Primmy's Daughter

by Primmy's Daughter (retail) (epub)

  ‘Tomorrow. Albie and Rose are bringing her—’

  ‘Oh ah, they’d have wanted the first look-see,’ Emma said amiably. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘We’ll be having a party here at New World once Cathy’s arranged it all, so I’ll let you know the date as soon as I can. You’ll both be sure to come, won’t you? There’s no lambing or pig-squealing to stop you, is there?’

  Emma gave a shrieking laugh. ‘Oh Mammie, lambing’s well and truly over by now. But Will says ’tis a pity the daffy season’s over, or we’d have made a right display for the maid, and filled the house with blooms. Though I know where they’d have ended up,’ she added.

  ‘You just keep the date free as soon as I let you know, then, and you know there’s plenty of room for you to stay the night,’ Morwen said.

  ‘That depends on what Will says.’

  Morwen sighed as the conversation ended. Where had her little girl gone – the one who always ran to her, and wanted her Mammie to the exclusion of everyone else? The one who had nearly died from the measles, and Jane Askhew had been the one to keep vigil with herself and Ran, when the two of them had nearly collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Now, all Emma wanted was Will, and her lambs and her pigs.

  Her mouth twitched at the nonsense of the thought. Because of course it was right and proper that folk moved on.

  But her flowers… Morwen’s face sobered. Emma knew her too well. She might not know the whole of it, but she knew that once a year her mother made a special pilgrimage to Killigrew Clay, just to gaze down into the clay pool where her friend Celia had drowned herself, rather than face the shame of what she had suffered.

  An illegitimate child would have been shameful enough, but to deal with it in the way she had – they had – Morwen added, was the wickedest of all. Taking a witchwoman’s potion, and burying the thing, the waste – no, the child – she made herself think brutally. Celia hadn’t been able to cope with any of it.

  It was decades ago now, and yet sometimes it was all so real to Morwen, as if she could still hear Celia’s terrified weeping as Ben Killigrew’s cousin had seduced her up on the moors near the standing stone.

  And Morwen’s annual pilgrimage always ended at Penwithick Church, not the moorland parish where Luke was now all puffed-up in importance as resident preacher at remote Prazeby, but where Celia was buried in the old churchyard, along with so many Killigrews and Tremaynes and Wainwrights.

  And she always lay a sheaf of wild flowers on Celia’s grave, the way she had done on the day she was married to Ben Killigrew in that very church, a lifetime ago.

  ‘You’re drifting again, and ’tis time you were in your bed,’ she heard Birdie say. ‘You’ll want to be sprightly to greet the maid tomorrow.’

  ‘Sprightly, is it! I’ll leave that to the young ’uns,’ she said, as tartly as she could, considering that there was still such a heartache inside her every time she thought of Celia Penry. It didn’t happen so often nowadays, but when it did, it could still catch her unawares.

  But Birdie was right. It was high time she was in bed, and she’d be glad to shut everything out of her mind until tomorrow.

  * * *

  Skye was on her way. At last she was going to meet the matriarch of the family, whom her Mom and Dad held in such esteem. What would she be like? She had heard such tales, and she had always imagined she had a weird affinity with the spirited girl that Morwen Tremayne had once been.

  But she wasn’t about to meet a wildcat young girl of seventeen who had fallen in love with the son and heir of Killigrew Clay and eventually married him against all the odds. She was going to meet an old lady. Her grandmother.

  ‘Nervous, Skye?’ Albie asked her, glancing back in the car.

  ‘No!’ she lied. ‘Should I be?’

  Rose laughed. ‘Some folk might say you should, my dear. Your Granny can be a formidable woman.’

  For Skye, at that moment, the sudden memory of herself and Philip Norwood laughing like conspirators over reducing folk to size by imagining them in their underwear, surged into her mind. Making her heart leap… not with the shame of imagining an old lady in that way, but in bringing Philip’s image so vividly alive.

  She concentrated on watching the passing scenery, and glorying in the wildness of the countryside as they crossed the lanes and byways and headed towards St. Austell.

