Cyril sighed. ‘I’m not going to have a struggle with you over this, am I? What else am I going to spend my money on if not my daughter and son-in-law? Anyway, you can’t have one without the other, Freddie. Take Venetia and a house or nothing at all.’
Venetia looked at him pleadingly, willing him not to let stupid pride come into this. At last, she saw his muscles relax again, and gave up her silent thanks.
‘In that case, I’ve no choice but to accept, since nothing will keep me from making Venetia my wife,’ Freddie said, more easily than he would have believed. ‘And may I have a drop more of that porter before my knees give way? You’ll appreciate that it’s not every afternoon that ends up like this.’
He had to keep being jocular to cover the emotion he felt, unknowingly reacting in exactly the right way to the blunt-speaking man. Venetia knew though, and rejoiced in the friendship already growing between them.
They were two of a kind, she thought gladly, and the future blossomed before her, beautiful and golden, like the best of a Cornish summer.
Chapter Twenty
April merged into May and still Ben’s clay blocks hadn’t left Charlestown port. His temper was so precarious that neither Morwen nor the children hardly dared speak to him. He had no patience with anyone and when Matt and his family returned to Killigrew House for the final week of their visit, he was away from the house more often than he was in it.
None of them was sorry. Matt wasn’t wild about Ben Killigrew, if the truth was told. When Matt and Jude Pascoe had left for America, Ben had still been an upstart from his London college, and he’d had no time for him then. He couldn’t see that there was much difference in the Ben of those days and the man he had become. The years in between may have softened him in Morwen’s eyes, but there was no evidence of it to Matt.
He was suddenly hungry to be back in the land that was now his own. He had missed his family, and longed to see them again. But he had put down roots in his chosen country, and wouldn’t be sorry to leave Cornwall after all, even though the days were mellow with approaching summer, and Freddie’s wedding was arranged for the end of June.
Matt was regretful that he couldn’t stay for that, but in any case another two months away from his own business was more than he could spare. His arrangements must be unchanged, but he could be glad that there was something lovely for the Killigrews and Tremaynes to look forward to.
He echoed his sister’s hopes that the last week of the visit would be uneventful as she shooed the children out into the garden to play hide-and-seek on the Sunday afternoon. They headed for the shrubbery, well away from the house. Cresswell was still smarting from a rebuke he’d had from that Ben that morning.
‘Why is your father always so cross?’ he asked Primmy.
‘He’s not always cross,’ she came to Ben’s defence at once. ‘He has a lot of business worries. I heard him telling Mother about the clay blocks still not leaving Cornwall. They should be in France by now. Our clay goes to lots of different countries,’ she added for good measure.
‘So does my father’s gold.’ Cresswell immediately pooh-poohed her words. ‘Our gold is far more precious than a lot of old clay. It’s made into jewellery and important things, not just cups and saucers and plates.’
‘Everybody needs cups and saucers and plates,’ Walter said testily. ‘People can get along without jewellery and stuff, so don t talk rubbish. Clay is just as important as gold.’
‘That’s silly. Anybody knows gold is the best—’
‘Don’t call Walter silly,’ Albert said threateningly.
Charlotte looked from one to the other, while Justin folded his arms and glared as belligerently as the older boys.
‘Are you going to have another fight?’
Walter ignored his little sister, speaking loftily to all of them. ‘Cresswell’s the idiot, for not understanding about all the things that depend on Cornish china-clay. It’s not found just anywhere, and our clayworks are among the biggest around here.’
‘Your clayworks!’ Cresswell was still scoffing.
Walter suddenly saw red at the sneering little squirt. He didn’t normally boast, but there was a time and a place for everything.
‘Yes, mine,’ he bragged. ‘When I’m old enough to take over from Daddy, I shall run Killigrew Clay the way I want to. Even if I wanted to export clay blocks to America, I should do that too,’ he added wildly.
Cresswell let out a shriek of laughter.
‘You’ll have to wait a long time for that, Walter Tremayne! Killigrew Clay’s never going to belong to you. You’re not even Uncle Ben’s eldest son. You’re not even a Killigrew, so how is it ever going to belong to you?’
