‘Oh, I missed you both, my darlings!’ she gasped. ‘You can’t imagine how much!’
‘We missed you too, Mommy!’ Wenna wailed, and immediately burst into tears in the sheer release of tension after the long wait for the ship to dock.
‘Well, she’s back now, so don’t be such a crybaby,’ Celia snapped, resisting her own chin-wobble with a great effort. ‘Have you brought us anything, Mom?’
Before Skye could catch her breath at this, Wenna dug her sister in the ribs.
‘You know you’re not supposed to ask right away. Daddy said so. Celia’s cross because he smacked her for saying those words, Mommy. You know the ones,’ she said, unable to hide a nervous giggle.
‘Welcome home, darling,’ Philip said, coming into her focus, and kissing Skye on both cheeks. Très continental, she thought. And totally without the emotion she felt inside.
He was obviously ignoring Wenna’s indiscretion, unless he hadn’t heard it properly in the general quayside confusion and excited babble. His words were warm – just – considering he was glaring at both his daughters now, but Skye felt desperately let down. As a learned professor he made it a rule to keep his dignity in public at all times, but she was his wife and had been away from him for more than a month…
‘You didn’t bring Oliver then,’ she said, simply because she couldn’t think of anything else to say to this stranger who was her husband.
‘I did not,’ he said, his eyes becoming steely despite himself, and she guessed at once what this month of child caring had been like for him.
Poor Philip, she thought, sympathy overcoming everything else for the moment.
And then at last her father had caught up with them, having supervised the baggage unloading with one of the quayside porters while the little reunion was going on.
‘Daddy,’ she quickly drew him into their family circle. ‘Come meet your granddaughters, Celia and Wenna.’
She pushed Celia forward, still sulking, still black-faced at being shown up in public. But Wenna went straight into his arms, and his heart was lost to her for ever.
Wenna sat close beside him as they drove back to New World, with Celia on his other side, and as the girls chattered, Skye could sense how he was trying to relax. This journey had been an ordeal for him, she thought suddenly, and wondered why she had never realised it before. She had only thought of doing good by him, but she should have known that his memories here were very mixed.
His engagement and subsequent marriage to his cousin Primmy had been far too hasty and suspicious for the rest of the family, even though it had assailed the darker suspicion about Primmy and Albie. Primmy had often laughed about their varying attitudes when relating the old tales to her daughter, and there had been no embarrassment, no hint of scandal to keep hidden away.
Skye was fully aware of the family history that linked brother and sister together, however wrongly. But seeing her father’s haunted and dark-shadowed eyes, she was full of self-doubt at bringing him home with her at this vulnerable time for him, knowing that the therapy of it was as much for her peace of mind as for his. She prayed it hadn’t been a mistake.
‘Has Theo been a problem while I’ve been away?’ she asked Philip, immediately thinking it was a foolish question to ask, and worded in such an infantile manner. As if Theo was another child, instead of a grown man.
Philip snorted. ‘No more than usual.’
But she was in tune with the wariness in his voice even before Celia cut in, important with knowledge as ever.
‘Uncle Theo came to the house and he and Daddy had an awful fight. A big fight, with lots of shouting,’ Celia had announced, before Philip told her to be quiet and to stop telling tales before her mother had even reached home.
Skye turned to him at once, her heart sinking. She could imagine how Theo would react if Philip had started interfering in clay business. Theo hated interference of any kind.
‘What happened?’ she said quietly but insistently.
‘The man’s a fool, and has completely taken leave of his senses,’ he exploded, clearly unable to hold himself in check any longer, until he glanced at the older man sitting silently in the back seat of the car. ‘I apologise for this, Cresswell, you didn’t want to be thrust right into the middle of it – and I haven’t yet said how sorry I am about your son.’
Dear God, was there ever an afterthought so tactless? Skye fumed, aghast at his words.
‘Get it off your chest, man, whatever it is,’ Cress said roughly. ‘We all know that life has to go on.’
