And it was Matt’s parents he now knew and who found him pleasantly agreeable, and nothing like the wild colonials that Ben had teasingly told them lived beyond the ocean. It was Matt’s family he was so taken with, and Ben Killigrew was a mere accessory to the Tremaynes. It was a novel situation, and if he felt it a blow to his pride for one moment on that account, she guessed that he would dismiss it as being ridiculous.
‘I want to know if it’s a serious matter at Bult and Vine’s,’ she said, trying not to let her mouth tremble. Any suggestion of scaggying or strikes or wild-running among the clayworkers was always serious. Morwen had always seen it as an omen for herself too. When things went wrong with the clay, somehow they invariably went wrong for her. She knew better than to try to explain that to Ben. He would call her as moonstruck as the old hag on the moors, whose cottage had gone up in smoke with her in it a year or so ago. For which most folk had thankfully and guiltily said good riddance.
‘Discontent among workers is always serious,’ he said shortly. He caught her eye, as mutinous as only Morwen could look when she knew she wasn’t getting a straight answer. Damn her need for honesty, Ben thought sourly. Hadn’t she learned yet that in business, as in life, there were some things that were best glossed over?
‘All right. There’s been some scaggying—’
‘I know that. My mother told me. Daddy told her a week ago.’ She let this sink in with a little pause. ‘So how will it affect us?’
‘I won’t hold with scaggying or striking, and that’s one thing on which I’m certain,’ Ben was suddenly more like his old self, the pomposity stifled as his eyes gleamed. ‘Killigrew clayworkers get fair dues for their labour, and I shall read them the riot act to make them realize it. They’re better off now than they ever were, and I’ll not stand for it!’
‘Bravo,’ Morwen said tremulously. ‘Your father wouldn’t have stood for it either. Whatever their grievances, stop them swiftly and sharply, he always told Daddy. Tell them to work or get out. There’s no place here for wastrels.’
He was suddenly still, listening to her. It was like listening to the ghost of old Charles Killigrew, giving his lion’s roar to his Pit Captains, to Hal Tremayne and Gil Dark, and the others from Pits Three and Four. His wife was no social butterfly, flitting about the society set of the town with her head full of fripperies and nonsense. And he knew instantly how badly he had hurt the woman who was inextricably a part of him, of the clay, and of his life.
He moved across the room to her in long strides. He took her in his arms, and held her against his chest. The beat of her heart was his heart, her sudden glimmering tears echoed inside him. He felt her trembling body and hated himself.
‘Forgive me, dar,’ he murmured roughly. ‘It’s sometimes too easy to forget the important things.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Ben,’ she whispered against the warmth of his body. ‘We are what we are.’
Someone else had once said as much. Someone she wished hadn’t come into her thoughts just then: Captain Neville Peterson. And one of the reasons she didn’t want to go to London with Ben was because of the risk of seeing Neville Peterson again.
And what was more likely? Peterson was one of Ormsby College’s Crimean heroes. He had not an ounce of sensitivity about the way Ben had sent him packing after his disgraceful behaviour with the piano tutor, and he would undoubtedly be present at the new Honorary Governor’s inauguration. Seeing him again would be more than an ordeal for Morwen, but she had never revealed her dread of it to Ben.
She was as guilty as he for keeping secrets… thankfully, the London visit was still some weeks away, and Ben was too fully occupied with the crisis at the clayworks to dwell on it. He admitted to himself, if not to Morwen, that there was a crisis.
* * *
He called a meeting at the works for Monday morning. Hal Tremayne, Works Manager, grizzled and a little stooped, still had enough voice to bellow at the boisterous clayworkers gathered at Clay One pit to keep some order while the boss had his say-so.
The pit was surrounded by the white spoil hills, the depth of the pit wider and deeper now than when Ben had first taken over from his father. The pool, filled with the slurry from the clay, was a pale milky-green in the September day. The autumn loads had been sent to Charlestown port on Ben’s railway, and the turnaround in the preparing and drying and blocking of the clay should be starting now for next spring’s despatches.
