Family Shadows Read online

  Bradley piped up. ‘They wear bright clothes and paint their faces, and people turn to stare at them in the streets.’

  ‘Well, I hope people don’t turn to stare at Albert and Primmy in the streets,’ Morwen said, taken aback at this knowledge. ‘Where on earth did you hear such things, Bradley?’

  ‘Aunt Venetia told me so, the last time I saw her,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘And she didn’t seem to mind.’

  ‘Oh, well, she wouldn’t,’ Charlotte said, grinning. ‘She’s a sketch herself wherever she goes—’

  ‘Well, I like her!’ Bradley said, scowling at Charlotte now. ‘She takes me riding, lets me stay up as late as I like, gives me sticky buns for tea, and never cares if I wash my hands first or not!’

  By now, Charlotte was chortling loudly, and the two older women hardly knew whether to laugh or scold him. The younger children stared open-mouthed at these reckless indiscretions, while Morwen said that if that was the way he was permitted to behave in his Aunt Venetia’s company, she wasn’t sure if he’d ever be allowed to visit her again.

  It had been said mildly enough, and without any seriousness, knowing how Venetia doted on the boy, but she wasn’t prepared for the little whirlwind that Bradley became. He threw himself at her, almost knocking her off-balance, and she hadn’t realized what strength he had. He pummelled at her chest, while she held him off as best she could.

  ‘You won’t stop me going there!’ he raged. ‘I’ll run away from home if you do, and I won’t even care if I never see you again.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Bradley, control yourself!’ Morwen said, aghast at this show of temper. ‘There’s no need for all this. You’re shaming me in front of everyone. Stop it, now!’

  He gradually became chastened as he realized that everyone had quietened, wondering if he’d gone quite mad. For a moment, he’d felt in danger of it, knowing that if he was banished from Hocking Hall for good, he’d be only half-alive. He knew all about family love and loyalty, but when he was with Venetia and Freddie, there was a different kind of love. With them, and their free and easy way of living, he felt as if the whole world was his for the taking, and that he was capable of greater things than ever came out of a clay pit.

  But he couldn’t tell his mother that, and he’d certainly never confide in his father. Ran would merely scoff, saying he was getting above himself, and in serious danger of losing what little grey matter he had if he thought that riding about the countryside on horses was any better than being in control of a great company like Killigrew Clay.

  But with a burst of mature insight he knew that since he couldn’t even control his own temper, there was no hope of him controlling Killigrew Clay if he ever got the chance. Not that he’d want to. He’d far rather be with Freddie and Venetia and the horses. He wished he had the nerve to tell the lot of them so, but he wasn’t quite brave enough for that.

  ‘I think it’s nearly time we went home,’ Morwen said meaningly, and Bradley knew there’d be more fuss when his mother got him on her own. ‘There’s no use waiting for the men, since it could be hours before the meeting’s over.’

  ‘As you like, dar,’ Bess said comfortably. ‘But we still haven’t settled whether to have Justin’s party here or at New World. Do you have any ideas on it, Charlotte?’ she said, bringing the girl into the conversation.

  ‘Justin won’t care where it is,’ Charlotte said at once. ‘But I daresay we won’t please everybody.’

  It was a veiled reference to the fact that Justin and their stepfather didn’t get on either. Morwen was set to rise to the bait, but Bess spoke first.

  ‘I say we hold it here then. Hal and me will be only too pleased to have all our young uns under the same roof once more, and the little uns can sleep upstairs. Lord knows there’s room enough in this rattling great place for all of ’ee, and ’tis easier for Albert and Primmy and their friends to get to us from Truro, and for Jack and Annie’s brood too.’

  She added the last names as she saw Charlotte’s eyes flash at the mention of Albert and Primmy’s Bohemian friends. Charlotte definitely didn’t like them, Morwen thought, but there was no reason known to her, why she should not.

  ‘It’s for Justin to have the last word on it, of course,’ Morwen said. ‘But I’ll put it to him, if you’re sure it won’t be too much for you, Mammie.’

  ‘When the day comes that ’tis too much trouble to cater for my own, you’ll be the first to know, Morwen,’ Bess said drily. And there was no more to be said.