Philip nodded. ‘Well then, that bast – that imbecile, and I can’t think of him in any other way, has taken Anglo-German relations too far, and the clayworkers are already at loggerheads about it. There’ll be a strike before long, you mark my words, or something worse.’
‘Perhaps this discussion is best left until we get home after all, Philip. Little ears are quivering,’ Skye said swiftly, seeing how Celia was leaning forward in the car now, sensing something dramatic going on between the grown-ups, and agog for the bits of information that she didn’t yet know. But she had to put in her piece.
‘I already know some of it, anyway, and Sebby told me his father said you weren’t going to like it one bit when you heard. But it was more his clayworks than yours anyway, and so was the pottery, so he went ahead and did it.’
‘Be quiet, Celia,’ Philip snapped at her, seeing that her garbled words made little sense to Skye except to alarm her more. ‘This is a fine welcome home for your mother, and your grandfather will think he’s come into a crazy house.’
‘Not at all,’ said Cress, the coolest of them all. ‘I’m a Tremayne, remember?’
Which was more than Philip was…
‘I’ll hear no more of it until we get home,’ Skye said fiercely. ‘Not – one – more – word, Celia.’
She couldn’t be sure, but as her elder daughter turned her imperious little face to the car window, she fancied she heard her mutter “Bleedin’ ’ell”, and she had a hard job not to let her mouth twitch. Or it might have done if she didn’t sense already that something dire was in the air. Something that affected Killigrew Clay and White Rivers, and therefore her, and all of them.
As if belatedly realising he should make a greater effort to be sociable after the unfortunate incident, Philip spoke directly to his father-in-law.
‘You’ll be seeing some changes since your last visit, Cresswell. There are fewer of the old family members left now, of course, but the Pengelly fellow joined the ranks when he married Vera.’
Considering that Cress’s own son was one of the depleted family members, it was a doubly tactless remark that Philip apparently didn’t see, and which Cress chose to ignore.
‘Oh yes, the wedding. Skye told me all about it and how beautiful these little honeys looked on the day.’
‘Am I a honey, Grandad?’ Wenna asked, charmed by the word as always.
‘You surely are, babe,’ Cress went on, exaggerating his accent. ‘As sweet as the honey from a hiveful of bees.’
‘We seem to have been invaded by a hiveful of Pengellys now,’ Philip said, his voice edgy and clearly not enjoying this transatlantic jargon. ‘What with the boy apprenticed at the pottery, and now the older one coming back to Cornwall—’
‘The older one? You mean Nicholas?’ Skye spoke as evenly as she could, giving Nick his full name as if to distance herself from any intimate knowledge of him.
‘The very one,’ Philip nodded. ‘The parents are practically at death’s door, I gather, so he and his partner have dissolved their practice in Plymouth and he’s taken up a partnership with Slater in Bodmin. The Pengellys will be privy to all our family business soon.’
‘So is he living in Bodmin now?’ Skye tried not to sound too interested, and didn’t rise to the bait that Slater was her family’s solicitor, not his, and always had been.
‘No. He’s taken a house in Truro.’
‘Oh well, I’m sure his family will b
e glad to have him fairly near.’
She glanced round at Wenna as she spoke, as if for reassurance that she had her own family, and that whatever Nick Pengelly did had nothing to do with her. As she did so, she caught her father looking at her.
He knew, she thought. With the uncanny intuition of the Tremaynes, he knew that this information meant more to her than the disquieting news that there was about to be trouble brewing between herself and Theo and the clayworkers. But how could anyone not know, when she was so aware of her pounding heart, and the heat in her cheeks, just by hearing his name? Dear God, what was happening to her?
‘Daddy, you must think we’re being terribly selfish, going on about things you know nothing about,’ she said quickly.
‘Of course I don’t. It’s strangely refreshing to be caught in the middle of family ups and downs again, no matter what they are. I hadn’t realised how I’d missed it.’
But if she thought this meant he was likely to stay forever, the slightest shake of his head at her hopeful look, told her differently.