Walter had got him by the scruff of the neck before he finished talking. Albert piled on top of him, and the three of them went down on the grass. This time, Justin pummelled his small fists against the American cousin as well.
‘What the hell are you talking about, you boring little bastard?’ Walter grated, uncaring of his language.
Cresswell furiously panted out the words, nearly suffocated by three bodies smothering him, and half a dozen hands squeezing his throat.
‘It’s true! If you don’t believe me, ask my Daddy. You can’t ask your own, because he’s dead, in the churchyard at Penwithick. I saw the name on the stone. Sam Tremayne. That’s who your Daddy is. Yours and Albert’s and Primmy’s.’
Walter wrenched him to his feet. The blue of the sky seemed to dazzle in front of his eyes and he couldn’t think straight for a minute. He could hardly breathe.
‘You’re a bloody liar!’ he shouted. ‘I’m not Sam Tremayne’s son. He’s our uncle who died years ago—’
‘He’s not!’ Cresswell shrieked. ‘He’s your Daddy, not your uncle. And Aunt Morwen’s not your mother, neither. It’s only Justin and Charlotte who belong here, and it’ll be Justin who owns Killigrew Clay one day, not you.’
For a few seconds the only sounds to be heard were the harsh breathing of the older children, and Charlotte’s noisy sobbing. Walter felt as though time were suspended. Then gradually all the soft sounds of summer, the humming of bees, the soaring birdsongs, the busily scratching crickets, penetrated his senses once more. Normal everyday sounds, that were in such contrast to this sudden nightmare of a day.
‘You’re coming with me.’ He yanked Cresswell’s arm and held it cruelly, not heeding the boy’s yelp of pain. ‘You’ll tell my mother exactly what you’ve told us, and then we’ll see what a little liar you are!’
Albert grabbed his other arm, and they frog-marched Cresswell to the open French windows of the drawing-room, with the rest of the children forming the rear-guard.
* * *
Morwen saw them coming. Dimly, she had been aware of some commotion, and had laughed ruefully with Matt and Louisa over it. It seemed that their children were always destined to be at odds with each other, no matter how fond the regard of their elders. Now, she half-rose at the white, set faces of her boys, and the obvious distress of the girls.
She could see that Cresswell was furious and humiliated by their treatment of him, and she might have found it secretly laughable, had she not sensed that something awful had happened.
Walter thrust his cousin forward, so that he stumbled into the room, and Matt jumped up, exclaiming angrily. Before he could demand to know the reason for it, Walter was shouting.
‘Do you know what lies this little shit has been telling about us, Mother?’
Morwen gasped. She’d never heard Walter speak that way before. She could suddenly hear Sam in him, defending to the death what he thought to be right.
‘It’s not lies!’ Cresswell bellowed. ‘It’s the truth. My Daddy told me. Ask him if you don’t believe me.’
For a second, the room blurred in front of Morwen. Even before Walter spilled out the words, she knew what they were going to be. She had never thought to warn Matt that the children didn’t know the facts of their birth. She had always intended to tell
them gently, and now it was too late for that… too late…
‘He says we’re not Killigrews. He says Sam Tremayne was our Daddy instead of our uncle. He says Killigrew Clay’s not my inheritance, but Justin’s—’
Walter stopped as suddenly as if he had been punched in the stomach. The full pain of that statement had only just penetrated. Ben rarely allowed him to go to the clayworks, even though he wanted to work there so badly. When he was fully grown, he had every intention of doing so. The clay was in his blood. He wanted it as fiercely as any man born to be a clayworker and not a boss… the full impact hit him anew of what he had always felt, and he almost staggered and fell. If the other children hadn’t been right behind him, grabbing him, he probably would have done.
Matt spoke up hoarsely. ‘My God, Morwen, have you never told them?’
‘Oh, Cresswell, how could you do such a thing?’ Louisa’s eyes were filled with tears as she saw the shock still rippling across the three older children’s faces.
‘Cresswell, what did you tell them?’ Matt thundered.
