‘Why, Vera Pengelly, are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ Skye gave her the ghost of a smile, thinking there was precious little else to laugh about in these tense days.
Vera’s face went pink. ‘I dare say I am. There’s more ways than one of making a man do what a woman wants, and depriving him of his needs is one of the oldest.’
‘So you didn’t only go on strike in the kitchen then?’ Lily grinned as her sister’s colour deepened still more.
Before she could think of a suitable answer, Skye exclaimed, ‘Vera, you’re a marvel! I’m still struggling with my article for David’s newsletter, but you’ve given me the best idea.’
Two nights of poring over paper and discarding most of what she had written had finally produced a telling and perfectly competent article on the short-sightedness of perpetuating a conflict that was long since over, and with it the need to move on and look to the future. But she still wasn’t completely satisfied with it. Now, with Vera’s artless words, she realised there was a different angle she could use, and she suggested that she might take the rest of the day off.
‘Why not? We’re not exactly rushed off our feet,’ Lily said. ‘We’ve had one sale of a pot in two days, and even that was to Vera.’
‘It had dividends though,’ her sister told her triumphantly. ‘It was one of Ethan’s, and Adam was so impressed by his brother’s work that I could see he was dying to be back here himself. Who said women aren’t clever enough to be the driving force behind their men!’
‘Can I quote you on that?’ Skye said.
The words that were going to change everything – she hoped – were already in her mind, and she tingled with the need to get them down on paper, and the style of the article became clearer by the minute as she drove back to New World.
David needed the finished copy by tonight, and now she was sure she could have it ready. All the muddled words she had somehow been unable to express were unravelling in her head, and once she had assured the children that she was here to work and not to play, she spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon writing and rewriting until she felt she could refine the article no more.
Although it wasn’t so much an article as a letter, written intimately as if from one woman to another. Those were the people who counted. Vera had given her that thought, and she was ever grateful to her. Women were the backbone of every marriage and every family. She made their role abundantly clear, detailing it in brutal, often painful truth, in words that men usually turned away from.
The women bore the pain of childbirth and nurtured their children; fed them and clothed them and cared for them with a gentleness that hid the very steel of their fabric. They were the ones who had held homes together during the dreadful years of war, and who deserved every man’s respect because of their suffering, which in its way, was as deep as any man’s.
It was to the women that Skye’s words were written, knowing that every one of them would take note and relay her sentiments to their husbands and brothers. She wouldn’t be so indelicate as to urge them to deprive their husbands of their conjugal rights in so many words, but the inference was as smooth as silk.
Her final paragraphs were straight to the point, and would either endear her to the county or damn her prestige for good and all, she thought grimly. She read them aloud, trying to imagine how others would see the words she had written.
‘Dear friends, despite the variations in our accents, you and I speak the same language and you will understand what I’m trying to say. We share the same hopes and feelings and emotions. We have husbands, fathers and children that we love.
‘Some of us lost those husbands, fathers and children during the war, or from the effects of it, and we still grieve for what might have been. But we should never forget that the main aim of the struggle was to make a better life for us all, through peace, the natural end result of war.
‘The women of other countries speak a different language from ours, but the wives and sweethearts and mothers of our old enemy grieve for their menfolk too. They share our pain, and in that we are all sisters under the skin.
‘I freely acknowledge that I was responsible for sending the young German workers back to their families. I deeply regret that it was necessary, since to me it represents failure in that common humanity and decency we all profess to have. But I did it in the hope that the incident that provoked such bad feeling, dividing friends and families could be forgotten once and for all. There has to come a point where we say that enough is enough, to get on with our lives and welcome strangers as friends.
‘Don’t let us become so insular and small-minded that we cannot see beyond yesterday towards a brighter tomorrow. That was the hope that our loved ones died for.’
* * *
Two days later every household in a wide area around Truro and St Austell was waking up to a newsletter pushed through their letter boxes. It had taken a team of David Kingsley’s staff and any casual lads they could round up to deliver them, and he was paying handsomely for the privilege. But by now he was as caught up in the project as Skye, and he wished he could have been a fly on every wall to gauge the reaction to her uninhibited and impassioned words.
* * *
‘What the hell is this?’ Theo Tremayne spluttered, as his son pushed the pamphlet towards him over the breakfast table.
‘Aunt Skye’s telling everybody that she and Aunt Lily are shopkeepers now,’ Sebby chortled, proud of his reading skills after scanning the first, businesslike part of Skye’s message. ‘They say if the men are too soft to work, then the womenfolk must do what they can to earn a crust.’
‘Earn a crust! More likely crumbs,’ Theo snarled. ‘What do they know about men’s work?’
‘A good deal, if I remember rightly,’ Betsy said, reading over his shoulder and quickly skipping the first part to read Skye’s more intimate writing.
‘Your womenfolk all worked as bal maidens at Killigrew Clay, which was how your grandmother met and married Ben Killigrew, so don’t scoff at the power of women,’ she added, charmed by Skye’s particular way of phrasing things.
‘Oh ah. And I suppose you’re thinkin’ of going up to White Rivers and manning the showroom too, are you? Not that there’d be any buyers…’
‘Why not? Do you think I’m incapable of doing anything but cook your meals and make your bed?’
