by CL Skelton
‘Those bitches forgive nothing,’ she said, and it was only later he realized her unpardonable sin was not what she’d done, but that she wouldn’t crawl back into the fold, marry a local chap, and be forgiven. It was her feisty independence they hated, her refusal to engage in the endless gossip behind those lace curtains, the interminable discussion of sex and more sex at the factory bench, the lively and harmless street squabbles over children. She’d set herself above them, and that was mortal sin.
Still, the result of that independence was a long succession of meetings on some sort of no man’s land, half-way between Hardacres and Halifax, in country pubs and small hotels for long, leisurely dinners, after which he would go his way home, and she, hers. The sight of her little red Mini bouncing away defiantly alone down the road was a sight he grew to detest. But she would have it no other way.
It was in the midsummer of 1959 that he took Geordie, at last, to Scotland, to meet his grandmother. In all that time he had made no mention of what was happening to Jane. He could not bear to tell her of him until he was certain they would meet. He drove up to Strathconon with Geordie in an old van. The boy had never been north of the Border, indeed never been anywhere much further than Leeds, and was thrilled with the journey. He had a provisional driving licence and Sam, who was teaching him, allowed him to drive on the empty Northern roads. They reached Jane’s home late at night, but it was still light enough in the long Highland twilight to make out the shape of the house with its high, narrow gables, a house Sam had always loved. He went to the door through the dim garden, sweet with fresh rain on the lavender hedges, and rang the bell. Geordie hung behind, a little shyly, by the van. Jane answered the door herself; she had only a daily woman to help in the house. She peered out into the dim light and suddenly recognized him. She was utterly amazed.
‘Sam? Whatever are you doing here.’ He just grinned and half-turned, waving to the boy to join them. Geordie came forward, only slightly shy now and stood beside Sam for reassurance. Sam put his arm over the boy’s shoulders.
‘I’ve brought someone to meet you,’ he said. It was the sweetest moment of his life.
Chapter Twenty-seven
It was only after that summer meeting that he and Mavis Emmerson became lovers. Even then, it was not like any affair he had carried on before. He was not even certain, at first, that he wanted it to happen. He wanted her of course. He had wanted her from the day she drove up his driveway in her damnable Mini. But there was no way he could possibly pursue her, and certainly no way he could seduce. She was a mother, and an unwed mother, doubly vulnerable. He could not possibly endanger her hard-won reputation or, worse yet, risk the faith of the boy he had befriended. He felt with Mavis, as he would always feel over one issue and another, that his rights were few, if any, and his desires must always come last. He would never have used his not inconsiderable romantic talents to persuade her into his bed. Even were she persuadable, and he had his doubts. He did generally know his limitations, and he’d never met a woman like her before.
She had her way of meeting him half-way, not just literally, but emotionally as well. She insisted always on pulling her own weight, and she refused to lean on him one whit. It was both refreshing and infuriating. She certainly won his respect, but she frustrated his need to look after people, particularly the women in his life. He was a little old-fashioned that way, anyhow and, particularly once he was her lover, he wanted to be her protector as well, and she wouldn’t let him.
She didn’t consult him about things. She made her own decisions. Even when it became necessary to leave her job at the hotel and take another similar job elsewhere, she only told him when the matter was settled. All the women in his family, even Jane, who had more sense and more strength even than he, always turned to him for advice. Mavis didn’t. It was unnerving. And it was tantalizing.
Yet had she not made the first move, they would have remained only friends, though they may have been friends for life. And it was a move, when she did make it, of sheer spontaneity, a split-second decision and a reaction to the sheer undeniable pull of romance and, had a dozen different things been otherwise that evening, he knew it might never have happened.
They had been to dinner in a country pub, one of their many neutral meeting grounds. It was a filthy wet night in September and the red Mini, his arch-enemy, had chosen that occasion to develop an intermittent fault with its lights. Just occasionally, when Mavis would dip her beams, they’d go out entirely, leaving her alone in an unhappy little dark shell. It was scary, and since it had happened twice on her journey from Halifax and the second time had required a good several minutes fiddling with the recalcitrant switch to get the headlamps back on, she arrived at the pub nervous and unhappy. After dinner he offered to drive her home, but she wasn’t about to leave the Mini in the middle of Yorkshire alone. Eventually she agreed to let him follow her back to Halifax as an escort, to make sure she got home. He felt a malicious delight in keeping the fleeing little red car at the edge of his headlights all the way, like a recaptured lost sheep.
Outside her house he dutifully said good-night. She kissed him, she turned, and then suddenly she stood straight, still in the middle of the street, as if the weight of seventeen years of celibate respectability had suddenly landed on her at once. ‘God damn you buggers, just watch me now,’ she said aloud, to the silent closed curtains of the street. She took his hand and led him defiantly to the door, through it, inside her little house and up the narrow stairs of the old two-up, two-down, without ever releasing her hold. She took off her coat and threw it on the floor, and shoved open the bedroom door. She turned and grasped him about the waist. ‘I want loving,’ she said, in a whisper as fierce as a growl. And she got loving, too. He went home in the morning, a bemused, but happy man.
