Family Ties

by Family Ties (retail) (epub)

  And now Randell E Wainwright had come into their lives, and his presence was a delight and a respite. While he was in the house, Ben lost the dour expression that so often spoiled his handsome good looks, turning him into an old man before his time. Ran could cajole and tease, and make everybody laugh, and the children adored him.

  ‘I can’t think why Matt hasn’t brought Louisa and Cresswell for a visit in all these years,’ he said one evening soon after his arrival. ‘Louisa’s own parents died some years ago, and I know she’s always been interested in her husband’s Cornish background.’

  ‘Oh, I wish you could persuade him, Ran!’

  Morwen clasped her hands together, the thought of a visit from Matt making her eyes moisten, the thought that this delightful man could be the catalyst to bring her adored Matt home again, making him her champion.

  Randell watched her across the dinner table, her glorious eyes like blue fire in the candlelight, her mouth open and inviting in that wonderful smile of hers, the deep neckline of her russet gown accentuating the soft curves of her breasts and her tiny waist. Dear God, he thought, did she know what effect she could have on a man? Did her husband not know, or appreciate such a woman? He glanced at Ben, teasing the enchanting six-year-old Charlotte into eating her meat pie, and felt a sharp envy of this man who had so much, so much…

  ‘Ben, did you hear what Ran said? He’ll write to Matt and suggest a visit to us. Wouldn’t it be marvellous?’

  ‘Have we got many American cousins, Mother?’ Walter asked eagerly.

  At fourteen, he was so like his own father, Sam Tremayne, that it sometimes took Morwen’s breath away. Already Walter was tall and broad, and destined to break a few girlish hearts, she guessed. And mad keen to work at the clayworks, alongside his grandfather Hal.

  So far Ben had refused to allow it, even though the clay was in his blood, as it was in all of them. Walter was the son of the clay boss, and therefore couldn’t be given the menial job of kiddley-boy, making the tea and running around at everyone’s beck and call, no matter that that was the way all Morwen’s brothers had begun. If Walter did want to work with the clay, it must wait until he was older. Besides, he had his schooling to finish, and there might be a college place for him yet.

  Undoubtedly, the old stories about the clayworks intrigued all the children. None of them was aware that the real parents of the older three were dead. They were brought up as Killigrews, and it had been decided long ago that they would take the Killigrew name. It was simpler for everyone.

  ‘Only one, I’m afraid,’ Morwen gave Walter his answer. ‘He’s the same age as Justin—’

  ‘Only ten! He won’t want to play with cissy things, will he?’ Albert added scornfully, which brought an immediate retort from Justin.

  ‘I don’t play with cissy things!’

  ‘When will he be coming, Mother?’ Primmy clamoured, her pretty flushed face already showing signs of the lovely young woman she would be, even at eleven years old.

  ‘Will he talk funny, like Uncle Ran?’ Charlotte piped, at which they all laughed, and once again Randell envied them their closeness, their private circle in which he sometimes felt very much the outsider.

  As if suddenly aware of this, Morwen smiled into his eyes.

  ‘I don’t think Uncle Ran talks funny, Charlotte. Just differently, that’s all. If everyone talked exactly the same, we’d never be able to tell people apart, would we?’

  Ben spoke coolly from the end of the table. ‘My wife has a special kind of philosophy all her own, Ran. You’ll grow to understand it in time.’

  He understood it now. It was warm and funny and wonderful, and it was one of the things that had charmed him from the first moment he saw her. And showing how much her every word and gesture delighted him was one of the things he had to keep under control whenever she was near him. She didn’t belong to him, and never could. But it didn’t stop him wanting her.

  ‘But when will Cresswell come to Cornwall?’ Justin said impatiently, his handsome young face betraying the impatience of both his parents. Morwen sighed. He was her darling, yet he could try her patience more than any of the others. Justin wanted the moon, and he wanted it now…

  ‘Nobody said he was coming,’ Ben said. ‘Why don’t you listen? All Randell said was that he’d write and suggest it. Are you incapable of understanding plain English?’

