by CL Skelton
‘Or,’ Jane Macgregor said, ‘that I should drive through the Scottish countryside one day,’ she smiled to herself, ‘with Karl Muller’s son. Do you know how strange that would have been, had someone told me this would happen, that day in 1913? And how strange all of it is, Jan. To be old,’ she laughed at his instant dispute. ‘No, Jan, I am old. Well-preserved like a good port, perhaps, but old. And of all the people who meant everything to me, who should remain but the son of a stranger met by chance in a foreign land.’ She smiled gently. ‘I think we shall be splendid friends,’ she said.
In Inverness they stopped for lunch at the Kings Mills Hotel, and emerged to find winter had descended among the purples and yellows of the crocuses. They raised the hood of the Jaguar and drove out of the Highland capital into the snow. The journey thereafter rapidly became an adventure as they climbed up into the hills, reaching the Slochd Summit in heavy snow and meeting a real blizzard as they passed through Aviemore and climbed once more towards the barren heights of Dalwhinnie. ‘Do you know, Lady Macgregor,’ Jan said, ‘for fifteen years I have missed seeing snow, and now I can’t possibly imagine why.’ He grinned gamely, as once more the Jaguar slowed to a slithering sideways halt and, as he had done twice already, Jan climbed out to dig their way out.
‘Aren’t you glad I brought the spade?’ Jane said brightly as they pulled away once more into the storm.
‘Delighted,’ said Jan.
‘I told you it would be interesting,’ Jane sniffed, peering into shifting sheets of white haze. At Perth they gave up and settled for a good meal and two luxurious rooms in the Royal George overlooking the River Tay. They awoke to find a spring morning, all traces of snow washed away, and continued on their journey once more at the speeds to which Jaguar and Jane were more accustomed. Jan hung on, thinking her driving style exactly like Yigel’s with the kibbutz car over the rutted unpaved desert roads of home. He said nothing, suspecting she’d not like the comparison. They passed through Edinburgh and crossed the border in good time, so that it was still only early afternoon when they were already on the approaches to York.
‘It seems such a shame to abandon you here with so much of the day left,’ Jane said suddenly. ‘I doubt there’ll be a train, but you’ve still the whole afternoon. Of course, I suppose you’d love to see York; it is rather a gem, but I was thinking …’
‘What, Lady Macgregor?’ Jan said eagerly, because he too, was reluctant to end their cheerful companionship so abruptly and be left alone in a foreign city once more.
‘I don’t suppose you’d fancy a spin over to Hardacres with me? I could run you back in time for your morning train. Oh, forgive me, I am being a dreadfully selfish old bore, no doubt, but I have so enjoyed your company, and I would like you to meet everyone …’ she trailed off, uncertain.
‘But, Lady Macgregor, I would be so honoured,’ he said.
With a grin of delight, and a resultant lurch that had Jan clinging to the smoothly polished door of the Jaguar, Jane spun the wheel and sent the car skidding round a sharp turn into a side road swathed in the grey spring mist of the Yorkshire countryside. As they roared off through the hedgerows and amongst low brick farm cottages, neither had the slightest premonition that that sharp turn of the road comprised as sharp a turn in Jan’s life as the day forty years before that first linked their families in the colonial port of Hong Kong.
Chapter Nine
Hardacres was in turmoil. After over five months of self-imposed exile, Sam Hardacre was coming home in style. Harry had received a telephone call two days before from a remarkably jubilant-sounding Sam, announcing that he had a weekend free which he would very much like to spend at Hardacres, and that he also would like to give a small party, ‘in celebration’ as he put it, for the family and a few select friends.
‘Delighted, of course,’ Harry said with his instinctive well-mannered hospitality. ‘How many might it be for?’ he asked then, with a premonitory flash of concern, hearkening far back to the pre-war days when Sam and Terry party was something to give even the formidable pause.
‘Oh, just an intimate gathering,’ Sam said lightly, and there was a moment’s silence in which Harry supposed him to be ticking off the guest list in his mind. ‘A handful,’ he said. ‘About forty.’
‘Forty?’ Harry asked, swallowing hard, his mind leaping at once to the beleaguered store-cupboards of the Hardacre kitchens, and the gathered but meagre powers of the family ration books.
