Jack had gone home to Annie, apprehensive of her reaction to all that he had to tell her. The doctor had supplied items that would seem to deflate any man’s ardour, and a chart on which Annie was to record her monthly happenings, to be doubly sure…
He stumbled and stammered in trying to explain to his wife, while Annie turned the unfamiliar appliance over and over as though it was red-hot. Her mouth began to twitch, and to Jack’s astonishment she began laughing and gasping, and he was laughing just as hysterically.
‘Then you don’t think too badly of me for finding a way, my lamb?’ he said roughly, when the mixture of tears and laughter subsided.
‘I would never think badly of you, Jack.’ She smiled through tears. ‘I’m touched more than I can say that you swallowed your pride and asked Doctor Vestey to put things right for us. It proves how much you love me.’
All the aggressive male feelings he’d had to suppress for weeks began to stir in him. She was his girl, his woman, and he wanted her now.
‘If ’tis proof that you need, then we’d best try out this new-fangled affair, afore I go off the boil,’ Jack teased.
‘And hell will freeze over before that day ever comes,’ Annie replied, and opened her arms to him.
* * *
And now it was Fair-day, and all the younger Tremaynes and the Killigrews were going to be together. The morning was crisp and bright, the excitement rising as coats and bonnets were fastened and boots were laced with shaking fingers. Morwen forgot everything but the excitement of Fair-day: the noise, the colour, the smells, the magic. They would be meeting Annie and Jack and their two little girls, and, hopefully, Freddie would leave his shop in the care of his assistant and join them all. The Tremaynes and the Killigrews were going out on the town.
Ran was going to drive the carriage himself. He had been used to driving heavier vehicles than this in California, he assured Morwen. It would be no problem to control the reins of the two horses, and since the carriage would be left at Jack’s yard, it would be perfectly safe without a groom.
‘Besides, when I take you to show you my house, I don’t want anyone else around,’ Ran added with a smile. ‘I want to be the only one to see your expression when you see what I’m going to buy.’
‘It sounds as if you’ve already decided on it,’ Morwen said, ignoring the dangerous little glow his words gave her. ‘I thought this was to be an inspection to give you my feminine views on the house.’
Ran laughed. ‘So it is. But I don’t have any doubts on that score. I’m perfectly sure that our opinions will be in perfect harmony.’
A little thrill ran through Morwen at the confident words. She couldn’t deny that in most things they were in perfect accord. Their tastes coincided in so many things. They liked the same kind of music, not too heavy, but something with a swing to it. They liked walking on the moors with the wind in their faces, or along a stretch of virginal sand and making their footprints the only ones to mar its surface. In short, they liked everything Morwen had always liked sharing with Ben, the things that Ben had no time for any more.
But this was no day for such unhappy thoughts. The children could barely contain their excitement as the carriage took them away from St Austell and along the high road towards Truro. They merged into a seemingly endless procession of fine carriages and humbler carts, and frequently scattered those who were doggedly walking the twelve miles to Truro in aim of a day’s pleasure.
‘See there, Mama!’ Primmy pointed ahead of them. ‘Are those women the bal maidens from the clayworks? How common they look in their loud clothes.’
Morwen’s anger was as sharp as a knife at the girl’s thoughtless remark. She rounded on her at once.
‘There’s nothing common in doing an honest day’s work, Primmy, nor in dressing up in finery when once they get away from the claypits. ’Tis no pleasure to be working in damp and muck for half the year, and covered in clay dust for the rest of it.’
‘Well, I still think they’re common,’ Primmy said mutinously. She tossed her dark hair, glaring at the three boys giggling at her. Charlotte put her small hand in her mother’s.
‘I’m going to be a bal maiden when I grow up,’ she said confidently. ‘There’s more room for people on the moors.’
The boys hooted at this, while Primmy mocked her small sister, annoyed that she seemed to be getting the worst out of all this.
‘Don’t be a ninny, Charlotte. Daughters of Killigrew Clay owner’s can’t be bal maidens. That’s for people who don’t have any money and live in miserable cottages.’