Philip spoke again. ‘You’ll be wanting to meet all your folks again, I dare say. We could arrange a small get-together for them all while you’re here. Not exactly a party, of course. You wouldn’t want that, I’m sure,’ he added, accentuating the gaffe.
‘Thank you, but in the circumstances I’d prefer to see them all separately in my own time. I don’t want any fuss.’
‘No. Of course not.’
There was dignity and dignity, Skye mused, as they all fell silent for a few embarrassed moments. Philip had it when it suited him, especially in the company of adoring students or academic contemporaries, but her father had it all the time. And to his credit, she could see he was just as determined not to put a damper on his daughter’s homecoming, and he spoke cheerfully about making the acquaintance of young Oliver Norwood.
‘He won’t talk to you for days, Grandad,’ Celia said at once with a superior giggle. ‘He’ll just stick his thumb in his mouth and bury his head in his nanny’s bosom.’
‘Celia!’ thundered her father. ‘I won’t have you using such words.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Philip,’ Skye said, starting to laugh. ‘Don’t go on at her so. She could have said far worse!’
‘And we all know where she got that from, don’t we?’
* * *
Once they had arrived at New World, and the infant Oliver was brought down to study the grandfather he didn’t know, he did exactly as Celia had said, sucked his thumb and buried his head into his nanny’s bosom without a single word.
Cress gave a small smile as he felt Celia’s hand creep into his and squeeze it in triumph, and he gave her a surreptitious wink that made her giggle. It took time to get to know people, but already he felt he was beginning to understand this precocious little one quite well.
Skye could hardly wait to tackle Philip about the trouble with Theo. Once the girls had insisted on taking Cress to his bedroom and then showing him their garden and the plants they were growing in their special little plot, she put all other matters out of her head and demanded to know what had been happening while she had been away.
The comment about Anglo-German relations had more than alarmed her. The war had been over a long time now, and people had to get along with one another, no matter how many compromises had to be made.
‘As I told you, your lunatic cousin’s gone right over the top this time,’ he said, blind to the irony of the tragic phrase. ‘Of all the wild schemes he ever had, this has got to be the worst. He’s so hand in glove with these foreigners now, he’s invited half a dozen young German workers to study the clayworking methods from beginning to end, to see how the clay is transformed into the pottery for export to their factory.’
‘Well? That doesn’t seem so unreasonable to me,’ Skye began uneasily. ‘Time’s getting short, I’d have thought, and the export order must surely be well under way by now.’
‘I’m not talking about all that.’ He brushed the importance of it aside as if it was nothing. ‘Anyway, from the mutterings among the clayworkers when he first suggested it, you might have second thoughts about the wisdom of inviting foreigners. But it hasn’t stopped there.’
‘Go on, then. What happened next?’ she said, biting her lip as he seemed too short of breath to go on. Maybe she shouldn’t be pressing him, but she knew only too well she wouldn’t stop him, despite the way the veins on his forehead stood out like purple ropes. It was a pity he couldn’t stay calm in the telling the way he apparently did with his students. How was it he could explain the most intricate things to them, in infinite and patient detail, and yet anything to do with Killigrew Clay or White Rivers had him near to apoplexy? But she knew the answer to that, of course. Teaching was his domain, while the rest was hers.
‘The next thing, my dear sweet wife,’ he said insultingly, ‘is that he’s offered them temporary jobs while they’re here, putting them on the clayworks payroll without even consulting you, and sending a kiss-my-ass “so what?” to everybody else.’ As she gasped at this rare vulgarity from Philip, he stormed on. ‘And you don’t need me to tell you how the clayers have reacted to that. You know the list of names on the memorial cross in St Austell as well as I do. Do I need to remind you of how many were wiped out in one day in France? Or have you forgotten the Killigrew Pals’ Battalion so soon?’
Skye flinched. No, she hadn’t forgotten. How could she, when she had been the one to write home to every one of the families when the news had come through to their army hospital in France? When she had written of the tragedy so emotionally for the readers of The Informer newspaper?
