Family Shadows Read online

  * * *

  She and Ran had driven silently towards St Austell, as distant as though the loving that had ended last night’s quarrelling had never happened. She remembered the loving with a rush of pleasure. It been so tender and so beautiful… Morwen glanced at the profile of her husband and sighed. Why couldn’t it always be like that?

  For an hour or so, it had seemed as if the old Ran had come back to her, the strong, passionate man who had wanted her so badly, even while she was still married to Ben. The man who had shown her the glory of love in a small London hotel room, and banished all thoughts of guilt. For if Ben had no longer wanted her, then this man did, and she had felt loved and cherished, and a woman once more.

  ‘How long do you think the meeting will take?’ she said, softer and huskier than usual as the memories of those times filled her mind.

  ‘God knows,’ he said in his clipped American accent. ‘When it ends for the day I’ll be home, but don’t be surprised if it’s not until the early hours.’

  ‘Ran, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning! It can’t go on into the early hours of tomorrow!’

  ‘You don’t understand, honey. It’s best for small groups to discuss things privately, as well as collectively. I mean to do all I can to nip this strike threat in the bud before it begins.’

  ‘It’s really serious then?’

  He looked at her witheringly.

  ‘Where have you been these past months, woman? Of course it’s bloody serious. If you haven’t been listening to me, you’ve been reading it in the papers, I presume? Tom Askhew’s been putting in a damn sight more than his two cents’ worth in The Informer.’

  She flinched, hearing the dislike in Ran’s voice. None of them liked the brash Yorkshireman who’d run the newspaper down here for a time, and then gone back up north with his family for a few years. Then he’d returned to Cornwall, better heeled and more powerful than before, and wielding ever more influence to get his radical views into print. But even worse than his frequently vindictive accounts in the newspaper, according to Ran he was a strikers’ man, if ever he saw one.

  And talk of the ominous threat of strikes among the clayworkers was very much on everyone’s lips right now. If they came to fruition, it would be just up Tom Askhew’s alley, Ran frequently said, to whip up the clayworkers into action. He’d do it, if only to get back at the business he despised, and more especially the family who overlorded it. He had no love for the Killigrews, nor anyone who married into them, which included Tremaynes and Wainwrights. The only exception was for the daughter that he doted on. And even there…

  Morwen was perfectly sure that the sharpest thorn in Tom Askhew’s side was the fact that his adored Cathy had never wavered from her determination to marry Walter Tremayne. And after several years of marriage now, she was to have a child. The couple were overjoyed, as were Morwen and Ran, but in the local kiddley-winks Askhew had been heard to say sourly that it would just be another little bugger with the Tremayne hallmark on it, and more working fodder for the clayworks.

  ‘You’ll sort it all out, dar, I know you will,’ Morwen said swiftly to Ran now, more confidently than she felt.

  He gave a half-smile. ‘Your faith in me does you proud. But my name’s Wainwright, not Tremayne, and it sure as hell ain’t Killigrew. I daresay Ben might have known how to handle them, and your daddy would have had a fair chance of quelling any riots in the old days. But when it comes to a brash colonial, they suddenly go deaf.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call yourself that! After all these years, you’re practically as Cornish as the rest of us.’

  ‘And you’re talking moonshine, honey,’ Ran said drily.

  They both knew it. It took more than ten years of marriage to a Cornishwoman to absorb what had been in the blood for generations. Morwen wondered if there was anywhere else in the world quite so insular as here. It was the first time she considered it with resentment.

  ‘Is Daddy joining you for this meeting?’ she asked, ignoring the jibe.

  ‘Naturally. It’s as much his concern as mine, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I would, yes, but the men—’

  ‘The men will just see old Hal Tremayne getting his two pennyworth of interest out of Killigrew Clay’s business, the same as he always did before he so-say retired. Don’t worry. It would take more than a roomful of raucous clayworkers to make him forget himself and give away the true state of affairs.’