Morwen felt panic. How could she and Ben have been so foolish not to let the children know of their origins before this? Primmy had been a baby when their parents had died, Walter and Albert still very young, and for them the memory of their old life had faded very quickly.
‘Sometimes I wonder if we ever lived in a cottage,’ Walter said suddenly. His eyes were troubled, and Morwen felt a swift sorrow for him as Primmy burst out laughing now, ridiculing him.
‘What nonsense! Of course we never lived in a cottage! Papa’s father built Killigrew House, and Charlotte was named after him. How stupid you are today!’
Morwen saw Ran’s hand leave the reins and cover hers for a moment. It didn’t help. This was something she had to do alone, and she had to do it now. It didn’t matter where they were. In fact, it was probably better that they were in a fine carriage on their way to Truro Fair, because there was nowhere the children could run and sulk or weep or rage…
But when she started to say the words, they wouldn’t come, and she could only tell part of it after all. The enormity of the knowledge that the older three were her brother Sam’s children, and had been born in the humble cottage on the moors, was too much for them to take in on a sunny October morning without Ben’s support.
‘You’re turning into a snob, Primmy, and it’s something I don’t want to see. As for living in a cottage, there’s nothing so terrible about that. I was born in a cottage, and I lived there with my parents and brothers for many years until I married your father. You can be just as proud of being half Tremaynes as you are Killigrews, all of you.’
At least that wasn’t a lie, even though the Tremayne half didn’t come from her, Morwen thought swiftly. After the first stunned silence, came the choking words from her elder daughter.
‘I don’t believe it! Papa would never have—’
Morwen turned to stare at her reddened face, her eyes steady and unblinking.
‘Papa would never have what?’ Morwen’s voice was hard as steel. ‘Married someone so far beneath him? Someone as common as those bal maidens walking all the way to Truro Fair? Is that what you were about to say, Primmy?’
‘Mother, she’s just being silly,’ Walter said uneasily. ‘But you should have told us. It’s not right for families to have secrets—’
‘I think it’s a bit special, for Father to have picked Mother out of a poor cottage,’ Albert said stoically.
‘It’s not special, it’s awful, you milk-sop!’ Primmy was near to tears now. Justin said nothing, and Charlotte merely looked frightened at this upset in what began as a perfect day.
‘You children need your backsides spanked,’ Ran suddenly put in calmly. ‘Your mother is the most gracious lady I’ve ever met, and what does it matter if she once lived in a hovel or a castle? It all happened before you were born.’
‘Just as long as she wasn’t one of those women!’ Primmy was still vindictive, still determined to have the last word, but in that, she was out of luck. Morwen’s lips tightened. Her chin lifted, and if Ben Killigrew had been there, he would have recognized someone who had once charmed him into wanting her with all the passion he possessed.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Primmy, but that is exactly what I was when I first knew your father,’ Morwen said. ‘My family all worked for Killigrew Clay. Your Grandma Bess and I were bal maidens, Granddad Hal was Pit Captain of Clay One, your Uncle Freddie was a kiddley-boy
, and your – other uncles – were all clayworkers. Now, if you’ve anything more to say about it, let’s have it now, before the whole day is spoiled.’
Her chest ached. She had so nearly said ‘your father had been a clayworker until the proud day he took over from Hal and became Pit Captain of Clay One’. If that knowledge had come out now, on top of everything else, she was sure it would have destroyed Walter and Albert and Primmy. As it was…
‘Mother, we should have been told this before,’ Walter said angrily. ‘We’re not babies any more. You had no right to keep us in the dark all these years.’
‘No, my love. You’re not babies any more.’ Morwen knew the truth of it as she looked into the fiercely blue eyes of Sam’s eldest. The pain inside her deepened. Someday they would need to be told all of it. That they weren’t even of her flesh, nor Ben’s.
It was something they had avoided mentioning all these years, wanting to compensate for the fact that the three little ones had been left orphaned. And Morwen had wanted them so much, and had looked on them as her own for so long…
She realized that Ran had turned the horses and was driving the carriage away from the main stream of traffic, on to a waste patch of land. He pulled the horses to a stop, and turned round in his seat to study the belligerent young faces.
