‘That’s not what Ben ’ould say,’ Bess reprimanded him. ‘He says that schooling’s important, and you’ve got another year yet. You’re not at any old village school now, so be thankful for the chance, even if ’tain’t that posh London school. If it weren’t for Ben and our Morwen, you’d still be a kiddley boy and have no proper learning at all.’
‘We’ve all got a lot to thank Ben Killigrew for,’ Jack said half-grudgingly. ‘’Specially for marryin’ our Morwen—’
‘He married Morwen for love, not to help the likes of the Tremayne family!’ Bess said indignantly, and then began to smile as she realised that Jack had been baiting her.
Jack gave her a hug. ‘Thank God. I thought you’d forgotten how to smile, Mammie. That’s the first smile I’ve seen since our Sam died. That’s one to mark up.’
‘Do ’ee reckon he’s up there somewhere noting that Mammie’s just been smiling?’ Freddie said curiously, glancing at the ceiling. ‘I don’t reckon he’d mind. He liked a good laugh, our Sam.’
Bess found herself laughing and crying at the same instant at Freddie’s words, and it was a good sound. Already the healing process had begun.
* * *
Morwen found it harder to come to terms with Sam’s death, partly because of Dora’s strangeness. Ben had come to the cottage several times on his way to and from Bodmin, and while he was visiting there, three days after the funeral, Dora announced she would take the children for a walk while the two of them had private words together.
‘’Tain’t right for ’ee to be parted on my account,’ she said prettily. ‘Sam keeps saying ’ee should go home, Morwen. Think about it while we’m gone strolling.’
They watched her slender form as she wheeled the baby in the baby carriage, the little boys clinging to her skirts as ever, and Morwen swallowed the lump in her throat. What Dora was expressing wasn’t bravery. It was something sinister and frightening, and Morwen didn’t know what to do about it.
‘What does the doctor say?’ Ben asked at once.
‘He’s as helpless as anyone. He gives her sleeping potions that she doesn’t take, and advice that she doesn’t heed. He tells me to watch her, as if she’s a kettle about to boil over. Sometimes, I think that’s exactly what she is, Ben—’
‘My sweet darling, don’t take all her troubles on yourself!’ Ben pulled her into his arms, and the feel of security she felt there was as powerful as any drug. If only she and Ben were together, perhaps she could cope with all this.
‘Oh, Ben, I miss you so!’
The words burst out of her before she could stop them. She leaned her face against his cheek, cold from the morning air, and still felt warmed by his presence.
‘God knows I miss you too, dar,’ he muttered. ‘The house is empty without you. Father keeps asking where you are, and only half understands what’s happened. He had to be told, of course. Killigrew Clay is part of his life, but we softened it as best we could. I want you back, Morwen.’
His words were like sweet music to her, but even as he said them, and his hands moved down over her shoulders, and caressed the long curving shape of her spine and slid over her rounded hips, she shuddered slightly.
‘Ben, we cannot find comfort in one another in this house, at such a time. ’Tis wrong—’
‘How can it be wrong? It would be the only thing to keep me sane right now,’ Ben said half angrily. ‘God knows what will happen to us, Morwen. I didn’t want to tell you yet, but we could be ruined over this business.’
He hardly noticed her small gasp as he went on.
‘I’m insisting on paying the workers who suffered in the accident, and making good their hospital bills for the women and children. It’s the least I can do, and it’s a pittance compared with the enormous costs I fear will come from the court case. How do you feel at having the town of St Austell versus Ben Killigrew blazoned all over The Informer, dar?’
His voice was harsh with bitterness, and she knew how deeply he felt at this town turning on him, when he had done so much for them.
‘Perhaps it won’t come to that, Ben’ she whispered, and he moved away from her, slumping down in a chair and leaning his head wearily against its hard wooden back.
‘You were never one for burying your head in the sand, Morwen. Don’t do it now. I don’t want any false hopes. We’re in a serious position, and we have to face it.’