‘Or fifty,’ came Sam’s complacent voice over the telephone. There was a brief silence and then suddenly Sam said urgently, ‘You do understand that I intend supplying the food and all, don’t you, Uncle Harry? You didn’t think …’
Harry fought his sigh of relief into a whispering silence and managed to mumble, ‘Oh, that really is too kind, Sam. Of course, it would help if you could manage part of it …’
‘Everything, Uncle Harry. Everything.’ There was another pause and then Sam said, ‘I do hope you all like salmon,’ and on that cryptic note he hung up the phone.
The progress of the party was monitored by Harry over the next two days through a series of phone calls which came in at intervals announcing that this or that member of the family was absolutely delighted and would be sure to be there. Terry telephoned from Ampleforth saying he had permission to attend and sounding as enthusiastic about the social gathering as the old Terry of pre-monastic days. The Bartons, on Emily’s insistence, agreed to close up The Rose for the day (not that anyone will notice, Emily added) and bring their children down from Kilham. Various total strangers with a vast array of startling accents telephoned or showed up at the door with vanloads of provisions for the kitchen. Harry felt rather like the guest of honour at a surprise party which, for all he knew of the event burgeoning in his own house, it might as well have been. Sam had said something about a celebration but had not obliged him with what had given him cause to celebrate.
Philip Barton, the only member of the family to Harry’s knowledge to have been recently in contact with Sam, was hardly helpful. When Harry pressed him as to precisely what it was that Madelene’s errant son was up to, he only answered, echoing Sam himself, ‘Well, you won’t be short of salmon, anyhow.’
Salmon came to haunt Harry. Mrs Dobson, the cook, had ventured upstairs after the most recent delivery and, in her hesitantly respectful way, had approached Harry.
‘I thought I’d do some in a casserole. And some in a salad. And then there’s t’ mousse. But frankly, Mr Hardacre, it don’t seem reeght. I mean, supposin’ some folk don’t care for …’
‘Salmon?’ Harry chanced. She nodded vigorously. ‘I was afraid so,’ he said, and left her to her own devices. On the morning of the proposed event, Harry rose early, as was his custom, leaving Hetty sleeping on, and descended alone to the kitchens of Hardacres. Signs of preparation were everywhere, and Mrs Dobson was already busy baking fresh bread. She looked up in surprise but Harry, still in his dressing gown, murmured, ‘Please, continue. I’ll just make myself some tea. No, really, it’s no trouble,’ he added lamely, still staring at the mountains of food and cases of wine and spirits. He said, ‘I just couldn’t sleep. I suddenly had the most terrible suspicion.’
‘Suspicion, sir?’
‘About this party. I mean, has anyone actually heard from Sam again, after that first telephone call?’
‘No, Mr Hardacre.’ Mrs Dobson paused, wiping her hands down the floury front of her apron. She was a short round person with red country cheeks. ‘I certainly haven’t. Not that I would, mind.’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘But neither have I. You don’t suppose it’s one of his awful practical jokes …?’ Mrs Dobson’s widening eyes, her expression first of amazement, then recollection, no doubt of the old days and a more youthful Sam, and then sheer boiling fury, drove him to insist hastily ‘Oh, of course it wouldn’t be, it was just a queer notion …’ He retreated, still murmuring assurances, from the kitchen, and fled to his library and the comfort of the
fire. He spent the morning there, peering cautiously out from time to time, hoping to see Sam, and fearing to see, unattended, a descending horde of unknown guests.
Promptly at ten o’clock, just after he had watched an oblivious Vanessa, who regarded the whole event as nothing to do with her, trotting off on Gold Flake, a large dilapidated grey-painted lorry came rumbling up out of the beech wood, crept self-consciously past the rolling sweeps of lawn, and came to a respectful halt well down the drive. It sat there, rumbling quietly and puffing diesel fumes contentedly into the country air until, eventually, a door opened and a man stepped down. At the distance between him and the lorry Harry could not recognize the figure, but he was able to make out the lettering on the front of the lorry. It was new and bright, unlike the basic paintwork, and being set on a boldly painted patch on the front of the cab, it gave the impression of having been recently redone, perhaps over an earlier, obliterated sign. The large black letters on a red ground said HARDACRE SALVAGE.
‘Who the hell are they?’ Harry demanded of the velvet library draperies. And then he saw it was Sam.