  Yes, thought Morwen. Even now, there would be some who still fiercely resented the fact that Hal Tremayne had come up in the world to be one of the bosses. And even more so to realize how much money Hal had put into it, when none of them knew he had any. It was a well-kept family secret, known only to the older ones, on Hal’s own insistence. He was a simple man, who cared nothing for power and money, but he’d accepted what was offered to him with dignity, and was wise with his advice when it was needed.

  ‘And what of Walter? I can’t imagine he’d leave Cathy too long at this time.’

  Ran shrugged. ‘You never made much fuss when it came to your birthing time, and Cathy seems a sensible girl, for all that her father’s such a hot-head.’

  ‘Ran, I wish you wouldn’t always refer to Tom Askhew in that way,’ Morwen said wearily. ‘He’s not a monster, for pity’s sake—’

  ‘You’d consider him more like a saviour in one respect, I daresay,’ Ran drawled, glancing sideways at his wife and seeing the swift colour stain her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous—’

  ‘I’m not ridiculous, nor blind, nor forgetful. I know just how thankful you were when he came on the scene and lured your Miss “Finelady” Jane away from Ben. That was your name for her, I believe?’

  ‘I was young and foolish then. And Ben and Jane were never more than friends,’ she snapped.

  He laughed outright now. ‘And you were never jealous of them, were you, honey? You seem to forget I knew your brother before I knew you, and learned all about the family history before I came over here.’

  His reference to her brother Matt made her forget all about Tom and Jane Askhew. Matt had been the only one of her brothers to leave Cornwall, to prosper in the goldfields of California more successfully than any of them could ever have dreamed possible. And when he’d come home on a visit with a wife and son some years later, it was Matt who had been the real saviour of their dwindling family fortunes.

  The prodigal son had returned, and in returning had been the catalyst for so many things. Not least, the fact that his wife was American and had a cousin in New York with a yen to see this south-west corner of the country that held itself so much apart from the rest of England. And the cousin’s name was Randall E Wainwright.

  ‘Don’t worry about this meeting today, Morwen,’ Ran said. He was more gentle now, misunderstanding her look as she stared ahead without seeing any of the surrounding moorland.

  ‘Then I won’t,’ she said, turning on a bright smile for him. ‘You, Daddy and Walter make a formidable team, and the clayworkers know that already.’

  He nodded, satisfied. They had reached the old Killigrew House, where her parents lived, and he leaned forward in the carriage to kiss her. Later, Gillings would meet the younger children at the foot of the moors and bring them to the house, eventually taking Morwen and the children home.

  She clung to Ran for a moment, and as she did so she felt a small shiver run through her, like a premonition that something bad was about to happen. She wished she could ignore it, but such feelings were rarely wrong.

  ‘Just take care,’ she said, knowing it was as much as she could say, for if she voiced her fears, he would dismiss it out of hand. Such fanciful Cornish forebodings had no place in a hard-headed businessman like her husband.

  She alighted from the carriage and watched it trundle away towards the town centre and the meeting house where the bosses, pit captains and the clayworkers out of their shift would be gathering. She knew just how it would be. It would start out in a civi
lized manner, with everyone having their say… and by the end of it there would be jostling and pushing, cursing and fisticuffs.

  There would be more than one bloodied nose, maybe a lot worse, and quite probably the constables would be called in to quell it all, and haul a dozen or more off to the cells to cool off for the night.

  Those of them that were still in one piece would most likely crawl off to ‘Kitty’s House’, the bawdyhouse along the coast from St Austell, for the kind of comfort and pleasure that many sage wives turned a blind eye to, while their menfolk blithely imagined they knew nothing of their activities. It was always the same pattern after a rowdy meeting: the cells or the bawdyhouse or the Blue Boar kiddley-wink…

  She gave up worrying about their doings. She was going to find out what the rest of the family had been doing lately. Her mammie was always a great source of news, Morwen thought with a smile. She hardly went anywhere these days, and she wasn’t a gossip, but somehow the information always came her way. And it would be good to hear how the rest of her large family fared.