‘You’ve all had your say, and now I’m going to have mine,’ he said. ‘Just because I talk with a funny accent and come from a different country doesn’t mean I’m not concerned with what happens to you. I haven’t known you long, but I love you all as my family. Do you agree with that?’
‘Of course we do,’ Primmy said. ‘It’s not you who’s deceived us, Uncle Ran—’
He smiled gently at her proud young face, so like Morwen’s at that moment that a family relationship was unmistakable.
‘Get those pompous words out of your head, honey, and think hard about what I just said. I come from a different background and I talk differently, but it doesn’t change the person I am, and I hope, the person you love and respect. It doesn’t change what your mother is to you either.’
Morwen was silent, seeing the way Ran’s mind was working, and praying the children would understand. All this had blown up in a moment, and she was still reeling with the shock of it all. But she needed someone else to cope with it now. She needed Ran’s common sense. She saw Primmy glance at her uneasily, and knew the battle was half-won, temporarily at least.
‘I still think we should have been told,’ Primmy muttered stubbornly.
‘Sometimes grown-ups do things that they think are for the best. Your parents did it to protect you. Have they ever been cruel to you, or hurt you? Haven’t they always been loving parents?’ Ran went on relentlessly.
‘Oh, can’t we forget it, Primmy? Why do you always have to question things?’ Albert was getting impatient. ‘What does it really matter if Mother was once a bal maiden? She doesn’t dress in that funny way now, does she? She doesn’t talk as funny as Grandma Bess!’
‘That’s true,’ Walter managed a grin, echoed by Justin.
Morwen felt her mouth twitch. Oh, if they only knew, how hard it had been to train her voice to that of the cultured lady deserving to be Ben Killigrew’s wife! It had been easy enough for the young Walter and Albert to lose the rough accents they didn’t even remember now, but it hadn’t been so easy for Morwen.
‘Mama’s never cruel,’ Charlotte said indignantly. ‘She’s lovely and soft and pretty.’ She climbed on to Morwen’s lap, winding her chubby arms around her mother’s neck. She hugged Morwen so tightly that the stinging tears threatened to fall.
‘Well, if everybody’s agreed on that, what do you say we all go to Truro Fair and enjoy ourselves?’ Ran spoke briskly. ‘If we don’t hurry, the day will be half over before we get there, and this lovely, soft, pretty lady deserves a day off from being at your beck and call all the time.’
Justin leaned forward. ‘We do love you, Mother,’ he whispered in her ear, and sat back hastily before the others would think him too feeble for words.
But Morwen treasured the moment, and resisted the uneasy knowledge that it was her own son, and her own sweet Charlotte, who had been the most generous. Sam’s children were still Sam’s children after all.
* * *
A couple of hours later, the Killigrew carriage had been safely stabled at Boskelly’s boatyard in the care of Jack’s stable-lad. Jack and Annie had welcomed the St Austell relatives, and their little girls, Sarah and Tessa, had immediately turned painfully shy until coaxed out of it by Charlotte’s artless chatter.
And Morwen began to breathe a little easier at last. There had been bad moments earlier in the day, and she had missed Ben more than she could say. It had been his place to soothe and calm, and she was enormously grateful to Ran for his tactful handling of the situation, and for not interfering until the time was right.
But now they were all walking the short distance to where the streets of Truro sang with noise and glowed with colour. Truro Fair was a hotchpotch of vendors and stalls selling everything from boot black to exotic silks; there were stilt men, performers of tragic plays, pierrots, hot potato sellers, cheapjacks, magicians, clowns. There was something for everyone, and it was a heady mixture of sights and smells and impressions.
‘There’s Uncle Freddie!’ Justin shouted. He ran nimbly away from the family group, twisting and flying among the crush of people as he glimpsed Freddie Tremayne’s tall handsome figure some distance away. In seconds he was swallowed up in the crowd.
‘Damn the child!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you keep more control of him, Morwen?’
