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

by CL Skelton

  Sam laughed and said, more to himself, ‘That’s more than I understand, then,’ but he wouldn’t explain when the banker looked at him, the bright little eyes mirroring confusion. He only motioned him to be seated in the chair that Cranswick had occupied, and resumed his own place behind the desk. They went, together, over the same territory that he had covered with the accountant the day before and, at the end, Sam laid the difference between the assets they had freed, and the sum required, before Strathers.

  Strathers’s eyes went mournfully sad. ‘That’s an awful lot of money, Sam,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll get it back. I make an awful lot of money.’

  The banker did not argue. ‘Yes, you do,’ he said, but his voice was uneasy. ‘Things can change,’ he said cryptically. He looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Of course they can. Shipping has ups and downs. Scrap values vary. It may all fluctuate, but salvage isn’t going to vanish. Ships will always sink,’ he added drily, feeling rather as if he was on one, doing just that.

  ‘Yes, yes, Sam.’

  ‘The company’s existence is collateral,’ Sam insisted. The banker squinted his little eyes shut and leaned forward.

  ‘Sam, the company is you. Without you it’s a bunch of rusty tubs and three Italian restaurants.’ He leaned forward again, glancing over his shoulder to see that the door to the library was shut to any of the family. ‘I know the way you live, Sam, the work you do. Anything happens to you and the whole thing will come down like a house of cards.’

  ‘I’ve got life insurance.’

  ‘Not to that tune, you haven’t. Anyone insuring you to that level hasn’t got his head screwed on right.’ He looked down at his small pudgy hands, and up again, and said gently, ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I’ll give you what I can.’

  Sam nodded, glancing down at his figures again. ‘Thanks, Bill,’ he said, with sincerity, ‘I know you will.’ His mind was already elsewhere, as he rose to see the banker out. ‘Thanks. We’ll work from there.’

  There were other banks. He tried them all. He spent most of the day on the telephone, and the rest of it over his books. But he was not entirely alone. Jan Muller rang from Hull, having just spoken with the accountant. His voice was oddly strained. He said, rather than asked, ‘Sam, you will call on me. There must be some way I can help.’ He paused, and then said vehemently, ‘I want you to understand, I will do anything, anything to keep that man out of your house.’

  ‘Thank you, Jan. I will call on you. I’m going to have to.’ He thought a moment, still chastened from his own confrontation with Mike Brannigan. He said, ‘I say, Jan, just keep it financial, okay? Nothing physical.’ He was remembering too, that day in the Dean Street flat. ‘I don’t want my future cousin-in-law, or whatever the hell you’ll be, in Wormwood Scrubs.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jan said, laughing. ‘I am here when you want me.’ He hung up the phone. An hour later, it rang again, and Sam lifted it absently.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sam?’

  The voice was thin and crackly over the Atlantic cable, and furious. It was Janet, from New York.

  ‘I’ve just heard what that armour-plated bitch of a grandmother of ours has done,’ she shouted.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, delighted, forgetting the house and his columns of figures in an instant. It was so good to hear her voice. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Are you going to stop her?’ Janet said, not bothering with inconsequentials.

  ‘I’m trying, sweetheart.’ There was a silence, filled with the whisperings of a weight of ocean.

  Her voice came again, fainter, ‘Sam, Bernie thinks I spend every penny I make, but I’ve got money stashed away he hasn’t even heard of.’

  ‘No, sweetheart.’

  ‘Come on, Sam, don’t be an asshole.’

  ‘You’re as charming as ever,’ he said, ‘but no. Not from you.’

  ‘Why not?’ she demanded, ready to fight.

  ‘No, dear. Please. I’m grateful, but no.’

  ‘You’ll take it from Jan,’ she said, sounding hurt.

  ‘Jan and I are in business together.’

  ‘You mean, he’s a man.’

  ‘Maybe I mean that.’ She could hear in his voice that she wouldn’t change him.

  She said, regretfully, ‘All right darling. You know where I am if you need me.’

  He laughed, delightedly. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ He said goodbye and put down the phone, and felt the distance between them come in like a wave from the sea. For a moment he sat sadly quiet, and then he returned to his work.

