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

by CL Skelton

  ‘You’re still here,’ she said, softly disapproving.

  ‘Why are you up?’ he said. ‘It’s three in the morning.’ She shrugged and smiled, stepping properly into the room and softly shutting the door.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep. I came down for some milk and I saw the light.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Oh, of course. It’s just age. I often can’t sleep, these days.’

  He leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes again. ‘Oh, I could,’ he said.

  ‘Go to bed, Sam. You’ve done enough.’ He shook his head.

  ‘I haven’t. I can’t yet. I just can’t get it to work.’

  She was still standing at the door. She said, ‘Excuse me a moment,’ and half-turned from him. She had suddenly remembered her hair, and was quickly winding it up round her head and securing it with hairpins, the old-fashioned kind, from her dressing-gown pocket. She was suddenly shy of him, and he remembered that she was of that generation of women who were not seen publicly with their hair loose. He turned away until she was done.

  She came then and stood behind his chair, her strong old hands light on his shoulders. She looked down at the sheets of paper on the desk.

  ‘Having second thoughts?’ she asked.

  ‘About what? Taking this on?’

  ‘About saying no to Harry,’ she said. She smiled. ‘It would have been easier.’

  ‘No. I still think I was right. And I still think Harry understood. Noel had to have it. First, anyhow.’

  ‘No regrets?’

  He paused, thought for a while, and then said, ‘I don’t, Jane. I don’t have regrets about things. I like life the way it is. Most of the time. If I had my whole life to do over, the War, Ampleforth, all this,’ he waved one hand over the paper evidence of his years of work, ‘Janet, even,’ he smiled wryly, ‘there’s only one thing I’d do different.’

  ‘Be born into a different family?’

  ‘There’s an idea!’ He laughed. ‘No, not that. No. I’d just have taken that bend at thirty-five.’

  She was silent, her fingers gently smoothing the long grey streaks of hair back from his temples. ‘Still with you, Sam?’ she said.

  ‘Every day. For the rest of my life.’ He leaned against her and said, ‘I wish I was at sea.’

  ‘Go to bed, love. You’re so tired.’

  ‘I won’t manage it, Jane. I’ve done my best. My level best. It’s not enough.’ He paused. It had never happened to him before. ‘It’s beyond me,’ he said.

  Still, he didn’t give up yet. The next morning he left the house and drove round the whole of the East Riding, seeing people. Some things were always better managed face to face. He tried other angles, other ways, other friends. He would even have approached Erasmus Sykes again, but Erasmus was dead, since the spring. He felt better for being out and about, but he made no progress. It was Friday. He had two days left yet, but he knew in his heart it did not matter. He’d run out of options before he ran out of time.

  And so, late on Friday afternoon, he was once again sitting in Emily Barton’s kitchen of The Rose at Kilham. It was exactly a week since he had last been there. It felt like a month.

  Emily was making broth, chopping vegetables, swedes, carrots and onions from her garden, and scooping them up in handfuls and dumping them in a huge pot bubbling on the Aga. The kitchen was warm with the smells and steam of cooking and the afternoon sun pouring through the window on to the slate floor and well-scrubbed deal table. Sam was sitting on the window-seat, his legs drawn up and his long body folded comfortably, leaning against the wall. He said, ‘The damn thing was, Emily, I got so close. But I couldn’t. When you’re talking about money like that, it seems madness to be stopped by a few thousand pounds. But there comes a point when you just can’t go any further. I just couldn’t do it.’ His voice was flat, and tired.

  Emily said, ‘It doesn’t matter, Sam.’ She paused, her chopping knife stilled. ‘What matters is, you tried for us. Thank you.’ He didn’t answer. Emily went back to her broth, chopping feathery spring greenery off young carrots. She watched him as she worked. He sat quietly, his head resting back against the plastered wall, his eyes closed. The sunlight was harshly strong, reflecting a gleam of silver from the St Christopher at his throat and showing clearly the familiar weatherbeaten lines about his eyes. There were other lines, too. For the first time, Emily saw age on his face. He looked exhausted, as if he would sleep there, sitting in the sun.

