Clay Country

by Clay Country (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’d probably be there with them if I didn’t have a clay business to run,’ he spoke harshly. ‘The petty fuss about whether ancient tin-mines were worked beneath my rail tracks seems pathetic when you think of our soldiers in that hellish Turkish hospital—’

  ‘Even with the wonderful Florence Nightingale coming to the rescue?’

  Morwen didn’t mean to be flippant, but she hated to hear Ben belittle his own achievements, when for his own small community he had done so much. She sensed the frustration in him when he read of others doing heroic deeds, and knew a secret womanly relief that Ben would never go to this war. He was needed here, and she needed him most of all. For a second, she imagined living without him. Her heart missed a beat and then raced on.

  ‘Most of the wounded think the woman is a saint,’ Ben retorted. ‘Some of the sights and smells she must live with every single day are beyond belief—’

  ‘Ben, please let’s stop talking about it,’ Morwen pleaded. ‘I admire Miss Nightingale as much as you. Today, can’t we just enjoy Primmy’s baptism?’

  For a second she thought he was still angry with her. His face was hard, the way it looked when he had trouble at the works. But now was not the time for dissent, and Ben slid one arm around his wife’s tense shoulders, and pressed his lips to her soft cheek, as he halted the horse at Penwithick church.

  ‘We’ll just enjoy today,’ he agreed. ‘As long as you’ll promise not to be haunted by ghosts of yesterday, I won’t let myself worry about tomorrow.’

  She couldn’t quite promise that, when yesterday was all around them, and she knew just why she rarely came back to the old cottage, the moors around the clay works, and Penwithick church. There were wonderful memories here, and dark ones too.

  A sudden shout from the direction of the church made her look thankfully to where Sam’s two youngest children were toddling towards the trap. Ben helped her alight, and she gathered up the tiny hurtling bodies of three-year-old Walter and two-year-old Albert.

  ‘Don’t let ’em dirty your pretty frock, Morwen,’ Dora called from the church porch, where she held the shawl-wrapped Primrose in her arms. Beside her, Sam smiled proudly.

  ‘Our Morwen’s not too fine to worry about a bit of honest dirt,’ he chuckled, and immediately she was in her old family place again. She was Morwen Tremayne, only girl in a family of lusty boys. She felt warm and welcome, and the brief constraint she still felt whenever Ben visited any of her family vanished at once.

  Her parents were already inside the church, along with Jack and Freddie, slicked down for the day, though Jack was too old now for being told to wash behind his ears and to tidy himself. Morwen hadn’t seen him for a while, and it gave her a shock to see how grown he was. No wonder her Mammie worried about him, she thought, before they all took their places, and the Vicar began intoning the words of the service.

  Her mind wandered. They were all here except Matthew. Family occasions always accentuated those who were missing, and she knew her mother would be feeling his loss. She glanced at Bess, and knew she was right. She felt Ben’s fingers creep around hers, and knew he was remembering that other time, when they had avowed their love here in this very church, cool and dark, and she had known then what she had always known. She had wanted Ben Killigrew all her life… and the miracle of it was that he wanted her too…

  Primrose began squalling as the holy water was dribbled over her face, and Morwen guiltily reminded herself where she was. Though why God would condemn thoughts of love that had begun in His very house, she couldn’t imagine. Even though that love was passionate and physical, it was God who had given them the joy in each other, and Morwen silently thanked Him for it.

  Once it was all over and they were outside in the warm afternoon air, they prepared to go back to Sam’s cottage for the modest feasting. The baby was already asleep.

  Morwen’s eyes sought the simple headstone in one corner of the churchyard, that she and Ben had put there in memory of her friend, Celia. Beside it were the graves of Celia’s father and brother, who had both been mutilated and killed in the terrible disaster at Nott’s bakery…

  ‘No ghosts, Morwen,’ Ben said gently in her ear. ‘Dora wants you to hold the baby while we go back to the cottage.’

  Dora passed the child across to her. Primrose had a deliciously warm, faintly milky baby smell, and Morwen felt her heart tug as she looked down at the perfect, sleeping face. She covered the dark downy head with the shawl, and tried not to imagine that Primmy was her child, hers and Ben’s.

