Hardacre's Luck (The Hardacre Family Saga Book 2)

by CL Skelton

  ‘How’d the show go?’ he asked, grinning. She looked away. She assumed he was teasing her, but replied seriously.

  ‘Not very well. No one was terribly interested today.’

  ‘I should think not. You’re quite an attraction, young lady, but Her Majesty is putting up pretty stiff competition, today.’

  ‘We’ll get them back tomorrow,’ Ruth said, without a smile.

  ‘I’m sure you will, pet,’ Albert said. He patted her shoulder but she shrugged away, fearing condescension. But it was not that, but sorrow that made Albert wish to draw a smile from that solemn, serious countenance. He had made no judgements of Ruth’s theatrical promise; he had only once seen her perform at her parents’ home and saw only a pretty child who reminded him faintly, in feature, of his wife, prettily displaying herself. She was too young, he assumed, to be seriously judged, but instinctively he felt the lack of real talent, disguised though that lack was by fierce determination. It was that determination, that solemnity, that worried him, and made him reach for the lightening effect of humour. He had seen that awful determination destroy so many young lives, in his years on the stage.

  But as they walked together up towards the harbour and Sam’s warehouse home, with Ruth and Olive each on an arm of Albert’s, and Paul galloping around behind like a playful colt, they were suddenly stopped by a loud shout.

  ‘Albert. Albert Chandler.’ A tall lanky figure hurried up to them and extended his hand to Albert, who released Ruth so that he might take it. ‘Albert Chandler, I knew it was you. Haven’t seen you in donkey’s years. Didn’t know you were back in the country at all. By gum, those were the days, down at the Spa. They don’t make music now the way you did.’ Albert smiled. The children watched, waiting perhaps for Albert to introduce them, which he, as it was, could not do. The man was only one of the myriad of his long-ago fans who remembered him yet. There was no way he could be expected to remember them all, as well. The man seemed to understand that, because he took no offence, and even offered his name, to which Albert gave a polite smile, and another handshake, and made no pretence of having known it all along. The man continued with his praise, and then, realizing he had delayed them long enough, backed away, but suddenly caught sight of Paul.

  ‘Eeh,’ he shouted, ‘it’s t’ little songbird.’ Paul blushed, but Albert looked surprised, and then the stranger said, ‘By gum, should uv guessed. Talent like that don’t come from nowhere. He’s one uv yourn, isn’t he?’

  ‘My nephew,’ Albert said, looking slightly puzzled at Paul, who was ducking the stranger’s affectionate tousling of his hair.

  ‘Eeh lad,’ the stranger said. ‘Nay doubt ye’ll be famous too, one day. But ye’ve a way to go yet afore you’re Albert Chandler.’ He strolled off, happy with his memories, and Albert stood looking after him, and then turned to his nephew who was waiting in an almost fearful silence for what he knew would follow.

  ‘What’s this about singing, lad?’ asked Albert with a curious smile.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The restaurant in Soho had an indisputable dinginess about its exterior that even Jane Macgregor’s silver Jaguar parked before it could not dispel. But it was known and loved by this year’s crop of London sophisticates for its excellent Italian food and discriminating wine list. Most of all, it was ‘in’. Next year they would be somewhere else, when the tourists, creeping back to Britain after their long absence during the forties, had taken Mama Rini’s to their hearts, and the provincials down for the day in t’ Big Smoke settled their ample North of England posteriors on its small cane seats. For now, however, only those in the know would dream of coming here, and inviting their favourite elderly aunt to partake of luncheon behind its modest checked curtains. Sam Hardacre was ‘in the know’. Suddenly, he was a Londoner again.

  ‘Very nice, Sam,’ Jane said, settling herself cautiously on one of the small chairs at Mama Rini’s best table. She looked about and gave, involuntarily, her ‘I’ll wait and see’ sniff.

  ‘Wait until you taste the food,’ Sam said, smiling.

  ‘I said it was nice,’ Jane defended, still looking about warily. But Sam was confident. He knew his restaurant, like he knew his city, the way he used to know that long-gone London of the war. Suddenly Jane’s face brightened, and she began to smile broadly.

  ‘I remember it,’ she said.

  ‘You what?’ Sam was startled.

  ‘The restaurant. It was the new name and the new … décor … that put me off. Of course. It’s Valente’s.’

  ‘It’s Mama Rini’s,’ Sam protested.

