* * *
Because he would be leaving for Europe with his mother quite soon, Cress was perfectly agreeable to sit for his portrait as often as Albert needed him. It would be a great gift to take back to California with him, and he was touched that his aunt and grandmother had thought of it. He visited the studio every day during the next few weeks. But sitting for his portrait wasn’t the only reason he went there. There was another, far more important reason now.
Each day when he was due to arrive, Primmy would wait impatiently for his arrival, and Albert would have been blind not to know the reason why. Finally, he had to speak out.
‘Primmy, I know you and Cress have become close, but I’ve got to say this. Once he goes back to America, I doubt that he’ll ever come back again. He’s got a career ahead of him, and he’s not going to change any of his plans. I don’t want you having impossible dreams about him, because you’ll only end up getting hurt.’
She turned her expressive eyes towards him, and then lowered them. Even Albie didn’t know just how close she and Cress had become. They weren’t lovers in the carnal sense of the word, but in every other respect, she knew they were exactly that. In every look, every touch, every thought, and every gesture, they were lovers.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she said huskily. ‘You can’t change feelings, Albie. Even if there’s no future for us beyond these few months, I wouldn’t change that, either.’
‘Even though you know you’ll have to say goodbye to him? In the days when Walter and Cathy met such opposition about marrying, and she had to go to Yorkshire with her parents, they wrote endless letters to one another. Somehow I don’t think that would be enough for you, Primmy.’
It didn’t need a crystal ball to know that Primmy had the same passionate nature as all the Tremaynes, and a long-distance love affair would never be enough.
‘Do you think my love wouldn’t be strong enough to survive such a separation?’ she said.
‘I know that it would. I just wouldn’t want you to have to endure it,’ he said carefully.
She put her arms around him and kissed him.
‘Don’t spoil it, Albie. Just be glad for me, and let me enjoy the time I’m having with Cress.’
And because he loved her, he knew he would do better to keep silent on the subject, but he also felt more troubled than he cared to admit. True, there was a special glow about her now that he’d never seen before. The heavy-eyed, drug-dazed Primmy of weeks ago might never have been. She sparkled now. Her hair was glossy and well-kept, and her attire was that of a sensual young lady who was in love and knew that love was reciprocated. It was a wonder the whole world didn’t know it, Albert thought.
But when Cress arrived that day, and he saw the eagerness with which Primmy threw open the door to him, he gave up worrying. It was none of his business, really. He could only stand by, and be ready if ever she needed him.
* * *
Cress wasn’t sorry when the day’s sitting was finished. He stretched his limbs from the stiffness of sitting in one position for too long, and smiled at his cousins.
‘It’s far too fine a day for staying indoors. What do you say to shutting up shop for the afternoon and taking a ferryboat ride down the river?’
Albert shrugged. Cress must be well aware by now that once a commission was nearing its final stages, he was always eager to continue with it, and rarely left his studio to go gallivanting. And it wasn’t hard to see who was really meant to accept the offer.
‘I’d like to, Cress,’ he said carelessly, ‘but apart from anything else, I’ve a client coming in to collect a family portrait in an hour’s time. But why don’t you and Primmy go? She can do with some fresh air, and I’m sure there’d be no objection to an outing with her cousin.’
He didn’t bother to analyse whether or not he meant to remind the two of them of their relationship, or if it even mattered to him. The way they both came to life in one another’s company was almost painful to watch, thought Albie. In fact, he’d as soon be absorbed in his work, which was as much an aphrodisiac to him as any female. Not that that couldn’t change, he amended. There was nothing unhealthy about Albert Tremayne. The right girl just hadn’t come along yet.
‘So, will you come for a ferryboat ride with me, Primmy?’ Cress asked.
He hardly needed an answer. Within minutes she had fetched her shawl, for although the day was extraordinarily fine and warm for the beginning of May, there was always a fresh breeze on the river.
