The Potter's Niece

by Randall, Rona

  The Potter’s Niece

  Rona Randall

  © Rona Randall 1987

  Rona Randall has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1987 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  To my sister Freda, with love — and because she enjoyed The Drayton Legacy so much.

  CHAPTER 1

  Olivia’s dislike of her cousin Lionel flared into active hatred during the celebrations for his coming of age, held with customary splendour at Tremain Hall on December 28, 1771. Clutching her ruined gown with one hand, she delivered a stinging blow with the other. It landed on target across his handsome face but all he did was laugh, whereupon she whipped it back more savagely. In a flash he pinioned her again, bending his head toward her breast, so she bit him. Hard. That freed her.

  ‘You vixen! You she-devil!’ Rubbing his cheek ruefully, he laughed even more. ‘But I like it, damned if I don’t. There’s an untamed animal in you that I’d enjoy mating with.’

  ‘A chance you’ll never get,’ she vowed hotly, and whirled away.

  His voice followed. ‘I fancy your mother wishes otherwise. I suspect the idea of her daughter marrying her brother’s son is quite to her liking — and the church wouldn’t forbid it. Take a look at the prayer book. It bans all sorts of marriages, but not between cousins. If you don’t wed soon, Livvy, you’ll be an old maid. Some even call you one now.’

  That was one of his favourite jibes, reminding her that she was six months his senior and that most young women of her age had already achieved the much desired married state.

  ‘The name is Olivia,’ she threw over her shoulder.

  Her abhorrence of Lionel Drayton stemmed from childhood, partly because her mother always insisted that she should be especially nice to him, and partly because she had had to endure a side of his nature that immediate members of the family never saw — though, no doubt, servants and lesser folk did. Lionel took his pleasure where he found it, in whatever form he chose. With the young Olivia it had pleased his vicious side to torment her when no one was looking, usually with savage pinches which he executed with relish. The more she cried, the more he enjoyed it.

  His favourite spot for attack had been inside the upper arm or in the curve of the neck, twisting the flesh in a vice-like grip. Then he would stare in injured astonishment if she ran to her mother, shedding tears of fury and pain. ‘I?’ he would protest. ‘Hurt dear Livvy? Aunt Phoebe, you know I could never do such a thing!’ And then her mother would say reproachfully, ‘Olivia, my child, you really must stop telling lies about your cousin. Remember he is my dear brother Joseph’s son and no more capable of being cruel than his father was.’ Then the sad look would come to her face, a look she seemed to summon at will when recalling her elder brother, who had died only a month before his wife discovered she was pregnant. ‘Such a tragedy,’ Phoebe would sigh, ‘dear Joseph leaving this world without knowing he had begat a son. We must always be especially nice to Lionel, deprived of a father before he was born.’

  ‘As I was,’ Olivia had once pointed out.

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Your father was a very different type of man. Dear Joseph would never have abandoned Agatha the way your father abandoned me.’

  ‘Grandmother Charlotte believes he meant to come back. And it can scarcely have been his fault. The earthquake, I mean. How could he know it was going to happen?’

  Tight-lipped, her mother had declared that he should never have been in a country where such a thing could happen. He should have been right here in Tremain Hall. ‘He was the heir. He had his duties to fulfil to the estates as well as to me, his loyal wife. Moreover, he knew he was to become a father.’

  ‘Then I’m sure he did mean to come back, and I hope he didn’t suffer terribly — all those people killed, wiped off the face of the earth the ship’s captain told Grandmother.’

  Even now, Olivia could remember that Liverpool skipper — ruddyfaced, rough-voiced, gentle-eyed — though she had been barely four at the time. She had been alone with her grandmother when he came, bringing back the letter he had been entrusted to deliver to her son some months before. Round voyages to the South American continent took a long time and the old lady had endured the waiting with characteristic fortitude, reading and re-reading Max’s last letter home. Such communications had been few and far between since embarking on his travels less than a year after his marriage, travels which had taken him virtually round the world.

  ‘Wandering from one place to another without so much as a thought for anyone but himself. Typically selfish!’ Phoebe had declared that repeatedly, but Charlotte Freeman would listen to no criticism of her son, merely raising an eyebrow when her daughter-in-law railed against him, a gesture which subtly conveyed both reproof and question, as if saying, ‘But why did he go? What drove him to it?’

  Max had written, ‘You can entrust any reply to Hardcastle, my dear Mother. He’s a good man and a fine skipper and his ship does the Pacific run every ten months. He’ll journey from Liverpool to Burslem when he reaches port and I shall remain in this vicinity until his return, to collect any letter he may bring from you. I find the climate and the people here much to my liking … ‘

  That was from a place called Mexico. Olivia’s grandfather had found the spot on the big globe standing beside his desk — the fine desk Aunt Agatha had given him because it reminded her too painfully of Joseph, her late husband, for whom she had had it made — and his hand trembled as he pointed to it. ‘A long way away, little Livvy. Very long indeed … ‘ Then, sadly, ‘And a long time it will take for him to come home.’

  That was when Olivia had known, with a child’s unerring instinct, that despite her mother’s hints about her father’s character, her grandfather regretted his son’s departure more than he cared to show.

