Family Shadows Read online

  ‘Maybe we’ll go up to Killigrew Clay one day soon too, if Walter will agree to it. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  She listened to herself, and wondered uneasily just how dangerous it was to try to keep too tight a hold on a past that was gone. Not that Killigrew Clay itself would ever be gone from her heart or her pocket, Morwen thought, more prosaically. She was still part-owner, along with her husband and her father.

  And to the outside world the clayworks were still a prosperous and thriving business, high on the moors above the town. The physical evidence shone out over the countryside where the white spoil heaps, whose discarded quartz and mineral deposits glinted like diamonds in the sunlight, were an ever-present reminder of the fortunes gained by the Killigrews from china clay.

  Killigrews and Tremaynes; and now Wainwrights, she added silently, for their lives had become too intertwined to separate one from the other.

  And Walter, her brother Sam’s son who had always been her best-beloved, she thought unashamedly, no matter that it had been her sister-in-law Dora who had borne him, was now the fine and respected Works Manager of one of the biggest clay concerns in Cornwall.

  She had such a fierce pride in Walter, such a damnable sense of pride that was hard to contain at times, but of all the older ones, he had turned out the best. And she wasn’t so stupid as not to see it and to know it. And it was still incredible to her that he was a husband now, and soon to become a father himself. Life moved on…

  Once Emma was settled, Morwen went silently back along the passage to her own room. Ran wouldn’t come upstairs for hours yet, and when he did, he’d sprawl across the bed, practically insensible from the drink. It was too much like the curse that had caught up with Ben, and the comparison certainly didn’t help her to deal with it.

  It was surely a cruel twist of fate to have been blessed with two such passionate, virile husbands… and then for both of them to be dragged down by the same demon.

  * * *

  She was still tossing and turning in the big bed they shared, when she was aware of someone or something beside her bed. She felt her heart leap, wondering if she had conjured up some unearthly apparition through all her introspection.

  Because just for one moment, for one spectacular, delirious moment, she thought it was Ben standing there… and then the tall, masculine figure moved slightly, and in the low light from the landing, she could see that it was Ben’s son.

  ‘Mammie, you’d best go and see what’s wrong with your husband,’ she heard Justin urge.

  He always used the formal term when he was disturbed by Ran’s drinking, and at other times he rarely called him anything but ‘Father’, which kept him at an emotional distance.

  ‘I’ll get up right away,’ Morwen said at once, hearing the crashing about from the floor below. How she had missed the noise before, she couldn’t think… unless she had simply shut Ran out of her mind.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’ Justin said.

  ‘No. You go back to bed. I can handle him,’ she said quietly, knowing of old that Ran would turn on the boy at once with his sarcastic remarks.

  Not that Justin was a boy any longer, she thought swiftly as she pulled on her dressing robe. He was a handsome young man now, and nearing his twenty-first birthday, which was an occasion they would all be celebrating in a few weeks’ time. And she recognized that the very fact of Justin reaching his majority seemed to be bringing out the worst in Ran lately.

  As if, with her son’s coming-of-age, Ran was seeing a glimpse of his own mortality. It was ridiculous for a man in his virile years to think that way, but she couldn’t apply Ran’s resentment of Justin to any other reason.

  Unless… it surely couldn’t be because of the boy’s education and sharp brain. Of all the children, Justin was the acknowledged clever one. He was the one who had gone to college in Truro and followed a legal career, was now working in Daniel Gorran’s Accountancy and Legal Chambers, and was very likely to inherit the practice when the old man passed on.

  It surely couldn’t be jealousy on Ran’s part, although he himself had once had a legal leaning, and had considered working with Daniel Gorran himself when he first came to Cornwall from New York. Loyally, Morwen wouldn’t put Ran’s feelings down to anything as petty as jealousy. Still, Justin could always hold his own in an argument with his stepfather, and usually won. Maybe that was what galled him so much.

