‘By God, but the bitch knows how to pull a crowd,’ Hal growled, trying not to betray the merest touch of admiration in his voice at the sight of Harriet Pendragon.
The other two said nothing, but Ran too was mightily struck by the picture the woman made. She knew damn well the effect her appearance would have on these folk, he thought angrily. She too, had arrived on horseback, elegantly side-saddled, her gleaming sapphire satin gown draped in glowing folds over her figure, as if it had been moulded there. She held the reins with long satin gloves that caressed her slender arms, and her bonnet was of the same colour as the rest of her ensemble.
It was an outrageous outfit to wear among these simple folk, in their tattered working clobber, and streaked with clay dust. As if the gown itself wasn’t enough, her horse was a contrasting light grey. It was obviously a purebred, and no doubt chosen to complement her silvery-grey eyes and that extraordinary silvery hair. She was bloody magnificent, Ran thought furiously, and hated himself for acknowledging it.
He pressed his knees into his horse’s flanks and urged it forward, scattering the outer groups of clayers and ignoring their howls of protest. Hal and Walter followed through the path he had made until they were almost level with Harriet Pendragon. Ran’s voice was short and sharp.
‘You’re trespassing, Ma’am, and if you don’t leave this place immediately, I shall have you forcibly removed.’
The clayers had begun muttering at their bosses’ approach, but now they had fallen silent again, and all eyes turned towards the Pendragon woman to see her reaction. She was completely unimpressed, and gave an amused laugh.
‘And who’s going to remove me, Mr Wainwright? Not any of these fine folk, who know a good thing when they hear it.’
Ran didn’t miss the rumbles of assent among the workers, and knew that Hal had a shrewder knowledge of these people than he did. But he didn’t give up easily. Dammit, he thought, he wasn’t giving up at all!
‘Then I shall remove you myself,’ he said contemptuously. ‘But I hardly think you’d care for the indignity of it, Ma’am.’
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the reporter busily scribbling down, word for word, all that was said.
‘Oh, but perhaps I would!’ Harriet Pendragon said, and to his fury, he realized she was teasing him, her eyes provocative and gleaming as if she was enjoying the chase. ‘Why don’t you come and try it, Mr Wainwright, because I surely don’t intend leaving by myself.’
‘Leave it, Ran. I’ll deal with this,’ Hal said angrily, seeing his fury.
‘No. It’s me she wants,’ Ran said, brushing his restraining hand aside. ‘It’s me she wants to bring down, for some Goddamn reason of her own.’
‘Why don’t our fine Works Manager have summat to say about it all, or is he too afeared of what his father-in-law might say about un in his newspaper?’
The catcalls began from the middle of the crowd, but were quickly taken up by the rest. They were like bloody sheep, Walter thought, his face reddening as the jeering was directed towards him. He knew that few of them would attack Hal. He’d been one of them for too long, and was too well-respected.
But Ran was a foreigner, which was even more damning than being a ‘grockle’ from upcountry. And to many of those who’d had the clay in their blood for generations, Walter was still wet behind the ears, despite his fine status at Killigrew Clay. It made no difference that Walter had clay in his blood too, he thought angrily, and that concern for the prosperity of them all was in his soul.
But he was too much of a man to let the jibes go by unheeded, especially regarding himself and Tom Askhew.
‘You all know me, you scum,’ he yelled out above the din, in language they would understand. ‘I worked here when I was young, same as the likes of your own, and there’s nothing we’d like more than to give you all a handsome bonus. But when times are bad, you can’t squeeze money out of a stone, so you’ve got to be patient, same as the rest of us—’
‘Oh ah, we know all about you and your family bein’ patient in your fine houses, while the rest on us scratch a living—’
‘Shut up a minute, you shit-bags,’ Hal bellowed out. ‘If Walter has a decent house to live in, it’s because he’s bloody-well worked for it—’
‘And because he’s got a wife wi’ money,’ somebody jeered out.
‘I don’t live on my wife’s money,’ Walter snapped coldly. ‘And neither does anyone else in my family.’