  They would reach New World before they reached the town, so the sight of the clayworks and the sky-tips must wait awhile longer. But by then the excitement in her heart had overcome all other thoughts. It wasn’t so much a feeling of coming home, as a sense of having been here before in some other life, some other time. Spooky, but oddly reassuring.

  And the moment she was enveloped in Morwen’s arms, she knew why she had made this journey.

  As for Morwen, she had to stop telling herself she was seeing ghosts. This was Skye. Not herself or Primmy, nor all of them. Skye was unique. Herself. A fact that became perfectly obvious when she declared her intention to stay here at New World for as long as Morwen would have her.

  ‘That’s what I hoped you’d say, dar,’ Morwen said, using the quaint endearment Skye’s parents used to one another. And if she thought it surprising that Albie looked almost relieved that Primmy’s daughter seemed not to want to spend more time with him and Rose, she ignored it.

  ‘I want to see everything, Granny Morwen!’ Skye said, after they had gone, and she and Morwen had spent a glorious couple of hours looking through the masses of photographs in the albums. ‘I’m longing to see the clayworks and the cottage where you used to live – and you do know I’m planning to write some articles for my magazine about Cornish life, past and present, don’t you? I’d love to send some of these photographs as well, but I guess most of them are too precious for you to part with.’

  She rushed on hopefully, her words almost tripping over themselves in her excitement now.

  ‘If there’s any similar to one another, you can have ’em,’ Morwen said. ‘But you’re right. Some are far too precious to part with.’

  ‘But perhaps I can get copies of them. I could try taking them to a photographer, or perhaps to the newspaper offices. I’m sure they could do them without damaging the originals,’ Skye persisted.

  Morwen laughed. ‘You’re a Tremayne all right and no mistake, my lamb!’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Skye said, but pleased at the comment.

  ‘You don’t give up, do you? Once you see something you want, you’ll go to the ends of the earth to get it.’

  ‘Like you did, you mean?’ Skye said daringly, and not allowing herself to apply such thoughts to wanting Philip Norwood.

  She wasn’t selfish enough to try to steal another woman’s man… but she was honest enough to admit to herself that she did want him, in every sense of the word.

  And Morwen was laughing now, and telling her to mind her manners when she spoke to her elders. But her blue eyes sparkled, giving Skye more than a glimpse of how strong-willed Morwen Tremayne had once been… wanting Ben Killigrew… and wanting Ran Wainwright.

  But it was clear that Morwen was getting tired, and Skye knew they had better leave any more discussions until tomorrow. After all, they had plenty of time to get to know one another.

  ‘Is there any chance of my hiring a bicycle while I’m here?’ she asked, as they prepared to go to bed. ‘I’d like to explore on my own, and not be a bother to anyone.’

  ‘You’ll never be that, Skye, but I’m sure it can be arranged. I’ll ask Birdie to see to it, if you’re sure that’s what you want.’ And didn’t she understand the need to be independent, and to form her own ideas? And this intelligent girl would want to see everything for herself, if she was going to write things about them all for her magazine.

  For the first time, Morwen felt a tiny doubt. There were too many things that should never be written about for all to see. Private things, personal things… but she was sure Skye had integrity too, and wouldn’t want to expose anyth
ing that was best kept buried for all eternity.

  Glory be, but what was she making such a fuss about! Who would be interested in Celia’s drowning but those who loved her? And there were precious few of those left now… only herself, in fact, she thought, with a huge shock.

  And who would be concerned about Sam Tremayne’s dying in a mine shaft when Ben Killigrew’s little rail-tracks collapsed with the weight of clayfolk going on an outing to the seaside? But even as she thought it, she knew Skye would be very interested in that particular happening.

  For Sam had been her natural grandfather, and if things hadn’t taken the turn that they did, with Dora dying so soon after from the measles, and leaving three orphaned children, then Primmy’s life would have taken a very different turn, along with her brothers, Walter and Albert. And there would probably have been no Skye.

  ‘Are you all right, Granny Morwen?’ she heard the girl’s voice say now.

