, but ’twill be worth it by tomorrow morning. We could even buy our passage on that ship for America you’ve been dreaming about,’ he taunted Matt, knowing how often his thoughts had strayed in that direction.
‘We could even do that,’ Matt agreed, putting his uncertainty behind him. Anyway, there were enough of them now, making their way south along the coast to where the floundering ship had been sighted. The sailors would hopefully wade ashore or be able to cling to the wreckage and be saved by those on shore. He was naïve enough to believe it.
Some hours later, frozen through, and wishing himself anywhere but on a miserable stretch of moorland above the churning sea, Matt began to reverse his thoughts. He was surrounded by a vast crowd of men, women and children, all intent on watching for the first sign of merchandise bobbing about on the huge seas that crashed onto the rocks. White spume cascaded over those too impatient to wait above and already crouched on the rocky beach to claim their spoils, and finally Jude grabbed at his shoulder, pulling Matt behind him to scramble down the cliff, stiff and aching in every limb.
‘Come on,’ he said harshly. ‘We ain’t been here all night for some other buggers to take what’s rightfully ours!’
‘You can hardly call it that!’ Matt said.
Listening to the jeers of his fellow wreckers all night, and the cheers whenever the stricken ship lurched still nearer to the churning water, he began to feel sickened by what was happening and what he knew now was inevitable. There was no intention of saving the poor wretches whose occasional cries for help could be heard in a small lull in the thundering waves. They were as doomed as their ship, and Matt would be as guilty as anyone here of leaving them to drown.
‘What d’you think will happen to that fine French brandy and wine if we don’t take it?’ Jude demanded. ‘Look around you, Matt Tremayne. We’re all wreckers here, all tarred wi’ the same brush, so don’t put on your fine airs now. ’Tis too late for that—’
Whatever else he might have said was lost in a sudden mighty roar from the throats of the wreckers. They seemed to rise up behind him and Jude in one surging mass as the ship suddenly heaved over, creaking and gurgling as though with some hideous death rattle as it was enveloped in the foaming sea.
The wreckers almost knocked Matt down in their rush to retrieve the ship’s cargo as it was unleashed from the holds. Brandishing sticks and flaring torches, they rushed to the beach and out thigh-deep into the water. Wherever they met the unfortunate sailors they crashed them about their heads, to Matt’s growing horror. Survivors would tell the tale, Jude hollered in Matt’s ear as the two of them were pushed and pulled with all the rest, part of them whether they wanted to be or not.
And Matt did not want to be with them. He panicked, seeing for a minute his mother’s face in the greedy caricature of the hag alongside him, screaming to kill the bastards before they got ashore and roused the preventive men… his mother would disown him if she ever dreamed he could associate with scum like these, Matt thought in sickened shame…
‘Look out, Matt!’ Jude suddenly shouted as he floundered in the sucking waves, his hands grabbing the bottles of French brandy that slid by him and losing them just as quickly. Matt turned his head, in time to see a sailor staggering ashore, terror rolling his eyes. The sailor saw Matt at the same time, bent and grabbed a piece of rock and slammed it against Matt’s head. It rocked his senses for a minute, and then he knew it was a case of survival between the two of them.
He ducked and weaved as the rock came for him again, and knew raw fear for the first time in his life. The breath was ragged and painful in his chest. It was the sailor’s life or his. He grabbed at the man’s throat, squeezing, pressing, feeling the pulse in his neck and almost ready to puke. He could hardly see for rain and spray and tears, and couldn’t have said which was which. He was killing a man, and it burned into his conscience even as he did it…
Suddenly the sailor went down silently, his body limp in Matt’s hands. Matt couldn’t stop himself from falling, swallowing sea water and nearly blinded by it. It seemed an eternity before he felt strong hands hauling him off the sailor’s body, to which he seemed to have become attached like a leech.
‘Christ, but you nearly throttled him,’ Jude said in admiration. ‘I finished him off for you, Matt. I grabbed some poor bastard’s knife and stuck him in the back. He won’t bother anybody again.’
Matt retched, spewing into the already tainted sea. It was a nightmare and he was never going to wake up… he felt as if he must slide about in this bloodied water for ever. It was his penance… he ducked his head beneath the freezing water as though to rid himself of the sight of the wreckers and their victims, only to be dragged back to the surface again and onto the shingle beach.
‘What are you trying to do?’ Jude yelled in his ear. ‘Have ’ee found summat worth saving down there?’
Not any more, Matt wanted to scream at him. There was only the remnants of a man who wouldn’t be returning to his woman after a sojourn at sea. He felt like weeping…
‘Preventers!… Preventers!…’
The words suddenly rippled through the wreckers as the shrill whistles of the Preventive Men were heard above the noise of it all.
