Trevallion Read online

  Trevallion

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Copyright

  Trevallion

  Gloria Cook

  In celebration of the birth of my first grandchild

  Kerenza Naomi Webb

  And love and thanks to her mum, my daughter,

  Cheryl and her husband, Andrew

  Prologue

  He knew as his men scrambled up the ladders and netting from the trenches that their faces were as white with fear as his own, their eyes glazed to attention, their lips like his muttering goodbyes to their loved ones and snatches of prayer, their throats gulping at the sheer enormity of what would probably be their last act on earth. Over the top he led them, each man towards the place where he might die. They were fighting for king and country, for the peace and security of the world, in the Third Battle of Ypres in the month of August, in the year 1917.

  Sergeant Georgie Gilbert followed his lead and urged the men on to glory with a bloodcurdling threat against the Hun. Sixteen-year-old Jimmy Clark was on the sergeant’s heels fighting back the tears, singing his favourite music-hall song with grim determination. Cyril Dawkins was playing a mouth organ clamped between chattering teeth.

  While he and his men ran onwards, aeroplanes roared overhead waging battle in the sky, British and German flying machines, adding to the carnage that lay all around them. They didn’t look up. They didn’t see the aeroplanes. They didn’t hear them. They had to concentrate. They were rushing through a quagmire of French soil in which some of their comrades had drowned.

  There was mud everywhere, in their eyes, noses, mouths and ears. There was mud ground into their flesh, filling their pores. The relentless heavy rainfalls had churned up the fields, flooding the trenches with black water.

  Everything was black. Black smoke hung heavily in the air and shut out the daylight. Huge black rats were running for cover while he led his men on, their guns blazing. The world was black. The future was black. He knew it and so did his men.

  New and highly sophisticated artillery was spewing death and destruction on all sides and after only a few feet of forward movement the first of his men fell. Others followed quickly and those dragging ammunition stumbled over the bodies. Shells and mortar grenades exploded, bullets whistled past, and as they got closer to the heart of the battle, machine-guns cut them down in a swathe as if they were a field of ripe corn.

  He ran on relentlessly, showing his men the way forward, his gun barrel red-hot from firing at the enemy, and those who were left followed him. While they ran they cried, screamed, moaned, cursed and prayed. The men fought for breath, many shuddering out their last.

  They dodged whinnying horses and fallen men. The guns continued to boom. Mud cascaded up into the sky and spattered them, spraying over the dead and dying. Bodies were strewn everywhere, bloodied, torn apart, mangled, twisted, flattened; once living, once human, once caring, loving, giving men; lying now in craters, over mounds of earth, over barbed wire.

  Bodies of men who had fallen only a moment before were in the way but he had to keep running, so he ran over them, and his men, becoming smaller and smaller in number, followed him. It was madness, all this death and destruction, just to gain a few hundred feet of land. And the screaming never stopped. It was burrowing its way deep into his brain and echoing in his ears, screaming, screaming, screaming.

  He shouted to Sergeant Gilbert that they would take out the nearest machine-gun sheltered in an almost impregnable position a few yards up ahead.

  ‘We can do it!’ he shouted, encouraging and cajoling his men onwards. His unit had recently captured a fortified farmhouse from the enemy; they might be but a few now but they could surely take out a machine-gun.

  He and Georgie Gilbert, with Jimmy Clark and Cyril Dawkins hard on their heels, dodged in and out of the line of fire, crawling on their bellies the last few feet.

  Suddenly all went quiet. The battle had stopped. He looked back to smile in blessed relief at his men. But they weren’t there. No one was there. Where were they? Where were his men? Where was the enemy? He got to his feet. It was a terrible risk to take; he could be shot. But there was no one to shoot him. He spun round and round. There was nothing. No one. No unit, no enemy. No horses, no aeroplanes. No mud, no trenches, no war. Nothing but a vacuum of impenetrable blackness.

  He ran but there was nowhere to run to, his feet wouldn’t move. There was just black nothingness and the sound of his own breathing and panic inside his head where once the noise of the battle had been.

  Then he was falling, falling deeper and deeper into the emptiness. He cried out and screamed, fighting against the blackness, fighting against the nothingness.

  Someone was shaking him, something vile and terrible from the nothingness was trying to devour him and keep him there for ever. He struggled and fought.

  There was a light. A small flickering light. Then there was a voice.

  ‘Wake up, Major! Wake up, sir!’

  Alex Fiennes woke with a tremendous shudder. There was a man. One of the men from his unit? No, a servant. There was a woman with him, another of his servants.

  ‘Are you all right, Major?’ she asked in soothing tones.

  He wiped at the stream of sweat burning on his brow. He couldn’t speak. He could only nod. They left him alone, leaving the bedside light on so he wouldn’t be in darkness.

  Outside the bedroom door his butler turned to the housekeeper. ‘That’s the third nightmare he’s had this month.’

  ‘It’s a good thing the missus is out. She can’t cope with him when he’s like this,’ the housekeeper whispered, shaking her head in despair. ‘You’d think he’d be over it by now, after all these years.’