  Coming back here was not always good for her peace of mind. She hadn’t been to Penwithick church since young Albert’s baptising, her nephew who had been named after the Prince. Before that it was Walter’s… how many more would there be? How many more times would she feel these pangs, and never know the fulfilment of holding her own child in her arms?

  As though what ailed her was suddenly illuminated, Morwen knew she was lonely. Ben had his own world, the way men did. Her brothers were settled with their own lives. Her mother had made her own niche with her sewing, while Morwen…

  She had once had a dear friend, and had never found another to replace her. Even with all the love that she and Ben shared, the time she spent with Charles Killigrew, and her loving family, she still missed Celia desperately.

  She could take up Good Causes. She could maybe learn to play the pianoforte that stood idly in the drawing-room. She could try any of those things, but there would still be an emptiness in her life that only a child could fill…

  At that moment Morwen made up her mind, even before the thought was really formed. But there was a way. There were potions to take. And there was someone who would give them to her. Someone with whom Morwen had had contact before.

  She and Celia had twice visited old Zillah, and got different kinds of potions. Those had worked… her mind shied away from remembering the final outcome of those visits, but the resolve was already there. She would visit old Zillah and beg her help once more.

  * * *

  Sir Garside Sefton himself decided he would take Jane Askhew and her daughter home to Truro in Cornwall when they were ready to leave Yorkshire, while her husband Tom was in foreign parts. Since Tom had agreed so eagerly to take on the new role of War Correspondent in the Crimea for The Northern Informer, leaving his wife and young daughter behind, it was only right that Sir Garside should see to the young woman’s safety on the arduous coach journey.

  He had business as well as honour on his mind, of course. Sir Garside Sefton rarely did anything if he couldn’t combine business with pleasure. It was how he had come across Tom Askhew in the first place, when an acquaintance visiting Cornwall had mentioned the vigorous young editor of the Truro newspaper, and said he was just the type they needed in the north.

  Tom was described to Sir Garside as pithy and hard-hitting, and fearless in his reporting. Added to that, he was a Yorkshireman and no doubt willing to accept an editorial post on a brand new newspaper in his native county. Sir Garside had gone to Truro and made Tom an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  When the time had been right, he and Jane Carrick had eloped to Yorkshire in romantic fashion, against her family’s approval or even knowledge, married and become established as a bright and well-liked young couple in the community. And under Tom’s editorship The Northern Informer had flourished.

  Now Sir Garside saw a way of linking the two newspapers successfully. Tom’s war reports could be telegraphed from Yorkshire to the Truro newspaper. Sir Garside had no doubt that Tom’s reports would be highly successful, and he had a notion to buy the Cornish paper out.

  There was something to be said for having a finger in southern as well as northern pies, and he intended investigating this while in Truro, as well as discreetly checking the circulation figures. He was highly pleased with his new idea.

  It was imperative to get Tom away as soon as possible. Other newspapers had already sent off reporters to be the new war correspondents and he had
been short-sighted in not doing so before this – when the war was already more than a year old. Who had ever believed it would last so long?

  Jane had barely had time to get used to the idea and dry her tears, when she was waving her husband good-bye, locking up the small house she loved, and boarding the coach for the long journey south-west, with little Cathy and the genial Sir Garside. She hadn’t even informed her parents she was coming, but she knew how delighted they would be at a prolonged visit.

  Jane prayed that it wouldn’t be for too long. She and her mother wouldn’t be on good terms for months on end… and she wanted Tom back even before he had left England’s shores. She felt obliged to invite Sir Garside to stay at her parents’ home in Truro, and was enormously relieved when he said he had already made arrangements to stay at an hotel.

  * * *

  ‘You want to learn to play the pianoforte?’ Ben couldn’t remove the quirk of amusement at the corners of his mouth when they finally arrived home at Killigrew House on the evening after Primmy’s first public occasion.