‘Bastards! Before we’ve had a chance to get anything worth taking,’ Jude said savagely. ‘Quick. Let’s get away before they pin this murder on us. We won’t be the only ones guilty of it this night, but they’ll be looking for scapegoats once they find the bodies floating.’
Gasping and near to sobbing, Matt followed Jude up the cliff, scrabbling for footholds and near to collapsing with fear and fatigue. Was this what they all found so exhilarating? This shameful night would be a permanent scar on his mind. He would never be able to face his father again. The guilt must surely be written in letters a foot high all over him.
Once he and Jude reached the moors they crouched silently for a few moments until it seemed safe to move on, with the Preventers’ activity all concentrated on the beach below. Other wreckers sped by them, some with spoils, some blaspheming at their untimely interruption. And he was one of them, thought Matt sickeningly. He was just as bad as any of them.
‘I’ve got to get
away,’ he said in a wild panic. Jude’s hand clamped over his mouth as they knelt panting to get their breath. Jude’s voice was as harsh as Matt’s, and he knew that Jude was as scared as himself.
‘Ain’t that what we’re doing, toe-rag?’
Matt clutched at his arm, digging his fingers into the cold flesh.
‘I mean right away,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t face any of my family after this, and I’ve no wish to be hounded by the Preventive men or sent to gaol. There’s a ship bound for America, Jude, that’s looking for hands. I mean to be on it, and you can come with me or not.’
‘Why not?’ Jude said slowly. ‘I’ve been pissed on by my uncle and cousin for long enough. They wanted to be rid of me, and now they can be rid of me for good. I’m with ’ee, Matt!’
They sped on in the darkness, under cover of the driving rain and scudding low cloud over the moors. Matt’s heart thudded wildly, but somehow it was as though his whole life had been leading up to this. He’d always been the dreamer in his family, and his yearning to be different had almost led him to disaster. He felt a gnawing pain that he might never see his parents and his brothers and his dear Morwen ever again, but it was the price he had to pay.
If he stayed, the price might be much higher, he thought grimly, remembering the face of the sailor he thought he’d killed. He had as good as killed him, he thought. The blame was shared between him and Jude, and in that they were bound together. They had to leave Cornwall and England, whatever the pangs, and as soon as possible. The ship was due to leave Falmouth in two days’ time, providing the weather improved, and there would be two extra hands aboard when she sailed.
There was only one thing Matt insisted on, when he and Jude were steaming in front of a meagre fire in their lodgings a while later. He refused to simply disappear off the face of the earth without letting his family know what had happened to him, and grudgingly Jude said he may as well send his mother word as well. They arranged it cleverly.
Not until the morning the ship sailed did they give the notes in care of a coachman travelling between Falmouth and Truro. Jude had sniggered when they’d seen the coach depart.
‘That’ll set the cat among the pigeons,’ he sneered. ‘I never did like those Carricks, thinking themselves above everybody else, but Richard Carrick will feel obliged to deliver the notes. That’s one thing about our so-called betters, Matt, they’re sticklers for doing the right thing. We needn’t bother our heads about ’em again. We’re as good as on our way, boy!’
Matt’s thoughts were too private to be shared with Jude just then. He had tied himself to this lout, but whatever Jude’s feelings, Matt was already missing his family, and mourning them as if they were dead. Which they might just as well be to him. And they might just as well think of him in the same way, because it was unlikely that they were destined to meet again.
* * *
Richard Carrick was too busy to ride to St Austell himself with the two envelopes the coachman delivered to his chambers two days later. He paid a boy a few coppers to take the notes to their destinations, one to Jude’s mother at Miss Emily Ford’s house, and one to Miss Morwen Tremayne, care of Killigrew House, where Matt firmly believed his sister to be still employed, and whom he had thought the best one to tell his news.
As the ship left Falmouth harbour and out into the broad expanse of water beyond, Matt looked back at the receding coastline, his heart full. What he did now he felt obliged to do, for his family’s sake as much as his own. If the murder of the French sailor had been traced to him, his father would never get over the disgrace of it.
Sadly, Matt knew that he had already gone far away from them all. He didn’t know how far. If he had been aware that his family was caught up in a strike at Killigrew Clay, he may have thought twice about his decision to leave. But he didn’t know, any more than Jude did. Falmouth might have been as far from St Austell as America, for all that the news filtered through so slowly.
It was better that he should disappear out of their lives for ever than bring disgrace and pain to their door. But as the shores of Cornwall merged into a misty blueness, he knew he had never loved them more.
Chapter Eighteen
Richard Carrick had been unwise in his choice of messenger boy. The urchin met some skallywags and promptly forgot the two notes stuffed inside his shirt until it was too late that day to deliver them. It was several days later when they began to feel itchy against his skin, and he started out for St Austell. It mattered little to the boy. He’d had his payment, and bits of paper he couldn’t read were of no consequence to him. They were for rich folk who lived in big houses like the one called Killigrew House, outside which he gawped and hesitated, before handing them in to a skivvy.