  ‘Ben, please—’ Morwen hated the way he belittled their son. It was almost as though he forced himself into doing it, in his determination to show no favouritism towards his own. It was ridiculous and unnecessary, and, as so often happened, it caused a wave of embarrassment to go around the dinner table. It was even worse because Randell Wainwright must be able to sense the sudden atmosphere.

  ‘I shall write tonight,’ Ran said quickly to Justin. ‘And if you wish, you may write a little note to your cousin Cresswell, and I’ll send it with my letter.’

  Justin’s face beamed with pleasure. ‘Will you really? Thank you, Uncle Ran!’

  Ben scraped his chair back from the table.

  ‘Well, if we’ve all finished, it’s time the children went to bed. You must wait until tomorrow to write your note, Justin. It’s too late now, and it will keep the others awake while you pore over your spelling. Tomorrow will be soon enough.’

  Sometimes, Morwen thought silently, you can be a prize pig, Ben Killigrew. She caught Ran’s eye and turned away quickly. Disloyalty in one’s own head was one thing. Knowing that another person was aware of it and sympathized, was something else.

  * * *

  ‘Jack!’ Morwen said in pleased surprise next morning. ‘We don’t often get a visit from you! Is Annie well? And the twins?’

  ‘Everybody’s well,’ Jack hid his impatience, knowing Morwen’s small show of sarcasm was deserved. He wasn’t one for visiting. ‘Freddie seemed to think it was time I called on Mammie, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and tell you we’ll be glad to come for the tea party on Sunday.’

  ‘Good. Then you’ll be able to meet our American cousin.’

  ‘Isn’t he here now then?’ Jack was disappointed.

  ‘Ben’s taken him to see Daniel Gorran this morning. Ran’s quite keen to work with him for a while, and Ben says Mr Gorran’s been saying he’ll have to give up soon and hand over to a younger man. It’s possible that Ran will take over Gorran’s Accounting Chambers.’

  ‘Can he add up in pounds and pence then? I thought he’d only know about those new-fangled dollars—’

  Morwen burst out laughing. ‘Oh Jack, you are funny. Dollars aren’t new, only to us, that’s all. Ran was explaining it all to the children last night—’

  ‘Your Ran seems to have charmed everybody from the looks of it.’ He watched her closely, and noted how her colour rose.

  ‘He’s not my Ran, Jack, so don’t be so silly.’ But just as it was hard for her to hide anything from him, she saw the anxiety in his face, and smothered her defensive tone. ‘Shall we have some tea? The children are at school and Charlotte’s having a nap, so we can be cosy the way we used to be.’

  ‘In this barn of a place?’ At her reproachful look, Jack’s prickliness vanished. ‘All right then, our Morwen, let’s be cosy.’

  ‘And you can tell me what’s wrong,’ she said calmly.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘Then tell me what’s right, and I’ll try to work out why a man with nothing wrong should be frowning at his sister whom he’s ridden miles to see.’

  She rang for Mrs Horn to bring the tea, and when they were settled with it, and a plate of fruit scones baked that day, she tried once more.

  ‘Are you going to tell me, or are we going to sit here making petty talk the way the fine townsladies do?’

  Jack grinned. ‘Do ’ee remember how you used to call Jane Askhew “Miss Finelady”, Morwen? When you thought she and Ben were going to be wed, and you were all hoity-toity because of it—’

  ‘I was not!’

  �
�No? What about the night we first set foot in this house, when old Charles Killigrew asked us to supper, and you nearly died with shame because your Miss Finelady Jane asked you what a bal maiden did?’

  Morwen hadn’t thought of that night in years. Her life had changed so dramatically since then. She had never imagined then that one day she would be Ben Killigrew’s lady. She had been so certain that his heart was already lost to that young Truro girl who was born a real lady, whose white hands caressed the pianoforte keys as though she touched a lover’s skin.

  ‘I didn’t know you boys even noticed such a thing,’ Morwen murmured.

  Jack laughed wickedly. ‘Oh, we did. Well, Matt was too taken up with Jude Pascoe, I daresay, and Freddie was too young to care for anything but the food. But Sam and me—’

  She saw the sudden look of pain on Jack’s face.