  Morwen misconstrued the small smile and bridled at once. The very first time she had entered this house on her seventeenth birthday, summoned here by Charles Killigrew to a so-called social supper, Morwen had squirmed with embarrassment at being among so many fine folk.

  She still remembered the way Miss Jane Carrick had been requested to play for the company, and had done so in such an accomplished manner, her slim supple fingers moving over the ivory keys as though she caressed a lover…

  In her immediate jealousy of Jane Carrick, whom she had dubbed Miss Finelady, the thought had stormed through Morwen’s mind then, and stormed through it now.

  Did Ben think Morwen’s bal maiden’s hands weren’t capable of caressing the keys so delicately? Didn’t he recall the times she caressed him, to his groaning pleasure, and his assertions that the touch of her fingers on his skin was like fire rippling through him, warm and sensual and exciting?

  He saw the sudden flush of anger on her cheeks, and the sparkle in her blue eyes as she leapt to her feet, and caught her hands in his before she could begin berating him.

  ‘Darling, I’m not mocking you—’

  ‘It feels as though you are! Have I said summat so queer? I thought it might please ’ee —’

  In her distress she lapsed into the old way of talking. Four years of being a lady were suddenly wiped out in the feeling of inferiority Ben’s reaction had given her. She was furious at recognising it. It had no place in their lives now. She was Ben’s wife, his friend and lover, and yet in an instant she reverted to feeling as awkward as on that first night here.

  Her mother had sewn gay trailing ribbons on to a cream-coloured dress for her to wear, and she had thought it so beautiful, until she saw the silk dresses of Jane Carrick and the other ladies… now she was Morwen Tremayne again, in a cream cambric dress with trailing ribbons sewn on for the occasion… she twisted away from Ben.

  ‘Forget I mentioned it! ’Twas no more than a whim—’

  ‘I won’t forget it,’ he said angrily. ‘I think it’s a very good idea. I love to hear someone play, and it’s been a while since anyone did so. Aunt Hannah was the last one, and I’ll arrange a tutor for you tomorrow.’

  She was suddenly overcome with fright. ‘I’ll be no good at it. You’ll be wasting your money, and the tutor will think me an idiot—’

  He came close to her again. ‘No-one will dare to think my wife is an idiot, Morwen Killigrew!’

  His voice dropped to a lower pitch. ‘Have you anything else to do tonight, my love? We’ve spoken with Father, and Nurse has settled him for the night. Are you tired?’

  ‘Not a bit—’ she was still ruffled, unsure of what she wanted now.

  ‘Good. Neither am I. It’s time we went to bed.’

  She couldn’t mistake the meaning in his voice, nor the way his arm curled around her waist and held her possessively. They were still attired in the fine clothes they had worn for the church service, but from the sudden flare of passion in Ben’s eyes, she knew that in the privacy of their bedroom, those clothes would be discarded with the speed and urgency of lovers, needing fulfilment in each other’s arms. The time for wrangling was over, and the anger died.

  They left the drawing-room with their arms entwined. They had always been passionate lovers, but somehow tonight, the old associations with the moors and the church, and the memories of how their lives had been interwoven, gave an added dimension to their delight in each other.

  Ben took his wife in his arms beneath the cool sheets, and held her naked body to his for long moments without moving, savouring the moments before his questing fingers began their familiar exploration of her. He loved every part of her. He loved her rounded softness and her smooth satiny skin, and the way in which her warm secret places opened up for him. He loved to bury himself in her breasts and taste their sweetness, to hear her breathing quicken and to feel the warmth of her breath against him. He loved to lose himself in her, and to feel himself wrapped in her. He loved her uninhibited responses, and the unerring way she pleasured him.

  ‘God, but I love you, Morwen,’ he murmured against her mouth as he felt the hardening of her nipples against his own chest. ‘How many times have I told you that?’

  ‘A million times, but never enough times,’ she whispered back. ‘Never stop telling me, Ben.’

