Primmy's Daughter

by Primmy's Daughter (retail) (epub)

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she whispered into his shoulder. ‘Now that Mom’s here, I think maybe it’s time for Gran to go. I can’t explain my fears – but this time of night was always a bad time for allowing demons into my head, and there’s no stopping them.’

  She could feel his breath on her cheek, and the touch of his hands was warm and comforting on her body.

  ‘There are no demons in this old house, Skye, only love. And if there are, then it’s time to banish them for good. I don’t think Morwen would begrudge two people who want each other so desperately for fulfilling that love, do you?’

  She responded at once. Loving him, and needing him, and knowing in her soul that there had been a time when Morwen herself would have responded in exactly the same way to her lover, wantonly and passionately… and totally against doctor’s orders, with the bulge of the baby between them.

  * * *

  Morwen took the arrival of her daughter and son-in-law far more calmly than any of them had expected. It was just as if she knew they would come, Skye told Emma on the telephone.

  ‘She allus had an instinct for such things,’ Emma said without any surprise in her voice. ‘I’ll try to get over to see them if I can, lamb, but ’tis never easy on a farm. You’ll be letting t’others know, I daresay?’

  ‘Of course – except for Albie. Mom especially wants to tell him herself.’

  ‘That’s to be expected. They were allus as close as two halves of the same coin.’

  But in the end, Primmy couldn’t bear to speak to Albie on the telephone for more than a few minutes. Skye heard her choke out his name, feeling like an eavesdropper, and suddenly wanting to protect her father from whatever closeness had once existed between these two.

  ‘Do you want to take a walk outside?’ she asked Cress quickly. ‘Mom’s going to be on the phone for ages.’

  He agreed at once, and she linked her arm in his as they strolled round the grounds of the lovely old house that had seen such turmoil in its history.

  ‘It’s so tranquil here, isn’t it, Daddy? It’s almost impossible to believe there’s a war still raging in Europe, and that some of our boys will never come back. It was terrible to lose a whole generation of our own clayworkers.’

  ‘You love this place, don’t you?’ he commented. ‘I never realised quite how much, but now I get the feeling that you’re never coming home to us, Skye.’

  ‘I am home. Philip and I have made our home here, and our baby will be born here. You have to go where your heart is, don’t you? You and Mom knew that.’

  And Skye knew very well that Primmy’s extra reason for wanting to live in America was to escape any hint of scandal surrounding herself and her brother, however ill-founded.

  ‘Mom always loved you, Daddy,’ Skye went on, going as far as she dared. ‘She’d have followed you anywhere.’

  ‘I know that. We had a shaky start, but I won her in the end. And that’s enough about us oldies. I want to know if my girl’s truly happy.’

  Skye laughed. ‘Isn’t it obvious! Philip and I adore each other. I couldn’t ask for more.’

  And thankfully, the demons that had plagued her in the still of the night had gone. Love truly conquered everything, she thought, filing away the thought in her mind for future reference, in case it should ever be needed.

  And who was being second-sighted now! She hugged her father, suggesting they went inside, as it was getting cold. And if she stood for too long the baby pressed ever more uncomfortably inside her these days.

  Primmy was flushed when they rejoined her.

  ‘Albie sounded totally stunned when he heard my voice,’ she told them. ‘He wanted to come here right away, but I told him how much I wanted to see the studio again. When Mammie’s settled for the afternoon, I’d like to go over there, Cress.’

  Skye would dearly have liked to take her, but the doctor had forbidden her to drive in the last months of pregnancy. Now that the birth was imminent, she was more than happy to take his advice, especially as she could hardly fit behind the wheel of the car any more.

  What a sketch she looked, she sometimes thought, eyeing her bulge in the long mirror of their bedroom. And what an angel she looked to him, Philip always retorted.

  ‘I’ll take you into Truro whenever you’re ready, Primmy,’ Cress said now. ‘You can spend some time at the studio while I reacquaint myself with the town.’

  ‘But you’ll want to see Albie too, won’t you?’