  But Grandmother Charlotte’s letter had never reached her son. ‘No trace, Ma’am … whole towns and villages wiped out … ‘ Skipper Hardcastle had stood there, twisting and turning his battered seaman’s cap in his big, red hands and looking as uncomfortable as Olivia always felt when awaiting reprimand from her mother — but reprimand wasn’t what this big, lumbering man was afraid of, and she knew it. He was afraid the old lady was going to break down and, young as she was, the child knew that he would rather face a raging sea than a woman in tears.

  But he didn’t know Charlotte Freeman, an indomitable woman who kept a firm grip on her emotions. It was called ‘the Tremain pride’, Olivia’s grandfather had told her. ‘It means, little lass, that anyone with Tremain blood in their veins never gives way to grief in public, but I am a Freeman, born of lesser stock.’

  The six-year-old didn’t know what he meant by that, but she did know how he felt. Grandfather Ralph’s kindly face had crumpled at the news of his son’s death, though she had always understood that her father had been a disappointment to him. ‘Max was a wastrel who broke not only my heart, but his parents’.’ That, also, was an
oft-repeated remark of her mother’s, but despite it Olivia knew that both her grandparents mourned the loss of her father a great deal more than her mother did.

  ‘I bore my sorrows proudly,’ Phoebe would say, never failing to add that she had remained at Tremain Hall for her daughter’s sake. ‘Because you are the only child of the heir and, in my opinion, fully entitled to inherit since there is no son in the direct line.’

  ‘What about Lionel?’

  ‘He is a Drayton. As I was.’

  ‘But his mother was a Freeman.’

  So many names had been confusing to a child, though her mother insisted that it was perfectly simple.

  ‘Your grandmother was a Tremain before her marriage. She was also heretrix, which meant that she inherited Tremain Hall and its estates, not to mention the Tremain coalmines in Spen Green and Stoke, plus vast areas of Staffordshire forestry. All the wealth is on her side, though I have to admit that Grandfather Freeman became successful in his own right, despite his humble birth, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he was the son of an impoverished clergyman. It is well known that the clergy leave their families ill provided for.’

  Olivia would have loved her grandfather just as greatly had he remained poor, but kept that secret to herself because her mother would never have understood. Maxwell Freeman’s widow deplored her daughter’s tendency to hob-nob with lesser folk. That, too, had been drummed into Olivia at an early age; consequently she had become skilled in secrecy. Phoebe would have been aghast to learn that she knew many of the workers at the Drayton Pottery, even counting them amongst her friends.

  Although a Drayton herself before marriage, Phoebe never visited the place, whereas her daughter found it hard to keep away. The whirring wheels, the spinning masses of wet clay, the deft hands which made it spiral into a vase or widen into a bowl, all had fascinated her from early infancy. Now she longed to work there herself, and on the one day of the week when the pottery closed — the Sabbath — her uncle, Martin Drayton, encouraged her to slip away between compulsory religious services and meet him there. It was an exciting and rewarding game of truant, spiced with the knowledge that Phoebe had no suspicion of what her daughter was up to.

  This alliance between Martin Drayton and his niece had reached culmination more than a year ago, when Olivia had decided to seek escape from a hopeless and unrequited love by submerging herself in work, the more exacting, the more difficult, the better. Instinctively she was drawn to ceramic modelling, the sphere in which Martin had distinguished himself and which, since he became Master of Drayton’s, had added lustre to the name. He now had a whole department producing figurines and other original works, and it was to this area that she headed when her mother took her afternoon nap, fondly believing her daughter was indulging that odd fancy of hers, a cross-country ride. On returning, Olivia enjoyed fostering the pretence by describing the route she had taken and how splendidly Corporal had jumped both fences and hedges. As an additional precaution she varied the imaginary routes, but all of it bored Phoebe so much that she never really listened.

  But there had been one disturbing occasion when Olivia slipped away to the pottery on a weekday, unable to resist an impulse to watch and talk to the workers, and emerged at the precise moment that her mother’s carriage was driving by. Inevitably, there had been an unpleasant interview to face at home.

  ‘I could scarce believe my eyes! Potteries are a man’s world. Only the roughest women work in them and no daughter of mine can be allowed to associate with them.’

  ‘But there are fine examples of women’s work at Drayton’s, including pieces turned by a former worker named Meg Gibson. There was no one so skilled at making a foot, Amelia tells me.’

  ‘Meg Gibson! The most notorious whore in Burslem! The place was well rid of her.’

  ‘Amelia has never said that.’

  ‘Aunt Amelia, if you please.’

  ‘I never think of her as my aunt. She seems so young — ‘

  ‘She’s not much younger than I, though I daresay she would like everyone to think so.’

  ‘ — and she likes me to use her first name.’

  ‘How typical! No doubt it makes her feel equal to her juniors. She was always vain.’

  ‘I can see no vanity in her and she certainly has no airs, especially at the pottery. She’s compiling the archives now, and the display of Draytonware is her responsibility. She calls it “the showroom” and she arranges it beautifully.’

