Primmy's Daughter

by Primmy's Daughter (retail) (epub)

  It was one of the few times Skye saw her lose her composure. But the sights on the wards made everyone lose all sense of decency and privacy, and they also lost much respect for men who could so humiliate and maim their own kind.

  On the rare occasions she seemed to see Philip alone now, Skye wept in his arms, berating the whole human race.

  ‘Hush, darling,’ he said. ‘You have to accept that war makes animals out of all of us.’

  ‘Not you,’ she said stubbornly. ‘And certainly not me.’

  ‘So if you were to come face to face with a Hun, and it was a case of kill or be killed, you think you would be too full of humanity to pull the trigger, do you? I think not, my love. The need for survival is as strong in us today as it was in the Stone Age.’

  ‘Oh, I hate it when you’re so logical and make me feel such a ninny,’ she stormed.

  ‘Then let me make you feel human again,’ he said softly, but she couldn’t and in the end, neither could he.

  ‘This war has got a lot to answer for,’ he said grimly, knowing that this wasn’t the time or place, after all, to be making love. ‘There was never a more apt saying about the spirit being willing, but the flesh weak.’

  ‘We’re all exhausted,’ Skye told him, knowing his male pride was suffering right now. ‘But one day it will end, and we’ll be home in Cornwall again, doing all the ordinary things we always took for granted.’

  It had never sounded so poignant nor so sweet.

  ‘Is Cornwall truly home to you now, Skye? Don’t you have hankerings to go back to America? If it was what you really wanted, we should think about it—’

  ‘It’s not,’ she said flatly. ‘Of course I’ll want to see Mom and Daddy sometimes, but I can live without my brother’s pomposity, and Cornwall feels more like my spiritual home than anywhere else on earth now. And if you don’t start talking about something else, I’m going to cry.’

  * * *

  They had occasional leaves, but the timing didn’t always coincide, and they only went back to England a few times during the following year. Most times they preferred to stay where they could be in touch with each other, and Skye’s fellow nurses had long since begun calling them the love-birds. But it was said with affection, and not a little envy.

  In the September of 1916, tanks arrived on the scene to give them new hope for an early end to it all. And there was fresh excitement as the news was relayed about the Zeppelin that had exploded over Essex, with the crew being almost bizarrely arrested by a lone Special Constable. And then something far more heartbreaking occurred to bring home and war more closely together for Skye than anything else so far.

  ‘There’s a large batch of casualties for you to detail, Tremayne,’ her immediate superior said. ‘You came from Cornwall, didn’t you? I’d better warn you that some of the names might be familiar to you.’

  She didn’t get much sympathy from that one, thought Skye, and she took the bundle of papers into the small office that had been allocated to her, steeling herself for seeing Cornish names among all the others. But there was only one section of casualties that turned her blood to water. They were all dead. The whole unit had been wiped out, and they were collectively known as the Killigrew Pals Battalion.

  For the first time in a long while, she couldn’t think. Couldn’t write. Could hardly breathe. She simply sat there with tears streaming down her face, her chest so tight it felt as though it would burst as so many names that were familiar to her leapt out of the columns at her.

  David and Harry Penry… Drago Trewithin… John Penhale… Lenny Pollard… Tommy Dark… Lance Jerram… Jemmy Praed… Ronnie Wells… Denzil Trethorne…

  ‘For God’s sake, Skye, what’s happened?’

  She heard her cousin Vera’s voice as if through a mist. Vera was about to be posted, and Skye knew she would miss her badly. They had become good friends in the last traumatic months they had shared.

  ‘I have to detail the lists of casualties, and I’ll have to send a special list back to The Informer. It’s our boys, Vera. Our lovely Killigrew Clay boys…’

  She couldn’t say any more as the sobs were wrenched out of her. She didn’t know many of them, or their families, but they were part of her heritage, and she wept for them. Vera hugged her, sharing her sorrow because of who they were, but more hardened to war than Skye, and finally speaking to her like a Dutch Uncle.

