Family Ties by Rowena Summers

Author:Rowena Summers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788634694
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Ran Wainwright was moving into his splendid new house. He had named it New World, which made Ben scoff, and charmed Morwen and all the children, linking his old country with his adopted one. They had been to see it many times now, and knew every nook and cranny. In particular they loved the little round room, hidden away from the bigger rooms, and overlooking the sea, where Ran swore there must be a friendly ghost, a fact that nonetheless sent them shiveringly to bed.

‘You shouldn’t tease them, Ran,’ Morwen laughed, when Charlotte had asked curiously if he had ever seen the ghost and he had to admit that he had not, to her great disappointment. ‘They’ll be wanting one at Killigrew House next!’

‘I thought there were already enough ghosts there,’ Ran said lightly, as they went on a tour of the house now that all the furniture had been delivered, and it began to look like a home.

‘Do we have ghosts, Mother?’ Albert said at once, and she shook her head quickly.

‘No, we don’t, love. Uncle Ran’s just being facetious.’

‘What’s that?’ Charlotte pouted, hating words that she didn’t understand.

‘It means “funny”, silly. Uncle Ran’s always funny. Not like Daddy. He’s miserable all the time,’ Primmy added for good measure.

‘Daddy’s got a lot of business worries—’

‘Killigrew Clay’s not in trouble, is it, Mother?’ Walter was too sharp, too keen on his heritage to ignore any such comment, and Morwen wished she had never made it.

She would have fobbed him off, but she looked into his clear anxious blue eyes and knew that he deserved more. He was growing up so fast. He was going on for fifteen, tall and muscular like Sam had been, and already a young man to make girls’ heads turn. Ben was wrong to treat him like a child the way he did.

‘Prices have fallen, and folk aren’t so keen to pay their bills, which stretches us to pay the wages and other things,’ she said as honestly as possible without giving too much away. ‘But you know the clay prices go up and down, darling. ’Tis nothing to worry about.’

‘We’re not worrying today,’ Ran said heartily. ‘I thought you were all having tea with me, and I want no glum faces around my table.’

Walter looked at him steadily. ‘You’re all right, aren’t you, Uncle Ran? The clay-stone’s doing well. I read it in The Informer.’

‘Did you? I thought your father discouraged you from reading newspapers at home,’ Ran said mildly.

‘I don’t read them at home. We get a selection of papers from all over the country at school. If Father wants me to be educated, he must expect a private school to provide such literary masterpieces along with Dickens and Shakespeare.’

He spoke with studied irony. He was going to be clever with words, Morwen thought suddenly. Her clever, clever son – Sam’s son – who still wanted to work with the clay, despite all his learning. Just as Ben had done, once long ago.

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