  ‘Later. The two of you will have plenty to talk about.’

  Skye avoided looking at either of them. Whatever had happened in the past was long over, and she sensed that there was perfect trust between her parents. But she had also sensed the depth of Albert Tremayne’s love for her mother, and felt its unhealthy transference to her.

  She shivered, thankful to her soul that she had such an uncomplicated relationship with Philip, and in the small silence she said quickly that she’d be happy to spend time with Morwen that afternoon, to counteract the excitement of Primmy’s coming home. So far nobody had dared ask how long she and Cress intended to stay.

  ‘We must take a drive up to the moors sometime too, and take a look at the clayworks,’ Cress went on sociably. ‘It must have changed a good deal over the years.’

  The women looked at him, each lost in thoughts of their own. Primmy spoke slowly.

  ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad idea, Cress. I could lay a few ghosts at the same time. I never did truly forgive my own mother and father for dying on me—’

  ‘Mom, how can you say such a thing!’

  ‘Quite easily, love. Oh, I know that Morwen and Ben Killigrew became the best of parents to Walter, Albie and me, and we loved them for it. But finding out that we weren’t really their children still felt like the worst betrayal any youngsters could know. And maybe because I was a girl, I felt it more than the others.’

  ‘Or it could have been because you were a particularly precocious child, honey,’ Cress said mildly. ‘And I was the one who unknowingly shattered all those illusions.’

  Primmy gave him a swift smile, her hand reaching out for his. ‘I more than forgave you, dar, in case you haven’t been aware of it all these years.’

  Skye turned away, glad to see their obvious love for each other, and feeling guilty for wanting to register it so badly. Until coming to Cornwall she had never doubted it – and she didn’t doubt it now. And she certainly wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall to see Primmy and Albie meet again.

  * * *

  Cress deposited his wife outside the artist’s studio in Truro, kissing her lightly on the cheek as he left.

  ‘I’ll be back for you in an hour or so,’ he told her.

  Primmy hardly saw him go. For a few wild, wonderful moments she simply stood outside the door of the studio, drinking in the atmosphere, no longer a matronly woman with two grown-up children, soon to be a grandmother herself.

  No longer the wife of a successful American businessman, and an equally successful pianist invited to soirées and luncheons at all the best houses in New Jersey.

  No longer anyone but the flamboyant and beautiful bohemian Primmy Tremayne she had once been, dressing in outrageous, flowing skirts, and wearing beads in her hair, and mixing with all Albie’s arty friends as if they were all soul-mates. Entering into their dark, forbidden world, and tasting all its freedoms and its pleasures…

  The studio door opened, and a middle-aged man appeared. A man who had once been her life, as she had once been his beloved.

  ‘Primmy,’ he said in a choked voice, holding out his arms to her. ‘My Primmy.’

  She went into his embrace as if in a dream, recognising him instantly, yet no longer knowing him.

  ‘It’s really me,’ she said shakily, when he seemed loath to let her go. ‘So – are you going to invite me inside, or do we stand on the doorstep inviting comments from the townsfolk who don’t realise we’re brother and sister?’

  The words were out of her mouth be
fore she had time to think, and with them she separated the past from the present.

  ‘When did you ever wait for an invitation?’ Albie said, recovering himself quickly. ‘It’s so good to see you, Prim and I hardly thought this day would ever come.’

  ‘Well, it has, and it took the saddest reason for it,’ she reminded him. ‘I fear that Mammie won’t be with us for much longer.’

  ‘But whatever happens, you’ll stay to see your grandchild born, won’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  They climbed the stairs that Primmy remembered so well, to the rooms above that she and Albie had once shared so decorously, and where Rose would be waiting for them now.

  ‘Skye’s a lovely girl,’ Albie said abruptly. ‘She’s the image of you, Prim.’

  ‘Of what I was, you mean,’ Primmy said ruefully.

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he said.

  Before she could think of a suitable reply, Rose had come out of the sitting room to greet her, plunging them all into her closet world of symptoms and treatments, of temperature charts and doctor’s visits, and linctuses and pills.