  ‘When you do your reports, remember that this is the last thing you can do for them, Skye. Write about them as if they were the heroes they were, and this time write with your own name, and insist that David Kingsley acknowledges it. Let the folk back home know that you’re here and that you care. It will give them comfort.’

  ‘You’re so wise, Vera,’ Skye said through her sobs. ‘And you’re so right. All the articles I send back in future will be from a woman’s viewpoint, and not some anonymous male observer. If David won’t publish them, I’m sure there will be other editors who will.’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ Vera said softly.

  * * *

  All the same, it was the hardest job in the world to send in the lists and the article about the Killigrew Pals Battalion, insisting that her name should be beneath it. And then she took it on herself to write personal letters to every family, knowing it was what her family would have wanted. It was what Morwen would expect, and it was certainly what Walter would have wanted.

  She didn’t know about Theo, but she wrote to him separately, telling him what she had done, and hoping that he would follow up her initiative by visiting the families concerned. To her surprise she received a package from Theo a few weeks later, a surprisingly humble Theo from the one she remembered.

  “Well done, Skye,” he wrote. “And well done for telling that oaf Kingsley where to credit the reports in his paper. Your name is now there for all to see, and I’m enclosing the latest issue for you. I’ve done as you suggested, and visited the families, and a pretty harrowing task it was. But nothing like the harrowing scenes I’m sure you and Philip and young Vera have to face.

  “Anyway, in the midst of all this misery, there is some happier news to tell you, though I’m sure Gran will be relaying it all as well. As you know, I was married in the summer, and my wife Betsy is preparing for a happy event in the spring. We’re naturally hoping for a son, since the child will be the heir to Killigrew Clay, such as it is.

  “But life goes on, and since my mother has decided to live permanently in Yorkshire now, it’s time that Killigrew House had some young blood in it. Be pleased for us, Skye, and God willing, you’ll all be safely back with us before the new sprog makes his appearance.”

  Skye folded the letter slowly. He was kind, but there was still an underlying selfishness in Theo that she couldn’t deny, and she would never really warm to him. She wished his wife Betsy well of him, and according to Granny Morwen the lady had brought money to the marriage, so Theo was undoubtedly well satisfied.

  Which was more than could be said when news of her own marriage had broken, Skye thought with a shiver. When she had sailed to France, leaving the wedding certificate in Morwen’s safe-keeping, she had begged her grandmother to say nothing to anyone else, lest their relationship should scupper their chances of being here together. But she had received a less than complimentary letter back from Morwen, condemning her for her deceit. And only at the end did the words soften.

  “…but because I know only too well the strong Tremayne passions that are in your heart, my dearest Skye, I wish you and Philip all the happiness in the world, and a safe return to normality in this mad world.”

  ‘What do you think?’ Skye said to Philip, when they snatched a few moments together a few evenings later. ‘Theo’s wife is expecting a baby, and knowing him, he’ll be bragging that it’s the most perfect child ever born on this earth.’

  ‘So it will be, to him and Betsy,’ Philip told her. ‘Just as ours will be to us.’

  ‘Oh, so we are planning to have children, then?’ she said,
glad to be jocular after a very painful week.

  ‘Of course. Didn’t I tell you?’ he said, matching her mood, and caressing her bare arm. ‘Once this war is over, we’ll plan on a dozen or more, if that’s what you’d like. We’ll have lots of little cousins for the princely Theo’s offspring to fight with.’

  ‘Fight? Don’t you mean to play with?’

  ‘Not if I know the fiery Tremayne brood,’ Philip teased.

  ‘But ours will be Norwoods, and anyway, who said I wanted a dozen? One will do for a start – but not yet, thank you!’

  She crossed her fingers as she said it, for apart from the times when the horrors of war seemed to make them both mentally and physically impotent, they were such passionate lovers, and everyone knew that for people like them, this was no time to be making babies…

  Morwen wrote to Skye in her usual blunt fashion.