  Chapter Four

  The air in St Austell’s meeting house was thick and cloying, blue with smoke from the mixture of many expensive cigars and humble hand-rolled cigarettes. But it was neither thicker nor bluer than the insults and blasphemies flying backwards and forwards across the room, in the ever-growing crush of clayworkers and bosses gathered there. The meeting had dragged on through the morning and afternoon, and was now into early evening, nothing sensible having yet come out of it. Nor was it helped by the Union men who objected to every suggestion put by the bosses, and scotched most of them.

  ‘’Tis madness,’ Hal Tremayne shouted above the din. ‘What bloody fool let all these buggers in? If we get many more coming off shift and trying to put in their two pen’orth, the floor will be fair near to collapse with all the weight.’

  ‘You were the one who said all and sundry should be allowed to come, man,’ Ran Wainwright snapped at him.

  Hal glared at his son-in-law. He respected Ran, liked him well enough, but there were times when his sardonic American twang drove him wild. Bloody colonials, he thought viciously, coming over here and thinking they’re God’s gift to humanity… he caught the gleam in Ran’s eye, and knew the American was following his every thought.

  ‘They’ve every right to be here, Wainwright,’ one of Bult and Vine’s bosses leaned forward and spoke. ‘’Tis our way to let the workers have their say, and always has been, and we don’t aim to change now.’

  And sure as hell not for the likes of you, said the unspoken words. Their eyes clashed, and Ran felt the same spark of animosity he had felt from Hal. It was he who who looked away first, but only when his stepson Walter cracked the wooden mallet on the table, bellowing into the rowdy crowd, and making them all jump as if it was a pistol shot.

  ‘Why don’t you all shut up and let them that know what’s what have their say?’ he yelled, his words tripping over themselves in his effort to be heard. ‘We’re gettin’ nowhere with all this arguing, and I for one want to get home to my bed tonight.’

  ‘Yeah, and who wouldn’t, with a pretty little wifey like yourn,’ one of the clayworkers at the back of the room heckled, sniggering suggestively. In the momentary silence Walter had created, the words were audible to all, causing more sniggers and obscene gestures, and his proud face flushed a dull, angry red.

  And one man at the back of the room, dressed in clayworker’s garb and with a slouch hat pulled well down over his face, made discreet comments in a notepad under cover of the crumpled newspaper he carried. He was careful not to be observed. If any of these roughnecks ever guessed that a disciple of Tom Askhew’s newspaper, The Informer, was present at this closed-shop meeting, he’d be skinned alive before he could reach the door.

  But he knew Askhew would be pleased with the ingenuity of his young protégé in gaining access to this meeting, and gleaning what information he could. And any gossipy snippet about young Walter Tremayne and the news editor’s pretty daughter would be a bonus, especially when it was sent in anonymously to the letters page. Even more so when that same ambitious young reporter with an eye to the future knew how it would incense Tom Askhew and undermine his confidence as to where those damn letters were coming from.

  Ellis White bent his head as a burly clayworker alongside him suddenly stared hard at him. Deftly and surreptitiously, Ellis managed to slide his notepad and pencil into his coat pocket.

  ‘Who’re you with, boy?’ the older man said suspiciously. ‘I ain’t seen yo
u afore at Killigrew Clay and I know most of the men here from Bult and Vine’s.’

  ‘I’m from over St Dennis way,’ Ellis said quickly, evading the main question. ‘I’m a newcomer to the business, and I need to know what’s in it for me, see?’

  The other man laughed raucously amid the din that was already starting up again.

  ‘You’m in the wrong trade then, boy. There ain’t no money in china clay no more. Any fool can tell ’ee that. Why the devil d’you think we’re all here?’

  He turned away from the younger man, bored with an idiot without the gumption to see there were no fortunes to be made from an ailing industry. There never had been for the clayworkers, the man scowled. Even for the bosses, the glory days were past. And by all accounts, unless a miracle happened, those days that were left were fading fast.

  The bosses were so busy filling the works with newfangled machinery that did the job no better than the old ways, in order to compete with one another, that there was no money left for those that toiled in the sodding wet clay in all weathers. All that happened was a glut of clay, with nowhere to sell it, except at rockbottom prices.