She was frightened at hearing him speak like this. All her sorrow over Sam was smothered for the moment in her anxiety for Ben and their own future. Ben looked more beaten than she had ever seen him. And she should be by his side. She knew it. She rushed to him, kneeling on the rush matting floor to look into his eyes, her own full of love.
‘Ben, darling, please don’t look like that. Whatever happens, we will always have each other. We don’t need wealth and position and a big house. It’s only pride that makes folk want those things. When you look at others – like Dora, for instance – you know as well as I do that we already have all the riches in the world.’
For a second, she thought he wasn’t going to respond. She reached up her hand to touch his cheek, and suddenly he caught her hand in his, twisting it to press it to his mouth.
He pulled her towards him, and somehow she was on his lap and his arms were holding her close, and he was crushing the breath out of her and saying against her mouth that she could always put things into perspective for him. Because of where they were, it was in no way a sexual embrace, but the love that flowed between them was as strong and binding as the vows they had once made at Penwithick church.
She wanted to stay in his arms for ever, but she knew that wasn’t possible. Ben was on his way to Bodmin, and reluctantly he said that he must be on his way.
‘But I have your faith in me, dar, and it’s a talisman I cherish,’ he said.
‘And we shan’t always be apart like this, Ben,’ she whispered back. ‘Dora must come to her senses soon, and then I shall come home.’
‘And you and I will make up for lost time,’ Ben said softly, knowing that while she still grieved for Sam she wouldn’t want to be reminded yet of sleeping in his arms. But reminding her, too, that they were still young and healthy, and must continue to live their own lives.
When he had gone Morwen wandered about the cottage, doing the menial tasks she did for Dora, since the girl seemed incapable of settling to anything for long. She made a pretence at caring for the home and the children, but she spent long hours staring out of the window for Sam, and virtually did nothing.
Morwen was beginning to feel exhausted, but still believed that this situation couldn’t last. Sooner or later the dam on Dora’s emotions must break, and once her grief was out in the open she would be well again.
She had made them all a mid-day meal by the time Dora brought the children home from their walk. For the first time, the young widow seemed to realise something of Morwen’s own strain, as she snapped at Dora for not eating properly.
‘Why don’t ’ee take a walk later, Morwen?’ she said kindly. ‘The babbies need a rest, and ’twill do ’ee good to get away from us for a while. There must be folk ’ee can visit hereabouts.’
Her concern was so different from the usual scratchy way she reacted to Morwen, and that in itself was an oddity. But the thought of getting away from the cottage for a short while was suddenly overwhelmingly attractive.
Where would she go? She didn’t want to encounter sympathetic old friends who would be embarrassed by her presence. She wouldn’t visit Bess, because she didn’t want to stay away too long. But why visit anyone? Just to be alone on the moors would be comfort enough…
She nodded. ‘You need time to be on your own too, Dora, and the children will only be upstairs. I daresay ’twill do us both more good than becoming each other’s shadow.’
Morwen wrapped a woollen shawl around her shoulders, for the late September afternoons could become cool on the moors, and as she stepped away from the cottage, she felt as though she shed a h
eavy load. Until that moment she hadn’t realised how claustrophobic the atmosphere at the cottage had been, and how introverted she, as well as Dora, had become.
It was so good to get well away from the huddle of cottages, skirting the clay works so that she did not have to answer any stilted, polite enquiries about her family, and walking towards the great open space of the moors she had always loved so much.
As she did so, it was as if she breathed new life, and even while she thought instantly of Sam and how he had loved it here too, she could suddenly think of him only with love, and therefore with fractionally less pain.
The scents and sounds of the moors were part of her life, the wild beauty and the sense of freedom an extension of her own emotions. In no other place had she ever felt so much attuned with nature – with some great universal plan that needed no fancy education to explain. To Morwen these things just were.
Who could explain the origins of the gaunt granite Larnie Stone, rearing out of the moorland mist? Around it she and Celia had walked so long ago, solemnly following old Zillah’s instructions and hoping to find the face of their true love peering at them through the hole in the stone.