For the first time, the boy looked uncertainly at the faces of the adults in the room. His Aunt Morwen, whom he liked quite well, looked as though she was about to faint, and his parents were angrier than he had ever seen them. He began to shake all over, his voice hoarse with fear.
‘How was I to know they didn’t know? Nobody told me it was a secret. I thought Walter was just showing off about owning the clayworks, and I told him it would be Justin’s not his, because he wasn’t really a Killigrew.’
‘He said our Daddy was Sam Tremayne,’ Primmy said shrilly. ‘He said we don’t belong here, only Justin and Charlotte. Mother—’
She looked beseechingly at Morwen.
Dear God, Morwen thought frantically, where was Ben? Why wasn’t he here to help her with all of this? She swallowed painfully, then looked at Matt and Louisa.
‘Would you please take Cresswell for a walk or something? I have to be alone with my children for a while.’
There was nothing Matt could say to ease the painful telling, except to murmur that if she wished, they would go around the rest of the family and tell them what had happened. Morwen agreed at once. As soon as he and his family had gone, she faced the five wounded young faces, suffering along with them.
‘Come and sit down, all of you—’
‘I’d rather stand,’ Walter said stiffly.
Morwen put her arms around his unbending young body, knowing that Walter’s hurt would be the worst of all.
‘Please sit down, darling. ’Twill make no difference to the telling whether you stand or sit.’
‘I can’t see that there’s anything else to say,’ he burst out. ‘It’s obviously true, and you’ve been letting us live a lie all these years.’
Morwen refused to speak until he sat down, and after a minute or two, he sat with his legs sprawled out in front of him. It was the way Sam used to sit. Morwen’s heart turned over, wishing such images wouldn’t keep coming to haunt her right now. She didn’t know where to begin, and there was no one to help her.
‘Walter, do you know the cottages on the moors?’ she said finally.
He fidgeted. ‘The ones where the clayworkers live? Of course I do,’ he grunted.
‘And you remember I told you that Granddad Hal and Grandma Bess and all my family once lived there, when we all worked for Killigrew Clay?’ She looked at them all steadily, daring any of them to ridicule it now.
‘When you and Grandma Bess were bal maidens,’ Primmy muttered.
‘That’s right. When Granddad Hal moved to his house, Sam and Dora moved into the cottage. When you were very young, you lived there as well. Walter was only three years old, Albert was two, and Primmy was six months old when we brought you away from there to Killigrew House.’
She saw a spark of memory in Walter’s eyes.
‘I do remember something. A woman with soft hair, and a man who looked like Uncle Matt.’
‘They were your parents, Walter,’ Morwen said quietly. ‘My brother Sam, and Dora, as pretty as Primmy is now. You’ve heard about the accident on – Ben’s rail tracks where Sam was killed? When that happened, your mother lost the will to live, and when she got the measles she died a few weeks after your Daddy. It was a terrible time for all of us, and you three were just babies, and Ben and I brought you here to love you and care for you, and that is the truth of it—’
She realized that she was speaking wildly now, that Primmy’s eyes were filling with tears at the sweet romantic tragedy of it all, and that Walter and Albert were still too upset to accept it all so easily.
‘You should have told us,’ Walter’s voice shook with anger. ‘We had a right to know.’
‘Of course you did, and we always meant to tell you, darling. The time never seemed to be right—’
‘Today wasn’t right either!’ Walter leapt to his feet, the enormity of it all still washing over him. ‘To hear it from that crowing little sod wasn’t right Mother – or do I have to call you Aunt Morwen from now on?’
Anger blazed up in her. ‘You do not! You’re my son and always will be. I may not have given birth to you, but Ben and I legally adopted all three of you, so there’s no question of your not being Killigrews, and Cresswell doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
‘And what about me?’ Justin said resentfully.
They all looked at him. He was Ben in miniature at that moment, arrogantly good-looking, temperamental, the well-bred claimant to his rights.