  ‘Now it’s Mama Rini’s,’ Jane dismissed with a wave of her bony hand. ‘I remember it from the thirties, Sam.’ She peered, childishly pleased, through the checked half-curtains, spotting landmarks outside on Dean Street. ‘Valente’s. I used to come here, years ago. Once I even brought Mother.’ She smiled at Sam, conscious of having deflated his new discovery. ‘London’s a very old city, my dear. I think it was even here before you were born.’

  ‘Touché,’ said Sam. ‘I should have known better than to try and impress you,’ he added ruefully.

  ‘Oh, but I am impressed,’ Jane comforted, taking up the simple handwritten menu and studying it intently. She paused, and leaned back and said then, her voice lower, ‘I came here during the war, too, Sam. Once. With Peter. And Mavis. I’d quite forgotten all about that. I think it was about two weeks before he was killed. They were so happy.’ She shook her head, and looked back at the menu.

  Sam said, ‘Oh, I’ve picked a real winner this time. Sorry, Aunt Jane, I had no idea.’ She laughed.

  ‘Oh, not to worry. To be honest, I hadn’t thought of that day for years. I must have put it right out of my mind. It doesn’t really hurt any more, remembering. I mean, it’s almost nice, savouring the good things. Such a pleasant girl she was, Mavis. Do you remember her, Sam?’

  Sam ordered for them both and, since the waiter had suddenly appeared beside him, chose wine. Then he said, ‘Certainly do. She was quite the looker, Mavis Emmerson.’

  ‘They’d have been happy, wouldn’t they, Sam?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Jane looked sad. ‘I never understood why we never heard from her again. She just vanished after Peter died. After all, they were engaged.’ She traced the outline of her bread knife on the cloth with a well-manicured nail. Sam watched her carefully.

  ‘That was wartime,’ he said simply, and she nodded, accepting it as explanation enough.

  Sam used the restaurant a lot; it was just down the street from the small flat he had rented, for his and Jan Muller’s use whenever either of them was in London. He was back and forth all the time now, or so it seemed, and a few weeks into the new year he had totted up his hotel bills and decided a flat would be cheaper. And more private. London, he had to admit, had more attractions than business alone. He had enjoyed rediscovering it, and rediscovering his bachelor ways.

  Mama Rini herself came from the kitchen to make a big fuss of him. It was partly business, he knew, but the proprietress was genuinely fond of him and had taken a motherly interest in him ever since she learned he was a Catholic. He introduced Jane, who shook hands and smiled politely.

  ‘And how is the young lady?’ Mama Rini asked, just as Sam rather feared she would. Jane’s beautifully defined black eyebrows rose one millimetre. Mama Rini beamed motherly interest, and Sam said, ‘Very well,’ hoping Mama Rini would not go into detail about either her, or any of the other ‘young ladies’ she might have noticed in Sam’s company, over the months. The one in question had dined with him here just two nights before and he had bedded her after and to his chagrin he could not recall her name. There’d been a lot of that sort of thing lately and he wasn’t proud of it, particularly not in front of Aunt Jane.

  Fortunately Mama Rini was summoned to her kitchen before the conversation could go further and when Sam’s eyes met Jane’s she only smiled and looked away, dismissing the subject. He was glad. What had seemed
only natural at twenty-seven seemed inappropriate at thirty-seven, with three years in a Benedictine monastery lying in between. He wondered at times if he oughtn’t to marry and yet could not conceive of it happening.

  ‘I think late marriages work best, anyhow,’ Jane said, and Sam looked up amazed, as if she had read his thoughts, until he realized she was still thinking of her son Peter and his fiancée. ‘I mean, even my Ian and I could have become a disaster as we grew older. Who will ever know? I look back on the child I was when I married …’ she shook her head, ‘it always amazes me.’

  ‘But you were happy.’

  ‘We were children together. Who knows where life would have led us?’ She shrugged. ‘All of us … Ian and I, Madelene and Arnold, Peter and his Mavis. War threw us together, or at least hastened things, like it did for Ian and me. And war separated us. Perhaps it was best. Such sweet memories. Like flowers, cut and pressed before they can possibly decay.’ She sipped her wine. ‘Don’t possibly tell anyone, but I think Philip and Emily will divorce.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Sam whispered, genuinely shocked. She shrugged again.

  ‘Oh perhaps not. But I see it headed that way. They were children too. Or at least, Emily was. Now she’s grown up and Philip’s behaving like a little boy with his first train set.’