In spite of the manner of his transport, Sam Hardacre was dressed very well, in a well-tailored business suit of navy blue, and as Harry, who had hastened outside, approached him, he was happily surprised at both how well the clothes suited him and how well he looked, lean and fit, and slightly weatherbeaten. Sam waved one leisurely long arm over his head towards his great-uncle and then turned back to the lorry, from which were descending two companions. A fourth member of the party who had evidently ridden in the open back of the vehicle was now rather shakily clambering over the metal side, rubbing a tousled head as if he had been asleep.
Each was, like Sam, dressed in a manner incongruous with the lorry in which they had arrived, most of all in the case of the gentleman who’d ridden in the back. Sam’s companions, however, wore their party finery with something less than aplomb, and stood now looking about at the gracious setting of Hardacres with open nervousness. The one nearest Sam, a grey-haired, tough-looking man of late middle-age, conspicuous for his having only one arm, used his one hand to tug uncomfortably at his collar and tie. As Harry approached he heard him say, ‘Eeh, lad, you’ve sure dropped us in it this time.’
‘Harry,’ Sam called, delighted, ‘splendid to see you. Come, you must meet some friends of mine. Friends,’ he added, with a grin, ‘and business associates. Herein you see before you,’ he encompassed his nervous, shuffling line of companions with a sweeping arm gesture, ‘the full workforce of Hardacre Salvage. Mick Raddley, skipper of the Dainty Girl, Pete Haines, salvage master, and,’ he paused, a cautious eye on the tall individual who had clambered out of the lorry, ‘our diver, Martin Raynor.’
Harry nodded, still feeling vaguely confused, but dutifully shook hands, first with the one-armed seaman, then with Pete Haines, and lastly with the diver, a lanky man of uncertain age, with a beaky nose and a large Adam’s apple giving him the look of a vast featherless fledgling bird. Harry felt distinctly that the diver, Raynor, was having difficulty focusing his eyes as he peered blearily out at his host.
‘This is my great-uncle, Harry Hardacre,’ Sam announced, and the three nodded and shuffled feet obediently.
Harry was swept with sympathy. He could see that they were utterly overawed by the house looming up behind him, and indeed by himself, looking the country gentleman that he had become. He wanted to say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m really just one of you,’ but there was no way he could make himself believed, he knew. So he said instead, with instinctive kindness, ‘The house is in a bit of an uproar just now, but I’m sure if we sneak in the back Mrs Dobson would give us all a cup of tea. Just the thing on a cold morning, eh?’
They relaxed, with grins and nods of agreement, and Harry led them off round the house, past the beautiful, now empty conservatory, and into the courtyard behind the kitchens. He felt their relief even as they entered that sheltered, homely spot, and he sympathized. He himself had always had a sneaking fondness for this more modest, less imposing entrance to the house and his mother, Mary Hardacre, had rarely used any other.
Thus it was that, over the broad pine table of the Hardacre kitchen, Harry first learned of his great-nephew’s venturing out into the risky world of marine salvage, and his first, modest business success. Sam related the saga of the Louisa Jane, referring all Harry’s queries of a technical nature to Haines and Mick Raddley whose confidence visibly grew once on their own familiar ground. Mick, in his turn, insisted on giving Sam full credit for the success of the venture.
‘It were him that thought of it,’ he said firmly. ‘If’n it had been up to me and Pete she’d all be sitting there yet under t’sea.’
‘And you’ve managed to raise the entire cargo?’ Harry said, impressed.
‘Near as damn it,’ Mick said, adding a quick, ‘pardon, ma’am,’ with a glance to Mrs Dobson, who was laboriously laying out trays of food, with limited good grace, around her invaded kitchen table. ‘Now’s t’ big job.’
‘What’s that?’ Harry asked.
Mick looked to Sam who said, ‘We’ve completed the contract for the cargo. Now we’re thinking of having a go at the wreck itself, for scrap. We’re all agreed,’ he glanced at his three companions, two of whom nodded, while the third, the diver Martin Raynor, merely stared dreamily into his tea, ‘we’re all agreed,’ Sam continued, ‘to risk what we’ve made on the job on getting her up. Or at least getting the stern end up. Trouble is, I’m afraid we’ll need more money. So we’re waiting on Erasmus Sykes; you’ll meet him today. If he decides to call in his investment, we can pay, but we can’t go on.’ He paused, tapping the table thoughtfully. ‘Dashed pity if he does,’ he said.