All those young boys… All of them Killigrew Clay boys, whose families had worked for Killigrew Clay for generations past. Their boys… Her tolerance to the foreigners was fast disappearing.
‘How dare you accuse me of forgetting!’ she said.
‘Nor do the clayers,’ he retorted. ‘I warn you, there’ll be strikes at the very least, and bloodshed at worst.’
‘Bloodshed? What do you mean by that?’
But a cold shock was running through her, knowing of the temperament of the clayers. They didn’t have the hardships of their predecessors now that things were more mechanised, but the heart and soul of them was the same. They were hard, tough men, as hard as the granite memorial cross in St Austell, and they wouldn’t have forgotten, either. They were a tight-knit community, and they had all lost sons and brothers and fathers.
‘I need to speak to Theo,’ she said, through cold lips. ‘We must do something about this before it’s too late.’
‘I doubt that you’ll get him to change his mind. It’ll mean losing face to send them back now.’
‘Then I must speak to the clayworkers myself.’
‘You! You’re a woman!’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Philip. Haven’t you been listening to anything except what’s in your own head these past years? Women do have a voice now, you know. Ask Lily!’
‘Your cousin Lily’s a feminist of the worst kind,’ he sneered. ‘Marching and banner waving and screeching like a banshee hardly becomes her.’
‘And neither does sitting on the sidelines and letting things happen when you can do something about them. Morwen Tremayne wouldn’t have stood aside and let a man make a perfect fool of himself. Even if that’s all it is.’
But she knew in her heart that Philip was right about one thing. There could be strikes – or bloodshed…
‘You set a mighty great store on what Morwen Tremayne would have done, don’t you?’
She heard the resentment in his voice now, and gaped at him in astonishment and sorrow. Philip had loved and respected her grandmother, but his twisted thought processes meant that his feelings for people could change with chameleon-like swiftness these days. Her throat was thick as she put her hand on his arm, knowing it wasn’t his fault. It was a relic of the evil, bloody war – and she understood too, his own personal reason for resenting Theo’s acti
on. He couldn’t help the way he felt, and she had to keep reminding herself of that fact or it would destroy her. She spoke more softly.
‘You always set a great store by Morwen’s opinions too, Philip, and I know that in your heart you still do. But let’s leave it for now. I won’t do anything until I see Theo, and I don’t want any of this business to spoil my father’s visit. He’s suffered enough without having to hear us bickering like magpies.’
It was more like two dinosaurs head to head, she thought, but to her relief he nodded, and she was glad to turn away from him as they heard the children bringing their grandfather back to join them.
* * *
Cresswell settled in remarkably quickly, and he was offered the use of a family car whenever he wanted it to visit his relatives. Thankfully, there was no more talk of a family reunion for him. It was the last thing he would have wanted right now. He had varying memories of Cornwall, and the happiest were those when he and Primmy had fallen in love. But it had never been his home, the way it was with all these others. He had been born in America, the son of Morwen’s brother Matt, but his Cornish links were strong, through his father, and his darling Primmy, who had become his wife.
But he had already resolved that this visit shouldn’t be prolonged. He knew how much Skye wanted him to stay, and he loved her for it, but in his heart he knew that a couple of weeks would be enough, and at night he already found himself longing for the familiarity of being back home.
Within the first few days, he had called on the ageing Luke, and was glad to get away from the wheezing and ponderously speaking old man. He visited Charlotte and heard her cloying sympathy about Sinclair, and he drove out to the farm to call on Emma and Will, and was clasped to Em’s ample chest. He was invited to supper with Vera and her new husband, whom he liked enormously for his fresh honesty and obvious devotion to Vera.
His visit to Theo and his family was brief, and neither man mentioned the trouble Cress now knew was imminent, though he felt disinclined to advise Skye on what to do or say about it. Having been uninvolved in the war himself, and knowing the attitude of some British folk towards America’s late entry, it hardly seemed his place to do so.
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