  ‘My goodness, Rose, do you have time to think about anything else?’ Primmy exclaimed.

  ‘She does not,’ Albie said dryly. ‘Nor me, neither. It’s a full-time job for Rose, being ill.’

  ‘But you still have your work? Your painting?’ Primmy asked him. ‘Nothing could take you away from that for very long in the past, Albie.’

  Only the wild parties they used to have right here in these rooms, and the potent drinks they drank, and the illicit substances they smoked… For a moment her thoughts spun out of control, as if she was seeing another world, one that she had once known, that could never be as familiar to her again. Thank God, she thought fervently, that the madness of those days had had no lasting effect on either one of them.

  ‘Rose often sits with me while I paint,’ he said. ‘She likes to watch me work, and I like the company.’

  Dear Lord, but how stuffy that sounded, thought Primmy sorrowfully. Albie had always been so flamboyant, drawing a bohemian crowd to him like a moth to a flame, and it was so sad to see the staid figure he had become.

  Almost appalled to realise it, she found herself wishing the time away until Cresswell came to collect her. All her life she had longed to see Albie again, loving him in the purest way, as if he was the other half of her. She still loved him, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing ever was.

  ‘We won’t linger,’ she told her brother, once he and Cress and Rose had greeted one another. ‘I want to get back to Mammie, and I’d like to look in on Charlotte before we go back to New World. And I believe Theo’s coming to dinner tonight.’

  She was speaking too quickly, knowing they had avoided too much mention of Walter, but knowing it had to come.

  ‘You’ll be missing Walter,’ Albie said, reading her mind. ‘It was a terrible shock to us all, him doing what he did.’ Primmy nodded, not wanting to hear any accusation in his voice. Not wanting to think of how the sadness of losing Walter hurt them all so badly. First Walter’s son, Jordan, fighting for his country, and then Walter himself, throwing himself into the sea. And having to hear about it all over again from Albie…

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Cress asked her, when she had said nothing for fully ten minutes as they drove away.

  ‘Yes, except for Rose’s tactlessness. Fancy telling me that the next time we met would probably be at Mammie’s burying! She was always selfish, and far too possessive over Albie, and she certainly hasn’t improved with age.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to mind. Do you?’

  ‘Of course not. They suit one another very well, just like we do, dar.’

  She was rewarded by his quick smile and a squeeze of her hand. ‘Are you sure you want to call on Charlotte?’ he asked.

  She did, though they had never been very close. And when they met, they hugged one another, exclaiming that neither had changed a bit, which they both knew was a blatant lie.

  ‘Your daughter was a bit of a dark horse, wasn’t she, Prim?’ Charlotte said. ‘Springing a wedding and a baby on us almost at the same time, I mean.’

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that!’ Primmy protested.

  ‘Oh, I know, but you must admit it could have thrown a few cats among the pigeons if it hadn’t been for the lovely way she wrote in the newspaper about it. She certainly has a gift for words,’ she added generously. ‘By the way, did you know the Germans are appealing for an Armistice now? They know when they’re beaten, thank the Lord. It’s all in the latest edition of The Informer.’

  ‘I didn’t know any of it,’ Primmy murmured. ‘I’ve been rather too busy worrying about Mammie since we arrived to bother looking at newspapers.’

  ‘Well, of course you have,’ Charlotte said, eyeing her thoughtfully. ‘And I reckon I know exactly now, why she’s been hanging on.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Charlotte gave an uneasy and half-resentful laugh. ‘It’s something I’ve only just remembered: I asked Birdie what she could possibly be hanging on for, when she was obviously ready to die – and I’m not apologising for being so blunt, neither. You haven’t seen the state of her all summer the way the rest of us have. But now I know. She was waiting for you, Primmy.’

  ‘Don’t say such things! It makes me feel creepy. And anyway, she couldn’t possibly have known that Cress and I were coming. We didn’t decide until the last minute, and then we didn’t let anyone know, since we didn’t want any fuss.’