Ben’s handsome face darkened. This should be a good time in the clay calendar. One load safely gone, the next swinging into production in line with the seasons. Instead, he faced an unsettled mob.
Clayworkers, young and old, squelching from foot to foot to keep from sinking into the mud in their thigh-length leather boots; the wild young kiddley-boys racing hither and thither, bootless and often shoeless, their feet hardened to the moors; the white-bonneted bal maidens, clustered together like fluttering moths, the long black hair of the younger ones streaming out; the older matrons seeming to have no hair at all beneath the all-embracing bonnets. And over faces and clothes, the clinging white clay dust that made phantoms of them all.
Except for the shouting and cat-calls, Clay One was eerily silent. There was no rumbling of the little trucks taking the waste to the sky-tips. The pumping-house was quiet, the beam engine still. The fire-hole no longer roared with the furnace heat and the blasphemies of the men stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat.
For an instant, Ben remembered the day he had taken his turn in the fire-hole at his father’s insistence. The acrid smell of men’s bodies, the unbearable heat, the searing of flesh, drying of eye sockets and throats, the bulging of muscles, were all as vivid to him now as it had tormented him then.
‘Let’s have silence, you buggers!’ Hal shouted above the din. His son Sam had always added his voice to Hal’s when needed. It was Ben’s voice now that roared alongside him.
‘Let’s have a spokesman to air your grievances. We’ll get nowhere while you’re all hollering at once.’
He might as well have tried to stop the tide from filling Charlestown port twice a day.
‘We want some assurance that our jobs be safe.’
‘’Tis our bellies that’ll be empty if the clay demand falls off because of these bastards sellin’ it off cheap—’
‘Have I given any of you your marching orders?’ Ben said angrily, having little patience with rumours and the way they made sheep of sensible men.
‘Bult and Vine’s have—’
‘We’re not Bult and Vine’s,’ Ben shouted back. ‘Tell me your grievances, and I’ll set your minds at rest—’
‘I mind your daddy said that once,’ one of the older clayworkers spoke up loudly. ‘Next thing we knew we was on strike and our babies was starving.’
Ben looked at him coldly. ‘We want no strikes here, and there’s no need for them. You’re paid a fair wage for a fair day’s work. But I promise you, here and now, that the first one I catch scaggying will be out on his ear, and if he’s living in one of my cottages he’ll be turned out without a roof over his head.’
There were mutterings among the men, and cries of disapproval from the women.
‘You’d turn out innocent babbies, would ’ee, Ben Killigrew?’ One old harridan shrieked. ‘Shame on ’ee for saying such an evil thing. ’Tis not what Morwen would want from ’ee. She’ll not have forgotten her days in one of Killigrew’s cots wi’ her mammie and daddy. You go back to your fine house and tell Morwen what you’ve told we and see if ’ee don’t get tongue pie for supper!’
The woman’s words drew howls of laughter from the rest. Ben felt the anger tightening up in him. This was what he hated. There was no respect among these people. Couldn’t they see that Morwen had moved on, even if they had not?
Morwen was his wife. She was no longer the prettiest bal maiden who ever worked at Killigrew Clay, turning every young clayworker’s head. She was Mrs Killigrew, and these fools should remember it. He was about to t
ell them so, when he felt Hal’s hand on his arm.
‘Leave it, Ben. ’Twill do no good to let personal pride get in the way of what you’ve come here to say.’
Ben knew the sense of it well enough. He gave a small nod, waving his arms about for quiet.
‘We all want the same thing,’ he shouted, appealing to their common sense. ‘We want Killigrew Clay to continue and prosper, and if some scaggies have begun disrupting Bult and Vine’s, that’s no concern of ours. His pits may be in a state of upheaval, but ours are not. And as long as you do your work, I’ll do mine—’
‘So long as those soft hands o’ yourn don’t get dirtied, I daresay—’ a lone voice jeered, to be shushed by the majority.