Pete Haines laughed. ‘Look at him,’ he said. ‘’E’s got t’ bug, all right. It’s like gambling. Only wetter. Cream cakes in t’ window.’ He grinned at Sam and Sam grinned ruefully back.
‘I rather suppose I have,’ he said.
Harry smiled, and said, hesitantly, ‘I really wish I could help …’ but Sam cut him off brusquely.
‘Good God, Uncle Harry, I wasn’t meaning you. You’re not a gambling man, thank God, or we’d not have this place any longer, would we?’ He looked fondly up to the high beams of the kitchen of his childhood. ‘No. It’s a risky game, Uncle Harry. But Erasmus …’ he grinned. ‘He’ll huff and puff, I reckon, but I doubt he can resist the bait.’
When Erasmus Sykes arrived, two hours later, Harry was not at all certain that Sam had judged his man right. He appeared at the front door, having arrived in an unprepossessing motor car which he had parked discreetly behind the Hardacre Salvage lorry, looking sadly about him as if the party were something he wished to enjoy and yet was certain that he was fated not to.
‘Ah, Mr Hardacre,’ he greeted Harry, after Sam’s introduction. ‘No doubt you have never heard of me. Little chance for the likes of you and me to meet.’
‘Sykes Amusements in Bridlington, I understand?’ Harry said helpfully.
Erasmus bent his heavy face into a wistful smile and said, ‘My little enterprise indeed, famed so far afield?’
Harry was uncertain whether he was sarcastic or as genuinely pleased as he sounded, but Erasmus at once deflated his own pleasure by adding, ‘But of course. Young Mr Hardacre will have explained!’ His expression of resigned sorrow returned and he entered the house with slow, plodding steps. At once he was intercepted by Vanessa, who had been press-ganged into attending and who now barked at him an offer of sherry. Harry turned to go to his rescue, but other guests had materialized and he was obliged to leave Erasmus to his fate.
The Bartons had appeared at the door. Emily, slightly overdressed and over made-up, her eyes a little too bright with nervous excitement, cast an eager glance into the drawing-room of Hardacres, filled now with people, that was almost a look of hunger. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you,’ she said to Harry. ‘So good to see everyone. So many people. Oh, do tell, has anyone come up from London, perhaps? Wil
l Jane be here?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Harry said, taking her by the elbow, with a smile for her elder daughter Ruth, teetering on too-high heels. ‘It’s mostly Sam’s crowd and a lot of new faces, too, from his,’ he paused with a ruefully ironic grin, ‘his business circle.’
‘Nowt but good Yorkshire folk,’ Philip bellowed and Harry saw Emily’s mouth tighten with a wince that went beyond good humour. But Philip was away, glass in hand, pursuing Noel into the library, in what he obviously considered the proper Northern man’s disdain for social fripperies. Noel, with his permanently jaundiced eye and his affinity with the locals, had become Philip’s hero of late. The younger Bartons, Olive and Paul, stood self-consciously in corners of the drawing-room, sipping lemonade, and Harry dedicated himself to coaxing a smile back on Emily’s face, with a tall gin and a long talk about the London stage.
‘It’s missing everything that I can’t stand,’ she lamented, but she brightened then and said, ‘Oh, but Harry, I’ve the most splendid news. And I forgot to tell you. Albert and Maud are coming to London in July, with Janet, for the première of A Lady in Love. We’re all invited. Isn’t it marvellous? Everyone will be there … all the stars. I’ve started inviting my London friends already. It will be so wonderful, like a school reunion.’ She stopped suddenly, smiling nervously. ‘I must sound like a child.’ Her lower lip trembled. ‘I’d better put this glass down, Harry, if you don’t mind. I think I’ve had enough.’ She set it on the table and put her handkerchief to her lips, dabbing at nothing. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, turned away and walked, a little stiffly, to the drawing-room door. Harry heard her quick footsteps on the polished wood of the great main stairs. He stood sadly looking after her, sipping his sherry, and then suddenly remembered Erasmus Sykes and, recalling the obvious importance of that gentleman to Sam’s fledgling company, he set out seeking him, feeling guiltily to have been lax in his duties as host.