  * * *

  Bess Tremayne had spent a lifetime caring for other folk. Firstly in the little clayworker’s cottage high on the moors, where Hal and herself and the five children had lived, snug as bugs. And then, when the children had mostly grown and gone their own ways, in the larger place, halfway between the high moors and St Austell town, that Charles Killigrew had offered them when Hal’s status in the clayworks had been raised.

  Hal had argued and blustered about being given charity, but it had been herself and Morwen in particular who had persuaded him that he’d be a fool to turn his back on where fate was leading him. And a true Cornishman had never been one to argue with fate.

  And now, there was this. Bess looked around her with some satisfaction on that April day when the windows gleamed and sparkled from the maids’ diligence, and everything was pristine clean from her own administering. For she’d been a worker for too long not to want to see to the furniture polishing herself, and she prided herself on the fresh smell of herbal creams and polishes that permeated Killigrew House.

  Killigrew House! Even as she surveyed her domestic domain, a smile curved around Bess Tremayne’s lips for a moment. Who’d ever thought she’d be mistress here, for pity’s sake! Sometimes she still wondered if she was dreaming, and she’d wake up in the mean little cottage where they could see the stars through the rafters, where she’d spent her days working in the linhays at the clay pits, and her nights sewing dresses and underpinnings for finer folks than herself.

  ‘Mammie, are you ailing?’

  Bess jumped as she heard her daughter’s anxious voice. She hadn’t heard the Wainwright carriage arrive, and she gave Morwen a cheerful smile now.

  ‘I’m as right as ninepence, my lamb. Just thinking, that’s all.’

  Morwen bent to kiss her creased cheek, making little fuss about it. As a family they weren’t given to too much kissing, and Bess wouldn’t want anything made of the fact that it was rare for Morwen to find her mother just sitting and thinking. But Morwen was relieved to see that there was really nothing wrong, and that Bess rang for tea and biscuits to be brought in. It was still difficult for her to act the lady, and it had taken a long while before she’d finally got used to sending for refreshments instead of seeing to it all herself.

  When they were both settled with cups of steaming tea in their hands, Bess turned to her daughter.

  ‘As a matter of fact, there is summat I’m fretting over, but I didn’t want to say it just yet.’

  Morwen put her cup down on her saucer and gave her mother her wide, unblinking blue stare.

  ‘Well, now you’ve got this far, you’d better go on, hadn’t you? You can’t dangle half a story in front of me, or worse still, just the sniff of it!’

  Bess sighed. ‘You know what they say. Once you put a thing into words, ’tis there for all eternity.’

  ‘I thought that was when you put it in writing,’ Morwen said drily, knowing there’d be no hurrying her mother until she was ready to speak. Bess nodded slowly.

  ‘Well then, ’tis our Freddie and Venetia,’ she said.

  Morwen looked at her in surprise. Freddie had turned out to be the least complicated of her brothers after all. She would have reserved that judgement for Matt, her beloved, dreamy Matt, but he was far away with his family in California, and had found his own level of contentment.

  Sam – darling Sam – had died many years ago now in a tragic accident, but his memory could still stir her heart with sorrow. And Jack was a flourishing and well-respected boat-builder, away in Truro with his delicate wife Annie, who had blossomed so amazingly after the birth of the son that had defied all the doctor’s advice.

  But Freddie had seemed so happy with his Venetia – the Honourable Venetia Hocking Tremayne, Morwen reminded herself with a hidden, though uneasy smile.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mammie?’ she said, her voice a mite huskier.

  ‘Nothing exactly,’ Bess said uneasily. ‘’Tis just a feeling, from summat our Freddie said, that’s all. I’m probably making mountains out of emmet-hills.’

  ‘And you’re probably not. So why don’t you share it with me, and then we’ll both have summat to fret about?’