‘Walter’s always kept on about his inheritance and owning Killigrew Clay one day, and what he’s going to do with it when it belongs to him. But if he’s not Daddy’s oldest son, it really belongs to me. Doesn’t it Mother?’ Morwen heard Walter’s cry of outrage, and felt like strangling Justin at that moment. She spoke icily.
‘Killigrew Clay belongs to your father, Justin. If anything should happen to him, it will belong to me. I assure you he’s made provision for all his children, just as I shall do when the time comes. Unless of course, there is continued wrangling about it by then, when I promise you I shall have no hesitation in selling out.’
And long before that, if and when Ben died before her, another reckoning would have to come. Hal Tremayne must be recognized as half-owner of Killigrew Clay, and under the terms of his will, the Tremayne brothers would get equal shares along with Morwen. It was too much of a tangle to explain to these children, and anyway, Hal’s intentions were private ones. Even Morwen wasn’t supposed to know, and wouldn’t have, except that her mother had felt the need to confide in her.
She hoped desperately that she had done as good a job as she was able in explaining everything to the children. Charlotte was too young to understand all the implications, and Primmy seemed to find it all reasonable enough, with reservations. The three boys were the aggressive ones, with poor Albert torn between loyalty to the other two.
‘Anyway, Father had better let me leave school now,’ Walter said belligerently. ‘I’m not going into any stupid office when my place is obviously in the clayworks.’
‘There was no disgrace in Sam’s work, Walter,’ Morwen said sharply. ‘Don’t belittle it—’
‘I’m not!’ he howled. ‘I just want to work there, that’s all! I’ve told you a hundred times.’
Ben’s voice startled them all. He’d followed the raised voices around the side of the house, ready to snarl at them for behaving like fishwives. He reached the open French windows in time to hear Walter’s last remark.
‘Are you still snivelling on about being a clayworker, Walter? I haven’t paid out expensive school fees all these years for you to spend your time grovelling in filth, and it’s high time you recognized your position in life.’
Morwen gaped at him. If only she could have warned him, but it was too late for that too. Walter whirled on him, all the frustration inside him a match for Ben’s at that moment.
‘That’s just what I am doing, Father! Or should I call you Unc
le Ben, since my real father was no more than one of your wretched clayworkers, which is clearly what I was destined to be. How does it feel, to know that you can’t rid your son of his true blood after all?’
For a second Morwen saw Ben lift his hand to strike him for his insolence. She quickly put herself between them.
‘No!’ she said sharply. ‘This time you’ll leave well alone. Can’t you see the shock he’s had? He knows, Ben. They all know, and we owe it to them to sit down and talk quietly and sensibly about it all.’
It took a few minutes for her meaning to sink in. He found it hard to concentrate on anything these days but his own troubles. His clay blocks and his heart. The rhythm of the words were a constant drumming in his head, like the rattle of his railway trucks.
‘So they know,’ he muttered. ‘It had to be told sometime. You decided to go ahead without consulting me, did you?’
His anger was redirected to Morwen, and without thinking, Walter defended her.
‘Don’t blame Mother,’ he said bitterly. ‘She’s the only one who seems to care enough about us to try and make sense of it all. It was that little shit Cresswell who told us.’
The faint surprise at his son’s fearless language in front of him passed unheeded. He was more concerned with the other thing.
‘So the Americans haven’t made a perfect visit after all,’ he sneered.
‘Is that really all you can say?’ Morwen was weary, of him, of the whole clay business, of everything.
Even of Matt’s visit, which was becoming more of a strain than she would ever have dreamed. She longed for Ran’s good sense, for him to take her in his arms and gentle away the pain, remembering how he had been the one to smooth over telling the children about the family background on the way to Truro Fair.
‘I want to know about me,’ Justin said.
Ben looked at him, standing ramrod straight in the middle of the room, bottom lip stuck out, brows drawn together.
‘What about you?’
Morwen had been so taken up with Sam’s children, she had overlooked just how all this was affecting Justin. She and Ben had done what was right by the children. They had legally adopted Walter and Albert and Primmy, and in the eyes of the law and in Ben’s will, Justin was their fourth child. It would need gentle handling now… She heard Ben give a raucous laugh.
Family Ties Page 27