* * *
Inside the house a fierce argument was taking place. Ben had been to Gorran’s chambers that morning to try to get Daniel Gorran to back him in the strike settlement, but though the old man sympathised with Ben’s opinions, he said tersely that while Charles Killigrew’s health lasted, he was the man in charge, and new-fangled ideas must wait.
‘Your loyalty does you credit, but in other words, you’re saying that my father has to die before progress can be made,’ Ben had said bitterly.
‘That’s an unpleasant way of looking at it, Ben—’
‘But nonetheless true,’ he’d snapped. ‘I can see I’ll get no help from you, Daniel, and I’ll bid you good-day.’ He’d gone out into the crisp October morning, breathing heavily, furious with frustration. He felt at odds with everything. He and Charles constantly argued. His aunt still irritated his father by her visits to the house in the hope of being reinstated as housekeeper, and finding fault with the new one, Mrs Tilley.
And he missed Morwen more than he could say. He hadn’t seen her since the strike began. His father had been adamant that neither of them should visit the works until the men’s tempers had cooled, but it was getting them nowhere. He had taken one positive step though. He had been to Truro and roughed out the article with Tom Askhew. It should be appearing any time, and when it did, Ben would know that Tom and Jane had left Cornwall. More upsets to come, he thought grimly…
He strode off by way of the Killigrew Clay offices, and stopped short. A small crowd outside was being pacified by two constables. When they saw Ben they turned on him.
‘There’s the son, Constable! Sort it out wi’ him and let’s have some order in the town! We won’t have ruffians disturbing our peace because of the Killigrews, however important they think they be!’
‘What’s happened?’ Ben said, pushing through the angry crowd. As soon as he was near enough, he saw for himself. Windows had been broken and stones hurled through them. There were daubings on the walls of the offices.
‘Does anyone know who did this?’ Ben demanded.
‘They say ’twas a gang o’ clayworkers, Mr Killigrew,’ one of the constables said. ‘Came here early this morning and smashed up the place—’
‘’Twill be our homes next if you don’t sort out your own affairs, Killigrew,’ the crowd became menacing, and the constables puffed themselves up and moved closer.
‘Do you think we like this any more than you do?’ Ben said angrily.
‘Ah, but ’tain’t your home that’s wrecked, be it, sir?’
‘Nor yours,’ Ben retorted. He turned to the constables. ‘I’ll send someone to board up the windows before any more vandalism’s done, if you’ll stand guard in the meantime.’
‘I think ’tis a wise move, sir,’ one of them said meaningly. The onlookers didn’t look too savoury themselves, and Ben guessed that there’d be few fittings left in the offices if these rogues were let loose. Ben nodded and pushed his way through, more alarmed than he showed.
This was the beginning, and the clayworkers must be getting desperate. It was sheer folly to let the strike continue with no communication between the two sides. He rode home in a fury, his horse lathering by the time he reached Killigrew House. He slid off the animal’
s back and marched into the house.
His father stood by the window in the drawing-room, his back stooped. He had become oddly shrunk of late, despite being a powerfully made man. Ben ignored the alarm he felt on that account. There were more urgent things to be sorted out. Before he could tell Charles about the offices, his father turned, holding out two grubby notes for Ben to see.
‘Read these,’ Charles said harshly. ‘The envelopes were so tattered they were almost in shreds, and the paper’s none too sweet. One’s meant for your aunt, the other for Morwen Tremayne.’
It was only the mention of her name that stopped Ben impatiently discarding the notes. He took them and read them quickly. He was glad to see the back of his cousin, but he guessed what Matt Tremayne’s departure would mean to his family. In that instant he knew what he had to do.
‘I’ll take the note to Morwen myself, Father—’
‘You will not!’ Charles snapped. ‘You know my views on going there just yet. Give them time to sweat—’
‘Freeze is more likely,’ Ben said angrily. ‘Do you know what they’ve done today? They’ve broken windows in our offices and daubed the walls—’
‘What?’ Charles roared. ‘The bastards! This calls for an extra week before we meet them—’
‘No, it does not.’ Ben glared back. ‘I shall take this note to Morwen, and I’ll talk to the men. Short of locking me up, you won’t stop me. This farce has gone on long enough. Since I understand family feeling, which you apparently do not, I’ll pass on Jude’s note to my aunt too, though as far as I’m concerned, it’s good riddance to him.’
Charles’s face was puce with rage, but Ben didn’t stop to see it any longer. He wasn’t a child to be treated as such. The days when his father could dictate to him were over.
He stopped only to saddle a fresh horse, and rode to Miss Ford’s house, slipping the note through the letter-box. Now for the Tremayne cottage, Ben thought grimly, and wondered just what kind of reception he would receive there.
Killigrew Clay Page 21
