‘We felt obliged to confide in Cress, and he was an absolute brick. He saw the way out for Primmy, and she adored him for it – not that she didn’t adore him already. But it was Cress who insisted on the piece being put in The Informer about their engagement, Mammie, before that black devil could make his allegations public knowledge. So that was why it all seemed to be done in such haste.’
‘I see,’ Morwen said, knowing she must tread carefully. ‘And was Cress quite happy about the situation?’
Albie moved away from his mother now, looking her straight in the eyes. ‘If you mean, did he ever doubt us, the answer is no, not once. As for Rose – well, this is where I feel so confused. All this business is a pack of evil lies, and none of my making, but the fact that it happened at all is on my conscience, Mammie. So should I tell her?’
Morwen didn’t need to think twice.
‘Never in a million years, darling. If you want my advice, you’ll put this rubbish straight into the fire, and when it burns, so will the secret. According to the words of an old wisewoman I once knew, there’s magic and cleansing involved in the burning.’
Oh, Zillah, Morwen thought, you come to my aid more times than you know…
‘Come on now,’ she said briskly. ‘There’s no fire in the grate, so we’ll light one with this trash, put on a few twigs and logs, and make some dripping toast.’
‘I thought we’d just had tea,’ Albert said vaguely, but she could see the way his face was starting to relax.
‘That was ages ago, and there’s nothing like a bit of magic to sharpen the appetite,’ she said, with a half-smile. In all respects…
It was dusk by the time they’d finished discussing the kind of twisted person who could try to blacken the names of two innocent people. And by then Morwen’s calm manner had made Albert resolve to put it all behind him for ever. It was the only way, she assured him.
‘You’re such a good person, Mother,’ he said quietly. ‘You hold us all together, in the same way that Grandma Bess must have held you and the family together in the old days.’
‘Dear Lord, you make me feel like Methuselah!’ she said, laughing, but her eyes were damp, because it was the greatest compliment he could have paid her.
‘Well, maybe we’d best get those old bones moving,’ he said, grinning more like the old Albie, ‘or Ran will wonder what’s happened to you. I’m not letting you go all that way alone, either. I’ll come with you in the trap, then return it to Grandma Bess’s, and stay the night there.’
‘Oh, she’ll like that,’ Morwen said softly.
‘I know she will,’ Albie said.
* * *
By the time they were within sight of New World, Morwen was feeling apprehensive. She had been away from the house all day, without one word of explanation as to where she was going. If Ran had bothered to send Gillings to Killigrew House to see if she’d gone to see her mother, he’d have known she’d been there, and that she was going to see Justin. But apart from that, nobody would have had any idea where she’d been for the entire day.
As she alighted from the trap near the front door, she gave Albert a quick hug.
‘Don’t come in unless you’ve a mind to,’ she said, but he shook his head.
‘I’ll get back to see Grandma Bess before she goes to bed. I’ll enjoy having a jaw with Uncle Freddie as well, and maybe a game of backgammon.’
It all sounded so blessedly normal, and the only sadness in Morwen’s mind was the thought of how Hal would have enjoyed a jaw with his boys as well. But she was glad Albie wasn’t lingering on here. She was already anticipating the uproar when she got inside the house.
The wheels of the trap had hardly rumbled away before the front door was wrenched open and Ran stood there, toweringly tall against the lighted interior. Her heart faltered for a moment, and she forced a smile to her lips and began to stumble out an apology for her absence. But before she could get more than a few words out, Ran had grabbed at her arm and pulled her cruelly inside, shaking the living daylights out of her.
‘Where the devil have you been all day, woman?’ he bellowed. ‘You’ve worried us all sick, and frightened your children half to death, thinking that some terrible accident had befallen you. Emma’s refusing to go to sleep until she’s seen you, and Mrs Enders is having a wretched time with her, trying to stop her wailing and weeping. I daresay the woman will give notice in the morning, and I won’t blame her!’
‘For God’s sake, will you stop shaking me!’ Morwen screamed. ‘How can I explain anything to you, when you’re treating me like a rag doll?’