  ‘You still miss him, don’t you?’

  ‘’Course I do. That’s a daft question to ask, our Morwen. Didn’t you miss your friend Celia for years after she drowned herself in the claypit? Time makes no difference to missing people, do it? Ask Mammie about that, and see how her eyes soften when she thinks of our Matt—’

  ‘All right, I understand!’

  Jack didn’t often go on so. There must be something troubling him, something he couldn’t talk about, not yet. As if the small silence forced him to speak, he muttered almost beneath his breath.

  ‘And if our Sam were here, he’d know what I should do. I could tell him things—’ he stopped abruptly.

  ‘Tell me,’ Morwen said simply.

  She saw her brother’s face redden. He saw his sister, serene and beautiful, fulfilled as she was always meant to be, a lovely young wife and mother, and everything seemed to curl up inside him. He got to his feet, clattering his cup in his saucer.

  ‘I can’t. You’re not a man,’ he said brutally.

  ‘Then tell Ben,’ she said swiftly, and got no reply.

  * * *

  Long after Jack had gone back to Truro, Morwen brooded on his words. She had thought there might be some small domestic trouble. Jack was the kind to let problems fester instead of bringing them out into the open, the way Morwen always did. Though she had to admit she had been reluctant to share her anxiety over her father with Ben.

  But now she believed Jack’s worries went far deeper than some slight disturbance at home. She ached for him, but if he wouldn’t tell her, she couldn’t force him.

  Perhaps on Sunday there might be some opportunity for Ben to take him aside and get him to confide in him. She prayed so. Ben hadn’t always had much time for Jack. She shrugged, hoping things would sort themselves out, and in the meantime she was going to see her mother that afternoon. Bess may have got some sense out of Jack.

  Once a week, Morwen and her mother met at Fielding’s Tea Rooms in St Austell. It was an arrangement they had continued for years, a little outing in the middle of the week that they each looked forward to enormously. Bess was there first that day, which was unusual. Morwen always tried to get there before her, to order the tea and fruit buns, and to settle the bill in advance before her mother had a chance to do so.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ Morwen said warmly, kissing her soft cheek in greeting. Bess was comfortably rounded, a little stiff in the joints, as she put it, but still going on fair to middling, thank you.

  ‘Did you see Jack yesterday?’ Morwen went on, nodding to Miss Fielding to bring the refreshments. Bess gave a small snort.

  ‘That I did, and why he bothered to come, I can’t think. All he did was mope about the house as if he’d lost sixpence and found tuppence. Your Daddy wanted to see ’un, but Jack couldn’t wait for the end of his shift, said he had to be back in Truro before afternoon.’

  ‘He does have a business to run, Mammie—’

  ‘Oh aye, the boat-building,’ Bess said vaguely. ‘Well, never mind all that. I daresay we’ll be seeing him and Annie and the little ’uns on Sunday. Has Ben said anything to ’ee, Morwen?’

  Morwen looked at her in exasperation. ‘Well, we do talk to each other! What about?’ Her sarcasm was lost on her mother.

  ‘Your Daddy says there’s been uproar at Bult and Vine’s because of some scaggies working nights and pinching clay loads for their own gain.’

  ‘What? They wouldn’t be so stupid—’

  ‘They would. I don’t need to tell ’ee that some of the young clayworkers are reckless enough to do anything for an extra shilling or two. Bult and Vine’s took on some roughnecks from over Redruth way a while ago, and they’m inciting the rest of the young ’uns to do a bit of scaggying. Ben’s afeared it’s spreading to Killigrew Clay, but he can’t prove nothing yet.’

  Morwen shuddered, remembering the last time such a thing had happened at Killigrew Clay. All those years ago… she remembered the hysterical tales of the badly-loaded clay waggons hurtling through the town and the resulting disaster, with lives lost, and the destruction of the very bakery that was now Fielding’s Tea Rooms in which they were sitting.