  The man became incensed with his own thoughts, and the indignity of the clayworkers’ lot. And this young fool was daft enough to come into it at what some saw as the worst of times… To the horror of Ellis White, he suddenly found himself grabbed by the scruff of the neck and almost pulled off his feet by a pair of huge hairy hands.

  ‘Take a look at this young feller-me-lad,’ the man bawled out, while Ellis’s heart thudded furiously, thinking his ruse had been found out. He’d have to bluster it out somehow, he thought wildly. He might be ambitious, but he wasn’t a physical man, and nor was he prepared to take on these uncouth bastards for the sake of a newspaper story…

  ‘What’s to do wi’ him, Herbie?’ the man jostling him yelled back with some relish, sensing a fight.

  The man called Herbie bawled out above the heads of the crowd, many of whom were turning their heads to look at the to-do at the back of the room now. Herbie’s voice gathered pitch and momentum.

  ‘This is what we’m here about, men. A young whippersnapper like this ’ere ’andsome lad, just making ’is way in the world. What future is there for the likes of ’ee, when the bosses won’t even consider givin’ us the piddlin’ extra two shillin’ a week they promised us back a year and more. How’s the likes of this un going to raise a family on such a pittance as is paid now, I’d like to know?’

  The roars that accompanied Herbie’s words drowned out the choking sounds from Ellis White’s throat. He managed to point desperately at his throat, while he felt his eyes begin to bulge and his knees to buckle.

  As if only just aware of what was happening, Herbie let him go. Whether or not he’d actually been suspended an inch or two above the floor, Ellis couldn’t even tell. But it felt as if he had. He could barely swallow, and he wanted to crawl away and die from the fiery sensation in his throat. He’d be bruised tomorrow, he thought savagely, just when he’d arranged to meet a new friend, and now he’d be black and blue…

  Well, if they wanted news of their doings put in print, they’d get it. An honest and fair report of their grievances by ‘our correspondent’ would appear in The Informer, no matter how mysteriously they thought it had been obtained. And the anonymous and infamous letter writer who was causing such a stir whenever he put pen to paper, would take a sadistic pleasure in condemning the mentality of men as clodhopping as the clay beneath their feet, who conducted their meetings with all the finesse of wild animals tearing at each others’ throats.

  He felt his own throat tenderly for a moment, but his anger was being tempered now by knowing his own capabilities. He had few friends, and he was what folk termed a lone wolf. But if he didn’t get along with people, at least words were his friends, and his education wasn’t going to waste, he thought, preening himself. Words were powerful weapons, and although Tom Askhew himself was unaware of the letter writer’s identity, Ellis got great satisfaction out of sniping away at all and sundry, especially his own editor, whenever he felt like it.

  * * *

  There was a sudden hush in the room, and the combined raised voices of Walter and Hal Tremayne, Ran Wainwright, and Bult and Vine’s representatives, dwindled away. Ellis swivelled his neck, wincing as he did so, and relishing the bloody tale he’d have to tell, of how he was manhandled in the company of these clayers…

  Then, even his vicious thoughts were scattered as he saw what folk nearer to the door had seen.

  A flash of scarlet satin startled him. Among this company of drab, dishevelled clayworkers, most of whom had lately come off their shifts, with grey-white, unwashed faces and filthy garb; and the bosses in their pressed suits and their high-polished boots and gaiters; the newcomer shone out like a glorious, glowing beacon.

  Ellis’s considerable command of words made his thoughts momentarily lyrical, and then the vision moved determinedly towards the platform where the bosses sat, and he closed his gaping mouth to try to think who the devil she was.

  And a woman, for God’s sake! What was a woman doing here, in this company, when no bal maiden would dare show her face, and not even Morwen Wainwright, with her rightful stake in Killigrew Clay, interfered with mens’ business to this extent. His newspaperman’s curiosity was aroused, overcoming his recent urgent need to get out of the cloying atmosphere and to breathe some clean salt air in his lungs.

  ‘Who the devil is she?’ he heard himself croak, and as the pathetic squeak came out he wondered for a frantic moment if his throat had been permanently damaged from the clay lout’s rough handling.