‘I’d treat a rag doll with more respect, since it wouldn’t go off and leave its children all day long without a bloody word,’ Ran swore.
‘Well, it could hardly do that, could it?’ Morwen said with a burst of sarcasm, and was rewarded by a swift cuff about the head. She gaped at Ran in total shock, but it had been a purely involuntary reaction, and he was too incensed to realize what he’d done. She smothered a sob of impotent rage, and rushed past him. He grabbed her by the arm again, and she knew she’d be black and blue by the morning.
‘Not so fast, my lady—’
‘You said my children need me, and I’m going to them,’ Morwen said shrilly. ‘I want to see Emma, and I want to see her now.’
‘So where have you been?’ Ran thundered.
‘Oh, dallying with my lover, of course,’ she screamed. ‘That’s what you’re expecting me to say, isn’t it? Maybe it’s what you want, to give you the right to do something of the same. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander too, I daresay, or should it be the other way around?’
She wrenched away from him and fled towards the stairs, sobbing in bitter frustration. Since they had been yelling at the tops of their voices, the servants must have heard all that was going on, but she didn’t care. Her marriage was in tatters, and all she had was her children. There had been very few bright spots in this terrible day, and she began to wonder just how much more one person was expected to bear.
Outside Emma’s bedroom, she controlled herself as best she could. Thank God the door was closed, and since she could hear Emma wailing noisily inside, she doubted that the child could have heard any of the furore downstairs. She could be thankful for that. She opened the door and went inside, and found Mrs Enders in a right old state of distress as she tried to comfort Emma.
‘Oh, Mrs Wainwright, thank goodness,’ the woman gasped. ‘We were that worried, and this poor little mite was convinced you were dead and buried, same as her grandaddy.’
If ever anything was needed to fill her with guilt and remorse, that was it. She’d never given a single thought to such a thing. In fact, she guiltily knew that she’d hardly considered Emma and Luke’s feelings since her daddy had died, being so concerned with the older ones, and her mammie. She’d simply overlooked the way a child’s imagination could turn the simplest slip from a normal day into a disaster of monstrous proportions. And remembering their tutor’s relish for telling them ghoulish stories, she knew how badly she had neglected her children.
‘Emma, darling,’ she croaked. ‘Mammie’s here now.’
She hardly knew how she crossed the room. She felt as though she flew across to Emma’s bed, and the child leapt out of it and met her halfway, to be swept up in Morwen’s arms and kissed and hugged and wept over.
‘I was afraid you’d gone to be with Grandad Hal and the angels,’ Emma sobbed.
‘What nonsense,’ Morwen whispered against her hot little cheek, her eyes damp. ‘Just as if I’d leave my darlings!’
‘Well, Grandad Hal did,’ Emma said with a child’s accusing logic. ‘And so did my Uncle Sam and Aunt Dora.’
Morwen’s heart skipped a beat. She held Emma slightly away from her now, looking searchingly into her swollen eyes.
‘Who told you that?’ she said huskily.
‘Miss Pinner told me and Luke in a lesson about fam’ly history. She said everybody should know about
the folk in their own fam’ly, and I never even knew I had an Uncle Sam and an Aunt Dora, Mammie!’
‘Well, you did, darling—’
‘And are they with Grandad Hal now?’
‘Yes, they are.’
And, dear God, at some stage in this little one’s life, there would be more explanations to be made, about the tangled relationships between all the children. And Morwen vowed at that moment that it must come about properly, and not in the disastrous way that Cress had blurted out the truth to Walter and Primmy and Albert all those years ago. It was something that needed to be done calmly, and soon.
She kissed her daughter’s cheek, and smoothed back her dishevelled hair as she tucked her up in bed once more.
‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow, darling, and we’ll make a big chart of all our family for you to put on the wall of the nursery.’
‘Miss Pinner will want to help,’ Emma said miserably.
‘No, she won’t, Emma. Miss Pinner will be leaving.’
