The first of E.V. Thompson’s nine book historical saga, Ben Retallick, was published in 1980. It begins in Cornwall in March 1818. The title character is fifteen and has just survived the flooding of the tin mine where he worked. His father Pearson, 37, also a miner, is suffering from years of working underground mining tin: ‘I’ve spent too many years following tin lodes, Ben. I carry a part of every one of them inside me now.’ In short, he’s finished; the tin in his blood and lungs. Ben makes the acquaintance of Jesse Henna, a young girl and neighbour. There appears to be a mystery involving Jesse’s mother Maude and the local landowner Sir John Vincent. We will learn the answer in good time. However, when Sir John’s Colman inherits the manor house and land, he casts out the Hennas and encourages his game-keeper Reuben Holyoak to wed Jesse. Colman is not a pleasant man.
Holyoak is unaware of the attraction Ben and Jesse share. ‘In the darkness of the night, with only the stars to bear witness, Ben and Jesse had consummated their love, and Jesse had crossed the threshold of womanhood’ (p100).
Times were hard in those days, and people suffered real grinding poverty, and Thompson reflects this well. All the ingredients are here: suicide, press gang abductions, still-born birth, mob anger, fishermen and tin miners at odds, the imposition of cruel law, death on the gallows, drunken domestic violence, blighted love, poignant deaths, kind-hearted neighbours and social commentary that never dominates the story and characters.
The
second volume is Chase the Wind (which surprisingly was published in 1977!).
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