  ‘Perhaps the journey down to Cornwall and a few weeks of sea and country air will do him good.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so. If something doesn’t happen soon to help him come to terms with his ordeal, I fear he’ll go completely mad.’

  Chapter 1

  ‘So there is an heir to Trevallion after all!’ Trease Allen exclaimed, tapping the letter he was reading. ‘It says so right here.’

  ‘Are you sure, Dad? Let me see that.’ Rebecca Allen sprang up from the kitchen table where she had been poring over an accounts book and tried to take the letter out of her father’s hand.

  A few moments ago she had paused in her work and watched anxiously as Trease had taken the letter down from the mantelshelf where it had been sitting unopened for the past three days. Rebecca knew why he had been reluctant to open it. The letter was obviously from Mr Robert Drayton, one of the trustees of the estate of which her father was negligent caretaker. Rebecca thought it p
robably contained a demand for the accounts she’d been working on, which were one of Trease’s lapsed responsibilities, or even a formal confirmation of his dismissal. But now, here he was, after three long anxious days, telling her it was probably the good news they had been waiting so long to hear.

  Trease held the letter up high and danced excitedly about the kitchen of their small cottage while Rebecca watched him in exasperation. He ended up in front of her with a wide grin on his face but she looked back at him severely.

  ‘Well, Becca?’ he inquired eagerly, smacking his thin pale lips and looking up under her disapproving chin. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Dad! You’ve had that letter sitting up there for three whole days and all the time it contained the news that we’ve been hoping to hear for ages! That Mr Drayton has found an heir to the estate and we might not be out of our home and jobs after all. How many times have I begged you to open it? But no, you had to be your usual stubborn self!’

  Rebecca picked up the accounts book and waved it under her father’s nose. ‘I thought Mr Drayton was asking you yet again for these, the winter accounts that you’ve been taking so long over. It’s nearly time to make up the spring ones! Why didn’t you open the letter before? I’ve been worrying that you might have been dismissed, or that Mr Drayton was writing to say the estate was going to be sold, that the big house was going to be turned into a hotel for the holiday trade or something.’ Rebecca pursed her lips and folded her arms tightly. She found it hard to share her father’s sudden joy and optimism. ‘Well? What exactly does the letter say?’

  Trease had become subdued under his daughter’s reprimand. She had got up early this morning to try to make sense of the scribbles he had put at sketchy intervals in the accounts book. Rebecca was always having to cover for his laziness. She had shouldered so much for him over the years, worrying constantly over him, that she had lost something of her youth.

  Trease scratched at his thinning, prematurely grey hair and attempted to remove the deliberately blank look in his hooded colourless eyes. Putting on a businesslike face, he returned to his chair by the fireplace. He rubbed at the sides of his thick brush-moustache, placed his spectacles on the end of his nose and, after straightening out the pages of the letter, scanned its contents again with his one good eye.

  Rebecca knelt down beside him. Her long black hair fell over his arm and he pushed it away. He didn’t like her near him; she hadn’t been able to get close to him in years. It hurt her feelings every time he did something like this. She craned her neck to read the letter with him. It began with the expected plea, accompanied with a threat of sorts, for the accounts covering the months of January to March, then moved on to what her father had become so excited about. After a moment Rebecca became excited too and began to read bits of it out loud.

  ‘… am therefore pleased to inform you that the property has passed into the hands of a Major Alexander Fiennes… a second cousin of the late Captain Miles Trevallion… an industrialist… resides in Berkshire… Major Fiennes has expressed the wish to view the property and will shortly be journeying to Cornwall… with him will be Mrs Fiennes and her son, Stephen… Despite the fact that I’ve pointed out Trevallion House is presently uninhabitable the Major desires to stay on the property rather than at an hotel… Therefore I trust you will prepare appropriate accommodation at the gatehouse; it has sufficient rooms for the family’s needs… my apologies this is such short notice… will be arriving – What!’

  Rebecca snatched the letter from Trease’s hand and swung it round as he jumped up and tried to grab it back. ‘But that’s tomorrow morning! Why weren’t we told? Oh, Dad, we can’t possibly get things ready for them by tomorrow. It will take weeks rather than hours. Oh, how can people be so inconsiderate!’

  ‘Because they’re our masters,’ Trease said calmly, not including himself in her last remark. He took the letter back and placing it on the floral-patterned oilcloth over the table he reverently smoothed out the creases Rebecca had made as if it was the most important thing in the world. At that moment, to Trease Allen, it was.

  Rebecca watched his actions and suddenly felt the same way. ‘At least we know we have an employer again,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, and as this major wants to come down here and look over the place it could be the end of our worries for the future, Becca. He’s an industrialist, a rich man, he might build up the estate to what it was in Captain Miles’s day. We can’t waste any more time, we’ve got a lot to do to get things ready for him. You can give work on the farm a miss today. ’Tis in Frank Kellow’s interests as much as ours to get things in order. Go and fetch Jossy, Joe and Loveday here, m’dear. Tell ’em whatever they’ve got to do today, this is more important. I’ve got a bottle of sherry somewhere in the cupboard… left over from Christmas. We’ll have a little celebration and get up a campaign of action on what we’ll have to do to get ready for the people coming here tomorrow.’