  ‘Just sensing a goose stepping over my grave,’ she replied, a little laboured. ‘And hoping you’ll not uncover too many old secrets that are best kept where they belong.’

  ‘I’m sure there are none,’ Skye said, just as sure that there were. What family didn’t have secrets? And this one was hers. She belonged to it, and therefore it belonged to her.

  She wrote to her parents that evening, as she had promised to do the minute she reached New World. There was so much to say, about Albie and the studio and the extraordinary feelings she had at just being here at all.

  But there was one topic she hardly mentioned at all, and that was Philip Norwood. She had already told them of their meeting on the voyage, so she merely said they had parted company at Falmouth, and naturally she didn’t expect to see him again.

  When she had finished her letter, she put out her bedroom light, half wishing she hadn’t brought his name into the letter. It was the way lovers always wanted to speak the beloved’s name at every opportunity… the way they so often gave themselves away. And she was all kinds of a fool for believing in love at first sight. Or in a shipboard romance that hadn’t happened, anyway – however much the two people concerned had wanted it to happen.

  She shivered, snuggling down in the unfamiliar bed, determined to put him right out of her mind, and tried to think of nothing at all.

  * * *

  Philip Norwood had already come to the sad conclusion that his engagement had been a big mistake. It had been a comfortable inevitability but now that it had happened, he wasn’t the kind of man to jilt a girl he’d known for so long, and who had always looked up to him and depended on him. He couldn’t be the one to break Ruth’s heart.

  But re-entering her silent world made him even more aware of his frustration, and all the more so every time he recalled the quick, light voice of the vivacious girl he had met on the voyage back to England. The girl with the unlikely name, and the wide, unconsciously voluptuous smile. And the expressive blue eyes that would have made poets wax lyrical about cornflowers and the colour of the sea, and which made even a prosaic lecturer like himself go weak at the knees, just picturing them gazing into his.

  God, how he had wanted her, and how he had censured himself for almost revealing the feelings he had found so hard to control. It would have been disastrous, knowing that he had a duty to Ruth. He was no cad. But the hell of it was that he still wanted Skye Tremayne more than he had ever wanted anyone, and certainly more than he had ever wanted the pale-haired girl he’d known all his life.

  He watched her skimming her hand in the water now, as they rowed gently down the river in the boat he had hired for the day before he settled into his college duties. Ruth had been living for some time with an elderly aunt just outside Truro, and it had seemed so fortuitous when the college post there had been offered to him.

  Now, shamefully, he wished it had never happened, and they could perhaps have drifted apart as simply as they had drifted into the engagement. But if he hadn’t been on that particular ship, he would never have met Skye Tremayne…

  He felt the touch of Ruth’s hand on his knee, and he started, thanking God that at least she wasn’t a thought-reader. He looked at her intently as she made the quick, expressive hand movements and exaggerated mouthings he had long since taught himself to follow, to be able to communicate with her.

  ‘Philip, what’s wrong?’ the gestures said. ‘I know something is bothering you.’

  Thankfully, she could lip-read, so that he didn’t have to take his hands off the oars to use the sign language that was so natural to her, and so difficult for him.

  ‘It just feels strange coming back here after the bustle of New York, that’s all,’ he said with a forced smile. ‘In a few days everything will seem more normal, especially when I begin work.’

  ‘And then I’ll hardly see you at all.’

  Her eyes were large and unblinking, and at that moment they seemed to Philip to be all-seeing. As if she knew very well he welcomed the very thing she looked so mournful about.

  They said that people with disabilities developed other senses, and deafness didn’t exclude a strong sense of awareness when something was wrong. Or when someone didn’t feel the same way about you as they had once done.

  He reached out a hand and squeezed hers.

  ‘We’ll find time to be together, Ruth. We’ll make time.’

  It wasn’t said with any great enthusiasm, and guiltily, he knew it didn’t matter. Because she couldn’t hear the words.

  * * *

  ‘You’re a blessed miracle worker, Birdie,’ Skye told her delightedly, eyeing the splendid bicycle that had been delivered to New World by mid-morning the following day.