  Morwen tried to push the family squabbles out of her mind and hurried down the staircase to where Ran was muttering angrily to himself in the drawing room. She closed the door swiftly behind her, thankful for its solid oak construction that muffled any sounds.

  It was an unwritten rule of the house that if doors were left open, they invited anyone to come in, but the younger ones and servants alike knew better than to interrupt when doors were tight shut.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Morwen said sharply. ‘Are you determined to waken the whole household?’

  ‘And why should I not, if I feel so inclined? It is still my household, I believe, Ma’am?’ he said, oozing a drunkard’s elaborate sarcasm.

  She sighed, moving across the soft carpet to him, and placing her hand on his arm. She spoke more pleadingly. ‘Please Ran, don’t let’s fight. Come to bed.’

  The moment the words left her lips, she knew she had chosen them badly. But then, she hadn’t chosen them at all. It was the most natural thing in the world for Morwen to speak openly and frankly about anything and everything.

  But when Justin had woken her, she had simply slipped a loose dressing robe over her night-gown without bothering to tie it at the waist, and she saw how Ran’s dark eyes gleamed now at the realization.

  His hand reached out to fondle the softness of her breast, and to her chagrin, she felt its ready reaction and her own quickening breath. But this wasn’t the time or the place, and her earlier romantic mood had vanished. She was in no mood now to respond to a drink-sodden lover, or so she believed…

  ‘Is that an invitation, honey?’ he said in a softer, deeper voice, and, despite herself, she caught her breath at its sweet seduction. It seemed so long since he had been this way, that she felt herself weakening, despite herself.

  ‘If you like,’ she said huskily. ‘Only please leave the bottles behind, Ran.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that if I have any more I shan’t be able to perform?’ he said, still with the mockery he seemed unable to resist these days.

  ‘No, I didn’t think that,’ she said, her beautiful eyes steady, and refusing to be provoked. ‘But I prefer to have my husband’s undivided attention when he makes love to me, and not to be sharing him with a bottle.’

  For a few seconds he said nothing, and then he drew her to him, his arms hard and powerful, and holding her so tightly she thought she would break. He buried his face in her neck, and then his kisses roamed over her closed eyelids and cheeks, to the tip of her nose, and finally sought her open, waiting lips.

  ‘I’m a prize bastard to you sometimes, honey, and I know it,’ he muttered in a voice that was heavier with desire than with the effects of drink now. ‘But God preserve me from ever taking so much liquor that it blinds me to all that you mean to me.’

  ‘Then let’s go to bed,’ she whispered again, aware of the hardness of that desire through the softness of her gown.

  And he was still holding her in his arms, and still kissing her, as they left the room with the door wide open. They were hungry for love, and everything else was forgotten but their need for each other.

  Chapter Two

  Spring days in Cornwall could be as seductively warm as a summer’s day in upcountry England. This was just such a morning, and a glorious burst of sunlight glinted on the whiteness of the towering spoil heaps above St Austell, exposing all the glittering fragments of quartz and mica and other minerals that mingled with the discarded earth before the china clay was extracted.

  The boys had climbed part-way up the biggest mountain that was l
ocally and quaintly known as a sky-tip, leaving their struggling small sister a long way behind as she vainly tried to keep up with them on her short, sturdy legs. The eldest boy turned to laugh at her, then wobbled, losing his balance and sliding down the length of the sky-tip, to crash in a heap at the bottom.

  Emma squealed as he fell onto her, all the breath knocked out of her. And then it was Bradley who was yelping, as he was hauled up by the scruff of his neck by one of his brother Walter’s pit captains.

  ‘Now then, young feller-me-lad, you’ve been told a hundred times that it’s dangerous to play on them heaps,’ the man said, scowling.

  Bradley wriggled, none too pleased at being held this way by a man who might be a slice above most of the clayworkers who toiled for the family business of Killigrew Clay, but was still an employee. And it was well known that the man’s sons were ne’er-do-wells, who hung about the waterfront at St Austell, while Bradley was about to be sent to one of the best schools in Truro, and could hardly ever stop bragging about it.

