Primmy's Daughter

by Primmy's Daughter (retail) (epub)

  Jack and his wife promised to travel from Sussex if the weather improved, but as Annie was habitually unwell, he hoped the family would excuse their absence if they didn’t arrive. Emma and Will would come the previous day and freely offered to stay overnight on the day to give Morwen support.

  Skye presumed they all asked after Cathy, Walter’s wife, and yet it was Morwen they were all concerned about. Walter was her adopted son, along with Albert and Primmy, but by now Skye was well aware that Walter had always been the one closest to her heart.

  They were all the children of Morwen’s oldest brother Sam, who had died when Ben Killigrew’s rail tracks had collapsed all those years ago. And she and Ben had taken in the three orphaned children and loved them like their own.

  ‘What the hell does it matter who comes and who doesn’t?’ Theo snorted when he put the phone down at last. ‘My father won’t be there to see ’em, and there’ll be plenty of clayers to turn up to see him properly planted.’

  Skye felt shocked at his words, but by now, having listened to him on the telephone to the various family members, she knew it was the only way he could get through these first raw hours.

  * * *

  On the day, it was just as Theo had said. The long stream of clayers from other pits as well as theirs, walked in silence behind the cars taking the family to the church where Luke Wainwright presided over the service for his step-brother.

  Cathy was as pale and composed as if she was made of ice, while Morwen’s suffering showed all too well in her face, and she had to be assisted by the men of the family. Only Albert was one of her own boys, thought Skye. But Charlotte’s husband Vincent, and Em’s husband Will, were stalwart seconds.

  Jack and Annie had thought better of their reticence, and travelled from Sussex in this dismal January weather to stay a couple of days with Morwen. Matt had sent a telegram from California expressing his sorrow, and a distraught one had arrived from Primmy, begging a detailed letter from Skye.

  Skye was thankful for Philip’s presence at New World that day. Inevitably, much of the talk was of the past and those no longer with them, and she felt very much the outsider.

  ‘So you’re Primmy’s daughter,’ Jack stated unnecessarily for what seemed like the tenth time. ‘I can see the likeness to her, and to our Morwen as she was, o’ course. She were always a corker of a girl.’

  Skye wasn’t sure which of the two he was referring to. She didn’t like him much. He was noisy and stout, a prosperous businessman who had made good out of his boat-building skills, and nothing like the adoring sibling of his brother Sam that she had imagined from Morwen’s description.

  But for heaven’s sake, she chided herself, how could he be! He was an old man now, and those childhood days were far away. She shivered as they ate their funeral fare and drank their wine and fruit cup, listening to the talk between the older ones, and the younger generation, and feeling that she didn’t fit in here. Not at all. Despite all she had once felt and dreamed about this place, she didn’t fit in. She was an intruder.

  ‘It will be over soon, and then we can get on with our own lives,’ she heard Philip say quietly beside her.

  She was glad of his understanding, and yet unwittingly as contrary as Morwen Tremayne had ever been, she resented it too. ‘You mean we’ll mark time until April, and then we’ll both go to war and be killed, and join the rest of the family in the churchyard.’

  Appalled, she heard her voice rise passionately, and some of the others paused in their conversation and stared at her. Jack cleared his throat and spoke again.

  ‘By God, she’s a true Tremayne, ain’t she, Morwen? And she’s Primmy’s girl all right with all that fire in her belly. Wouldn’t you say so, Albie?’

  To her horror, Skye saw Albert’s face go red, and as if it was written all over him, she knew instantly what his feelings had been for her mother – and for her. Without thinking, she linked her arm through Philip’s, as though to affirm their relationship for everyone to see.

  ‘I think we’re rather forgetting why we’re here.’ They all heard a genteel voice break into the embarrassed silence.

  Cathy stood in the middle of the drawing-room, holding her audience with quiet dignity, her face pale above her black dress, a glass in her hand.

  ‘Mother, perhaps you should sit down—’ Theo began, but she shook him off.

  ‘I’m perfectly calm, thank you, Theo. But I would like us all to drink to Walter’s memory before we part company.’