  It had been one of her favourite pastimes to bicycle around the New Jersey coast, free as a bird and beholden to no one. And she anticipated the same pleasure here, with added enjoyment, because every fold in the hills or turn of the road would be a new adventure.

  ‘I know a few folk,’ Birdie said modestly. ‘Though you wouldn’t be catching me on one of them machines myself.’

  Skye laughed, itching to be out of here now, and finding her own way around the countryside. She reported to Morwen before she did so, asking how far it was to Killigrew Clay, and if she could bicycle there.

  ‘Time was when we all walked to Truro Fair from St Austell, there and back again, so if you’ve the heart and legs for it, you should manage it well enough. ’Tis uphill most of the way, o’ course, but ’tis downhill coming back.’

  Skye laughed, loving the moments when Morwen lapsed into the old way of speaking. She was a grand lady now, but there must have been a time, thought Skye, when she spoke the way all the local folk did, lilting and soft, and catching every young man’s eye…

  ‘I’ll be sure and be back in good time for meeting the folks this evening,’ she said now.

  ‘You’ll want summat to eat afore then,’ Birdie said, not approving of this way of behaving.

  Morwen was less fussy. ‘Go and ask Cook to pack up a pie and a bottle of lemonade for you, Skye. The kiddley-boys and bal maidens survived on far less in a day.’

  Skye gave her a hug, already feeling that they understood each other very well. And she had learned plenty of those days from her Mom. Primmy hadn’t had much time for claying, but when Primmy had charmed her litle daughter with tales of the old days, Skye had thought that she might well have been a bal maiden herself, given the chance.

  She had pictured herself scraping the clay blocks and setting them out to dry in the linhay, stacking them pyramid-high on their carts and sending them careering down the steep hills from the moors to Charlestown Port at St. Austell for shipping to far-off destinations. And making Killigrew Clay prosperous in the process.

  And now she was going to see it all for herself at last.

  * * *

  By the time she had toiled up the last bit of moorland track, and glimpsed the huddle of cottages ranged like a row of soldiers along the top of the moors, she was hot and drained. The sky-tips were ahead of her now
, vast white mountains that glinted in the sunlight with their mineral and waste deposits.

  She paused to catch her breath, drinking in the scene, and then had to scramble to the edge of the track with her bicycle as a dark green motor-car swept past her.

  ‘Pig!’ she yelled after it, but it vanished in a cloud of dust, leaving her choking, brushing the dirt from her skirts, and furiously straightening her hat. Some way she was going to arrive at the clayworks, looking like a hoyden! Not that she intended making her presence known, she had decided. This was just a preliminary look.

  ‘Be ’ee lost, pretty maid?’ she heard a voice say.

  She whirled around to see a wispy-haired, dishevelled old woman with an armful of sticks, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere. She wasn’t a frightening spectacle, and Skye wasn’t easily unnerved, though the toothless grin left something to be desired for dental hygiene, she thought.

  ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘Just finding my way around.’

  ‘A stranger, be ’ee?’ the woman nodded sagely. ‘And one o’ they Tremaynes, I’ll wager, come from across the sea. I heard one of ’em was coming back.’

  Skye didn’t particularly want to get into conversation with such a disreputable old crone, but this was local colour, she reminded herself, and she was a journalist, and this was what she had come for. Besides which, she could do with a breather from the stiff uphill ride.

  ‘Well, hardly coming back, since I’ve never been here before,’ Skye told her. ‘But my name is Tremayne, and I daresay the news got around that I was coming.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘Didn’t need no news reports, my pretty. I seen it coming long ago. ’Twas certain sure that one of ’ee ’ould come back. They allus do, see? The one that went off wi’ that other ’un after the wrecking years ago – he came back. Then there was the one that caused all the fussing – he came back and took your mammie with ’un. Now you.’

  Skye stood as if transfixed as all this detail into the Tremayne family life emerged from such an unlikely source. There were some bits that she knew, and some she simply didn’t understand. And she was suddenly angry at this crowing female.