Primmy's Daughter

by Primmy's Daughter (retail) (epub)

  ‘What’s to do with Theo now, anyway?’ Morwen asked. ‘Putting the cat among the clay pigeons again, is he?’

  Cathy pursed her lips, not seeing the joke. ‘I don’t know why you always belittle his efforts to keep control of the business, Mother. You can’t allow the workers to dictate to the management, can you?’

  ‘Oh, management now, is it?’ Morwen said, her blue eyes beginning to sparkle. ‘You should leave the men’s doings to the men, my dear. Theo’s got his head screwed on properly, but you have to let the workers know where they stand, and he’ll know the right words to say when the time comes, no matter what the trouble is. He takes after his father and his grand-daddy in that respect.’

  ‘More than anyone in my family, you mean.’

  ‘Cathy, I don’t want to fight with you,’ Morwen said gently. ‘Life’s too short, especially when you don’t have too much of it left to you. Go home and plan your party, and let’s all aim to give Skye a happy time while she’s here.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Cathy said, standing up, clearly relieved that this visit could be cut short. She gave Morwen a quick peck on the cheek, and remembered to ask after her health a mite late.

  ‘I’m eighty years old, and my joints are stiff,’ Morwen said drily. ‘So don’t expect me to be leaping about on the moors, or dancing at parties. But I’m well enough, so you can report back the same to anybody who’s a mind to be interested.’

  * * *

  Minutes after Cathy had gone, the homely companion that Walter had insisted lived in at the house after Ran died came into the room with their tea, her head on one side like an inquisitive bird. In fact, with a name like Miss Hawkes, Morwen had christened her Birdie, and the name had stuck.

  ‘You torment that one, you wicked ’un,’ she remarked.

  ‘You were listening as usual then. Thought you might be. One of these days, you’ll hear summat you don’t like, you old crone,’ Morwen said smartly, reverting to their own special way of talking. Sometimes it was such a relief to revert back to the old moorland ways that she felt more akin to Birdie than any of her large family, Morwen thought sadly.

  ‘What’s to do that you wouldn’t want me to hear that I don’t know already?’ Birdie challenged her. ‘There’s few fam’ly secrets I don’t know about.’

  And that was what she thought…

  ‘Never mind all that. Tell me your verdict. Is Mrs Cathy Askhew Tremayne getting to be as pompous as my son, Luke, or is she not?’

  ‘’Tis not for me to say, me dear. I’m only the hired help.’ Then, after a pause: ‘But since you ask, I’d say there’s not much to choose between ’em. Now then, what’ll it be? A buttered scone or a tea cake?’

  ‘Tea cake. And get that self-satisfied look off your face and come and tell me what gossip you’ve learned in St Austell today. I can always tell when there’s something.’

  They both enjoyed the game of baiting one another. It was different in public, or when any of the family was around, but in private, they suited one another very well. And for someone around her daughter-in-law Cathy’s own age, thought Morwen, Birdie was a sight more lively and earthy.

  When they were both seated with their refreshments, the companion leaned forward, her round face a touch more serious than usual.

  ‘’Tis no more than rumours, I’m sure, and no reason for you to concern yourself with it.’

  ‘With what, you irritating emmet?’

  Birdie grinned at the abuse and then the grin faded. ‘There’s folk who say that war’s coming. That it’s been too many years of peace, and that we allus have to pay for it.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Morwen said.

  ‘Ain’t it enough?’

  ‘Well, it would be if it was true, but such dire predictions are always being bandied about. You know well enough that Cornish folk are superstitious about anything, and if there’s no superstition to suit the occasion, they’ll invent one. Where did you hear it, anyway? I’ll bet it was in the Blue Boar, and not from any reliable source.’

  She scoffed, knowing very well that Birdie wasn’t above sharing a jug of ale with any farmer or sea-faring man who would pay for it.

  ‘Don’t you feel none o’ that famous shivering in your bones then, just hearing me tell it?’ Birdie challenged her.

  ‘I do not. And I’ve got more important things to think about than a lot of stuff and nonsense about a war that’s never likely to happen.’