Ran shifted in his saddle, knowing that the situation was getting out of hand. It was dwelling too much on personalities, instead of on the state of the business as a whole. And Harriet Pendragon was content to sit on that damn great horse of hers and let the wrangling go on. It angered him to know that she was witnessing it, and he was doubly angry at allowing himself to be humiliated by the woman.
He cracked his whip in the air, in an effort to call for silence. The cat calls dwindled away as his horse reared protestingly at the sudden noise, and he swiftly brought it under control.
‘We all seem to have forgotten why we’re here, and I’ve yet to hear exactly what Mrs Pendragon is doing here. Please explain yourself in a few sentences, Ma’am, which is all I will allow you before I see you off this land.’
‘Really?’ Harriet said, still with that infuriating amusement in her voice, so that Ran began to wonder if anything ever really irked her. Or was the power she’d inherited from her husband’s death enough to give her this vast confidence that overcame all else?
‘Your time is running out, Ma’am,’ he said coldly, as the crowd waited expectantly for her to speak.
‘Answer the man, Mrs Pendragon, and let’s all get back to our business,’ Tom Askhew called out now in his sharp nasal tones, clearly getting tired of all this fencing. ‘If you want my reporter to give a good account of what’s to do here today, you’d best get on with it.’
At his words, Walter remembered where he’d seen the ferrety-faced man. He’d been at the men’s meeting in the St Austell meeting house, when Harriet Pendragon had first swept into their midst. Walter had dismissed the man as of no account then, and he’d like to dismiss him and his master now.
But he was too well aware of Askhew’s contempt for the clayworkers, and of himself in particular. Tom had never forgiven him for marrying Cathy, and baby Theo was half Tremayne, which was condemnation enough. His brother and sister had taken the Killigrew name, but Walter never had. He was a Tremayne, and would always be a Tremayne…
He blinked, realizing he’d let his attention wander, and that the Pendragon woman had slid down from her horse with all the grace of a queen. He watched as the clayworkers moved aside like the parting of the Red Sea as she approached the bosses with her sensuous walk, and he scowled again, wishing these damnable attributes didn’t keep coming into his mind.
He wondered briefly how the others were assessing her. His Grandad Hal wouldn’t be moved by a woman’s teasing and taunting, but Ran… he wasn’t so sure about Ran. Harriet Pendragon presented a powerful attraction for any man, but more especially one of similar dynamic power, and for the first time in his life he felt an anxiety on Morwen’s behalf.
He tried to shrug off the feeling as the woman came right up to the three of them, tipping back her head and looking up at Ran as he remained mounted on his horse. With any other woman, it might have looked subordinate. With her, it merely looked provocative. She bloody well knew it too, Walter thought savagely, and so did Ran.
‘Well, Ma’am?’ he snapped. ‘We don’t have all day to waste, so get to the point.’
‘Very well, Mr Wainwright,’ she said in her clear, carrying voice. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve told these clayworkers. I’m willing to offer sixpence an hour more for them to work for me at any of the small pits I’ve recently acquired. Unless, of course, you’re willing to sell out to me. I admit that I’ve a hankering to own Killigrew Clay, and rid it of a name that lost any meaning when Ben Killigrew died. When that day comes, the workers wi
ll get a handsome bonus into the bargain.’
There was uproar as she finished speaking, and the bosses didn’t miss the cheers from many of the listeners.
‘By God, but she’s a clever bitch,’ Hal said under his breath. ‘She’ll turn ’em her way, Ran, and God knows what we can do about it.’
‘Shut up and listen to me, all of you.’ Ran ignored him, and bellowed out into the crowd. They fell silent as his horse reared up in protest, and Harriet Pendragon stepped back hastily from the flailing hooves.