  She was as good as saying the wake was over, thought Skye, as they dutifully did as she asked. She remembered how Morwen had once told her in an unguarded moment that the adolescent Walter and Cathy had run away together, hiding in the turret room of this very house, because they couldn’t bear to be parted.

  And here was this calm, controlled woman, dealing with a social gathering so efficiently, as if she hadn’t just buried her husband and so recently lost a son.

  She seemed unnatural… but watching them all as they began to make their goodbyes, and knowing what she already did about her family, Skye could see how life changed people. Her thoughts ran on frighteningly, turning inwards. Life changed them all. It would change her and Philip.

  As well as Jack and Annie, Emma and Will were staying overnight, leaving the farm in the charge of their stockman. And at the last minute, Skye clung to Philip.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she whispered. ‘There’s plenty of room here. I feel so isolated, and I need someone of my own.’

  She knew it was the oddest way to feel, surrounded by her family, but it was true. Apart from Morwen, they were still strangers to her, and Philip was her dearest, her darling, her lover… her eyes held a mixture of pain and passion, and despite the solemnity of this day, she knew what she was offering. She needed his arms around her so desperately, to feel that life was still warm and vibrant, and didn’t merely consist of ghosts of the past.

  ‘Of course I’ll stay if your grandmother agrees,’ he said quietly, and they knew they wouldn’t be parted that night.

  * * *

  Whether the others knew, or guessed, that he had come to her room that night, she hardly cared. She was safe in his arms, where she most wanted to be. He made love to her gently at first, until she made it clear that she wanted more, and finally she cried out as she felt the moment of climax approach. She clung to him fiercely, but, as always, he withdrew from her, leaving her momentarily lonely, but knowing this was the way it had to be. They couldn’t risk the shame of creating a child out of wedlock.

  He left after breakfast the following morning, along with the rest of the family. And only then, when they were alone, did Morwen make any comment.

  ‘Philip is a good man, Skye, but be careful, my lamb. I know how feelings can run away with you, and you’re not planning a wedding just yet, I take it?’

  ‘We haven’t discussed it, Gran,’ she murmured. ‘There’s time enough for that, and there’s a war to get through first.’

  ‘You still intend to go with him, then?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you, if it were Ben? Or Ran?’

  Morwen gave a small smile. ‘Oh ah. I’d have followed either one of ’em to the ends of the earth.’

  ‘Well then,’ Skye said.

  * * *

  There were no surprises in Walter Tremayne’s will. He left his shares in the clayworks to his son, and Killigrew House was also left to him, with provision for Cathy to live in it for as long as she wished. Theo came to New World a week or so later to discuss it with Morwen.

  ‘There was no need for a formal reading, Gran, as everything was straightforward. It was a recent will, with no mention of Jordan.’

  To him, it was a sure sign that Walter had known exactly what he was doing when he went over the cliff. But he knew better than to say so. Morwen had taken to her bed more and more now, and the doctor had put her on permanent sedatory medication, though she constantly railed against it, saying caustically that she was no cabbage-head yet.


  ‘So what have you come to say, Theo?’

  ‘I think we should make a decision to close down Clay Two for now. There’s work enough for those remaining at Clay One, but we’d be wasting machinery to keep both pits open at present. Stokes and Keighley are willing to extend their contract with us for the next five years. The war will be over long before that, of course, and we’ll be on our feet again with the overseas markets,’ he added optimistically.

  But he knew the war reports didn’t look good. After the initial burst of patriotic fever, more men were dying than enlisting now. He had toyed with the idea of going himself, but somebody had to run the clayworks, and he was the only Tremayne left here to do it. It shook him to realise it.

  ‘And what about the pottery notion?’ Morwen asked. She was too tired to be overly interested, and other folk could deal with the hustle and bustle of business.

  ‘We leave it for the time being,’ Theo said. ‘We can lease the linhay at Clay Two to the two dabblers there now, but this is no time to go into production on our own account, when we’d probably lose half the workforce to the army.’