And so it began. They continued, naturally, since it’s a step that generally only goes one way. They conducted their affair, and themselves, with infinite restraint and respectable dignity. They were not children, not even young, and the whole thing seemed to have greater significance to Sam than he’d ever felt before about it. Besides, there was Geordie, whom he felt a tremendous need to shield and protect. They met at her house, and occasionally for a stolen night away in the countryside where no one knew either of them. Even so, they did not meet too often, and even then, she would not come to Hardacres and would certainly never spend the night beneath his roof. That saddened him, but he respected her need to stand alone, and found the cramped room in the little brick house in Halifax as romantic and lovely as the master bedroom of Hardacres with its ancient four-poster bed. As always, he walked his familiar tightrope with the morality of his church, though with something less than the old reckless ease. Still, he was quite contented with it all, as was she, both of them a little too adult and worn by life to even consider further commitments. It might have continued like that for years, but an incident in February of 1960 brought it all to a sudden end.
They were working in the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland, on a small coaster that had gone down a fortnight before after her cargo shifted. She had tried to make her way to Aberdeen, and failed, capsizing eventually and sinking in eighty feet of water midway between that port and Stonehaven, with the loss of two of her crew. The rest had been taken off by lifeboat, and the ship now lay on her side in shifting sand. Pete Haines had taken the Mary Hardacre up to Aberdeen from Hull, after Sam won the salvage contract, and Sam had gone with them. They were attempting now to send divers down to see what could be done to raise her.
It was, for February in that part of the world, a nice day, in that it was marginally above freezing, the wind was brisk but not savage, and it was only snowing part of the time. In between the sun actually shone. They’d done a good day’s work, mooring a barge over the site and making ready a diving platform aboard it, and were about to head back into Aberdeen for the night. Sam was standing at the lee rail, watching the crew prepare to raise anchor. He was tired and pleased with himself
and the day, having done a hard day’s work and got a lot done, which is a lot nicer than doing a hard day’s work and getting nothing done which, in the nature of things, often happened. He was thinking that he would telephone Mavis from Aberdeen. She was not hysterical about his work, nor did she resent it, as Janet had done, but she was healthily concerned, and he found it the decent thing to do to keep in touch. Two young lads were fooling around at the stern, capering, enjoying the same relaxation that he was. He watched them, good-naturedly, but Pete Haines, who had absolutely no sense of humour over work, shouted down a warning, which they either did not hear, or ignored. He came right out of the wheelhouse then and waved his fist. Sam thought him harsh, but he was wrong, in the next few moments would learn how wrong.
Somehow, he was never sure how, they ended up half on the rail, and half off, and in a moment of silly confusion one of them overbalanced the other, and a man went in the sea. It took two seconds, and in the third second Sam went after him. It was not heroism, but immediate instinct. He was nearest, and he knew, too, that the man, in the inexplicable tradition of some members of the maritime community, could not swim. There was nothing else to do.
Sam could swim, and very well. And he’d taken the moment’s pause to kick off his boots, so he had that advantage, too, over the crewman floundering in the choppy sea. But it was February, and the water in those near-Arctic latitudes was a handful of degrees above freezing. It shocked and numbed his entire body the instant he hit it, and he went right under before he could make his limbs move. He broke surface, angry with himself for losing sight of the man in trouble, but glimpsed him over the top of a wave, and struck out for him.
Swimming in that water was not like any swimming he’d done ever before in his life. It was almost impossible even to breathe. But he reached the man, taking more energy to do it than he’d ever imagined, and was confronted with the desperation of the drowning and found it difficult to fend off the grasping hands that would draw him under too. Eventually he got behind the man, calmed him with his voice, and managed to hold him above the surface while the crew aboard the tug cast a life-ring and lines.
Even that was difficult. The man was a lot heavier than he was himself, and a dead weight in the choppy shifting sea, though at least now he was not struggling. Sam realized quickly that the other’s calm was not reason, but shock, and the effect of the freezing water. He was already barely conscious. Sam got a line about him, with tremendous pains. His hands were too numb to manage the simplest knots without a struggle and the man himself was now incapable of helping, or holding on.
The distance between them and the tug seemed to have widened greatly, and he wondered dimly if they were being blown away from it, or if it was only imagination. The side of the boat was dark and very high above them suddenly, and the sky was darker too. In a handful of minutes it had turned from afternoon to the edge of early northern night. He was, just for an instant, afraid, not of the sea, but the darkness closing in.
He heard voices shouting, and the line was pulling them both towards the tug, and then they were within the reach, almost, of arms from above. Other lines were thrown down and he strove to reach one with his free hand, but had to give up because he could not stay afloat and do so, as well. The sea buffeted them against the metal side of the Mary Hardacre and he kicked away from it for safety. It is incredibly difficult to get a man out of rough water on to a sea-tossed vessel. Disinterestedly, almost, he began to assess their chances and was finding them diminishing. But between himself supporting the near-comatose seaman from below and those above drawing up the line he had secured about the man, they finally got him within arms’ reach and, with the effort of several strong hands, hauled him dripping and near-frozen on to the deck.