  ‘But there’s plenty of work now. The clay is fetching a fine price—’

  ‘That’s as may be, but there will allus be they who are greedy, my lamb. A few of the scaggies were sacked when they was discovered at it, but some of the regulars refused to work wi’ the rest, and left of their own accord. Bult and Vine’s needed men for the spring despatches, and stupidly took the bad ’uns on again and hoped for the best. The whole business is causing a lot of unrest among our men. So Ben hadn’t told you?’

  ‘No,’ Morwen said shortly. ‘How long have you known of it?’

  Bess thought back. ‘About a week. I daresay you’ve all been too taken up with your visitor for Ben to think of it.’

  Morwen looked at her sceptically. Too taken up with visitors to mention something that could be significant in their lives? Too self-contained to share such a turn of events with his wife, with whom he had always shared the good times and the bad, especially those concerning Killigrew Clay?

  Morwen felt as though an icy band was settling somewhere around her heart, wondering just how far apart they had really grown, so imperceptibly that she had never even noticed it was happening.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the scaggies!’

  Ben looked at the flushed and angry face of his wife when he arrived home that evening. He had spent a wearisome afternoon trying to determine if any of Killigrew’s clay was being filched from under his nose, and the last thing he wanted was to be met by accusations and female tantrums.

  ‘It’s men’s business,’ he said coldly. ‘Will you please pull off my boots for me?’

  She ignored the dusty, booted foot thrust up on to the footstool, and folded her arms tightly across her chest, glowering down at her husband.

  ‘Is that all you think I’m good for? To tug at your boots and grace your table and tuck your children in bed at night? I’m not a skivvy, Ben—’

  ‘Then act like the wife of a gentleman, and pull off my boots before the circulation is cut off completely.’

  The edge in his voice now took away any suggestion of teasing in the words.

  She reached down, tugging at one boot and then the other, and flinging them across the elegant drawing-room.

  ‘That’s a very childish action,’ Ben snapped. ‘And more worthy of young Charlotte than my wife—’

  ‘Your wife – your wifel’ She was incensed now. ‘I’m Morwen, Ben! I’m flesh and blood, not a possession to be brought out and then tidied away when it suits ’ee. I’m the one you share your troubles with – or so I always thought.’

  She couldn’t hide her hurt, especially over this. Didn’t he know – was he so blind that he couldn’t see – that her heart and soul was still entrenched in the fortunes of the clayworks?

  And not because of how grand the Killigrews could become when the demand for clay went well, or if he said jocularly that they must draw in their horns a little if demand fell. The clay was part of he
r life, and had been long before she met Mr High-and-Mighty Ben Killigrew…

  Her own thoughts appalled her. But Ben – even Ben – had come into the works long after Morwen. His father had been the mighty clay boss while Ben prettied his time away in a fancy London college. While Morwen and all her family – every one of them – had been gouging out the soft white substance from the earth to make the Killigrews rich. Oh yes, she was very much a part of it all, and how dare he forget it for one minute.

  ‘I think you forget your place,’ Ben said icily.

  ‘I do not! I forget nothing!’ She flashed at him, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘I remember all the years my Mammie and Daddy gave to Killigrew Clay. I remember how my brother Sam died for it. I remember how Jack and Freddie and me wore our fingers to ribbons in cold and rain and mist to keep your family prosperous. And all for the pittances you saw fit to pay to the likes o’ we!’

  She bit her lip, furious that her lady’s manner was slipping badly. Her heart beat sickeningly at recognizing in Ben’s eyes the disgust at her outburst. Disgust… when once he would have laughed and thought her Cornish ways quaintly charming, folded her in his arms and kissed away the quarrel…

  ‘What is it you want to know?’ He spoke with insulting politeness. ‘Perhaps we had best get it said, and then we may present ourselves for dinner in a reasonable state of harmony. The children will be sent down from the nursery soon, and your visitor will be returning from Gorran’s Chambers.’

  Oh God, when did he become so pompous? Morwen clamped her lips together rather than make an angry retort that Ran Wainwright wasn’t merely her visitor. She knew well enough that it was Matt Tremayne’s sister the American had come to see. Not only her, she thought quickly, but she admitted there was a small truth in Ben’s tart remark.