  Trease was already off to get the bottle and glasses. Rebecca frowned, her dark eyes flashing with extreme annoyance. She knew the sherry had not been left over from Christmas, no drink in her father’s possession ever lasted more than a few hours. But she needed no encouragement to go and fetch Joe Carlyon.

  * * *

  Rebecca and Trease lived in a small pink-painted cottage close to the water’s edge of Kennick Creek, a little inlet nestled in a sheltered spot, one quiet part of the winding course of the River Fal. Rebecca had been born in the cottage, known simply as Allen Cottage by the other creek inhabitants, who in turn were known locally as the ‘Kennickers’. The few other dwellings of Kennick Creek were all whitewashed cottages and like Allen Cottage backed onto and were sheltered by the woods of the estate. On the banks of the creek bushes grew, hazel, ash and sloe, tightly packed and overhanging the basin which was now empty, soon to be refilled by lazy green water as the tide came back in. Rebecca had her own small rowing boat, left high and dry alongside Trease’s at the moment by the receding tide.

  She strode along the river in her loose-limbed manner, and jumped down onto the shaley, seaweed-strewn shore of the creek. Because the weather had been hot and dry for several days the shore gave firm footing. Despite her worries there was a proud lift to Rebecca’s shoulders. She had a statuesque build, her skin was fine and flawless, her features as smooth as marble and looked as if they’d been sculpted with great love and care. Her mouth, red and full, was never given to sulkiness. Her eyes, dark, immense and almond-shaped, looked straight at those she spoke to but were guarded, as if they possessed secrets she would never share – although nothing had happened in Rebecca’s life to give her what she considered a secret.

  She made her way first to the boathouse. It was only a few yards away from Allen Cottage but was hidden by the trees and bushes that bowed down to the water’s edge. There were three boats still kept there and Rebecca knew she would find Jossy Jenkins, a sprightly septuagenarian whose family had always been Trevallion’s boatmen, somewhere in its vicinity.

  She rounded the mooring poles and ducked under the hawsers of the Jenkins’ family oysterdredger and half a dozen other boats belonging to the Kennickers, passing by several sheds of neatly stowed equipment up on the bank. The tide and wind had eroded much of the lower bank, exposing gnarled roots of the trees and making the sheds look as if they might fall from their precarious perches at any moment. Holly intermingled with the trees and streamers of ivy swayed in the fresh breeze.

  Rebecca jumped onto the trunk of a tree fallen in a long-ago winter gale and spying Jossy on a bench outside the boathouse she waved to him. Jossy was proud of the bench which he had made himself from old wooden crates and painted green in keeping with the river. He watched her with a keen eye, puffing away on a big brown pipe as she approached him and climbed the eight wide stone steps that led up from the shore.

  ‘Hello, maid,’ he hailed her brightly, waving his pipe in his thick knobbly hand. ‘Off to work then?’ As he spoke his bristly white beard m
oved about his weather-worn face.

  ‘Not today, Jossy.’ Rebecca smiled, gazing momentarily across the creek up at a field of quietly grazing sheep where she often worked. She had good news to share with Jossy today, but his round wrinkled face peeking below his lumpy ancient cap automatically brought a smile to everyone’s face. ‘Can you go to our cottage? Dad’s had a letter. It’s news about an heir to the estate.’

  Jossy puffed away thoughtfully for a moment. ‘So that Truro bloke’s found someone then, have ’ee?’

  ‘Looks like it. I’m on my way to fetch Joe and Loveday.’

  ‘See you in a little while then.’ When Rebecca had gone, Jossy asked the silent creek what it thought about this piece of news.

  Jossy Jenkins had received the news in his usual quiet way but Rebecca knew Joe and Loveday would welcome it as eagerly as she and Trease had, and share in their hopes that the interest Major Alexander Fiennes and his family were showing would end in them keeping their homes and jobs.

  Things had been uncertain for the estate since the outbreak of the Great War eleven years ago. Captain Miles Trevallion had gone to fight, taking with him all the young men on the estate not needed to keep up the farming and sheep rearing. Ever since, the estate had been kept in a kind of suspended animation. The women, children and old men left behind had done what they could to keep the big house and its grounds in good order. They had done their best, but there hadn’t been enough of them and they didn’t have the right skills.

  The war had ended seven years ago, it was now the summer of 1925, Captain Miles Trevallion had been returned home so badly wounded he had been forced to live in a nursing home at Truro, until four months ago when he had, mercifully, died. In accordance with the Captain’s instructions, if injury in the war rendered him incapable or killed, limited funds had been periodically released for the upkeep of the estate by Mr Drayton. The Captain had been greatly respected, and Trease and Joe Carlyon, who had returned home relatively unscathed, had been deeply affected by his terrible fate, more so than by their own battle trauma and Trease’s lost eye. Neither had felt particularly thankful to be spared, not even Trease for Rebecca’s sake. They were glad, however, that Mr Drayton, who had known how much Miles Trevallion had cared for his staff, took them back to work on the estate.