  She nodded in agreement, knowing that Walter had been the keener of the two. Theo kissed Morwen’s crumpled cheek, unconsciously echoing his cousin Skye’s thoughts that it was sad that life changed things, and people.

  He could remember Morwen when her hair was as black as Skye’s and her eyes as startlingly blue, and it saddened him to see her now. But he was too much in control of himself to stay sad for long. He had all the Tremayne passion when it came to the clay, but he had more than a smidgin of his mother’s icy control. And that made a more successful business brain than all the passion in the world.

  ‘Where’s Skye today?’ he asked now.

  ‘She and Philip are choosing an engagement ring,’ Morwen told him, brightening. ‘It’s Philip’s birthday at the end of February, but they don’t want any fuss or parties.’

  Theo grunted. Philip Norwood seemed a decent fellow, so good luck to them. Anyway, he might have plans of his own in the marriage direction, though with his father just cold in his grave, he wouldn’t introduce the subject yet.

  But with his mother gone to Yorkshire, and, he suspected, planning to stay there, Killigrew House was large and empty. It needed a wife, and children. And nobody was immortal. That was swiftly coming home to him.

  ‘I’ll leave you to sleep now, Gran,’ he said, planning to drive to his lady-friend’s house in Grampound. He passed it on the way back to St Austell, anyway, and it was too tempting to resist calling in for a cup of something and a warm at her fireside. Far too tempting.

  * * *

  Skye admired the ring on her finger, its small sapphire surounded by the cluster of diamonds in its Victorian setting. She had refused to have anything ostentatious. It seemed wrong to be celebrating birthdays and engagements when men were dying, even though she knew how foolish that was.

  Life went on, though the reports from the Front were becoming ever more serious. At the beginning of February the total British casualties had amounted to more than 100,000. And one thousand suffragettes were shortly going to France to do war work. Skye found herself wishing she were there too.

  But when April came, Philip enlisted alone. Morwen was ill and begged Skye not to leave her, often calling her Primmy in her confusion. Skye wouldn’t ask Philip to stay, no matter how she feared for him, nor how desperately she would miss him. So she stayed behind while Philip went to war.

  The spring and summer dragged on, and she was still getting letters from home, entreating her to return, but she was adamant that her place was now here. Her brother, Sinclair, washed his hands of her, thinking she was completely stupid, but despite her fears, Primmy understood, as Skye had known she would.

  Hadn’t she once sacrificed everything to be with Cresswell, whom she loved, despite all the threats of family and public scandal? But Skye admitted she felt useless. Charlotte’s girls were practically heroines in their parents’ eyes now, both seasoned nursing auxilliaries in France. Philip was driving an ambulance through the territory he knew well from the past. Morwen was improving and Skye resolved to stay at New World only until she recovered her health fully, and then she would join him.

  ‘You need to get out of the house, my dear,’ Birdie told her one morning. Skye’s face was clouded from reading the latest letter from Philip, in which he made no secret of the numbers of casualties, and the futile way in which a piece of ground could be gained, only to be lost almost immediately.

  ‘Get on up to the moors and get some colour in your cheeks,’ Birdie went on, ‘or you’ll be as pasty as t’other un. She’ll be sleeping like a babby for a coupla hours.’

  ‘I think I will, Birdie,’ Skye said gratefully.

  She rode her bicycle, revelling in the clean summer air, and realising that the house had been full of a sickbed smell lately. She had better get used to it, she thought grimly, if she intended working in one of the field hospitals in France, but for today she was going to forget it, and pretend that a war wasn’t raging across the Channel, and that her lover was not in the middle of it.

  After a laborious ride and bicycle-push up the steep moors, she reached the old cottages on the ridge. She gazed down on the glistening sky-tips, always beautiful in sunlight, and the gouged out hillside with the little trickling streams emptying into the milky green clay pool of Clay One.