  Without warning, she shivered all the same, but she knew it had less to do with Birdie’s wildly speculating informants, than with the fact that she had already lost a grandson and a nephew to a war. Albie’s young son had died at Mafeking in 1899, and then her brother Jack’s officer son, Sammie, whom they were all so proud of, had been killed soon after.

  Two tragedies coming so fast after one another other had almost destroyed them at the time. So whatever gossip Birdie had to tell her, she wanted no more talk of wars.

  ‘’Twasn’t no kiddley-wink talk, neither,’ Birdie added slyly now. ‘I ran into that fortune-telling woman in the town, and she reckons she can see war clouds gatherin’, and there ain’t no stoppin’ ’em, so you mind and remember what I’m sayin’ to ’ee, missus.’

  Chapter Three

  The two men leaned on the fence rail, checking the speed of their newly-acquired Arab horse as the young lad raced him around the track. The older man banged down the timer on the clock with a bellow of satisfaction.

  ‘He’s a bloody marvel, and so are you for spotting him, and bidding for him, Bradley,’ Freddie told him, his moon-face alight with pleasure as he beamed at his nephew. ‘We should do bloody well out of this nag.’

  ‘It’s a knack I have, Freddie,’ Bradley said, not averse to preening himself. He’d always had a high opinion of himself, and he’d long since stopped referring to Freddie as Uncle. ‘And he’s going to bring in a few bob all right. We should enter him in some local derbys to begin with, to put him through his paces, and then go for the big stuff in England once he’s proved himself. It’ll put up his odds for the punters with a few wins on record.’

  ‘That sounds a good move,’ Freddie said, nodding. Venetia would really have approved of the way Bradley had shaped up, he thought suddenly, her name returning to his consciousness as it so often did without warning, even after all this time. And the childless couple had made a smarter move than they could have known, when they’d begged Morwen to let her wayward young son come and live with them in Ireland, as he so badly wanted to do.

  It was also destined to be Freddie’s salvation, as he freely admitted. It was more than twenty years ago when his adored Venetia had broken her neck in a riding accident, and it had all but turned Freddie’s brain to think of life without her. He had been the one to need Bradley’s company then. Needed it, and had it in full measure.

  He pushed the painful memories out of his mind now, as the two men tramped back across the fields to the house, leaving the stable-hands to see to the horses. Freddie, with his gammy leg, was not as agile as the younger man, but rarely complained except in the worst of Irish weather when it played up so cruelly. But life was good for the Cornish exiles. They had a valuable stud now, and their name was well-respected in breeding and racing circles.

  But the mention of England had stirred something else in Freddie’s brain.

  ‘Have you had any thoughts about meeting this American cousin when she comes to Cornwall, Bradley? We could always invite her here for a spell, of course, and your mother might even stir herself out of that great mausoleum of a house and come with her. But if the girl’s to be staying for a year, there’s no need for urgency,’ Freddie added, knowing he should probably make the gesture, but none too enthusiastic about it.

  ‘Mother won’t come,’ Bradley said abruptly. ‘She and I never had much time for one another, and she’s no sweeter to me now than she was when I was a boy.’

  ‘You can hardly blame her for that, with all the strife you caused her,’ Freddie said m
ildly.

  ‘I don’t blame her. I just always seemed to be the whipping-boy among the three younger ones. Brought it on myself, of course. I never could keep my mouth shut, could I?’ he added with a grin. ‘Not that anybody could rival Cresswell in that respect.’

  ‘Well, you’re all settled now, and you all made good lives for yourselves.’ Freddie didn’t care to waste time dwelling on old scores and upheavals. Life was too short, and memories were best kept where they belonged – even good ones.

  Bradley gave a raucous laugh. ‘So we did. But God knows we never expected Luke to become a preacher. Still, in a rumbustious family like ours, it can’t do much harm to have a stake in heaven, one way or another. But Emma ending up a farmer’s wife was summat to turn Mammie’s stomach. She always did think of Emma as her precious little peach. Somehow I can’t see my sister trudging happily among the cow-shit, either. I thought she’d turn out to be airy-fairy and arty-farty – more like Primmy and Albert, in fact.’