  ‘What of the children?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Well, I’m sure they’ll wait for the children to finish school. Anyhow Ruth only has this year, and Olive is at the High School too, now. And Paul spends more time with Albert and Maud than anyone. They’re taking him along on their summer tour. It’s just around the Northern towns, so he’ll never really be far from home.’

  ‘Is he singing with them?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Jane shook her head, firmly. ‘No. Albert wouldn’t allow it. He sees to the voice lessons, but no performing, absolutely. He’s very firm about that, and Paul’s just as pleased, you know. He’s only a little boy, still, and Albert insists he’s not cheated of his childhood, as he puts it, whatever the talent.’

  ‘He’s wise,’ Sam said.

  ‘Emily doesn’t think so. But she doesn’t argue. You know, she’s afraid of Albert!’

  ‘No one’s afraid of Albert,’ Sam said, over his lasagne. ‘He’s the sweetest guy in the world.’

  ‘He’s a tough one, when he knows he’s right,’ Jane said. She sighed. ‘Maud, at least, was lucky,’ she added with a smile. She glanced suddenly towards the kitchen where Mama could be heard, faintly, singing in Italian. ‘And you?’ she said disarmingly. ‘What of you?’

  ‘What of me?’ he bluffed.

  ‘The young lady?’ she reminded.

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘Just friends,’ Jane said, making sure she heard right. Sam nodded, looking down. He said, ‘One of many.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jane. When she had finished her grilled sole, Sam ordered coffee and they sat drinking from tiny espresso cups. Jane said, ‘Never met the right girl, Sam, or not the marrying kind?’

  He shrugged. ‘A little of both, I think.’ He was silent and then said, hesitantly, only because he was closer to Jane Macgregor than to anyone other than Terry, ‘I suppose there was one, once, but it never came to anything.’ He was surprised at how boyish and shy he still felt over a woman he had met only once. It was March now of 1954; two and a half, two and three-quarter years ago, that meeting, to be exact. He doubted Janet Chandler counted the days.

  ‘Who knows,’ Jane said brightly. ‘Perhaps it will happen anyhow. I can remember when we were sure Vanessa would never wed anything but a horse, and look at her now.’ Sam laughed.

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Splendid. Driving Noel mad of course. They’ve just bought two more mares, both in foal. It’s funny, of course, but not funny too. The old place is really getting rundown. Except for the stables. Harry is facing another rates bill and quaking in his wellington boots.’

  ‘Tell him not to worry,’ Sam said quietly.

  She eyed him carefully and said, ‘I’m not sure you can afford to keep doing this. ‘

  ‘I can afford it.’

  ‘Really?’ she asked, uncertainly.

  ‘Really.’ He paid the bill and rose suddenly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let me show you something.’

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Jane asked, smiling. She had suggested Sam drive, on the pretext, quite false, that she was uneasy with London traffic. She knew how much he enjoyed the car.

  ‘Wait and see,’ he said. Sam drove out towards the East End and after a while Jane was pleased enough that she had allowed him the wheel. He had lost her completely, down in twisting mazes of streets she had rarely, if ever, seen, among the warehouses and bombsites of London’s dockland. Eventually he drew up at the back of a riverside building, blank-walled and decaying, and got out, helping Jane as well from the vehicle. Street children gathered to stare, and the bolder came up to gaze at their reflections in the Jaguar’s gleaming wings.

  ‘I feel like Marie Antoinette,’ Jane said. ‘Are you sure we’re quite welcome here?’ Sam grinned.

  ‘We’ll just be a moment,’ he said. He took her arm and led her round the corner of the building and down a narrow cobbled alleyway, towards the river whose wet and sour smell drifted up to greet them. He seemed at ease and familiar in these surroundings, just as he had in the restaurant, so much so that the incongruity of the car, and her smart tweeds and his own well-tailored suit apparently did not occur to him. At the end of the alleyway they found themselves standing on the edge of a deep slip of oily water in which was moored a large vessel, a tugboat, rust-stained and businesslike, with huge padded bows, and her decks taken up by heavy winches.

  She appeared unoccupied but Sam, leaving Jane comfortably seated on an overturned crate, said, ‘Just one moment,’ and clambered, uninvited, up the steel gangway extending from her deck to the dockside. He wandered off round the far side of the black-painted wheelhouse, and returned with his hand companionably on the shoulder of a man in dungarees who carried a paint bucket. ‘Come aboard,’ he shouted to Jane, who hesitated, and Sam ran down the gangplank again to assist her.