  Emily felt guiltily that she had goaded him into doing something she’d never intended for him to do. She’d never intended that he do anything. She’d only been working off some of her own anger, against him. She wasn’t angry any more, only remorseful. The kitchen was peaceful, sun-filled. Emily liked the kitchen. In fact, she was beginning to like the Inn a little, though she’d not told Philip. She thought Sam was asleep and worked very quietly. But suddenly he said, ‘Emily, why is it that all the things I really care about in life are the things at which I fail?’

  She looked sadly across the room. ‘If I had the answer to that one, Sam, I’d be Aquinas,’ she said. She turned away, and noticed the small envelope that she had left lying by her earthenware jug full of wooden spoons. ‘Oh, Sam, I forgot,’ she said. ‘Jane was in this morning. She left this for you.’ He looked across politely and, before he could move from the window-seat, she quickly crossed the room and handed it to him. He took it from her, a plain buff envelope with his name on the outside, unsealed.

  He opened it and slipped out the contents. It was a small, good-quality sheet of notepaper which he carefully unfolded to reveal a little note in her lovely old-fashioned hand.

  My dear,

  I never thanked you for the rose that day in Dean Street.

  Love,

  Aunt Jane

  Clipped neatly to the note was her cheque for ten thousand pounds.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  They met on Monday morning, for the transfer of monies and deeds, in Driffield at the offices of Noel’s solicitor, Appleby. Sam’s own solicitor travelled up from London for the occasion, and he was accompanied by the accountant, John Cranswick. Cranswick still looked faintly stunned at their success, and Appleby looked intensely suspicious, of Sam, Sam’s solicitor and, indeed, of Noel. He looked a little as if, had the Hardacre family chosen just then to take their legal business elsewhere, he would have been just as pleased.

  ‘You’re quite certain this will be satisfactory, Mr Hardacre?’ he said to Noel. Noel didn’t say anything. He never answered questions that struck him as extraneous.

  Appleby was very formal and old-fashioned about the proceedings, the more so for their taking place in his formal and old-fashioned wainscotted offices. He wore a pin-stripe three-piece suit, as did Sam’s London solicitor and, indeed, Cranswick. Noel was dressed as always in his habitual tweed plus-twos and some sort of canvas-appearing army-surplus jacket. He had green wellington boots on his feet. Sam was wearing dungarees, a Navy-surplus jumper unravelled at the sleeves and, over that, his oil-stained fisherman’s smock. The two of them, in the dignified surroundings of Appleby’s office, looked like a third-rate rag-and-bone man and his mate dragged in off the street.

  ‘Shall we proceed?’ said Appleby.

  ‘Aye,’ said Noel. ‘Get bluidy on with it.’

  Cranswick opened his briefcase and began carefully laying out his rather complex collection of bank drafts, cheques and promissory notes. There’d hardly been time to even co-ordinate it, but as Sam’s solicitor pointed out to Noel’s grunting agreement, it was all, more or less, money. It took a while. Appleby, with Noel looking over his shoulder, went through everything with a jaundiced, indeed suspicious eye. John Cranswick, made nervous by the pressured rush of the week, fidgeted. Sam’s solicitor looked out of the window politely. Sam sat on the edge of Appleby’s desk, his arms folded, and looked at the floor. He heard a whispered comment from Appleby, a shuffling of papers, and Noel’s sour
grunt. There was a silence, in which he waited, smiling slightly. Noel tapped his shoulder and he looked up.

  ‘You’re short, Sam,’ he said.

  Sam’s solicitor turned round sharply from the window, surprise on his face, and John Cranswick let out a small sigh, and looked faintly green. Sam straightened up from the desk. He glanced at the stack of paper on the desk and looked up to meet Noel’s eyes. They both just looked at each other for a long moment, while the rest of the room held its breath.

  ‘Thought you’d say that,’ said Sam. He reached slowly into the back pocket of his denim trousers and drew out his wallet, which he opened with great care. Slowly he withdrew a single, rather battered pound note. Without expression, he handed it to Noel.