  ‘You always did have a fine turn of phrase, Bradley. That fine school we sent you to in Dublin obviously did you a power of good,’ Freddie said. He was still mild-mannered, but he didn’t particularly like these caustic remarks. He could cuss with the best of them, but he was of a generation that respected the family, no matter what they did.

  ‘So what do you think this girl of Primmy’s will be like?’ Bradley went on. He never noticed sarcasm in others, even while he was adept at using it himself.

  ‘She’ll be beautiful, for certain sure, if she’s anything like her mother and grandmother,’ Freddie remarked. ‘How could a Tremayne woman be anything else?’

  He saw Bradley give a dark scowl, and sighed, knowing that the deep-seated resentment of his origins still hadn’t left him. Freddie thought he should have outgrown it long ago, but he had taken his boyhood resentments with him. And there was no reason why it should be so. They had a successful business partnership; they were richer than they had ever dreamed they would be; they had all they ever wanted, except for women to share their lives, and that didn’t seem to bother Bradley at all. But he still couldn’t seem to bypass the seething inner conflict that he had been born a Wainwright.

  He didn’t even have the respected name of Tremayne, like Freddie and the rest of his mother’s family, nor the much more priviliged and esteemed one of Killigrew that he’d always envied so much. He had told himself a thousand times that it was futile and foolish to resent a lovely woman like Morwen Tremayne for having had two husbands and reared a brood of children, some of whom weren’t even her own.

  But he did, damn it to hell and back. He had always done so, and he always would.

  ‘I wonder if she had anything to do with these bloody suffragette women,’ Bradley said, his mind going off at a tangent as the men entered the fine house.

  They dutifully left their boots in the porch, and put on house-shoes before going into the drawing-room to sink the first brandy of the day.

  ‘Who are we talking about now?’ Freddie asked, swirling the golden liquid around his glass and breathing in the fine aroma. They could afford the best, and they revelled in it.

  ‘Primmy’s daughter. Skye. And what a poncey name that is to go to bed with!’

  ‘Why do you think she’d have had anything to do with women’s suffrage?’

  ‘Think about it! You read the last letter Mammie sent. She writes stuff for a magazine, which ain’t your normal occupation for a well-bred young woman, is it? So I reckon she’s bound to be forthright and strident, marching and screeching with the rest of ’em. You mark my words. She’ll be a dead cert for one of the wretched baggages.’

  He scowled. He had never been able to forget the horrific incident the previous year, when Emily Davidson had thrown herself under the king’s horse at the Derby. Freddie and Bradley had both witnessed it, and couldn’t forget it. They had still been in England doing some horse-trading ten days later, when the vast funeral procession in London had made such a martyr of the suffragette, before the coffin had been transported from King’s Cross to Morpeth and burial in the family vault. Every last detail had been widely reported in all the newspapers, and proclaimed as a tragedy at the time, but there were folk who had other ideas on that.

  It was an avoidable farce, in Bradley Wainwright’s opinion. It may have promoted the women’s movement more acutely than all the imprisonments and hunger-strikes and force-feedings that the principals had endured, but in his opinion, women should keep to their proper place in the world. And that didn’t include marching about like lunatics and behaving disgracefully in public. That was a man’s role, he thought, without ever seeing the irony of it.

  ‘You shouldn’t prejudge your cousin, Bradley,’ Freddie said shortly. ‘Her mother was a lovely girl, if occasionally led astray by her feelings. And if Cresswell was anything like our Matt, well, you never knew him in the old days, when he had an almost poetic nature, according to our Morwen.’

  Bradley spluttered into his brandy glass. ‘Poetic! I thought he made it rich in the gold mines of California. I can’t imagine the roughnecks he came in contact with having much truck with a poet. They’d be seeing him as a very different kind of proposition.’

  ‘Our Matt wasn’t gay, and so what if he was,’ he snapped, chastising him as if he was a child instead of the well-built man he was now.