‘You don’t even do that. The servants do it,’ he sneered.
Betsy’s eyes flashed. It was a long time since she had challenged Theo, but she knew what an oaf he was, and she was also well aware that he took his bodily pleasures elsewhere. She knew it by the sickly whiff of cheap scent on his clothes whenever he stayed out late. But he still expected her to do her wifely duty whenever he chose to lift her nightdress. He treated her so casually and carelessly, as if she was no more than a chattel – and that wasn’t what women had been fighting for all these years. And she wasn’t so dumb that she couldn’t recognise Skye’s guarded hints that a woman could exercise her power over a man in more ways than by shifting clay blocks.
‘Then maybe the servants can see to the rest of your home needs as well,’ she snapped. ‘For I’ll be locking my bedroom door to you until you come to your senses and get the clayworkers back to work.’
She heard Sebby gasp, not quite understanding the gist of it, but never having heard his mother speak like this before. He looked at her with new respect.
‘Can I come to the pottery and be a shopkeeper with you and the aunts, Ma?’ he said, his eyes sparkling with glee at her getting one over on his father at last.
‘You bloody well will not. You’ll go nowhere without my say-so,’ Theo roared, turning on him.
‘Yes he will. We’ll both go. Get your coat, Sebby.’
Theo’s face was a picture of shock and rage, and for one pleasurable second of triumph Betsy wished she could have borrowed old Albert Tremayne’s skills to capture it on canvas.
* * *
‘Good Lor
d, will you look at this?’ Lily said in astonishment. ‘That surely can’t be Betsy and Sebby getting out of that posh car! And who are those other women with them?’
‘It’s working, Lily,’ Skye said softly with a catch in her throat. ‘I knew it would. Women will always show their strength when it matters.’
She crossed the showroom to greet Betsy with a kiss at the door. Two well-dressed townsladies got out of the front seats of the car after her and shook Skye’s hand as Betsy introduced her.
‘It’s a privilege to meet you, Mrs Norwood, and we wish to say how completely we agree with your sentiments in the newsletter. We’re here to do what we can to show our support in your efforts to stop this male foolishness.’
‘Mrs Anderson lost a son at Passchendaele, Skye,’ Betsy said soberly. ‘But she thinks, as we all do, that the time for recriminations is past. Sebby and I were on our way here when she and her sister gave us a ride in their car.’
‘Then I thank you sincerely, Mrs Anderson,’ Skye said to the lady, choked at this unexpected support from Betsy, and amazed at her proving to be such a spokeswoman. ‘I thank you all! This is wonderful, though I’m not sure that there’s very much for you to do.’ She could hardly ask such obvious ladies to soil their white hands on menial tasks! ‘As you see, we don’t have too many customers…’
‘But you do now, my dear,’ the second lady put in grandly. ‘You have us.’
As the day progressed more and more women appeared at White Rivers until Skye began to wonder if there was anyone left at home at all. They came to applaud her, to admire the goods at the pottery, and to buy. Those who couldn’t afford to buy anything, like many of the clayworkers’ wives and daughters, merely stayed outside in the pottery yard and took up their stance like immovable statues.
‘’Tis a real turn-up, ain’t it?’ Ethan Pengelly said, his eyes glowing, his hands dripping with sodden clay, when Skye went into the workroom to take him a bun to eat. ‘And even this young un is discovering how good it feels to get his hands in the wet clay and fashion a pot or two.’
Sebby glanced up from his determined attempt to throw a pot. Skye looked at him in surprise. The little horror of old was actually getting his hands dirty and enjoying it. What was even more odd, he and Ethan seemed to have found a new regard for each other. In Sebby’s eyes, Ethan was already a man.
‘Well, I can see we’ll have to find you a job here eventually,’ she said at last.
‘Will you, Aunt Skye? You can make it right with my father, can’t you?’ he said hopefully.
‘Now hold on a minute, honey! I was only joking. Besides, you have to go to school for years yet, and I dare say you’ll have changed your mind about becoming a potter long before that,’ she laughed.
‘I won’t. I know I won’t.’
He turned back to his dollop of clay and threw it with gusto onto his wheel, already forgetting her. And knowing what a strongly opinionated boy he was, just like his father, Skye had the strangest feeling that he wouldn’t change his mind either. And wouldn’t Theo just love that! It would be like hammering another nail in his proverbial coffin.
* * *
For an entire week the support for the pottery never wavered. The women turned up loyally every day. Those with money bought everything in sight, and those without money just came up to the moors anyway, wanting to be part of what was becoming known as Skye’s Crusaders. Who named it thus, Skye never knew, but the newspaper reporters were out in plenty, obtaining quotes and praise for Mrs Norwood, and interviewing anyone who would say anything at all.
The next regular issue of The Informer was full of it all, and the name of Skye’s Crusaders was blazoned all over the front page, together with letters the newspaper had received, all giving their support to the venture and condemnation for the men’s continuing strike action now that the situation had been resolved.
‘I’m sure the letters must have been suitably chosen for publication,’ Skye said. ‘But all credit to David for that.’