  ‘You’d best leave me be, George Dodds,’ he yelled, in his loudest voice. ‘Or I’ll tell my brother you’ve been cuffing me.’

  The man let him go with a careless laugh, and Bradley fell sprawling back onto the spoil help. Clouds of white clay dust rose around him, covering him from head to foot, and he was furious to know he resembled a circus clown more than an owner’s son.

  ‘You can tell him what you like, you young bugger,’ Dodds said, with no more respect in his voice than if he spoke to a bal maiden. ‘’Tis certain sure that Mister Walter will believe me more’n he believes you, from what I’ve been hearing lately. I pity the likes of the teachers in this fine school you’re going to. They won’t know what’s hit ’em.’

  The small girl was looking from one to the other of them in astonishment. Nobody ever spoke back to her brother like that, and she was still pondering on why Bradley didn’t lash out at the pit captain, when, as if from nowhere, the middle one of the three came scrambling down the slopes of the spoil heap, and landed with a flailing of arms and legs at his brother’s feet.

  ‘Get up, Luke, you gorm,’ Bradley scowled at him, venting his anger on his younger brother now instead of the pit captain. ‘I’m going to Grandma’s, and you two can follow or not as you please. I’m tired of this place, and I’ll be glad to get away from it.’

  ‘And you mind and tell your mammie how you came to look so comical, young sir. She’ll enjoy the sight of ’ee, I’m sure,’ George Dodds called after him mockingly, as Bradley tried to march through the soft white slurry that clogged his boots and hindered his proud progress.

  ‘Bloody stupid oaf,’ Bradley muttered beneath his breath, but not quietly enough to stop the other two from hearing. Emma gasped, while Luke stopped in his tracks, so that she almost fell over him.

  ‘Grandma Bess says you’ll never go to heaven if you say those words,’ she stated.

  Bradley scowled, glowering down at her from the superiority of his nine years.

  ‘I hope I don’t then. I’d rather go to the other place where I’ll be sure to meet up with some of the old Killigrews, and then I’ll find out why they stayed in this miserable backwater for so long, instead of moving upcountry like any sane body should.’

  ‘Well, you’re not a Killigrew,’ Luke said, always one for infuriatingly pointing out the obvious. ‘You’re a Wainwright, same as us.’

  Bradley’s handsome face darkened, and the blue eyes that were the hallmark of his mother’s family glared at him. He gave Luke a swift punch in the gut that drew a howl of complaint from his brother, and strode away from him.

  Luke didn’t have to remind him of his name. He’d grown up with it, but he couldn’t forget his rage when Grandma Bess had shown them all the names recorded in the big family bible at Killigrew House one Sunday. He’d been no more than knee-high to a flea then, as Grandad Hal had been forever saying, but that was the day he’d discovered that his mother had married for a second time and lost the proud name that was so respected in the county of Cornwall. He hadn’t even known that his mother had once married into the Killigrews.

  Bradley learned that day that he and his siblings had been born very soon after the second marriage to Randall E Wainwright. He’d never seen eye to eye with his father, and from that moment on, the name of Wainwright had seemed to him to be of far lesser importance than Killigrew, and still did.

  Even his mother’s maiden name of Tremayne had a fine Cornish ring to it. Some of his uncles and male cousins, of course, still continued it. And it was well known in the district, if not the world, Bradley thought expansively, that Killigrew Clay had become a flourishing china clay business once again, after a fluctuation in fortunes some years ago.

  But at that point he was always forced to admit to the common knowledge that its new burst of success had been mainly thanks to the money and intervention of business skills brought to it by his own father, Randall Wainwright. All the same, none of it held the same charm for a boy with too much pride, and a strong streak of snobbery, as the Cornish name of Killigrew.

  * * *

  Heads down against the moorland breezes now, the three children left the area of the spoil heaps on the high moors above St Austell town and the glittering sea beyond, and Bradley brooded on his lot. Why couldn’t he have been his uncle Matt Tremayne’s son, and been born in the golden land of America across the Atlantic Ocean like his cousin Cresswell? And like his father, Ran Wainwright himself, who was the cousin of Cresswell’s mother.