She and Cress stepped out into the May sunshine, and she saw no reason not to slip her hand in the crook of his arm, when he gallantly offered it. She was filled with excitement at the thought of this unexpected outing, and the sunlight sparkling on the tidal water reflected her sparkling mood.
The Truro River was always busy with water traffic, though of a very different kind from the port at St Austell, where the clay blocks from Killigrew Clay were loaded onto ships and transported to their various destinations. She gave a sudden shiver, for she had never returned to Charleston Port since the terrible day when her father, Ben Killigrew, had had his heart attack at that very place.
‘You’re not feeling cold, are you, honey?’ Cress said at once, feeling the tremor in her arm. ‘We could always go back if you prefer it. This was only an idea.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It was just a dark thought going through my mind, that’s all.’
‘Well, whatever it was, forget it all for today. We’re going on a voyage of discovery, aren’t we?’
Primmy laughed at his coaxing. ‘All the way from Worth’s Quay downriver and back again! It’s hardly a voyage of discovery, is it?’
‘It could be,’ Cress said quietly, and her breathing quickened as she followed his meaning. His arm pressed her hand to his side, and she knew they had already begun a special voyage of discovery that required no oceans of travel to realize.
She-didn’t meet his eyes as they boarded the ferryboat, concentrating more on being helped aboard the narrow craft with the help of the ferryman’s hand, and then seating herself on one of the planked seats beside Cress for the journey downstream. There was nowhere much to go when they alighted at one of the routed landing-stages, just a village and a wild tangle of shrubby moorland with a view down to the open sea. But the destination hardly mattered. Primmy had the certain feeling that this day was going to be important to them both.
When they left the ferryboat, they climbed the steep grassy slope and left the handful of cottages behind them, and sat down to catch their breaths. It really was a glorious day, and across this relatively fertile stretch of wasteland there was a profusion of wild yellow daffodils in full bloom.
Cress leaned over and picked a handful of them and handed them to her teasingly.
‘For my lady,’ he said solemnly.
Primmy laughed. She buried her nose in them, but there was little scent attached to them. Their pollen dusted her nose, and Cress reached forward to brush the delicate stuff away from her skin. As his fingers touched her, and his face came close to hers, the laughter died away, and she looked at him mutely. The next moment she was in his arms, and the flowers were crushed, unheeded, between them.
‘Do you know how many times I’ve ached to do that?’ Cress said quietly, when their first sweet kiss had ended.
‘No more times than I’ve longed for you to do it,’ she whispered, knowing she should behave with all the modesty such a situation demanded, but hardly knowing how to.
She hadn’t ever kissed a young man outside her immediate family before, and they hardly counted… Nor had she known this searing excitement flowing through her that was even more exciting than the way the adrenaline flowed through her at a successful recital. She had thought nothing else could match it, but now she realized she knew nothing. And she was so ready to learn…
‘Dear Lord, Primmy, have you any idea how wild you can drive a man when you look at him like that?’ She heard Cress groan, and she looked at him wi
th faint surprise.
‘How do I look?’ she whispered again, since her voice was stuck somewhere in her throat and wouldn’t function properly.
‘Like a mixture of innocence and unconscious wantonness,’ Cress said, almost grimly. ‘And God knows it’s wicked for any man to destroy a girl’s innocence.’
‘But what of the girl’s wishes?’ Primmy murmured. ‘Maybe the wantonness is something she wants to discover. Maybe it’s time.’
She could say no more before his mouth was covering hers again, and she felt the sweet touch of his hand on her breast. A sharp ripple of desire ran through her. He lay half over her, and with the weight of his body pressing on hers, the physical evidence of his desire was very potent.
‘I want you so much, but I won’t ruin you, Primmy,’ she heard him say softly. ‘But there are other ways.’
She opened her eyes slowly, unaware that they had been closed. She felt him unlace the bodice of her gown, and her breasts were exposed to the balmy air. She caught her breath as he bent his head and took each rosy peak between his lips, tugging at them gently with his teeth. New, exquisite sensations held her spellbound, so that she could hardly breathe, then she felt Cress’s hand slide down the length of her body, to lift her skirts and move softly upwards.