‘And it must be a constant thorn in every man’s side to see a White Rivers pot or plate on every mantelpiece and table,’ Vera chuckled. ‘Adam examines every piece I bring home, and from the way his hands move so lovingly over the glaze, I just know he’s itching to be back at work.’
‘And are they moving just as lovingly over you?’ Lily dared to tease her as they pored over the newspaper together.
‘They are not! And I don’t care to talk about it,’ Vera said primly. ‘It’s private.’
‘I won’t tell you my news then.’
Vera perked up at once. ‘What news? Have you been keeping secrets from me, Lily?’
Lily glared at her sister. ‘Hardly. It’s just that when everything calms down here I’ve decided not to go back to Plymouth. I’m moving back home with Mother.’
‘What? But you’ve never got on, and you’ll be at each other’s throats in a minute.’
‘She’s getting old, Vera, and I have a duty. Besides, David’s offered me a job at the newspaper. Not reporting, of course. I’d be no good at any of that, but I’ll be working as a sort of secretary-cum-dogsbody. It’s only temporary until I decide what I want to do.’
But she said it all so casually, far too casually…
‘Aha!’ declared Vera in triumph.
‘Aha nothing,’ Lily said, and then her face broke into a smile. ‘Well, maybe aha. It’s too early to tell yet. But we do seem to get on extraordinarily well. And I suppose you’re never too old…’
‘Good Lord, you ninny, you’re in your prime – and so is David, I’d say,’ Vera added with a grin. And for no good reason at all, the two sisters hugged one another, more in accord than they had been in a long time.
* * *
Theo arrived at White Rivers the following Monday morning. The clayers’ wives stood outside defiantly and silently as he strode through their midst and into the showroom where he was virtually ignored in the bustle of activity inside.
Through the open doors to the workroom he couldn’t fail to see that by now young Ethan Pengelly was a star attraction as he demonstrated how to throw a pot to the many interested folk eager to try their hands at the craft, and these demonstrations were a facet of the business that Skye was noting for the future.
He was also infuriated to see that his own son was fetching and carrying for the Pengelly boy and following his instructions to the letter. It was the ultimate blow to Theo’s pride, and he was having no more of it. He walked straight up to Skye and put his hands on the counter.
‘All right, madam. You’ve had your fun, and it’s time to put an end to it. I have already been to the clayworks, and as from tomorrow morning Killigrew Clay will be fully operational again. So I suggest that you get these females and children off the premises as quickly as possible and let the craftsmen get back to work.’
Once the cheers had died down, Skye spoke sweetly. ‘Are you telling me how to run my own business now, sir?’
Theo scowled, aware of the giggling around him. She had completely scored over him and was still doing so in reminding him that White Rivers belonged to her and not to him. And they both knew she could run it very well indeed without his help.
‘Heaven preserve me from interfering in anything you see fit to do,’ he rapped, ‘but since one business is reliant on the other, it would seem like a sensible idea to get your own people back at work.’
‘Then I thank you for the suggestion, cuz,’ Skye said with quiet dignity.
She turned away from him to speak with another customer, but before he was even out of the showroom, the women had pushed him away, crowding towards her, and applauding her loudly. Theo felt like less than nothing, while Skye, for the first time in years, felt as if she had the whole of Cornwall at her feet and in her heart.
* * *
It was inevitable that after the hiatus and the traumatic days, and then the triumph of it all, there would be a feeling of let-down. There was no need for Skye’s Crusaders to make a
stand any longer, and both Killigrew Clay and White Rivers quickly resumed their normal working days.
The return to work of all their own men and the several women who normally worked in the showroom, meant that Skye and Lily and Vera were no longer needed. They were redundant, when for those few heady days it had been a case of everyone pulling together, the way women had done during the war.
But now Vera was openly thankful to resume her life as a new wife again. Lily had already left New World to settle everything in Plymouth and to move back home with Charlotte in Truro. All was as it was before, except for Skye’s emotions.
Everyone said she had achieved a miracle. A very ugly situation could so easily have turned into a disaster, and David Kingsley had warmly congratulated her on the way her sensitive article had turned the corner for them all.
‘Aren’t you proud of what you accomplished?’ he asked. She seemed more listless than overjoyed when he called on her some days later with the many letters of congratulation that had since poured into the newspaper offices.
‘Of course, but it wasn’t only me,’ she said. ‘It was everyone. It was common sense prevailing over stupidity.’
‘And now that Skye’s Crusaders have retreated back into obscurity, their leader has nothing to do,’ he concluded softly. ‘Am I right?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose so. It’s silly, isn’t it? But suddenly I feel so useless. I have no goal any more. Nothing to keep my mind occupied and alert. I have no – no—’
Without warning her eyes filled, and his arms went around her, providing a much-needed shoulder to cry on, without a shred of sexuality involved. If there had been, it would have been rejected at once, and they both knew it.
‘You have no husband,’ he said gently. ‘And now that your cause is over, you have too much time on your hands to remind you that it’s almost Christmas, and that families should be together at this time. But you have your children, Skye, and Philip will always live on in them.’
White Rivers Page 28