  There was such a mish-mash of them all, Bradley scowled, still smarting from George Dodds’ taunting, and from the fuss in his father’s study that morning. He’d been summoned there after breakfast.

  He could see by his father’s florid face and heavy eyes, and his mother’s troubled ones, that something was up. Something was definitely up. It was his favourite expression of the moment. And he stood defiantly awaiting whatever censure was to come, displaying a mute insolence that irked Ran more by the minute.

  ‘You’ve been stealing apples, I understand,’ he said at once, never one for wasting words.

  ‘They were lying on the ground, no good to anybody, so I just helped Farmer Penwoody in clearing ’em up,’ he said, far too jauntily for Ran’s mood. For his cheek, he got a cuff around the ear that sent his senses spinning.

  ‘So you don’t yet know the difference between asking for something, and stealing other peoples’ property, is that it?’ Ran said. ‘And is this the boy who wants to go to Justin’s old school in Truro and carry on the family name?’

  ‘What family name?’ Bradley said, still on his private crusade. ‘Justin was a Killigrew, while I’m only a—’

  He caught the sparkle from his mother’s eyes, and paused. Maybe it was time to go back over his tracks, and he looked up at Ran with the blue eyes that could be so deceptively innocent when he chose.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ he said abjectly. ‘I know it was wrong, and I promise not to do it again.’

  ‘Good,’ Ran said, frowning, and never quite sure who was getting the better of whom where Bradley was concerned. ‘And I’m sure if you ask Farmer Penwoody, he’ll let you take your pick of the fallers any time.’

  ‘All right,’ Bradley said, avoiding his mother’s glance. But if his father was short-sighted enough to think that having free rein to the apple orchards was the same as the excitement of pinching them, he was quite sure his mother was not.

  But the censure had been short-lived, and his father had more important things to worry about than apple pinching. There had been a disastrous clayworkers’ strike early in the year, which had left many of them penniless. Yet now there was even more dissent among them, and rumblings of more ludicrous pay demands, and Ran Wainwright had called a meeting of his pit captains and all the other owners and pit captains in the area, to quell it quickly.

  Ran was anxious to be gone into St Austell where the meeting was to be held. Too anxious to waste time on piddling childish
misdemeanors. Business had to come first. There needed to be a solid front on this, and no more threats of wildcat strikes – or worse still, organized marches into St Austell to storm the Killigrew offices, as in times past.

  * * *

  Morwen had bundled Bradley out of the study before he could irritate his father further, and told him he could take the younger ones up to Killigrew Clay if he had a mind to it.

  ‘Can’t I go by myself?’ the boy sulked. ‘Why do I have to take the babbies with me?’

  ‘Because I want to see Grandma Bess on my own, and I promised Emma I’d take her there. So when you’ve had an hour or so at the clayworks, you can all come visiting at Killigrew House and then come home with me in the carriage.’

  ‘We can’t walk all that way,’ Bradley protested. ‘And I don’t aim to carry Emma!’

  Morwen sighed. Was there ever a child so keen on objecting at every turn?

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to. Gillings will take you in the cart. You can walk down to St Austell, but don’t stray from the proper pathways. I don’t want you three young ones to be wandering over the moors by yourselves.’

  ‘Why not?’ Bradley said at once.

  She glowered at him. Loving one’s offspring could sometimes be stretched to the limits, she thought. But she’d never been one to evade an honest answer.

  ‘Bad things can happen. Old mine workings can cause accidents, and there may be strangers about who would do you harm,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘And witch-women?’ Bradley said eagerly. ‘I heard tell of them at school, Mammie. Do you know of them?’

  ‘Maybe I do, but this isn’t the time for telling,’ she said briskly. ‘Go and remind the others to get ready, and I’ll ask Gillings to bring the cart around to the front of the house. I’m going into town with your father.’