‘I want to know your sweetness, my darling girl. But you only have to say the word to stop me now, if it’s your will,’ Cress said, his voice growing hoarser.
With an instinct more primitive than anything she had known before, Primmy felt her limbs relax as his fingers paused in their inching towards their goal.
‘I don’t want you to stop, Cress,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t stop.’
For how could anything compare with this glorious feeling of longing, and the certainty that belonging to this man was the only sane thing in her life? The sanest thing she had ever known. How could such a love be ruinous?
By the time they left the daffodil-strewn moors, they were committed to one another. Whatever scruples Cress had harboured, had been swept aside in the heat of passion and love he felt for this wonderful girl. They existed on a different plane from the rest of the world now, and their need to be together was all-consuming.
* * *
Ellis White and his friend had discovered a new waterfront meeting place, where the landlord didn’t look askance at the strange attire or habits of some of his clientele. Outwardly the Truro tavern known as The Seaman’s Friend was slightly less disreputable than some of the kiddley-winks where the clayworkers gathered in such rowdy numbers, but in other respects it had a sleaziness that few really suspected.
It was a tavern where not even the well-known prostitutes and young girls hoping to make a few pennies by lifting their skirts, dared to show their faces inside, though there were plenty of them crowding the streets nearby. Foreign sailors from the ports and rivers congregated at The Seaman’s Friend, as did those characters on the fringes of respectable society. And certain others paraded up and down in the smoke-filled atmosphere.
Ellis and Lawrence watched the transvestites with lascivious, yet cautious, eyes as they were still wrapped up in one another. They were a diversion, nothing more. Ellis and Lawrence also scorned the Bohemian set, who only came to the tavern for the drugs they could obtain from the foreign sailors. Lawrence took a long draught of his ale, and pointed out a couple of them.
‘Just look at them, my dear, shambling about like vagrants and begging for favours. You wonder where they get the money to pay for their habits.’
Ellis was disinterested in the arty set. His interest in a lot of things had waned, not least his enthusiasm for his anonymous letter writing in The Informer. It had been exciting to begin with, seeing folk squirm, and filling him with a power he’d never known, but Lawrence had put such a damper on it, saying it was beneath any man to hide behind such anonymity. It had produced a certain amount of bickering between them, and in the end Ellis had simply kept his mouth shut on the subject.
Besides which, there had been nothing of interest to write about lately, and he’d almost forgotten his intention to disgrace the Killigrew sprogs at the studio. Almost…
‘Just look at those rough fellows,’ Lawrence murmured as a group of seamen swaggered in. ‘I think we should get away from here, Ellis dear—’
But Ellis was no longer listening to his friend. His ears had become finely-tuned now to the group of scruffs brooding over their jugs of ale in the corner of the tavern.
‘I say we forget all about them,’ one growled. ‘The girl’s poncing herself up like a lady of fashion now, and Albie don’t want to know us no more. The two on ’em have got too big for their boots lately.’
‘You’re right,’ snarled another. ‘In any case, if she don’t want to sniff the stuff no more, it means there’s more for we.’
‘’Cepting that we don’t get their share of payment. Albie were allus generous, and ’tain’t cheap.’
Ellis felt a new excitement creeping over him. So the Killigrew pair were into more amusements than just sleeping with one another, were they? His vicious brain was already composing the carefully worded letter that would set a right cat among the pigeons.
‘Did you hear that?’ he hissed to Lawrence. ‘They’re on about the pair I told you about, and there’s more to ’em than I suspected. They enjoy the occasional sniff—’
He felt Lawrence’s hand grip his arm like a vice.
‘You breathe one word of this and you’ll have the authorities breathing down everybody’s neck, you damn fool.’