She was rewarded by a strangling hug around her neck, and she realized anew how the woman had frightened the sensitive child by her ghoulish tales. The woman definitely had to go.
* * *
She stayed in the bedroom until Emma had fallen asleep, and then she tiptoed out to look in on Luke. He was sprawled out in his bed, surrounded by his toy soldiers and snoring gently. And she gave a half-smile, knowing that nothing would have disturbed him.
When she went back downstairs to face Ran again, she felt calmer, knowing she had made the resolution to get rid of Miss Pinner. He too, looked less black than previously, and she took the bull by the horns before she lost her nerve.
‘May I please say something, Ran?’
‘Of course,’ he said, his voice giving nothing away.
‘Firstly, I apologize for my thoughtlessness in staying away all day, and of course I’ll tell you exactly where I’ve been. But there’s something more important that we have to deal with.’
‘Oh?’
‘The tutor has been frightening Emma, and I won’t have it. Luke’s not bothered by her tales, but Emma’s very disturbed. I want the woman out of the house tomorrow, Ran.’
She couldn’t even say her name. She had never liked her, despite her credentials and Ran’s respect for her, and she prepared to tussle with him over this. To her wild relief, she saw the semblance of a smile on his face now.
‘Is that all? I thought there was another trauma in the offing.’
‘There will be, if that woman doesn’t go,’ she said quietly, unable to be so jocular over Emma’s distress. ‘Do you agree to it, Ran?’
‘Of course, if you think it necessary.’
‘I do. And tomorrow, please.’
‘Tomorrow it is,’ he said, almost carelessly.
She swallowed. His carelessness seemed to extend to herself and her children, she thought, in her heightened state of nerves. He no longer cared for any of them in the way he once had, and she mourned the fact as if she mourned the passing of someone very dear. She felt instant shame at the thought, because at least they were still here, still alive… she walked swiftly over to him, and put her hand on his arm, looking up pleadingly into his eyes. There was a time for pride, and a time for swallowing it, and this was it.
‘Ran, I truly am sorry about today. I intended going to the clayworks—’
‘What the devil for? Checking up on me, were you, to see if I was keeping Walter in order?’
She felt her face flush with annoyance. She turned away and went to the fireplace, to stand with her hand on the mantel, as if suddenly needing its support.
‘I did not. I wanted to be where I felt I belonged, where all the Tremaynes had once belonged,’ she said with quiet dignity, and daring him to deny her the right to the name. He said nothing at first, and then he shrugged.
‘So what made you change your mind? You didn’t turn up at the clayworks, so where the hell were you?’
He was so hard and unforgiving, and she knew at once that she could never, never share Albert’s secret with him, or anyone. It had been burned to ashes, and must remain that way.
‘I went to visit a very old friend on the moors,’ she said truthfully, for old Zillah had surely been a kind of friend to herself and Celia. ‘Then I went to see my mother. I thought she’d be in need of company in these early days after Daddy’s death. Cathy and the baby were there, and—’
She stopped suddenly, and looked down, biting her lips in sharp remembrance of the way they had looked when she had arrived. So cheerful and bright, enjoying baby Theo, not needing her…
‘Go on,’ Ran said, more gently.
‘I stayed awhile,’ Morwen said in a choked voice, ‘but I didn’t feel like coming home yet. I felt so unsettled. I went to Truro to see how Justin was, hoping he’d calmed down after the will reading, but he’s still feeling bitter towards Walter, and it breaks my heart. We – we didn’t have a very easy time.’
Ran came slowly towards her, and took her trembling hands in his.
‘My poor baby. It’s turned out to be one hell of a day for you, hasn’t it?’
She couldn’t bear this sudden tenderness. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and looked at him with eyes that were diamond-bright with threatening tears.
‘Not entirely. I decided to go and see Albert at the studio, and he has a lovely lady-friend, Ran. They were so sweet together, and I was so glad for Albie, knowing how much he’ll be missing Primmy—’
She stopped abruptly, knowing she had to keep the awful secret that was none of their making, knowing she must keep it from Ran, from whom she had never kept anything before.