  ‘I love you! I love you. If I lost everything else, I’d still have the world as long as I had you—’

  ‘You’ll always have me. I’ve always belonged to you, and you know that. Oh, Ben, hold me tight—’

  Her fingers began a tantalising trail down the length of his spine, moving over the firm hard buttocks and kneading them for a few moments. There was power in every part of him, and she sometimes marvelled that a man of such physical strength and iron will could also be so tender, so sensitive to her every mood, every need. He was everything a woman could ever want, and Morwen gloried in knowing that she was his woman, wanted and cherished and loved by Ben Killigrew…

  The pattern of their loving was familiar, yet always new. The swift arousal of nerves and senses; the slowing-down of pace to give each other maximum pleasure; seeking new ways to prolong the ultimate union that Morwen believed implicitly was a God-given joy.

  She was not deeply religious, except with a simple, natural belief. But the moment when male and female seeds fused had always seemed to her to be something not quite of this earth, to be compared with all things mystical and wonderful. Morwen was both exalted and humbled by it.

  She felt that now, as Ben’s body became part of hers, and the slow, rhythmic pleasuring began. Her whole being seemed to change, to glow, to melt into Ben’s so effortlessly, as he gathered her to him. She wanted it to go on for ever; she wanted it to end; to take her further into that magical world that finally gave her a glimpse of ecstacy…

  The movements quickened, the spiralling sensations carrying her to a pinnacle of desire, until she felt her fingernails biting into his flesh. The need of him was exquisite, almost unbearable, and then the sudden gush of his seed made her cry out.

  She clung to him, eyelids flickering, hardly wanting to breathe, wanting to hold him for always like this, still part of her… cradling his head against her as he lay spent, his heartbeats drumming against her breasts.

  At that moment Ben was her baby, her child, her lover… and all the wisdom of the ages couldn’t compare with this knowledge…

  They lay close, not speaking, for long moments afterwards. And then she felt his fingers gently stroking her cheek, and became aware of the dampness there.

  ‘Why do you always cry, my Morwen?’ Ben said softly.

  He had asked her before, but she could never find the words to explain. She tried now.

  ‘Perhaps because ’tis almost too much for me to bear, this one-ness I feel with ’ee, Ben,’ she whispered, turning into his hand to kiss his palm. ‘If we take too much happiness, I’m almost afraid ’twill be snat
ched away from us—’

  Emotion thickened her voice. The nuance of it was pure Cornish. She had been wed for four years to Ben Killigrew, yet she recognised again that there were times she was still the fiery-tempered Morwen Tremayne, clayworker’s daughter, who dared to aspire to a boss’s love. A swine-herd looking at a king…

  Ben rocked her in his arms as though she were the child now. Her loosened hair was soft as silk against his skin, her body warm and moist against his. He loved her more than life… his Morwen, whose mind could still reach out into places where he couldn’t go.

  As though he were bewitched by her – Ben sometimes wondered if that wasn’t a fairly apt description. A London college education had ripped away much of his own Cornish belief in intuition, but never all. It was too deeply ingrained… but he could still laugh away Morwen’s fears at this moment.

  ‘How can you think for a moment that we’ll ever change, my darling? Or that anything could come between us! I’d kill the man that tried!’

  Or the woman? The question was never asked, and nor did it rate more than a second’s thought in Morwen’s mind. That anything or anyone could spoil their happiness was unthinkable. She was comforted by Ben’s insistence on it. And by knowing that while they had lain together, suffused with love, he had been hers, totally. However troubled his world, near or far, there was always peace to be found in each other’s arms.

  Chapter Four

  Hal Tremayne’s pit captains demanded a general works meeting. The four of them had come to his office, alongside the pit captain’s hut at clay one, which was now occupied by his eldest son, Sam.

  All were agreed that Ben Killigrew had been a fair boss in the four years since he’d taken control from his father. Even fairer than many had expected, with his little bonus payments for the excursion trips to and from the town on the Killigrew railway.

  And it was that very fairness that was causing much disturbance among the tough clay workers, the short-tempered kiln workers, the bal maidens who scraped and stacked the dried clay into blocks ready for despatching, and even the young kiddley boys who did the menial jobs of fetching and carrying and making tea for the others. Whole families were employed by Killigrew Clay, and when one member was upset, then so were the rest, and they were never slow in voicing their worries.