Ben spoke loudly now that he had got their attention. ‘It’s time the clay bosses got together and stamped out this threat to all our livelihoods. What affects one pit affects all the rest. It’s time we made certain rules and obligations between us all, and I’m going to ride over to Bultimore and Vine’s right now to see if a proper meeting can be set up among the bosses. I shall propose that Hal Tremayne and the four Pit Captains attend, so that they can report back all that’s said to you. Is it agreed? You can trust your Captains, and you know you can trust Hal Tremayne.’
The mutterings now were generally approving, unaware of the sarcastic note in his voice. They would trust Hal Tremayne in preference to trusting the man who put the bread in their children’s mouths.
‘Get back to work then, or there’ll be no dues to put food in your children’s bellies at the end of the week.’ His voice held the smallest threat. They recognized it, and dispersed rapidly.
‘That was a bit o’ quick thinking, Ben. Though now you’ll have to see it through,’ Hal grunted as they made their way to his Works Manager’s hut.
Ben smiled grimly. ‘It wasn’t said on the spur of the moment, Hal, even if it sounded that way. It’s time for a reckoning with the rest of the bosses, and time we all stood firm. You’ll know what a union means?’
Hal gaped at him. ‘You’re not proposing to unite the two clayworks, Ben? Your father ’ould turn in his grave. He built Killigrew Clay from nothing—’
‘No, I’m not,’ Ben said impatiently. ‘But there should be rules for every pit, and we should all abide by them, to rid ourselves of the dangers of scaggying and striking.’
‘You’ll never do that. Not while men breathe and have minds o’ their own. You can’t be the voice for every clayworker, Ben. You know well enough that a Cornishman is fiercely proud and independent, and don’t take kindly to rules.’
‘They’ll have to take to mine,’ Ben retorted. ‘There can be only one boss in any business.’
Hal looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Yet you’m about to see Bult and Vine to make these daft suggestions?’
Ben flushed angrily. ‘Daft suggestions? You forget yourself, Hal. You may be my father-in-law—’
‘But that don’t give me the right to say my piece, is that it? I think you’m forgetting summat too, Ben. A legal bit o’ paper that says I’ve as much right to discuss these things as you, and if I think my partner’s acting daft, I shall say so!’
They glared at one another across the hut, and then Ben grinned, holding out his hand for Hal to take.
‘Damn it, man, it’s me who’s the bloody fool. You insist on keeping our partnership so well-hidden I’d all but forgotten it myself. You do well to remind me.’
‘Well, now forget it,’ Hal muttered. ‘I don’t bring it up to make trouble, and the dividends paid into the bank every year are frightening enough—’
Ben laughed good-naturedly now, slapping Hal on the back.
‘By God, Hal, you’re the only one I know who’s frightened of accumulating wealth. Do you and Bess ever spend a fraction of what you make?’
Hal shrugged. ‘I doubt it, since our needs are simple enough, and I can’t make head nor tail of the accounting figures, and don’t want to neither!’
Ben shook his head in disbelief. If he wanted to, he could swindle this simple man out of his fortune, and Hal would never be the wiser. He would never do it, of course; Hal was Morwen’s father, and his good friend. But he knew that the naïvety of this man was echoed in all the moorland folk who worked the clay. They were honest and hard-working… except for the few…
‘Did you never think of taking Bess to America to visit Matt?’ Ben said abruptly. ‘It would mean the world to her, and you have ample funds. And it was Matt’s gift that made our partnership possible, so it would seem right—’
Hal’s face was shadowed. ‘Our Matt left us. He’s made amends by writing and putting his mammie’s mind at rest, but it’s his place to come to us, not the other way around. Besides, if Bess and me suddenly sported fares to America, the rest on ’em ’ould wonder where we got the money, and know of our partnership arrangement, and we swore to keep it private, didn’t we?’
There was no way such a dogged man could be changed, and the Tremayne pride was leaps and bounds ahead of the Killigrews’, Ben thought, as he rode off towards the other large clayworks in the district. That damnable pride that could keep families and lovers apart, and made a mockery of the honesty they all admired so much.
