Clay Country

by Clay Country (retail) (epub)

  Clay Country

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Read More

  Copyright

  This book contains views and language on nationality, sexual politics, ethnicity, and society which are a product of the time in which the book is set. The publisher does not endorse or support these views. They have been retained in order to preserve the integrity of the text.

  ‘As we entered St Austell we were met by several carts loaded with barrels containing a white earthy substance, which on enquiry we understood to be the porcelain earth.’

  Reverend Richard Warner, 1809

  Chapter One

  Fielding’s Tea Room was as crowded as ever on the mellow spring afternoon. The Misses Fielding who owned and managed it, welcomed their newest customer with a small twist of envy. The young woman with the beautiful black hair and deep blue eyes and the innocent air of being someone special epitomised everything they had vainly envied in their youth.

  Like most people in the town, they knew that Morwen Killigrew had humble beginnings. A bal maiden at a clay works was hardly the expected background for the wife of the young owner of Killigrew Clay… but few who knew her begrudged her the status.

  Miss Fielding moved quickly to hold a chair for Mrs Killigrew, and Morwen sat down gracefully, with none of the elaborate fuss of some of the good dames of St Austell town. She gave Miss Fielding a smile as warm as the day, as she ordered hot tea and fruit buns.

  ‘Will ’ee be wanting them now, Mrs Killigrew, or will your mother be joining ’ee today?’ Miss Fielding asked.

  ‘Yes she will, so I’ll wait for her to arrive, thank you.’ Morwen answered carefully, as though she had behaved as graciously every day of her life.

  She glanced around the Tea Room, nodding to the other ladies, and resisting the laughter that bubbled inside at the absurdity of being so elegant. She was serene and poised, but inwardly burned all the fire and vitality that had made Ben Killigrew want her so badly. Four years of marriage had only strengthened their love, however mis-matched the town had once thought them, and Morwen was fiercely proud of him.

  It was Ben who had relieved the town of the dangers of the heavy clay waggons thundering through the narrow cobbled streets, and built the fine new rail tracks that carried Killigrew’s clay blocks to Charlestown port.

  Because of his efforts the streets of the town were no longer white with clouds of clay dust from Killigrew’s Clay Works. Several smaller works still used the old method of transporting the clay to the port, but Killigrew’s had prospered and expanded, thanks to Ben’s keen eye for business.

  Morwen’s mouth watered as the aroma of hot fruit buns spiced the air in the Tea Room. It was odd that fruit buns were the Misses Fielding’s speciality. On this very site the terrible accident had happened… it had been Nott’s bakery then, and he had baked delicious fruit buns too. Those who remembered, all referred to him now as poor old Nott…

  Morwen shivered faintly. Yet the Tea Room had long since become a friendly meeting-place, on one of St Austell’s steeply winding cobbled hills. It was clinically clean, transformed from the old steamy bakery, and betraying none of the terror that had struck the building on that horrific night… Morwen was one who would never forget.

  She had seen the carnage left by the clay waggon, driven by the drunken, desperate clayworkers trying to make a few shillings by the illegal transport of clay blocks during the clay strike. The badly-loaded waggon had torn through Nott’s bakery, killing men and horses and poor old Nott too. She and Ben had been among those who had scrabbled through the wreckage trying to help, and she had been sickened at seeing what remained of clay men that she knew…

  The bell above the Tea Room door tinkled, and Morwen blinked quickly, away from old memories that still haunted her at times, her eyes gladdening as she saw the familiar figure of her mother.

  Bess Tremayne was a little stouter now than when she too had worked as a bal maiden at Killigrew Clay Works, but she said cheerfully that if that was the result of life in the snug house rented to them by Ben’s father, and her adored sedentary occupation of seamstress, then it was a small price to pay.

  ‘I thought you were never coming, Mammie!’ Morwen exclaimed. She spoke in the soft lilting voice that had refused to lose its accent despite her advancement in the world, and which had charmed Ben so effortlessly.