  The family rallied round in a discreet, quiet way. Meals were provided, odd words of encouragement dropped his way, some rather comical, coming as they did from Vanessa and Rodney, whose necks he was trying to save. But he appreciated it. He held court, more or less in the library, for three days, and most of the nights as well. He did make progress. He persuaded his various banking establishments to raise their backing drastically, which was a considerable achievement, but one which unfortunately did not yet meet his needs. He made an arrangement with Riccardo which would result in a larger share of the future restaurant profits going to Riccardo, in return for ready cash for Sam just now. It wasn’t a particularly good deal, but he was pleased with Riccardo for being so tough with him, and he wrote it off as a wedding present to Ruth. He was getting there, but there was a long way to go, and it was Wednesday.

  At odd intervals, Noel stuck his dishevelled grey head round the door and offered his compliments. Noel was laughing at him, laughing at all of them, he knew. But he didn’t care. He liked Noel, and even admired him. His action, taken abstractly, was the best bit of Hardacre wheeling and dealing since old Sam’s day. Only, unfortunately for himself, he was at the receiving end.

  He spent much of Wednesday morning on the phone with Jan, simultaneously discussing a job they were involved in, in the Solent, and the possibility of selling one of their many and varied boats. Jan was, if anything, more determined than Sam, and aside from volunteering a really sizeable personal loan, at a comically low rate of interest, he was enthusiastically dismantling Hardacre Salvage in his head, and Sam was finding himself the one to put the brakes on.

  ‘Hey,’ he finally said. ‘Hold on. It’s my problem, not yours.’

  ‘My friend,’ Jan said in that solemn European way of his, ‘Mr Brannigan was my problem before I ever knew you. You give me only an excellent opportunity for a little settling of scores.’

  ‘You’re getting like my grandmother,’ Sam said suddenly, seriously. ‘Vengefulness isn’t good for people.’ He meant it, and was getting sorry he had got Jan involved.

  Jan laughed softly. ‘That is very Christian and forgiving,’ he said ‘but today, if you will excuse me, I choose to think with Moses. An eye for an eye, Sam.’ He paused for a long while and added quietly, ‘He is getting off lightly if he loses only a house.’

  Sam put down the phone and sat thinking before he called the next name on his list. He wondered briefly what precisely had happened between Mike and Jan in Palestine, and decided quite abruptly that he never wanted to know. There was a knock on the door, and he absently said, ‘Come,’ as he yet sat thinking, toying with his glasses on the desk before him.

  Vanessa came into the room, walking in her overgrown schoolgirl way, a lanky, long-striding woman, leaning forward hesitantly as if to make herself less of an intrusion. ‘Sam?’

  ‘Aye, Vanessa. What is it?’ His eyes were already on his papers before him, as he put his glasses back on.

  ‘Sam, have you a moment?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, still not stopping to look at her. She didn’t speak, and he realized she wouldn’t until he appeared not to be working. So he leant back in the desk-chair, took his glasses off again, and waited.

  ‘Rodney and I, well, we had an idea. We thought we might be able to help.’ He said nothing, and she, after another awkward pause said, ‘Well, it is our home you’re fighting for …’ He looked up, faint
ly surprised that that fact had got through to her. She smiled her jolly-hockeysticks smile. ‘So we thought, Rodney and I …’

  ‘Vanessa, please, could you just get to the point.’

  She shuffled nervously. ‘Of course, old thing, sorry to bother. We decided maybe we … we’ll sell the horses.’ She spoke the last in a great rushed mouthful.

  ‘You’ll what?’

  ‘The horses, old thing. I mean, they’re very good stock. They’d fetch a tidy packet. Naturally we’d be sorry, after all the years … but we could build up again …’ she shifted from foot to foot, her big candid eyes filled with willingness and misery.

  ‘Vanessa,’ said Sam, ‘I’d quite seriously rather see you sell your daughter.’

  ‘No, but I mean it. We will do it. We must help, mustn’t we?’ she said, with unhappy sincerity.

  ‘No.’ He waved her away.

  ‘But Sam …’

  ‘No. Besides,’ he said leaning back, his eyes mischievous, ‘whatever would we do without them? I haven’t had a good ride in months.’

  Vanessa looked startled, and blank. ‘Well,’ she said uncertainly, ‘we can soon fix …’

  ‘Out, Vanessa,’ Sam said, laughing and waving her away again.