  Morwen reflected that it was true what Emma had said. When she was with her mother, it was easy to slip back into the old comfortable way of speaking. But so what? Who was to hear, and who was to care?

  ‘Well, ’twas just the way our Freddie spoke when they invited us to tea in that rambling great place of theirs. They took us round the stables as usual – you know how Venetia can’t resist showing off her horses, and then our Freddie said summat about expanding, and mebbe goin’ in for racing as well as breedin’, see?’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with that? Lord knows they can afford it with all the money her father left her—’

  Bess went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And then he got quite cagey, the way he does when he’s saying summat and meanin’ summat else.’

  Morwen nodded, understanding her mother’s own brand of logic, and knowing there was more to come.

  ‘It was when he said so casually that the real place to be for breedin’ and racin’ was Ireland.’

  ‘I daresay he’s right about that,’ Morwen said.

  Bess’s blue eyes were filled with a momentary pain. It was the way they had looked after they’d come and told her that her first-born Sam had died in Ben Killigrew’s rail track accident on the moors. The way they always looked when she sensed instinctively that one of her brood was going to leave her.

  Morwen drew in her breath. ‘You surely don’t think they’d up stakes and move to Ireland, do you?’

  ‘Mebbe they would and mebbe they wouldn’t. I’m only saying what I heard, but I’ve got a bad feeling about it, Morwen. I don’t want to lose another of my sons.’

  Sons! They were always so special, Morwen thought, but without more than a smidgin of resentment, since she knew she felt the very same way. All of hers were special too, from Walter down to little Luke.

  Her girls were special too, she thought hastily. In many ways there was a sweet telepathy between mothers and daughters, a womanly sisterhood that could never be denied. But a boy would always hold the key to his mother’s heart. And the look that passed between mother and daughter then made her almost wish she’d been born a boy too.

  Chapter Three

  Freddie Tremayne breathed in the pungent smells of horseflesh and fresh straw. While many folk might be repelled by them, he thought there was little to compare with the way they could tease and tantalize the senses.

  Except, in a very different way, the musky scents of his wife, of course, the earthy, rumbustious woman he had married, and who was a constant source of delight to him. She had been a dainty little thing when he’d married her, but had quickly grown fleshy, and some might say a little coarse, in her countrywoman’s pursuits. But these facts did nothing to lessen Freddie’s pleasure in her. There was
just more of her to love, as he frequently and generously told her.

  Some, jealous of the contentment these two had found in one another, even hinted that the Honourable Venetia Hocking Tremayne was a sight more mannish than her more slightly-built husband, with her ever more strident voice, and her penchant for wearing riding breeches whenever she chose to do so, even in town where such behaviour often outraged decent society.

  None of this disapproval, silent or otherwise, gave the slightest bother to either Freddie or Venetia, and merely caused them to chuckle gleefully at the scandalized looks they sometimes got. Theirs was a marriage into which they fitted like the best-made pair of soft leather gloves, and to blazes with what the rest of the world thought.

  But the rest of the world didn’t involve the close-knit Tremayne dynasty, and now there was the problem of telling the family what they were about to do. Despite their lack of inhibitions on a wider front, Freddie knew this was something that needed proper thinking about.

  ‘We’ll put it to our Morwen,’ he said suddenly, and with no preamble. ‘She was always the one who knew best how to handle things.’

  They were walking around the fertile land that had been left to Venetia by her father, the late Lord Hocking. They were hunched up in riding jackets and breeches in the cool of the April evening, their long boots matching stride for stride before they paused to lean on a fence and gaze with satisfaction at the fine riding stable they had created between them.

  It took no more than a breath and an eye-blink for Venetia to follow where Freddie’s thoughts had led him. She looked approvingly at him and she hugged his arm.

  ‘Of course, that’s the answer to it. We’ll tell Morwen first off, and let her sort it out with your folks. She’ll be just the one for smoothing things out.’

  He hugged her arm to his. ‘I daresay you’re thinking me a great loon for not wantin’ to tell ’em right off—’