  She was agitated now, not wanting to think about any kind of psychic involvement into why she was here, and why Morwen was still hanging on to life by a thread. And she was angry with Charlotte for putting the notion into her head.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s how it seemed to me. You were always her favourite, the one who was most like her.’

  ‘Mammie didn’t have favourites, and if she did, then it was always Walter,’ Primmy said, as the name of her loved brother stuck in her throat.

  They were two middle-aged women, acting like opposing sides on a battlefield, and what did it matter anyway? Yet Primmy still felt a ludicrous need to defend herself.

  ‘But Walter was a boy,’ Charlotte snapped, ‘and you were her best girl. Oh, I’m not condemning you for it, just stating facts. And I still say she was hanging on for you.’

  ‘Then I’d better get back to her and give her all the time that I have,’ Primmy said.

  ‘God, I’d forgotten how insufferable Charlotte could be,’ she exclaimed, once she and Cress were on their way back to New World. ‘It comes from marrying up in the world, of course. Vincent Pollard’s family were always a cut above ours – or thought they were!’

  She was talking too quickly to cover her very real feelings of premonition that if they didn’t hurry back to New World, Morwen would already have expired, and she would be too late to say goodbye.

  Damn Charlotte, she thought savagely, for putting such ideas into her head, and making her feel responsible for her own mother’s life expectancy.

  ‘You don’t think there’s anything in it, do you, dar?’ she said at last. ‘What Charlotte said, I mean. It doesn’t happen like that, does it?’ She gave a shaky laugh. ‘Oh, she makes me so mad! But if she was right, perhaps we should have stayed away, and Mammie would have gone on forever.’

  But she hid a sob in her throat as she said it, because it was a futile remark. Nobody lived forever.

  ‘I think she was right about one thing, honey,’ Cress said gently. ‘Morwen is ready to die, and when the time comes we’ll all have to be glad for her.’

  ‘And that’s the daftest thing anybody could say,’ Primmy said viciously.

  But she went straight to her mother’s room when they returned, relieved to see that Morwen was the same as ever, dozing fitfully, breathing with difficulty, but still there. Skye was sitting beside the bed, holding her grandmother’s hand and now she reached for her mother
’s hand too.

  They didn’t speak, but a great calmness seemed to settle in that silent room, as if the linked hands of the three women and the presence of the unborn child underlined the strongest bonds of all, Primmy thought, wishing it could always be so.

  * * *

  It was in the early hours of the morning, the time Skye hated the most, when she heard the tapping on her bedroom door and Nurse Jenkins’ urgent voice. She roused Philip at once, knowing what the call meant.

  Primmy and Cress were already in Morwen’s room, together with Birdie, and they circled the bed where the dying woman fought to stay with them a little longer.

  * * *

  Just a little longer, Morwen begged the hovering angel… there was still so much to say, but the words were all in her head and wouldn’t reach her mouth any more. And she was getting so tired and so muddled. She was drifting into a sweetly floating plane, filled with pastel colours, and faces that she knew and remembered were smiling and welcoming her…

  * * *

  ‘She’s leaving us,’ Birdie said, choking, almost staggering away from the bed. ‘I can’t bear it!’

  Primmy gently stroked her mother’s forehead, and closed the once-bright eyes. There was such a powerful sensation inside her that Morwen was already glimpsing things beyond their earthly imagination, and for the moment she couldn’t even be sad for her.

  ‘But she’s happy,’ Primmy whispered. ‘Wherever she is now, she’s happy.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘So it’s over.’

  Luke Tremayne stared at his flag-stoned floor as he received the message over the telephone.

  Philip cleared his throat. ‘And peacefully so. The womenfolk are with her now, and the doctor is on his way, so I volunteered to inform the rest of the family.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Good of you.’

  For once Luke couldn’t find the obligatory right words to say. Having buried so many of his flock over the years, pontificating that the natural order of things was inevitable and God’s will, the news still hit him like a violent punch in the stomach. It wasn’t manly to weep, and there would be plenty of folk who had high regard for the family to do that, but this was his mother.