  Her mother smiled, seeing Morwen’s poised mask slip, and her natural impatience show through. ‘I’ve been wrangling with Freddie. He’s still pestering to be sent away to this posh school he’s heard about. The schoolteacher came to see us, and says Freddie’s too bright to stay at school here, and he thinks he could get a scholarship place in London. Can you imagine Freddie wanting to go away to school? Your Daddy’s dead against it, and ’twill still cost us money for clothes and books—’

  ‘It would be a fine chance for him, Mammie, and if it’s money you’re worrying over, I’m sure Ben would help. He’s a strong believer in schooling—’

  ‘We don’t want no more of Ben’s money, lamb. If ’tis decided that Freddie goes away to school, then your Daddy and me will see to it, and I know our Sam will help if necessary,’ Bess said tartly.

  ‘With a wife and babbies of his own to support?’ Morwen felt the twist in her heart as she spoke the words. Her brother Sam had married his Dora a few months before she and Ben had been wed in Penwithick church. In four years Dora had produced two lusty boys, and a new baby girl had arrived not three months ago, while Morwen herself was still childless, to her searing disappointment.

  But that wasn’t what she had been so impatient to see her mother about today. Miss Fielding brought their order, and Morwen drew a deep breath as Bess took a drink of tea and cut through the fruit bun like the towns ladies did.

  ‘Who do you think I saw on the way here, Mammie?’

  Bess looked quizzical, glad to see that empty look disappear from Morwen’s lovely brow. Morwen and Ben were so much in love, so passionate a pair of love-birds… it was inexplicable to Bess that they hadn’t conceived a child yet. But it did no good to dwell on it, and she spoke lightly.

  ‘You know I’m no good at guessing games, so you’d best tell me and put me out of my misery!’

  ‘Hannah Pascoe!’

  Bess stared at her daughter. There could be nothing wonderful about that meeting! There was no love lost between Morwen and Ben’s waspish aunt, who had once been housekeeper at Killigrew House, and undoubtedly still resented the fact that Morwen was now its mistress.

  ‘I fail to see how that could charm ’ee, Morwen! Did the old biddy even give ’ee the time of day?’ Bess chuckled quietly as she lapsed into the old country dialect, so the elegant townsladies at the other tables couldn’t hear.

  ‘She gave me more than that! She sniffed and snorted as usual, looked me up and down as though I was an insect, and then asked if I’d had any news of that pale brother
of mine who’d gone off with her son—’

  Bess’s eyes flashed dangerously, as blue as her daughter’s and all the Tremaynes at that moment. Morwen put a calming hand over her mother’s needle-pricked fingers.

  ‘’Tis only her way, Mammie, and she can’t hurt me any more. Anyway, I was more curious to know why she was asking after our Matt. I thought you would be too—’

  ‘Of course I am! But I doubt she’d have more news than we do, and that’s precious little.’

  She couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. In more than four years, they had heard very little from Matt, the second Tremayne son. Bess loved her close-knit family dearly, and mourned him privately as though he were dead. He might as well be, to be across the sea in America with Jude Pascoe, the son of the awful woman Morwen spoke about. Jude Pascoe was the bad influence in Matt’s life, and Bess stubbornly refused to see that it was Matt’s own weakness that had been his downfall. God knew how they fared now…

  ‘Hannah Pascoe said she’d had a long letter from – her son.’ Morwen still couldn’t bring herself to speak his name with ease, though not solely for the same reason as her mother. She had more grievances against Jude Pascoe than his merely luring her brother away from home and family, but they were known only to herself and Ben.

  ‘Did he mention our Matt, then?’ Bess looked eager now, and Morwen smiled crookedly on reflecting that, according to his mother, Jude Pascoe had been sorely aggrieved.