Ellis felt himself blanch. In recent weeks, Lawrence had subtly introduced him to the twilight world of narcotics, and he could see the sense in what he heard. But it needn’t stop him welshing on them about the other.
Incest wasn’t the tastiest of subjects in a family… but his eyes narrowed, wondering if he was going about this in the wrong way. He had nothing personal against the Killigrews. But where was the real satisfaction in his letter writing? It didn’t shame him, for he was a man without shame, but he realized it was a pointless exercise, when there was a far better, and more profitable one, just waiting for him.
‘Let’s go home, Lawrence. I’ve got an important letter to write.’ And at his friend’s exasperated look, Ellis gave him a beatific smile. ‘It’s not what you think, lovey. It’s something that could prove very profitable to us both.’
* * *
A few days later, a letter was delivered by hand under cover of darkness to Albert Killigrew’s studio. He found it the next morning when he came downstairs to unlock the doors. He picked it up without much curiosity. Enquiries for his services sometimes came from unlikely sources, and folk who were reticent to find out about his charges face to face frequently used this method.
He tore open the envelope carelessly, and took out the folded piece of paper inside. He stared at the bold, uneven lettering, his mind totally revolting against what his eyes told him, and for a moment wondering if this was some child’s trick. And then he re-read the filth, and knew it was no child who had done this.
‘Good morning, Albie. Isn’t it a beautiful day!’
He heard Primmy’s light voice as she came downstairs to join him for breakfast. Her light, so-in-love voice, and surrounded by the aura now that he’d never seen until lately, making him urge to paint her and try to capture that elusive glow on canvas…
He was tempted to crush the letter in his hands and destroy it, rather than let her see it. But she couldn’t miss the devastated shock on his face. She’d know immediately that there was something wrong. And Primmy being Primmy, she would worm it out of him. Even as he knew it, he saw a look of anxiety shadow her face.
‘What’s happened, Albie?’ she said, without crossing the room.
She stood perfectly still, her sensitive pianist’s hands held tightly together. It was as if an invisible strength allowed her to hold herself in check, as if all her senses told her this was too momentous a happening to be resolved by mere platitudes,
and all her inner reserves were being gathered up for what was to come.
‘Some bastard’s sent me an anonymous letter,’ Albie said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his. It was filled with such pain and anguish, and still she couldn’t go to him.
‘What about?’ Primmy said huskily, thinking that there was nothing in the world her dear, sweet brother could do to offend anybody.
‘About you and me, Primmy,’ he said harshly, knowing he couldn’t dress it up in any other way. ‘About you and me.’
Primmy stared at him, not comprehending for a moment. Her nightmare days were over, and she wouldn’t believe her latterday friends would have betrayed their part in the multi-coloured evenings they had spent here.
So what…? At last her feet seemed to move forward by themselves, and she took the letter from Albie’s hands. She instantly knew the meaning from the blatant and carefully-pasted letters cut out from newspaper headlines, and her face flooded with painful colour.
‘Oh, how wicked,’ she whispered, hardly able to look into her brother’s face. ‘How disgusting!’
She felt her bile rise, and she clapped a hand over her mouth while her eyes scanned the vicious words again.
INCEST IS AN OFFENCE, KILLIGREW. I KNOW WHAT YOU AND YOUR SISTER DO IN THAT COSY LITTLE SETUP. IT’LL COST YOU PLENTY TO KEEP ME QUIET. THE FIRST INSTALMENT IS A HUNDRED POUNDS. YOU’LL BE CONTACTED WHERE TO LEAVE IT. DON’T GO TO THE POLICE OR THE INFORMER WILL GET TO KNOW OF IT.
‘It must have taken hours to do all this,’ Primmy said inanely. ‘How can somebody hate us so much?’
She looked up, genuine bewilderment mingling with the pain in her voice. As far as she knew, nobody hated them. They were the toast of Truro town, the elite, the successful. And this was all so terrible and so wrong…
Family Shadows Page 15