And Morwen had seen Ben, and tasted the first heady beginnings of love. Whatever else had happened that was bad and ugly, as when the hateful Jude Pascoe had raped her friend Celia, nothing could change those moments. The Larnie Stone had been the setting for those first wild sweet moments when Ben Killigrew had held her in his arms.
As she realised she was nearing the Larnie Stone now, Morwen caught her breath. For a second she felt no longer Ben’s beloved and self-assured wife, but the uncertain, strikingly beautiful bal maiden, Morwen Tremayne, who dared to imagine that the boss’s son could love her.
‘Be ’ee dreamin’ again, Mrs Killigrew?’
A voice that seemed to come right out of those lovely dreaming days jarred into Morwen’s ears. She whipped round to find the weird woman of the moors leering at her. More wizened than ever now, Zillah leaned heavily on a gnarled stick, but her beady eyes were as bright and knowing as ever.
In an instant all Morwen’s brief feeling of well-being vanished. This old crone and her evil ways… tempting folk into thinking they, too, could foretell the future by taking potions that could hurt and distort the mind…
‘’Tis more like a nightmare to be seeing you again,’ Morwen snapped. Old Zillah cackled.
‘You’ve not lost that fine old temper since you been wed to yon Killigrew boy, I see,’ she wheezed. ‘Nor been crushed in spirit like your brother was in body—’
‘What do you know of our Sam?’ Morwen hissed. ‘Was all this some kind of wicked revenge, because Celia took the potion at one gulp and then drowned herself?’
What was she saying? She was becoming as crazy as this old woman. What could the train accident possibly have to do with Celia Penry’s foolishness of four years ago? Morwen was angry with herself for appearing so gullible, and Ben would be just as angry if he ever got to hear of it.
‘Your friend was a ninny,’ Zillah said sharply. ‘You were allus the sensible one, for all your wildness. You know full well we can make or break our own destiny, and if your brother hadn’t been on the train, he’d be alive now, same as you and me.’
Morwen had never heard her speak so fluently, without the usual patois of the moorland folk. Was she really this articulate, and tempered her speech to suit those who consulted her? If so, Morwen was even more suspicious of her, and agreed fervently now with her mother, who had always forbidden Morwen to visit the old woman’s hovel. A demand which had made the secret visits all the more exciting to Morwen and Celia, and occasionally young Freddie too. But it was no longer exciting.
All Morwen wanted now was to get away from this woman who knew Celia’s secret too. Zillah knew about the baby that had to be destroyed before it was born because of the disgrace. Zillah knew why Celia had drowned herself when her mind was turned because of the shame…
She turned quickly to go back to Dora and the children. Even Dora’s strangeness was more palatable than the obscure mutterings and warnings of Zillah. As if she wouldn’t let Morwen get away without one last word, the old crone’s mocking, rasping voice followed her.
‘Fate’s not done with ’ee yet, Morwen Tremayne Killigrew. There’s more sorrow before rejoicing, mark me well!’
She wouldn’t take any notice, Morwen thought furiously. It was all nonsense, evil, black magic. But it was a damnable truth that being as Cornish as Zillah herself, Morwen was only too inclined to give credence to things mysterious and unseen.
She walked more briskly back to the cottage over the pleasantly spongy turf. Since the rains had stopped, the drying winds and autumn sunshine had given a new burst of vitality to the ground. Sam had always loved times like this.
Autumn and spring were his two favourite times, the spring especially when the earth began to revive again after the long winter months. Morwen found the soft slow tears running down her cheeks in a final farewell of grief for Sam, and resolved that this would be the last time. She was helping no-one, and she had resolved to help Dora in any way she could…
* * *
She pushed open the cottage door, ready with cheerful words on her lips to tell Dora she was back. The cottage was quiet, and obviously the children were still resting after their walk that morning. Morwen crept inside in case Dora, too, was asleep, and then a noise from the small back scullery made her peer inside. She drew back in silent horror.
Dora was furiously ironing a small pile of Sam’s shirts. Whether they had been washed or were still soiled, Morwen couldn’t tell. What appalled her was the frantic way Dora worked, as though driven to it. Even as Morwen watched, Dora thrust the iron down and picked up the hot shirt, burying her nose in it and closing her eyes as though in ecstacy.
‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ Morwen whispered.
Dora’s eyes flew open. For a second she didn’t speak, and then she threw the shirt away from her as quickly as she could. Her face suddenly crumpled, her whole body shook, and she stumbled past Morwen into the main room of the cottage and sank on to the hard settle. Morwen sat beside her, holding Dora’s shaking hands in hers.
‘Nobody knows how I feel!’ Dora gasped out the words as if desperately short of breath. ‘I’m not deranged or ill, Morwen. I know Sam’s dead. I know I’ll never see un again, or hold un again, and I’ll never feel un holding me, and filling me with his love, and if it offends the fine lady ’ee’ve become, then I’m sorry. But I miss my Sam so much, and ’tis me that’s dying without un. And I thought – if I iron his shirts, it brings out the smell o’ my Sam’s body, and I’ve got un with me a little while longer—’
It was the most she had ever said to Morwen. By the end of it Morwen was filled with anguish for her sister-in-law, and all the tears Dora hadn’t been able to shed came spilling out of her like a torrent as Morwen rocked her in her arms.
* * *
‘Cry, Dora. Cry for Sam,’ she said, over and over.
It was the start of Dora’s healing, she thought thankfully. Once she was able to talk about Sam and accept the truth of what had happened, and once she was able to cry for him, then her life could begin again. Never the same… but without that awful unreality that had plagued it since the accident.
‘He allus said we were a matching pair o’ turtle-doves,’ Dora sobbed against Morwen’s shoulder. ‘We were so happy in our warm little nest, and when the babbies came along, they were our little fledglings. Sam was mine, see? He weren’t just Hal Tremayne’s eldest, nor Morwen Killigrew’s brother. He were mine, and none of ’ee knew un like I did.’
‘Dora, I understand, really I do—’
‘Mebbe so. No woman gets to know the heart an’ soul of a man until she’s married to un. So you’ll know what I mean when I say I miss his body next to mine at night, and ’tis more than just the urges of the flesh. ’Tis the belonging that I miss. The words that only Sam ever spoke to me, the feel
of Sam’s hands on me, the look in Sam’s eyes when he was ready for the loving. Oh, God, how am I going to live wi’out my Sam?’
There was nothing Morwen could say to console her. Nothing she was able to say. She just held Dora while the girl sobbed out her bitterness and despair, and knew that she was witnessing a broken heart.
* * *
‘I really thought this was going to be a turning-point, Mammie,’ Morwen whispered to her mother when Bess came to the cottage a few days later. ‘Instead, she seemed so distressed I asked one of the neighbours to go for Doctor Growse, and now she’s struck down with the measles, and I’m so fearful for her. I don’t think she has the will to get well.’
‘If ’tis God’s will that she does, then she’ll survive this illness, my love.’
Bess hoped she sounded more comforting than she felt. She was as uneasy as Morwen. If Dora felt that she had nothing to live for, she could simply pine and die. She ate nothing, and only took sips of water and cordial.
The children raised no more than a wan smile from Dora each time Morwen took them to see her, and already the boys were finding Morwen more interesting than their ailing mother, and Primmy at eight months merely attached herself to whoever indulged her at the time.
Morwen began to feel desperate. How much longer was she going to stay away from her own home at the beck and call of Sam’s family? It wasn’t that she didn’t love them, but she began to feel as if she no longer had a life of her own. And that terrible outpouring of Dora’s had only made her miss her own man. She needed Ben’s love too.
‘Tell me the family news, Mammie,’ Morwen said, when she had got them each a drink. She had settled Primmy with her bottle, and a neighbour had taken the little boys for a walk. ‘Is Daddy all right? He looked so grey at Sam’s burying.’
‘He’s well enough,’ Bess said cautiously. ‘Doctor Pender wanted to see un, and says he should take things more easily, but no more than that. He’s been over-taxing himself at the works, instead of acting the proper overseer like he should.’
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