  It sometimes shocked Morwen to know how much she still hated Jude Pascoe… if she allowed her Cornish fancies to intrude she could even begin wondering if it was a punishment on her to be barren because of Jude Pascoe… but those thoughts were quickly squashed because that was the way madness lay. And strictly speaking, he had not physically harmed Morwen herself… though the girl he had harmed had been closer to Morwen than a twin…

  ‘Well, are you going to tell me or not?’ Bess demanded. Morwen might be all of twenty-one years and a young matron, but sometimes she could tease with a secret as capriciously as young Freddie, nine years her junior. And if there was news of Matthew, then Bess wanted to know it.

  ‘Hannah Pascoe says the two boys didn’t stay together very long after they started working at the docks in New York,’ Morwen said quickly, feeling a vast relief in the knowledge. ‘Matt heard about some gold diggings in a place in the west of America called California. He left New York with a waggon-train to go there and make his fortune!’

  Bess’s mouth dropped open in astonishment at these glib words. The names meant nothing to either of them, but Morwen meant to find them on Ben’s atlas the minute she got home that afternoon.

  Ben himself spent a lot of time poring over the atlas in his father’s old study, following the progress of the war in the Crimea, and sometimes exclaiming over names of old college friends whose exploits were reported in the London newspapers sent to him every week. Old friends who were now army Captains, and clearly important. It all seemed so far away to Morwen, and nothing to do with them… but now she too had a reason for studying the atlas.

  Bess was impatient to know more. ‘What’s this waggon-train? Like the clay waggons, d’you mean? Or a train like the little one on Ben’s rail tracks?’

  ‘I don’t know! I’m just telling you what Mrs Pascoe told me. Her son thinks our Matt’s deserted him by going off to California—’

  ‘And a good thing too,’ Bess said keenly. ‘I feel a mite happier knowing our Matt’s not with that roughneck any longer. So perhaps when he’s settled we’ll be getting a letter from un soon. I’ll look out for it.’

  Morwen covered her mother’s hand with her own again, and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘Don’t be too hopeful, Mammie,’ she said gently. ‘Our Matt made his choice. He knows he could come home any time—’

  She left the sentence unfinished. If Matt had wanted to come back, or to get in touch with them more frequently, there had been nothing to stop him. It was something Bess could never accept. Morwen changed the conversation.

  ‘How goes everything with you and Daddy?’

  ‘Fair to middlin’ as ever.’ Bess spoke in an understatement. She and Hal were sometimes as lovey-dovey as the young uns, now they had space to breathe, and solid walls between them and the children after the cramped cottage on the moors where Sam and his family now lived. Morwen smiled, seeing the cloud lift from her mother’s brow.

  She loved this weekly meeting with her mother, gossiping in the little Tea Room the way the townsladies did. Old Charles Killigrew had known a thing or two when he’d told her how much she would enjoy it, once her parents moved to the small house he’d put at their disposal all those years ago. This small lull in the weekly routine of their lives was a genteel pleasure she and Bess relished, the more so because it was a way of life neither had foreseen in the old days.

  From bal maiden to owner’s wife was spectacular enough for Morwen herself. But for her family too, life had changed. Her father was now Works Manager of Killigrew Clay; her oldest brother Sam was pit captain of Clay One works, stepping into her Daddy’s shoes as smoothly as though they were made on the same last; her Mammie was happy with the new house and the sewing, acknowledged as an expert seamstress; young Freddie was a bright lad who must surely get his chance at the schooling… and Jack…

  ‘You haven’t mentioned our Jack, Mammie. Is he still hanging on to Sam’s coat-tails and being his shadow?’ she said mischievously. To her surprise she saw her mother’s smile fade, and she frowned.