  But he didn’t need to ask a second time. As the silver-haired woman with the feathered scarlet hat atop her curls, and the proud bearing in her slim, scarlet-clad shoulders, approached the platform with such assurance, the whispers of recognition were already rippling around the room.

  ‘’Tis Harriet Pendragon from over Bodmin way.’

  ‘’Tis she who puts the fear o’ God into her workers, but pays ’em shillin’ for shillin’ for a good week’s work.’

  ‘Oh ah, wi’ all the money old Pendragon left her, she can do as she pleases, but ’tis dragon by name and dragon by nature, by all accounts.’

  ‘She be a fine creature, for all that, and one that a man ’ould be mighty eager to get his leg over, and her wi’ no man to call her own no more—’

  Ellis craned his neck, his interest quickening. He’d never seen the lady before, but he’d heard of her right enough. Who hadn’t heard of Harriet Pendragon?

  So this was the woman who had scandalized the county by taking over her husband’s clayworks when he lay dying, and had continued to lord it over her workers ever since, behaving with all the ruthless power of a man. The woman with rumoured untold wealth at her disposal, who threatened to undercut the prices the other bosses got for their clay blocks, and was one of the prime suspects for already doing so, though nobody seemed able to prove it. And one who already paid her workers sixpence a day more than any other owner to keep them sweet.

  If there hadn’t been so much superstition attached to working for a woman, together with her reputed toughness, it was certain there were plenty of workers who’d desert their old employers and go to work at Pendragon Pits.

  But, good God Almighty, Ellis thought anew, as he saw her mount the rostrum with voluptuous grace. This was no scarecrow bitch, ready to tear the eyes out of the first man to get in her way. This was a charmer of the first order… and one filled with staggering self-confidence to turn up in a whore’s colour, and wear it so magnificently… he didn’t dare get out his notepad again, but his memory was pin-sharp, and he mentally noted every iota of her appearance, and was ready to record inside his head every word she uttered.

  He saw Hal Tremayne rise angrily to his feet. He knocked over his chair and left it where it fell, glowering at the woman with no quarter given in face or manner.

  ‘Madam, you have no place here. T
his is a meeting called to order among men to discuss men’s business, and I’ll ask you to leave quietly.’

  Harriet Pendragon stood her ground and stared him straight in the eyes. Hers were a strange silvery grey, almost matching the unnatural colour of her hair, as opposed to Hal Tremayne’s hard blue eyes. If Ellis had been of a more regular inclination, he could have been stunned by such brittle beauty, but women held little interest for him.

  He pushed such thoughts out of his mind for the present, and concentrated on what was happening on the platform. It was as if the whole roomful of men were doing the same, but for various reasons. Few of them had moved, and yet it seemed as if they all pressed forward, hanging on the drama being unfolded in front of them.

  ‘None can dispute my right to own Pendragon Pits, and as a boss I’ve every right to have a say in the general mechanics of ownership. You’ve all shut me out for too long, Tremayne, and you’re all fools if you take no notice of me, for I’ll have the lot of you on your knees yet,’ she said, in a musical voice that belied the threat in her words.

  ‘A woman can’t control a couple of hundred men—’ Hal snapped at her.

  ‘Can you?’ Harriet Pendragon countered. ‘I’ve seen no evidence of it here, and I understand this miserable meeting has already lasted most of the day with no conclusions drawn.’

  You had to admire her, thought Ellis White, as the mutters of assent ran round the room. She knew exactly how to pull the listening men to her side, while they waited for Hal’s curt response. But it was Ran Wainwright who put a restraining hand on his father-in-law’s arm and got slowly to his feet to face the woman.

  ‘Mrs Pendragon, you have my sympathies,’ he said coolly. ‘A woman trying to walk in a man’s shoes is always a pathetic creature.’

  She stared in disbelief at his gall, taking in every lithe line of him, infuriated yet intrigued by what she saw. A man to lean on was something Harriet had never had, nor ever wanted. But she could see that the Killigrew widow had got herself a man of some stature in all respects, despite the dislike she saw in his face towards herself.