* * *
It was evening by the time he got back to Killigrew House. He had called at Hal’s house to tell him that the other clay bosses had been all too eager to go along with Ben’s suggestion for certain rules and agreements. No scaggies were going to skip from one claypit to the next and keep their own bit of shiftless work going. The general meeting with Works Managers and Pit Captains was fixed for two days’ time, at Bult and Vine’s.
He felt more than satisfied. It was for the good of everybody, and Morwen could get that worried look off her face now. He loved her, but he wished she wouldn’t concern herself quite so much with what went on at the works. Ben was nothing if not a man’s man, and his need to take care of the business without any female interference was absolute.
There was already one woman who had inherited her husband’s clayworks, and was said to be running it single-handed. A load of poppy-cock, Ben thought sourly. Did she stoke the fire-hole? Did she stack the clay blocks all by herself, when a team of bal maidens worked for the whole year to prepare the twice-yearly loads in every pit he knew? Did she wheel the little trucks and tip the waste?
No, much as he loved Morwen’s nimble mind and undoubted intelligence, and the wisdom that was sometimes uncanny, her place was here in his house, caring for his children and being his woman… just as she herself had asked him so scathingly, he thought, with a small grin at her impertinence.
She ran to greet him as he entered the house. Her eyes were shining, and as he held her close, he thought how beautiful she was tonight, and how easily his hands spanned her waist, and how delightfully her softly curving body nestled against him. Desire flared within in him as it hadn’t done for some little while, and he smiled down into her glowing face.
‘You’ll never guess what’s happened, dar!’
‘Then you’ll just have to tell me,’ he teased. ‘Quickly, before the little hordes rush in and spoil this moment.’
Already they could hear the sounds of high-pitched voices, laughing and squabbling, from somewhere in another room.
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Morwen laughed. ‘They’re too busy playing charades with Ran. He came home ages ago with such exciting news! They’ll be bursting to tell you too, and will no doubt get it all wrong!’
So, all this exuberance was because of Ran Wainwright. Ben held Morwen slightly away from him, watching the rapid rise and fall of her breasts in the rose-coloured gown she wore. When had she last looked this excited for him? The unexpected thought disturbed him.
‘What news?’ he said, a little distantly.
‘Ran’s bought out Prosper Barrows!’
Ben stared at her disbelievingly.
‘He’s going into clay-stone quarrying? But he knows nothing about it! What kind of foolhardy scheme is this?
’
Morwen’s smile slipped a little.
‘Ben, I thought you’d be pleased! It means Ran has decided to settle in Cornwall, and not only that, his business and ours will have connections. It will be almost like having Matt home again.’
She was so charmed at the thought that she didn’t notice her husband’s darkening features.
‘He decided to settle here pretty damn quickly, didn’t he? What happened to the accounting post I arranged for him at Gorran’s?’ Resentment oozed out of him, and Morwen spoke impatiently.
‘He intends to carry on with that for the time being. He wants to leam all he can about business methods here. He’s putting money into Prosper Barrows, but he will leave the actual production to his stoneworkers. My guess is that Ran means to be there as often as he can, all the same. He says that a boss without his finger in the working pie is no boss at all.’
‘He says that, does he? You seem to know a great deal about it. And I suppose the children know it all as well? Everyone knew but me.’ He growled the words, knowing they sounded petulant and irritated, but that was suddenly the way he felt.
Prosper Barrows had been a going concern until the owner gambled his assets away. Since china-stone had as steady a market as clay, if not more so, the quarry-workings only needed a good injection of money behind it to make it highly competitive in the alternative industry.
Entrepreneurs from up-country England had taken over more than one such quarry, left it to the Pit Captains to work the china-stone with new and more efficient equipment, and sat back in their city mansions, reaping in the profits.
Ben had never considered that the American would speculate in the same way, and for some reason he found the news less than agreeable. He saw Morwen’s astonished face.
‘Lack of communication seems usual between us lately, Ben.’ Her voice was soft and steady. ‘I don’t recall you telling me so fast about the scaggies. And since I only heard of Ran’s business venture this afternoon, you hardly expected me to ride up to Killigrew Clay to tell you, did you?’
Family Ties Page 4