  ‘Are you quite sure we’re welcome?’ she said again, but he only took her arm, without answering, and led her up to the deck.

  ‘Stop fussing,’ she said, annoyed, as he carefully helped her over the side. ‘I was a Navy wife once, if you recall.’

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ he smiled. ‘Forgive me.’ The man with the paint bucket had wandered back to the starboard side and Sam led Jane after him. ‘Where are we going?’ she demanded.

  He only smiled. There was a ladder propped up against the red-painted stack and the man she had seen was climbing it once more, paint bucket in hand. He recommenced his work as she watched, amazed, carefully filling in the last neatly stencilled letter of the name: Mary Hardacre.

  ‘Sam?’ Jane asked, uncertain.

  ‘I’ll name the next one after you,’ he said.

  On the drive back to Soho, Jane Macgregor really began to absorb quite how far Sam had come and where he was going. At first she simply repeated, almost to herself, what she had said on the dock.

  ‘It’s a real boat, Sam.’

  ‘You mean not just the Dainty Girl?’

  ‘Well, perhaps I do. I can’t get over it. It’s so big.’

  ‘She’s a sea-going tug, Jane. Not that big really, at 125 feet; she just looks big on the river. But she’s powerful.’ She was, too; 3,200 horsepower in her diesels, enough to haul a good-sized freighter through the North Atlantic.

  ‘Is she really yours?’

  ‘Most of her. She sank in the Solent. We raised her, and then I bought her. I had to stretch a bit. I even sold something, and I don’t like selling things. Jan was glad. He says I’m a squirrel.’

  ‘What did you sell?’ she asked, curious.

  ‘A little haulage company.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a haulage company,’ Jane said, again amazed.

  ‘Ah, you should watch more clos
ely,’ he teased. Then he said, ‘I got involved last year shifting a lot of rubble from a couple of old aerodromes they were breaking up. Got a contract from a chap down in Sussex who was doing some construction, and needed some site-fill. Thought it was easier to do the transport myself, rather than pay someone else. Worked well, too. I had my contract from the RAF for taking the rubble away, and of course the chap I sold it to contributed as well, and I ended up with four lorries as well as my profit.’

  ‘Do I understand you got paid twice for shifting the same rubble?’

  ‘Not exactly. I got paid for clearing the site. Then I got paid for filling another. One man’s broken up runway is another man’s site-fill.’

  ‘I think you’re a rogue,’ Jane said, but she smiled.

  ‘An opportunist,’ said Sam, chiding gently. Then he added, ‘An opportunist is a rogue in a Savile Row suit.’

  He stopped the car in front of the building on Dean Street that housed a florist’s shop on the ground floor and his flat on the second. He got out and went round to open her door. He handed her the keys, and escorted her to the driver’s seat. As she got in, he said quickly, ‘Just wait,’ and dashed round behind the car and into the florist’s shop. He emerged before she had time to readjust her driving mirror, and was standing at her window when she looked up, holding out a single red rose.

  ‘Sam.’

  ‘Aunt Jane.’ He handed her the rose through the open window, kissed her cheek and stood waving in the middle of Dean Street, oblivious of traffic, as Jane drove away.

  After the Jaguar disappeared round the corner into Old Compton Street, Sam stepped back on to the pavement and stood, hands in pockets, looking abstractedly at the traffic, while trying to decide what to do. He had an appointment at Lloyds at five o’clock, and a date for dinner and theatre with a young lady called Georgina something-or-other whom he’d met at a party the week before, at seven. But there was still an hour or two of afternoon left and he felt urgently he should do something with it. There was paperwork lying on his desk in the flat, and he had promised to telephone Jan with his decision over a sunken coal-barge in the Clyde. But the day was springlike and lovely and he seemed to be spending entirely too much time indoors of late. He wished he had a car in London, and wondered idly if Hardacre Salvage could afford to replace the old banger he used up north with something a bit more extravagant. The wood-rimmed wheel of Jane’s XK 120 left its phantom shape yet in his hands, like the morning-after memories of a lover. He wandered off, slowly, down Dean Street. There was a Jaguar showroom not far from there that he had noted idly one day, and it was a perfect afternoon for window-shopping …