  Noel took it, eyed it carefully, perhaps checking it wasn’t counterfeit. He folded it once, and then unfolded it, and his craggy face twisted in a lopsided grin, ‘I think these gentlemen can take care of the rest. Fancy a beer?’ He waved the pound note lightly before him. ‘Happen this should cover,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, Noel, that’ll be fine.’

  They turned together, and walked out of the door, leaving behind them two baffled solicitors, one stunned accountant, and an awful lot of money and the title deeds to Hardacres lying on the desk.

  Sam parted with Noel at the pub, leaving the latter to return on his own to his farm cottage and his now extremely solvent farm, relieved at last of the deadweight of the house which had so long held it down. He got back in his lorry and drove, alone, to Hardacres. Rodney and Vanessa, his mother, the Bartons, Albert and Maud, the staff, and anyone else who was passing, were planning a champagne celebration, supplied by Harry’s yet willing cellar, of his success.

  Success was, he knew, an odd word to describe what was undoubtedly the worst deal of his life. The house and its policies had cost him a considerable fortune, and six months before he could have had them for free. As it was, he was deeply in debt in many directions, and drastically overstretched. It would take years of hard work to recover. He did not mind. He liked to work. Still, it was going to be something of a struggle. Jan Muller would later maintain that that one purchase, coming as it did at a crucial time in the development of Sam’s business empire, would make the vital difference for him between wealth, and real wealth, which he would never now attain.

  Again, he did not care. Money never had, and never would, mean anything to him. What mattered a little, and gave the property, for him, something of a new value, was that he had fought for it, and won. But what mattered far more, he knew, as he drove up the driveway and the house came in sight on its rise as he cleared the shadows of the beech wood, was that he had saved it. He stopped the lorry for a moment and sat looking out through the dusty windscreen at the eccentric old brick structure softened by summer sun. The love he felt for it was a composite of effort and annoyance, memories and hopes, past joys and past sorrows. Everything he was had its roots there, all the people he had loved had set foot within its walls. He shrugged and restarted the rough diesel engine. He had, like Harry before him, taken on a duty he would maintain for the rest of his life. It was safe now, as long as he lived, and it would shelter his family as it had sheltered so many throughout its ancient years.

  He parked the old lorry squarely in front of the open door. The house was not exactly graced by it, but it might as well pay a little homage to what earned its bread. He went in slowly, and alone, thinking with a smile that, as always, he still had no keys, because Hardacres had no locks. But keys or not, it was his.

  Inside there was a tremendous silence and he knew, by a deep-rooted instinct, that there was no one at all within. Such an occurrence was so rare that the house actually had a different, virginal feel about it when it happened. Vanessa and Rodney and Mary were out on their horses; he’d seen them in the bottom field. And he had passed Mrs Dobson, with Mrs Bennett in the front seat of her Ford Popular, as he came up the drive. No doubt they were out for some late provision for the party. His mother, of course, no longer stayed in the big house, but in the cottage that Harry had left her. Within an hour the house would be filled with people, but right now it was his alone, and he was rather pleased.

  Feeling suddenly reverent, he walked slowly into the great hall and stood, his hands in his pockets, looking up around him in a slow circle, at the two-storey walls filled with paintings in their heavy gold frames, at the graceful sweep of staircase and gallery, and up to the skylights lit bright with blue summer sky above. His fingers in the loose pocket of the smock closed automatically on the guttie’s knife he yet carried, and he looked up to the portraits of his great-grandparents and suddenly grinned.

  He wandered through, slowly, to the drawing-room, a formal and beautiful room, infrequently used, but festive now with freshly cut flowers and a table spread with white linen, on which glittering rows of crystal glasses were set out in anticipation of the party. There were silver trays covered with crisp damask napkins. It was evident that Mrs Dobson had been half-way through her preparations when she dashed off to the village.