‘I thought he was right beside me,’ she said indignantly.
‘He won’t be far,’ Ran soothed her. ‘I’m sure Freddie caught sight of us, and the two of them will be heading towards each other.’
‘I hope so,’ Morwen said, suddenly apprehensive.
Ben had always been against the children coming here. If anything went amiss now… Her eyes searched frantically for the dark head of her son, bobbing amongst a sea of other heads.
For some crazy reason, she thought of the young, vulnerable boy Freddie had been. How easy it would be for a young boy to fall prey to rogues and abductors in the midst of a raucous crowd. She could almost hear Ben’s words saying as much on the many times the children had tried to persuade him to change his mind. This time, he had given in almost too easily. As if he had too many other things on his mind to be bothered with the responsibility of his own children…
She shook herself angrily, knowing she was letting her imagination run away with her. She did Ben an injustice. And surely there was nothing here to fear on this bright day, and old ghosts were best left undisturbed.
‘Stay right here with everyone else, Morwen,’ Ran ordered. ‘I can see Justin near the hurdy-gurdy man. I’ll fetch the boy back, and give him a good talking-to on the way.’
He thrust his way through the people pressing from all sides, and Morwen saw Jack and Annie glance at one another. She could interpret the look very clearly. The American cousin took a very proprietary interest in the Killigrew children…
Morwen ignored it. As long as Justin was brought back safely, it didn’t matter who reprimanded him, and if Ran was acting like a substitute father, then it was Ben’s own fault for not being here with his children …
Morwen drew in her breath. Dear God, today was Ben’s important day. Today her husband was being honoured by his old school and would become Honorary Governor of Ormsby College. And this was the first moment she had even thought of it. Guilt and horror overcame her. Her eyes sought to find the missing members of her family, as if to blot out the realization. How could she have forgotten.
A new shock held her gaze as if riveted for a second. A face she had hoped never to see again seemed to drift in front of her vision in the crowd. A fleshy face with dark piercing eyes, whose owner quickly turned and appeared to melt away. Morwen stood as if stunned. It couldn’t be Jude Pascoe. Not unles
s he had come back to haunt her…
‘Mama, Uncle Ran’s found Justin and Uncle Freddie too,’ she heard Primmy shout with relief. ‘Can we go and watch the puppets now, Mama? Can we, please?’
Primmy reverted to being Primmy the child again, and Morwen hugged her at once, and said of course they could, provided they all walked in crocodile-fashion, each keeping hold of another.
‘I want to go with Uncle Freddie.’ Justin yelled, quite unrepentant at being hauled back to his family.
‘And I want to stay with Uncle Ran,’ Charlotte howled.
‘We’ll all stay together,’ Ran said. ‘And no nonsense from any of you, do you hear?’
‘Remember what we’re saying, and just don’t go rushing off out of sight,’ Morwen said weakly, unable to think clearly any more.
‘Are you going to take some sweet-drink later on, Morwen?’ Freddie grinned. ‘Or is it too potent for you now that you’re such a fine lady?’
She glanced down at Primmy, who would read the significance in the words now, where once she would just have taken them for more of Freddie’s nonsense. The girl hesitated for a second, and then to Morwen’s surprise, she felt Primmy’s hand curl around hers.
‘My mother’s always been a lady,’ she said, making Morwen’s eyes prickle. And then the haughtiness fell away from her as a painted youth came prancing around them, announcing that the puppet show was about to begin.
‘You go and watch the puppets, while Annie and I take our little ones to see the monkey on a stick and we’ll buy you all toffee apples and come and find you,’ Jack said.
He was well away from his brother and sister and the American, with the five children trailing along with them, when he spoke thoughtfully to Annie.
‘Well, well. It looks more and more as though Ben will have to take better care of his wife, wouldn’t you say? The American seems pretty well inclined towards our Morwen, and I get the feeling that his attentions aren’t too unwelcome.’
Annie looked troubled. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Jack. Morwen never had eyes for anyone but Ben. You used to tell me how besotted they were with one another.’
Family Ties Page 8