  ‘But Sam …’

  ‘Out.’

  He picked up his pen again, but the phone rang. It was Pete Haines, from Hull.

  ‘Aye, Sam. I’ve got a buyer for t’ Dainty Girl. Jan says we can sell, if it’s all right wi’ you. She’s not much used any more, anyhow.’

  ‘No,’ Sam said, suddenly hasty.

  There was a long silence, before Pete, uncertain, said, ‘It’s a good offer, Sam. She’s not really worth that much, but t’ lad wants her.’

  ‘He can want. I’m not selling her.’

  ‘Understood you were looking for money.’

  ‘I am. But not that hard.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Pete said slowly. ‘You don’t need her, Sam.’

  ‘She’s my luck. I won’t sell her.’ There was a long slow laugh from the other end of the phone.

  ‘Well, well, lad. It comes to us all in t’ end.’ Pete laughed again, and put down the phone. Sam shrugged, and offered up a quick Ave of apology for his superstition before he went back to work. But he wouldn’t sell the Dainty Girl.

  Late in the afternoon he began to wonder if between scruples and superstition he wasn’t walling himself into a corner. He was beginning to have an inkling that it wasn’t going right, but he wasn’t about to admit it to himself yet. At ten o’clock that night, after he had eaten sandwiches at his desk rather than waste the time that dinner in the dining-room would have taken, there was another knock on the door. Before he could respond, the door swung open and Noel appeared, grinning in his old way.

  ‘Come in and shut it, there’s a draught,’ Sam said, by way of greeting.

  Noel ambled into the room, shutting the door behind him. He was dressed, as always, in his rough tweeds and farm boots. He wandered about the room, while Sam worked, and eventually arrived at the desk. He perched on the end of it and prodded at the stacks of paper. ‘Having fun, lad?’

  ‘Aye. In a way, I am.’

  ‘Bluidy fool,’ said Noel, amiably.

  ‘We’re all entitled to our own aberrations, Noel. Get off your father’s desk.’ Noel grumbled, but he got off. ‘Have a whisky,’ Sam said, ‘and pour me one, please.’ He was adding up a column of figures and not looking at Noel. Noel crossed the room slowly, his heavy boots making solid thuds on the padding of carpet. He paused at the sideboard, before the tantalus.

  ‘May I touch the sacred vessels?’ he said. Sam made the sign of the cross in Noel’s direction without looking up.

  ‘Ego te absolvo.’

  Noel poured two whiskys and returned with them to the desk. He handed one to Sam.

  ‘You’re mad as a hatter,’ he said.

  Sam took the glass and saluted Noel with it. ‘No worse than you.’

  Noel grinned, downed his whisky in one, and stamped off into the night.

  On Thursday morning, he dearly would have loved to stay in bed and sleep half the day. He’d been averaging four hours of sleep a night since Sunday and he was beginning to get very tired and, when tired, he was less able to fend off the logic of the situation, which told him he was losing. But he’d promised to call John Cranswick at nine, so he got up and dressed and went down to the kitchen to have coffee with Mrs Dobson, who insisted he have breakfast as well before he went back to work. He ate it to please her, but his mind was already too busy to let him feel hungry. He went back to the library, with a longing glance out of the front door. The day was beautiful and he ached to be outside. He’d been within walls for five days running, the longest such stretch in years. He saw Noel striding off over his fields and both envied and understood him. But he turned and went back to his desk and rang John Cranswick. Cranswick was grumpy at that early hour, and not in a mood to ease the blow.

  ‘Forget it, Sam,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you can’t do it. I’ve been over everything. It’s not possible. Look, Sam, I’m the accountant, not you. You know salvage, I know figures. Believe me, you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘It’s my time; I’ll waste it as I please,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve got till Sunday, and I’ll use till Sunday.’

  ‘Please yourself,’ said Cranswick, and hung up.

  Sam listened for a moment to the dialling tone and laid the receiver on its cradle. He sat looking across at the wall of books, their shapes, colours, sizes, outlines, familiar from his childhood. Then he put his head in his hands and prayed, ‘Please, just this once. I know I shouldn’t ask, but it isn’t really the money, and it isn’t really for me.’ He kept his head down for a moment then raised it, straightened his stiff back, picked up the phone and rang Jan to see what else he might possibly sell.