  He circled the room, his fingers still wrapped around the string-bound handle of the knife in his pocket. He stopped and stood before the huge fireplace with its heavy carved mantel and marble pillars, its brass fender and fire-irons, and screen. On the mantel, below the ornately-framed mirror which reflected the entire room, was the assortment of family photographs in varied, silver frames that had gathered, and stood there, for generations. There was Harry and Hetty on their wedding day, and beside them a small oval daguerreotype of Judith Winstanley. There were photographs of most of the children, as babies, now looking so alike as to be hard to tell apart, though a generation or two might separate them, pictured there in the same family christening robe. There was a wartime portrait of Peter in RAF uniform taken six months before he died. And one old, badly-faded picture of Jane Macgregor and her husband, Sir Ian, stalking in Scotland. At one end of the mantel was the slightly blurry photograph Harry had taken of himself and Terry a year after they entered Ampleforth. They were standing before one of the grey stone walls, laden with Virginia creeper, the two of them together in their solemn, graceful black habits, laughing eternally at some private joke. He could not, looking at it, tell which was himself and which was Terry. He glanced over the rim of the photograph at the older, greying man alone in the mirror, and abruptly turned away.

  He went through to the empty, silent kitchen, his footsteps suddenly loud on the stone floor. The fridge was neatly packed with bottles of champagne, patiently chilling. He took one out and carried it back to the drawing-room, setting it down carefully on the white linen of the table, beside the glasses.

  He undid the gold foil, and began slowly levering off the wire from the cork. He heard Harry’s voice saying, ‘Don’t shake it up, you damned idiots,’ as he and Terry sprayed champagne froth gleefully and wastefully all over the dining-room ceiling at countless family parties. He did not shake it now, but gently eased the cork out with his thumbs until it slipped free with the subtlest of pops and an airy breath of wine smoke.

  With quick expertise he tipped the bottle over one wide-mouthed glass and caught every frothing drop. He filled the glass and walked with it into the centre of the galleried hall. He stood alone, an incongruous figure in his working clothes, holding the bubbling glass. He looked up and grinned once more at the portraits of Sam and Mary and toasted them, smiling, drinking from the glass.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m home.’

  He turned and went back to the drawing-room, and stood once more before the mantel, looking quietly at the photographs and sipping the champagne. He finished the glass and set it down beside the open bottle. Then, very carefully, he chose a second, clean glass, and with equal care he poured the champagne again, filling it right to the brim. He set it, still without spilling a drop, on a small table in the centre of the room. Then he turned and walked to the door, looking back once at the full glass with its tiny haze of bubbles, alone on the dark table. He
heard Harry’s voice again, quoting

  … A ghost may come;

  For it is a ghost’s right …

  … To drink from the wine-breath …

  He went out, leaving the glass on the table, and shut the door.

  Sam didn’t move into Hardacres for over half a year. He wasn’t in a hurry. It had waited forty years for him and could wait six months more. When he did leave his Bridlington flat, in October of 1957, it was more because he was obliged then to vacate it for the new owner coming in. He had sold the flat, and the entire building, as part of his efforts to raise money. He didn’t really need it now, anyhow. He was really based in Hull where the deep-sea tugs were berthed, and where he kept most of his workboats. Still, he felt a strong tinge of nostalgia as he dismantled it, removing what possessions would go with him to the big house. It had been his first real home and it was rich with memory, much of it of Janet Chandler. Her wedding was set for 20 December, in London. He was to be Jan’s best man. It was a situation at once ridiculous and obvious. Jan had no family and he was, despite everything, Jan’s closest friend. He had threatened he might change places with him at the last moment, and make off, like Lochinvar, with the bride. But Jan wasn’t too worried. Janet was the sort of bride nobody made off with except by invitation, and they both knew, Sam most of all, that the invitation would not be forthcoming. He was no longer angry, or even hurt. He was wistful and would probably remain ever so slightly romantically in love with her all his days, but it was nothing he couldn’t live with. He knew very well it was possible to live with almost anything.

  He sat on the edge of the desk, smoking, looking around at the boxes and crates on the floor. All he was taking were his books, his clothing and his paintings. Hardacres hardly needed his auction-room furniture to grace its halls. He heard a solid rap on the door which he recognized as Mick Raddley’s, and called, ‘Come in, you old bugger,’ and then hoped he was right. He had been. Mick clumped into the room and looked around at the chaos of packing without comment. He took his pipe out and began to fill it, as Sam got back to his packing.