Sam felt himself relax, as if the whole thing were finished, which was terribly foolish, and he heard Pete Haines’s voice suddenly insistent, ‘Come on; now you,’ as if he needed reminding, as perhaps he already did. Cold is the most deceptive of enemies, the closer it comes to killing, the kinder it gets. He was already feeling lazily uninterested in the whole affair. He did actually reach the side of the tug again, and grasped the extended lifeline with stiff, frozen hands. The solid feel of it in his hands gave him purpose, and in a moment’s alertness he realized he was in danger, and struggled to use the line to get himself aboard. He was within a foot’s reach of help when a sudden swell tipped the tug savagely towards him and cast him, free of the line, back into the sea.
When he broke surface again, reality was fading. He heard shouts, distant over the sound of the water and wind, and something swished by him in the sea. He knew it was a line and tried for the rope with one hand, but it slithered, wet and icy, free of him. He tried again, but it seemed not worth the effort any longer. He wasn’t afraid, but out of a dim sense of duty he tried for the line once more, grasped it, hardly aware he was holding anything with his numb hands, and felt it slipping free. He let it go. He had done his best and the sea seemed suddenly gentle and kind. What stunned him briefly into a last action was the sudden desperation in Pete Haines’s voice shouting, somewhere far away, ‘Get him out of that water, for the love of God!’
He struggled for a moment to stay afloat, so that he could see where Pete was. The dark hull of the tug was a dim outline, washed in a watery mist. He wanted to see him, to let him know somehow, as he knew, that it didn’t really matter at all. But he could not. And then suddenly there was someone in the water with him. He heard a voice nearby, and glimpsed the arm of a swimmer and knew someone had gone in after him, as he had done after the first man. He was momentarily angry at Pete for allowing it, and putting yet another life at risk, but the anger faded with the flash of rationality that had preceded it.
It didn’t matter either; the sea was kind to all.
The swimmer reached him. He was dimly aware of the strength of arms around his numbed body, supporting him in the sea. Over his shoulder he heard the voice of Kevin Hawes, the Whitby lad he had cheered through the long night on the towed freighter, say with young authority, ‘All right Mr Hardacre, I’ve got you now.’
Consciously, gratefully, he relinquished the burden of survival to that strong young voice, closed his eyes, and let the watery darkness win.
He had no real awareness of being brought aboard the Mary Hardacre, only the fleeting distant sensation of the exhausting weight of his own body unsupported by water, and the oddity of feeling snow-blowing wind as warm. There was darkness after that and then, some time later perhaps, a realization that he was below deck, lying on a bunk, mercifully dry, someone having taken his wet clothing from him, and wrapped in swathes of blankets which seemed only to wrap tighter the ungodly cold around him.
Pete Haines was beside him, talking to him, trying to hold his attention, but he couldn’t understand what it was he was saying. And yet he was again aware of reality, and the true state of things. He knew Pete was trying to help him, was extending yet to him a lifeline, but he could no more reach out and grasp it now than he could in the icy sea. Again he wanted to thank Pete for trying so hard, and to let him know he had done enough. But he could neither speak nor listen. And then the cold began peacefully to fade, and with it Pete’s voice. In the last conscious remnant of his mind he sought the words of the confiteor, but they eluded him, like the ill-studied prayers of a child.
Chapter Twenty-eight
He awoke, sick and confused, in hospital in Aberdeen, having no recollection at all of how he got there. Later he learned that Pete had brought the Mary Hardacre into harbour there, and sent all three of her casualties into the Royal Infirmary, suffering from cold and exhaustion and Sam, eventually, from pneumonia as well. They had all been in the water far too long, and he’d been in far longer than either of the others. He was, for a while, extremely ill.
His first awareness was of Jane Macgregor sitting beside his bed. Her presence there seemed, at the time, as natural as the cool touch of her lovely old hands. His sense of time vanished for a whil
e, but she seemed always to be there, whenever he awoke. It was only later that he was stunned by her loyalty. True, he was in Scotland, and relatively, if not particularly, near her Strathconon home, but he knew she would have done the same had he, or any of the family, been in a similar state in Cornwall. He wondered who would hold them all together when she was gone.
He was ten days in hospital. It was an odd and chastening experience. He had never before, in all his adult life, been ill, and it took him as much by surprise as it did his stunned family. He was not, after the first night, in any real danger; it was the initial exposure, not the subsequent illness, that had threatened his life. But he was quite miserably sick with it, all the same. And when, after the ten days, he was released only on the agreement that he would go with Jane to Strathconon to convalesce, he did not argue. He was weak and still very tired, and he wanted only to sleep.
Jane drove him to her remote and beautiful home and he was there almost another fortnight. The clear Highland air was wonderfully refreshing and he slept twelve hours a night and spent the days lying on a sofa in front of her fire. She was a most attentive nurse. She spoiled him and protected him, answering the telephone always herself and letting no one but Mavis Emmerson even speak to him. She was quite severe and strict, but he did not mind. It was comforting to be looked after, for a little while, rather than always looking after everyone else.