  As he was talking, he saw a familiar flash of silver-grey as a car, long and low, swept up the drive and past the library window. He half-stood to watch it and said, suddenly, ‘I’ll call you back, Jan, someone’s just arrived I’ve got to see.’ He dropped the phone on its cradle and ran from the room, crossing the great galleried hall in three long bounds, and met her at the door.

  ‘Jane!’

  ‘Hello, Sam,’ she said. She turned her cheek for him to kiss, but he threw his arms about her tall, bony body instead and held her to him, ‘Oh, Jane. I am so glad to see you. You can’t imagine.’ He stepped back, holding her at arms’ length. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were in Scotland.’

  ‘I was,’ she said; she glanced at her solid old, leather-strapped wristwatch, ‘precisely eight hours ago.’ She grinned with satisfaction, glancing over her shoulder at the silver Jaguar. ‘Not bad, eh?’

  ‘Jane, you terrify me,’ Sam said honestly. ‘At night as well?’

  ‘Oh well, my dear, I couldn’t sleep. Anyhow, I like driving at night. The roads are nice and clear, not all jammed up with nasty little Morris Minors.’

  ‘You’re becoming a dreadful snob,’ he said.

  ‘Just to tease my egalitarian nephews,’ she grinned.

  ‘Anyhow, I promised Emily I’d come down. It’s cheer-up time. She’s facing the season, and getting over Riccardo and Ruth. I thought she could use some moral support.’ She paused, eyeing him wisely, ‘Thought you might use some as well.’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ he said, smiling wanly. ‘If you but knew.’

  She took his arm. ‘Come now, find me some coffee and then we’ll take a turn around the gardens and have a little talk.’ Sam glanced over his shoulder to the library and she said, ‘Yes, you have the time, dear,’ for him.

  Jane’s arrival hadn’t really changed anything, but by the time he returned to the library, he had hope again. He remembered a man in Manchester for whom he’d been able to do a favour; a good, honest man who’d made him swear at the time that he’d come, in time of need, for the favour’s return. It was something he h
ad never intended to do, but he had learned something in the last weeks, and developed a new humility about taking offered gifts. The man, a self-made shipowner with a fortune that made Sam’s look like pocket-money, was delighted, as thrilled as a child to have been remembered. His cheque was in the post within half an hour and it took all Sam’s effort to make him regard it as a loan, and not a gift. He added the figure to the credit side of his financial balance. It was a long list of dribs and drabs, loans, repaid debts, small sales of property, realized investments, and plain old-fashioned cash. He felt he was building a castle out of matchsticks.

  So he continued, throughout the day, even at one point rewinning John Cranswick’s guarded confidence, at least for a little longer. He took time off for dinner so that he might join his family now that Jane was here. And then once again he returned to work. At eleven o’clock that night he was talking once more to Jan. And at two in the morning he found a couple of thousand pounds he’d quite forgotten he had. He made coffee in the silent kitchen to celebrate, and found a packet of Rodney’s cigarettes lying on a windowsill, which he liberated, having smoked all his own.

  He went back to the library, drank the coffee, black, so that he could keep awake, and lit another cigarette. Then, with a sudden shake of his head, he sat down to make a final tally. He had decided it was time to stop fooling himself, as well. He laid everything out in order, and began to combine figures, feeling as his columns grew and multiplied, rather as he did at the moment in salvaging a sunken vessel when one waited in desperate tension to see if the force of one’s lift, cable, or compressed air, or pontoons, was going to break the powerful suction of the ocean bottom and set the vessel free. He was very calm, very patient, and it took him forty minutes. At the end he sat staring quietly, then slowly and without emotion he drew a long black line diagonally across the lot. He leaned back in his chair, took his glasses off, and closed his eyes. There was then, quite softly, a knock at the door. He sat up, startled, and called, his voice sounding loud in the silent house, ‘Yes?’

  The door opened slowly and quietly, and a tall figure appeared just inside. It was Jane. She was wearing an old-fashioned nightgown, buttoned up to her fine, strong old chin, and a long woollen dressing-gown. He stared, uncertain why she looked so different, then realized that, for the first time in his life, he was seeing her with her hair down. It hung in a long grey braid over her right shoulder.