  She could see the clayers, busy as bees, but she didn’t want company, and she turned away, pedalling over the firm moorland turf towards the abandoned Clay Two. The only activity here now was in the old linhay, where the unskilled potters muddled about, according to Theo. He was scathing of their efforts, and Skye agreed he had reason to be. When they started up the pottery properly they needed to employ skilled people, to support the proud name of Killigrew Clay.

  She had reached the linhay before she realised it, and as Desmond Lock caught sight of her and waved his beefy hand, she felt obliged to throw down her bicycle and wander across to say hello. She resisted taking his preferred hand, seeing it caked in oozing clay.

  ‘All alone?’ she asked.

  ‘Me Pa’s off doing a job for one of the farmers, Miss. Do ’ee want to have another try wi’ the clay?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I just thought I’d see how you were getting on.’

  She became aware that the grin on his face was becoming salacious, and she edged back a little, registering that he didn’t smell any sweeter than the dank, earthy clay.

  ‘I been waitin’ for ’ee, I have. I knew you’d come, sooner or later.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She tried to laugh, but the laugh stuck in her throat as he came swiftly around the workbench, his club foot being no hindrance to the lustful intent she could see in his eyes now.

  ‘I seen it first time you came ’ere wi’ my Uncle Bert. I told meself that fine pretty wench is just right for the pluckin’.’

  Skye smelled liquor on his breath, and knew she had better assert her position fast. She tried to sound as imperious as her Aunt Cathy.

  ‘I’ll try to overlook what you’ve just said, Desmond. Now, if you’ll just get out of my way—’

  How he had come between her and the means of escape, she didn’t know. But the next minute she screamed as he lunged for her, his clay-soggy hands pushing inside her coat and fumbling for her breasts. He was large and rough, and his words had become leering and slobbering.

  ‘Knew you was asking for it soon as I saw ’ee, wi’ them big blue eyes and that maid’s-hair. If I be the first, ’twill be an even bigger bonus than any yon pit bosses ever pay out.’

  ‘Keep away from me, you bastard,’ Skye screamed, fighting him off. He had bullish strength, and she was very frightened.

  And the last thing she wanted to do was to be practically mud-wrestling with this drunken oaf. Then the heavily-booted club foot shot out and hooked itself behind her ankle, giving it a vicious wrench.

  She lost her balance at once, and went f
lying to the ground, hitting the back of her head with a sickening crack. Desmond Lock fell on top of her, winding her, his hands fumbling for her skirts now, and pushing upwards with those slimy, sausage fingers, hurting her.

  Dazed and sobbing, Skye’s head twisted this way and that in her terror, her lovely hair unkempt and dirtied on the dusty ground. She tried desperately to clamp her legs together, knowing this awful thing was about to happen, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Then, out of nowhere came an unholy screech, as if all the demons in hell were being unleashed. Desmond’s head jerked up, and as he paused in his fumbling, Skye scrambled away from him, staggering to her feet and clutching at the edge of the workbench. Her head swam, and her eyes were blurred with tears as she made out the outline of what looked like a horrendous gargoyle standing against the light.

  The bedraggled figure, with its tangled, wispy grey hair, pointed an accusing finger at Desmond.

  ‘Keep away from me, you evil witch bitch!’ he screamed, backing away with his eyes rolling in terror.

  The old woman moved menacingly forward. ‘You’m doomed for defiling this pretty miss, Desmo Lock, and tain’t the first time you’ve dabbled with young maids, from all I hear tell. Such wickedness allus comes back to roost, sure as night follows day.’

  ‘You bloody old crone!’ Desmo screamed again. ‘You don’t scare me wi’ your spells and potions!’

  Without warning she flung a handful of something hot and peppery towards him, and he howled with pain as it reached his eyes. He blundered out of the linhay and away from the makeshift pottery, hollering that he’d have her pool-dunked and strung up yet for the she-devil that she was.

  Still shivering with shock, Skye recognised her unlikely saviour now as the old woman she had seen when she first came here. The woman from the hovel on the moors.

  ‘Thank you,’ she croaked.

  ‘No need for thanks. I’ve fair taken to ’ee, my pretty, and that one’s due for the fiery furnace, never fear.’