Their love had always been so open and so honest, and now there was this… she felt his arms go around her, and she leaned against him with a little sigh, feeling his strength.
‘So you stayed with Albie for a while, did you? And were this girl’s parents there too?’
‘I met her father at the studio,’ she said, with a faint bending of the true circumstances. ‘He’s a widower, and a dealer in artists’ materials in Truro, and clearly very impressed with Albie.’
‘So he should be,’ Ran said generously.
‘So then Albie and I had tea together, and I was appalled to realize how late it had got, truly I was. Albie brought me back here, and he’s staying tonight at Killigrew House with Mammie, and hoping for a game of backgammon with Freddie. And that’s all.’
It was very quiet when she had finished speaking. She was still in the circle of Ran’s arms, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She could feel the steady beat of his heart, and it was nothing like as erratic as her own. She felt his lips brush her forehead and her eyes stung, because it seemed to her as if all the passion they had once known had somehow drained out of their lives. It was sad, and terrible, the way that time and circumstances could change people.
‘I’ve got something to tell you too,’ he said quietly.
He released her then, and Morwen felt an uneasy, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she recognized the seriousness in his voice. Not more trouble, she thought. Not at Killigrew Clay…
She watched as Ran walked across to a side table and poured himself a large brandy. She made no comment on the quantity, nor the fact that she’d already gleaned that it wasn’t the first drink he’d had that evening. When he turned to face her, she saw he was gripping the glass tightly.
‘Walter and I had a long consultation this afternoon,’ he said.
‘Oh? A successful one, I hope,’ she said, not betraying for a moment the fear that they might have begun wrangling already.
‘More than successful.’ He took a long drink now, but he didn’t move to sit down. The brandy wasn’t impairing his faculties at all, she thought fleetingly. He was very much in control, and he knew the unconscious power of a man standing tall. ‘It seems that Walter and I are more in accord over the fortunes of Killigrew Clay than I believed.’
‘Well, I could have
told you that!’ Morwen sat down abruptly on one of the silk-covered sofas, wondering just what he was about to tell her.
Walter had always had the good of Killigrew Clay first and foremost in his heart. Surely Ran hadn’t somehow managed to persuade him into doing anything rash? Guiltily, she knew she was suspecting her husband’s motives in thinking that way, but for all Ran’s buying into the clayworks and dealing with the monetary side of it so skilfully, the clay wasn’t in his blood, the way it was in Walter’s. He hadn’t been born a clayworker’s son, he hadn’t worked with the clay and known the feel and the smell and the taste of it, almost as soon as he drew breath, like her Mammie and Daddy, and all her brothers and herself. And Walter.
‘Well, since you’re so all-fired clever, perhaps you’ve also worked out how we’re meant to pay the clayworkers the dues and deals we’ve offered them, honey?’
There was an edge to his voice, but she didn’t heed it. She leapt to her feet, her face flooding with angry colour, her hands tight by her sides in total shock.
‘You wouldn’t dare to welsh on your offer, Ran! You’d have outright mutiny in a minute, and worse. The men would be ready to do bloody murder if they thought you weren’t going to honour your words—’
‘Did I say that? By Christ, Morwen, but you get your dander up quicker than any woman I ever knew,’ he said, in an infuriatingly scathing voice.
She stood her ground, her blue eyes flashing dangerously.
‘Don’t play with me, Ran Wainwright. If you’ve got something to say, let’s have it. I suppose all that talk about new contracts with some medical manufacturing firm was all pie in the sky, was it?’ she ended bitterly.
‘It most certainly was not, and to put your suspicious mind at ease, I’ve got someone coming to see me on that score in a week’s time, but obviously we can’t expect any proceeds from there until after the autumn depatches, and then it will depend on the quantities they purchase.’
‘It looks likely to go ahead then, does it?’
‘Yes, my doubting little Thomasina, it certainly does. But that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you about, and nor was it the most important thing that Walter and I discussed.’
Family Shadows Page 26