  “You did a good and wonderful thing in writing separately to the families of the boys who were killed, dar. All of them were touched, and there was a grand service for them all that Luke managed to conduct less pompously than usual. Even his stuffy heart was stirred by the magnitude of such a loss.

  “It was held on the moors at Clay Two, since the workings have stopped there now. In fact, Theo has suggested that we close it permanently, as the workers are so depleted, and with none of the young ’uns coming back to carry on, it seems the most sensible course to follow. But when the war is over, and things are a bit more regular, we’ll think again what we intend to do.

  “As for your writings in The Informer, I hear nothing but good things about the way you describe it all. I’m sending copies to your Mammie every week, and she’s letting the folk where you used to work see them, so I daresay some of it will appear in your American magazine as well.

  “Apart from that, we’re all tolerably well here, though you can’t expect miracles of an old biddy like myself. But Theo’s Betsy is sprouting nicely, and it’s good to have something to look forward to. So you and Philip take care of yourselves, and be sure that you’re in our prayers.

  “Your loving grandmother, Morwen.”

  Her words brought tears to Skye’s eyes. Morwen wrote as she talked, and she could almost hear that soft Cornish accent, and the quaint way she referred to Betsy’s “sprouting”.

  And she could just visualise the service on the moors at Clay Two, which was the right and proper place for a dedication to all those young boys who had served Killigrew Clay so well, along with their fathers and grandfathers.

  The sweet continuity of it all wouldn’t have escaped any of them, and it didn’t escape Skye now.

  * * *

  The searing sadness of that time was three months behind them when they learned that she and Philip had been granted a few days’ Christmas leave together, but it was far too short a time to travel home. And the weather was less than clement.

  Instead, they managed to hire a service car, begging and scrounging just enough petrol to get them away from the hospital and into the countryside, where blessedly, there were still little hotels ready to accept folk who had money to spend on a couple of nights’ lodging and to sit and talk in front of a roaring wood fire before bedtime.

  And they were happy to linger in front of the fire, talking of old times and future plans, knowing that they had all night to be together. And letting themselves pretend, however selfishly, that this was the first of so many nights when war was a distant memory.

  The first night of the rest of their lives, Skye thought with a catch in her throat… and that was how it felt to her, as Philip undressed her slowly, kissing every inch of her exposed flesh as her clothes fell to the ground, and he gathered her into him.

  ‘God, I love you so much,’ he said, almost savagely, ‘If I thought this was all we had—’

  She put her fingers on his lips, realising almost with a little shock that his thoughts hadn’t been on the same plane as hers after all. She spoke with a passion.

  ‘It won’t be. Our marriage is our talisman, remember? One day we’ll go home and set up house, and live a mundane life with our children.’

  ‘It will never be mundane with you, sweetheart. Not with my mad, fiery, beautiful Skye who I love with all my heart.’

  ‘Do you? Then why don’t you show me how much?’ she said, provocative now, and utterly comfortable in her lack of inhibitions.

  He lifted her in his arms and lay her gently on the creaking bed, while he undressed swiftly. She gazed at him through shuttered eyelids, marvelling at the strength in his body, and the taut, powerful maleness of him.

  And then the desperate urgency to be lovers, to shut out everything ugly and evil in the world, transcended everything else. And as he covered her with himself, the vibrant heat of him filled her, and exalted her, making her gasp out loud at the surging joy of their oneness.

  * * *

  The brief leave was too soon over, and they drove back to the hospital through dank and misty roads in almost complete silence. Another Christmas had come and gone, however sweetly memorable it had been for them, and another year was just around the corner. Already this war had stretched into unbelievable lengths. Weeks, and months, and now years…

  And no matter how she tried, Skye couldn’t rid her thoughts of the dread that this unreal half-life they all led, seemed destined to go on for ever. That there would never be an end to this bitterly-fought war, and more and more people would be killed and maimed so senselessly.