‘You’ve heard Mrs Pendragon’s terms,’ he said loudly. ‘She’s offering a bonus if we sell out, which I can assure you we don’t aim to do now, nor at any time in the future—’ he was obliged to pause as the uproar began again, and he cracked his whip for the second time, ‘and she’s also offering you sixpence an hour more if you leave Killigrew Clay. But stop and listen for a minute before you go hot-headed into thinking this is such a good deal. This is a woman who’s ruthless enough to try to undermine the good name of an established firm, and to cold-bloodedly steal away loyal workers. Is this the boss you’d choose to work for, instead of those who have always treated you fairly, and shared the good times with the bad?’
‘That sort of talk don’t put food in the babbies’ bellies, Mr Wainwright,’ the pit captain, George Dodds, spoke up, ‘and you ain’t never guaranteed that we won’t have to face a cut in wages if the autumn orders be no better than the spring’s.’
‘Then I’ll guarantee it now,’ Ran said swiftly. ‘And we’ll match the extra sixpence an hour that Mrs Pendragon has offered. In fact, I’ll do more. There are promises of new orders coming in, so to show our good faith in you, I’ll guarantee a bonus payment next Christmas for every man, woman and child who remains loyal to Killigrew Clay and its rightful owners until that day.’
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’m playing at, Ran?’ Hal muttered angrily beneath his breath. ‘We’ve never risked putting such forward guarantees into their heads—’
‘Then maybe it’s time we did,’ Ran said, through the burst of noise as the clayworkers digested this new move.
‘Ran’s right, Grandad,’ Walter said quickly. ‘We’ve got to offer ’em something definite, or we’ll have lost ’em for good. The woman’s offers are too tempting for us to be wishy-washy now.’
The woman in question was eyeing up these three now, and wondering just which of them was worth her while tempting in other directions. She dismissed the old man at once, and the young one was too besotted with his wife and new child – besides, there was a newspaper tie there, and that was an apple-cart she wouldn’t care to upset. But the other one… the handsome American with the wife who was once a bal maiden here, and had then married the boss… she turned her startling silvery-grey eyes towards Ran Wainwright, and gave him a beatific smile.
‘All right. You’ve had your say, and your workers seem to approve of it. I’m tired of all this arguing, so for the moment we’ll call a truce, Ran Wainwright,’ she said, her voice softer than the strident tones she normally used in business dealings with men. ‘I’ll concede that you’ve played a trump card, though you’ll have to be seen to carry it through. And you and I haven’t done with one another yet.’
She turned swiftly, and was helped onto her horse with willing hands. She dug her heels into its sides and cantered away from Clay One with her back straight and her head held high. Even in defeat, she still looked magnificent, Ran thought grudgingly. She was as ruthless as any man, and twice as deadly, because it was obvious that half the earthy men here lusted after her, however unattainable she would be to the likes of them.
But not to the likes of himself. The thought was in his head before he could push it away, and his face darkened with the unwanted idea. He’d as soon bed a rat as the Pendragon woman… and again, his own thoughts conjured up a subconscious imagery that was abhorrent to him. He turned his attention to the crowds of clayers, still gabbling in groups about this new turn of events.
‘Well, now that all the excitement’s over, how about you shit-bagging buggers getting back to work?’ he bellowed into the crowd of gabbling clayers, in words that would have done justice to Hal in his heyday. ‘If you think we’re going to pay you dung beetles extra dues for standing about like spare parts at a wedding, then you can think again. Get to it, all of you!’
The horses of the three riders stamped restlessly at the angry tones, and the clayers began to move back to their appointed tasks. George Dodds lingered a moment, his gnarled hand on Ran’s reins. Ran would have flicked him off as impatiently as if he swotted a fly, but the man had something to say and wouldn’t be put off.
‘This new rate of sixpence an hour extra comes into force right away, I take it, Sir,’ he said, unconsciously putting an insult into the final word. ‘It ’ouldn’t do for ’em to have to wait now, ’specially wi’ the lady sniffing at their heels so prettily.’
‘Are you threatening me, George Dodds?’ Ran said coldly, hating the man more with every second.
‘No, Sir. I’m only speakin’ up for the rest on ’em, as they’d want me to do. Ain’t that the right way for a pit captain to act, Mr Tremayne?’ He ignored Walter altogether and looked directly at Hal.