  ‘My brother Joseph never needed a shop window of any kind. He concentrated on mass production and building up a tottering business. My father neglected it shamefully.’

  ‘Uncle Martin never says a word against Grandfather Drayton. He speaks of him most affectionately. And I think the showroom is a splendid idea. It was Uncle Martin who first thought of it. He wanted to display samples of the pottery’s finest Draytonware, featuring each craftsman’s name so that visitors may order goods made by those whose work particularly appeals. He is proud of their skill and likes to give credit for it. He also encourages them further by paying them a fair percentage of such fees — ‘

  ‘Over and above their wages? Indulgence! Extravagance!’

  ‘ — so Amelia undertook to arrange it all. She is also collecting pottery relics and historical material to form a small museum. I wouldn’t be surprised if it grew so big that eventually Staffordshire could regard it as part of its heritage — the heritage of the potteries. And on top of that she is searching back into the personal history of Drayton’s and writing it all down.’

  For no reason that Olivia could think of, her mother seemed to dislike that idea as well. Surely she couldn’t be ashamed of her family’s humble beginning? It was something to be proud of, dear old Grandfather Ralph always said, and with that Olivia agreed, but before she could say so her mother chillingly remarked that women who meddled in men’s affairs were nuisances and that Martin must surely find Amelia so. ‘As for gossiping with the women who work in the sheds, as I know she does, I wonder he allows it.’

  ‘She is interested in their welfare. Also in their children’s.’

  ‘What a busybody! Joseph would never have tolerated such interference. Workers are paid their wages and that is all they are entitled to. My family may have founded the Drayton Pottery, but we don’t demean ourselves by regarding the workers as our social responsibility and certainly not our equals. Remember that, Olivia. And remember this also — you are likely to inherit Tremain Hall and its estates, no matter what Agatha may hope for Lionel. Your grandmother has only to restore the heretrix clause, and when she dies you will reign in her place.’

  ‘And if I don’t want to?’

  ‘Of course you will want to! You must!’

  Olivia couldn’t understand her mother’s attitude, but knew nothing would change it. To hope for her approval, even less for her understanding, was therefore useless, so the potting lessons continued in secret and were now the highlights of Olivia’s week. But to Phoebe, the Drayton Pottery was no more than the industry her ancestors had started centuries ago and to which her brilliant brother, Joseph, had added distinction, though when Amelia claimed that its present renown was due wholly to Martin she would sniff and declare that, being his wife, she would naturally say so.

  It was plain that Phoebe had idolised her elder brother and thought little of her younger and partially crippled one, but as Olivia now fled from her cousin’s unpleasant manhandling she thought, fuming, that Joseph Drayton’s son would never add distinction to anything.

  Reaching her room and flinging aside her torn gown, she cursed Lionel for a lecher. She would have to return to the ballroom, of course, much as she longed to escape elsewhere. A swift ride could take her to the fringe of Burslem and the cottage where Damian Fletcher plied his trade, and she would rather have been there than pretending to enjoy her cousin’s birthday celebrations while dodging his unwelcome attentions. When she thought of Damian Fletcher her blood responded in its usual, tumultuous wa
y.

  Her mirrored reflection was startling: dark hair tousled, face flushed (with anger against Lionel, or desire for Damian?) and even her petticoats torn in the tussle. Her cousin had ripped much more than her bodice, ruthless hands demanding satisfaction. He enjoyed groping amongst a woman’s skirts and no doubt he was now doing so in some other private alcove, of which there were several close to the Tremain ballroom and yet more in the grounds. Failing to entice Olivia outside, he had pulled her away in the midst of a quadrille and launched his attack in a well-concealed nook. He should have tried it with the Havelock girl, she thought furiously, or that stupid Rivington wench, both of whom mooned after him and whose mothers would have been pleased for their daughters to be so compromised. A man who was an offshoot of both the Freeman and Drayton clans represented good matrimonial material.

  Lionel had finally shouted after Olivia’s retreating figure, ‘You’re too bloody stand-offish, that’s your trouble, but I’ll break you in yet, see if I don’t!’ He was as conceited as that, challenged by a woman’s indifference, always believing it was false and confident that in the end she would yield. And probably other women did. But not she. Perhaps it would have been wiser to humour him until, tiring of easy game, he abandoned her, but recoil had been instinctive. She wanted the touch of another man’s hands, another man’s love-making. That was the irony of it. One desired her; the other didn’t.

  She doubted if Damian Fletcher was aware of her as anything more than a skinny female with small claim to beauty. She had inherited none of her mother’s golden prettiness. Even now, at forty, Phoebe’s hair was bright and lovely — though sometimes it appeared more brassy than gold — and she still wore it in the girlish ringlets which her daughter lacked. Nor had Olivia inherited her mother’s dimples and curves, so it was inevitable that Phoebe should deplore the girl’s unfashionable looks.

  ‘What a pity your nose isn’t retroussé, like mine,’ she had once said, half turning before her mirror to view its charm, ‘but you can’t be blamed for that and perhaps, one day, some man will come along who isn’t averse to thin, straight noses, even if a little on the large side — though I don’t mean that unkindly, of course.’