  ‘Do I offer a penny for your thoughts, or are they too dismal for sharing?’ Philip asked her eventually.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said contritely, realising she had been staring gloomily out of the steamy car window at the dripping branches of the trees for the last ten minutes. ‘After our lovely time together, I shouldn’t seem such a grouch.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologise to me, darling. I can guess at the thoughts in your mind. Wondering when it will ever end, and when we’ll get back to normality. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ she said, thinking it odd that he could be so in tune with these dire thoughts, and yet his thoughts had completely missed connecting with hers when she had been able to imagine they were in some kind of never-ending seventh heaven at the small hotel.

  She had been able to believe themselves suspended in time for those blissful hours, while he apparently had not. But that was the prosaic in him, of course, while she was the romantic… and somebody had to be the practical one, she reminded herself. It didn’t mean he loved her any the less. She knew how much he loved her, with all his heart and soul, the way she loved him.

  ‘I do love you, Philip,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d just mention it, in case there was any doubt.’

  He laughed, putting his hand on hers for a moment before returning it to the steering wheel on the muddy, bumpy road.

  ‘Oh, I think I know it by now, my lovely, uninhibited angel! I think the whole hotel must have been aware of it!’

  She blushed and laughed with him, remembering how the bedsprings in the lumpy bed had creaked appallingly with their vigorous love-making – and she herself had been less than silent in the magic of it all. But this was the middle of a war, when such rare moments were too precious to lose, and she didn’t regret a single thing.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘You should have a nurse permanently at the house, Gran,’ Theo told Morwen in annoyance. ‘These constant bouts of pneumonia are weakening you, and it’s hardly fair on Birdie, is it? She’s not a trained nurse, and the doctor agrees with me.’

  Morwen glared at him as best she could while her eyes streamed with the attack of coughing she had just managed to suppress. It hurt her chest abominably, but she had no intention of letting him see it, especially with the anxious eyes of his whey-faced wife hovering beside him.

  Betsy was a nice enough soul, Morwen conceded, completely under Theo’s thumb, of course, as one would expect, and looking like the side of a house in the last months of her difficult pregnancy. She shouldn’t hav
e come here with him on such a miserable February day.

  ‘Have you been discussing my affairs with the doctor?’ Morwen wheezed at Theo now.

  ‘Who else is there to do it, if not me? Luke’s too busy saving souls, and the girls have their own families to care for. Albert and Rose rarely venture out of Truro now that Rose has got the consumption, and besides,’ he wound up without pausing for breath, ‘your affairs are my affairs, or have we grown too far apart for that as well?’

  ‘I’m sure Grandmother Morwen didn’t mean any such thing, Theo dear,’ Betsy put in anxiously.

  Morwen glanced at her. She was always anxious to please, the daughter of monied parents who had left everything to her, and yet she had the self-confidence of a flea. It had to be said that she irritated Morwen with her constant need to appease Theo’s caustic words, and she longed for the robustness of Skye to fill this house with laughter again. Primmy’s daughter had become so very dear to her.

  ‘So what did you and the doctor discuss for me?’ she said to Theo now, ignoring Betsy.

  ‘Just what I’ve said. We think we should engage a permanent nurse to live in the house, Gran. God knows we can afford it, and it would ease us all to know you were being taken care of properly.’

  ‘Ease your consciences, you mean,’ Morwen said dryly.

  For a moment she had a vision of her own Mammie, the stoical Bess Tremayne, living out her early married life with the five children in the cramped little cottage on the moors, through whose slates you could sometimes see the stars, and wondered how Bess would have scoffed at such a namby-pamby suggestion of a living-in nurse. It was odd that Theo’s wife had almost the name as her Mammie, yet never were there two women so totally different in spirit.

  But all the same, however reluctantly, she could see the sense of what Theo said, and times had changed for them all since those scratch-penny days. The owners of Killigrew Clay were Somebodies in this community, and she probably owed it to her relatives to show that she was being properly cared for.