‘It’s right, and you know it, but you’d best keep a civil tongue in your head. Pit captains can be replaced, and you know that too,’ Hal said, and twisted away from the leering man to ride away from the pit.
He needed fresh air. He’d done with all this wrangling and sniping a long time ago, and he wanted no more of it. He shouldn’t have come up here today. His chest was tight, and he felt ill. He should do as Bess wanted and lead a more leisurely life, reaping in the profits from his stake in Killigrew Clay when they were due, and learning to be a gentleman. Hal scowled, knowing it was something he could never be, not in the way that society dictated.
Walter caught up with him.
‘Are you all right, Grandad? You looked quite sickly a while back, and I was afraid—’
‘There’s nothing wrong wi’ me, boy, that can’t be cured by fresh air and a quiet life,’ he grunted.
And Walter knew at once that there was definitely something wrong with a man who’d once exalted in the cut and thrust of dealing with these scumbags, and who suddenly seemed too weary to care any more. But he pushed down the fear he felt on Hal’s behalf, and thought instead that it was more likely that he was just growing old. It was high time Hal had a going-over from the doctor, though Walter knew how he’d hate the suggestion. In his own mind, Hal was still as strong as he ever was, and didn’t give in to old age gracefully.
‘I’m staying on here now, Grandad, to see that production is going ahead. Ran’s in discussion with Tom Askhew and his reporter fellow at present, to see that they don’t distort our side of it, so will you wait for him?’ Walter said, keeping his face poker-straight as he mentioned the men from The Informer.
‘I might, and then again I might not,’ Hal said, as contrary as ever. ‘If I’ve a mind to get on home, I’ll do so, and if not, he’ll soon catch up wi’ me. You go on back to Clay One, boy, and be the fine Works Manager I know you to be.’
It was rare for Hal to pay such a compliment, and Walter found himself blinking. Impulsively, he reached out and pressed the old man’s arm in a rough gesture of affection.
‘Those words mean a lot to me, Grandad,’ he said. ‘I’ll go back then, and don’t worry. Ran will handle things.’
Ran had got them out of trouble once before. So had Matt. So, unknowingly to many, had Hal himself, offering all his dividends from his share of Killigrew Clay that were carefully salted away in a Bodmin bank, since such accumulated wealth was unnecessary in the life of a simple man.
Families such as theirs were all the richer for the way they helped and supported one another, Walter thought, as he turned to retrace his way to the clayworks he loved. And it would take more than the likes of a woman with silvery eyes and hair to fracture that closeness.
*
* *
Hal rode slowly down over the hillside, wanting to put all the noise of the clayworks behind him. He’d loved it, once.
He had been its throb and its heartbeat, like the young uns were now, especially Walter, but it was a part of his life that was gone. The past could never come again, and he was gradually realizing that he was more than ready to let his life wind down, like the winding down of an old clock that had seen its day, and was contentedly ticking slower and slower.
The sun was warm on his back, and his nag was content to meander slowly, taking its time, as if to savour this lovely day to the fullest. Hal glanced back for a moment, to where the sky-tips looked so magnificent now, like moon mountains in their glinting whiteness.
He looked beyond the clayworks, where he could just see the roof-tops of the old cottages, and remembered how one particular cottage had been so filled with love. He remembered how his daughter Morwen had come bursting into the cottage on her seventeenth birthday to find that they’d been invited to old Charles Killigrew’s house that evening. And he’d known, even before she knew it herself, that his girl had fallen in love with the boss’s son.
Hal turned and gazed ahead of him, down towards St Austell and the shimmering sea. Alongside where he paused were Ben Killigrew’s rail tracks, that were such an important part of the business now, taking the clayblocks to the port and the waiting ships. But his heart tugged as always at the sight of them, for it was here that the subsidence had occurred. Ben’s little train had been taking the cheerful crowd of clayers and their children on a joy ride to the sea. And the terrible accident had plunged the carriage into the depths of a disused tin mine, killing his first-born. Killing his strong young son, Sam, whom he would never see again…
Family Shadows Page 18