  ‘I never meant anything by it,’ Bradley said lazily. ‘But you know what they say about poets and artists and—’

  ‘You’d best stop right there if you know what’s good for you, boy,’ Freddie said warningly. His blue eyes glinted. They didn’t often fall out, but there was a danger of it now. Such sniggering was wholly undeserved, in any case, because his nephew Albert Tremayne was a respected Truro artist, with a wife and family, who didn’t credit any whiff of scandal from the lips of this braggard.

  Freddie was the youngest of the older generation of Tremaynes, and nearer in age to the children of his brother Sam. And as such, he was always ready to defend them, even if there had been an odd kind of whispering going around regarding Albie and Primmy at one time. But then she had upped and got engaged to Cresswell and been whisked off to America. Love’s young dream had had nothing on the two of them then, he recalled, a smile softening his rounded features.

  ‘Oh, let’s forget the lot of them and have a game of checkers. Do you fancy a wager?’ Bradley asked, realising he had gone too far yet again.

  ‘Why not? Providing you’re prepared to lose a packet.’

  There were those who thought it was a queer set-up for the two men to be living in such close harmony, and never a hint of a woman between them. Those who still recalled the horse-mad Lady Venetia Hocking Tremayne remembered her as more masculine in appearance and manners than many men, and drew their own conclusions about the relationship between Freddie and his male companion. But they lived in a relaxed and tolerant rural community, and whatever they did, as long as they harmed no one, it was nobody’s business but their own.

  * * *

  Walter kept his finger on the pulse of all that went on at Killigrew Clay, despite the fact that his son, Theo, considered himself in charge now. Walter had been entrenched in all its doings for far too long to let go of the reins so easily.

  Besides, Theo’s hot temper was more likely to stir up a hornet’s nest among the clayers than to appease them when their grumbles reached the boss’s ears. And right now, they were complaining about the shifts, and wanting the hours cut so they could spend more time with their families.

  ‘But still wanting the same wages, of course,’ Theo told his father angrily as they drove up to the works high on the moors. ‘Who do they think they are, giving ultimatums to us? They don’t rule the pits. We do.’

  ‘What ultimatums are these?’ Walter said sharply, having heard nothing of any such thing, and clinging to the side of Theo’s prized Austin motor that he drove at reckless and unnecessary speed through the narrow moorland lanes.

  ‘Oh, there’s no need for
you to bother your head about ’em, Father. They don’t amount to anything—’

  ‘And don’t you treat me like an imbecile or a yester-man! What ultimatums are you talking about?’

  Theo shrugged. He hadn’t wanted Walter here today, but as usual, he’d had no choice. If he’d gone on ahead, Walter would have turned up on horseback anyway.

  ‘What do you think? It’s nothing but talk. Puffs of wind, that’s all. And it’s the usual thing. Strikes. Marches to the offices in St Austell to bargain with us. Sending a spokesman to The Informer with their complaints and having ’em made public in that scandal rag. Bloody stupid threats, and I’m damn sure I’m not telling you anything new.’

  ‘You haven’t told me any of this before,’ Walter snapped.

  ‘I didn’t see the need to worry you—’

  ‘Well, in future you’d better see the need.’

  Theo stared ahead, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. He could handle this perfectly well, and it was high time his father stopped meddling. But he knew better than to say so.

  His grandad Hal had gone on controlling the clayworks long after Walter’s age. Once a clayworker, always a clayworker, it seemed, whether you were boss, or humble kiddley-boy fetching the tea, or bal maidens like Granny Morwen and grandmother Bess had once been.

  He grudgingly admitted that with a heritage like that, it was hardly surprising that Walter wouldn’t let go. It would take an earthquake or a fatal illness to shift him, and he didn’t wish that on anybody.

  He drew the car to a halt above the vast sprawling works, looking down on the hive of industry that still formed the heart of Killigrew Clay. The four pits were spread out, but Clay One was the biggest and had always been Walter’s favourite. The huge milky green clay pool where a bal maiden had drowned years ago was as deep and mysterious as ever. That part of its history meant nothing to Theo, but Walter always liked to pause here and ponder for a few moments.