  ‘Truth to tell, I’m a bit worried about our Jack,’ Bess said. ‘Your Daddy says there’s been friction between him and Sam at the works, and that’s unusual for a start. Our Jack’s allus taken his grub at the cottage when he’s been on the day shift, but Hal says he’s been eating it with the other young clayworkers lately—’

  ‘That’s nothing to worry about! The boys always took their grub on to the moors in fine weather—’

  As she spoke the words, a swift image of the moorland hill swept through Morwen’s mind, bringing with it a sharp nostalgia that surprised her. It was a while since she had been to the works or to Sam’s cottage. A while since she had seen the moors in all their spring glory, the short turf fragrant with the wild flowers and bright yellow furze; the whispering of the bracken; the gaunt granite oddity of the Larnie Stone, through whose hole could be seen the distant sea beyond St Austell town…

  The scars of the clay works in the hillside had their own strange beauty, with the milky-green pools and the spoil heaps surrounding them, glinting like diamonds in the sunlight with all the waste materials tipped there. Charles Killigrew used to call them his sky-tips, a name that had once charmed Morwen.

  The name still lingered, though the townsfolk had begun calling them the white hills of late, which had incensed some of the clayworkers, seeing the snobbery in it. Sky-tips or white hills… Morwen and her friend, Celia Penry, had shared their secrets there… she swallowed the sudden lump in her throat.

  ‘’Tis more than that,’ Bess went on slowly. ‘I fear our Jack’s moving away from us, like our Matt did. ’Twould break your daddy’s heart if Jack left us too.’

  ‘Jack’s no sailor, Mammie!’ Morwen tried to cheer her. ‘You wouldn’t get him on a ship that went all the way to America. And I can’t believe he’s lost his feelings for our Sam! He always wanted to be like Sam. It was his only ambition!’

  She began to laugh, for they had all teased Jack so over the years. But her mother wasn’t laughing back.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with un, Morwen, and that’s a fact. He’s seventeen now, and a man, but to your daddy and me he’s still our Jack, and I hate to see un so tetchy at times. He was tickled pink wi’ Sam’s babbies at first, but now all that’s worn off.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to say about it,’ Morwen said. ‘I’ll see for myself when we all come to the church for the babby’s baptising next Sunday, and perhaps Ben can find out something when we get back to the
cottage afterwards.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Bess agreed. She looked thoughtfully at her daughter. ‘Sometimes I think we all rely on your Ben too much. He can’t solve all our problems, and Lord knows he has enough of his own wi’ the clay works. He’s got a good head on his shoulders, Morwen. I only wish—’

  Her voice trailed away as she saw the tight look come over Morwen’s face. They all wished there was a son to ensure the future of Killigrew Clay, the way Ben had secured it when the strike had threatened its very existence. But wishing didn’t make it happen, and Bess knew better than to pursue the subject with her daughter. Morwen was as strong-willed as her handsome husband, and if a perverse mood took her, just as likely to snub her mother as confide in her whole-heartedly.

  * * *

  For once Morwen was quite glad when the hour at the Tea Room was over. For all that she had been eager to see her mother, now she was just as anxious to see Ben, and it frustrated her that he wasn’t at home when she arrived there in the trap. He had left a message for her with the housekeeper.

  ‘He’s gone to the clay works, Ma’am,’ Mrs Tilley informed her. ‘And didn’t rightly know when he’d be back.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Tilley,’ Morwen tried not to sigh as she spoke. Ben took his responsibilities as clay owner seriously. So had his father, but while Charles Killigrew had made irregular visits to the works on the moors, Ben believed his presence should be felt more often. It was a rare week that didn’t see him at the works at least three times. It was to his credit, but sometimes the days seemed long to Morwen.

  If only she had a child to care for, the hours would pass more quickly… she tried to push the thought aside, but somehow there was no escaping it. And knowing that on Sunday the whole family would be at Penwithick church during the Sunday-school hour to witness the baptism of Sam’s newest child, seemed to sharpen the longing inside her.

  She had never kept secrets from Ben, but even he was unaware of just how unfulfilled Morwen felt, how inadequate at being unable to do what even the cows in the field did with ease. She had hesitated from asking Doctor Pender if there might be anything wrong… Ben would hate the idea, but maybe she would do so without telling him, and that would be another secret he wouldn’t share…