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

by CL Skelton

  Hardacre’s Luck

  The Hardacre Family Saga Book 2

  CL Skelton

  Copyright © The Estate of CL Skelton 2015

  This edition published 2018 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1984

  www.wyndhambooks.com

  The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Wyndham Books: Timeless bestsellers for today’s readers

  Wyndham Books publishes the first ebook editions of bestselling works by some of the most popular authors of the twentieth century. Enjoy our Historical, Family Saga, Regency, Romance and Medical fiction and non-fiction.

  Join our free mailing list for news, exclusives and special deals:

  www.wyndhambooks.com

  Also by CL Skelton

  from Wyndham Books

  Hardacre

  The Regiment Family Saga

  The Maclarens

  Sweethearts and Wives

  Beloved Soldiers

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Preview: The Maclarens by CL Skelton

  Preview: Wyndham Books: Timeless bestsellers for today’s readers

  Preview: A Shaft of Light by John Finch

  Preview: Sara Dane by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: Chasing Shadows by J Carmen Smith

  Preview: Lily’s Daughter by Diana Raymond

  Chapter One

  The last passenger off the Malton bus was a tall young man carrying a single cheap buff suitcase which swung lightly from his hand as if it were more than half empty. He was dressed in a sombre dark blue suit which, being slightly short at both wrists and ankles, gave the impression of something second-hand, and he carried an army greatcoat over his other arm. He hesitated for a moment, before stepping to the ground, as if he was uncertain yet that he had reached his destination. Then he descended the last step, one hand still resting on the dusty metal of the coach exterior. Almost reluctantly, he released his grip, and turned once around, swinging the suitcase easily. Then, like a homing bird, he set out with purposeful strides eastwards, in the direction of the sea.

  The uncertainty he had shown in the bus station was gone now, and he made his way through the streets of the small seaside city with the assurance of a native. He turned a corner, and felt, as he had known he would, a burst of seawet air, and a sudden gust of salty November wind that cut through his clothing. He hesitated, then set the suitcase down and slipped the coat on over his suit, but left it swinging open as he walked, more quickly, towards the waterfront. When he reached the broad promenade he crossed to the stone wall facing the sea, set the case down once more, and stood leaning over the wall, his eyes on the darkening distance, where the lights of two fishing cables bobbed on the rough sea’s surface like early stars. He stood there, alone, for half an hour, drinking in the remembered delight of the sea.

  It was getting dark, when he at last turned away. The lights of the town were coming on, and they looked cheerful and warm. He was aware suddenly of the cold, and the need to find somewhere to stay. He was aware of hunger as well, and the startling necessity of finding a place to eat. He rubbed one long hand over the short stubble of his hair, as if uncertain how to go about the next move. For so long, the necessities of life had been provided, an unthought-of part of the smooth order of the days. To have to seek them out was distinctly odd. Walking more slowly now, he set out along the sea-front towards the Harbour, the sound of the sea constant to his left, while overhead a huge grey-backed gull shadowed him, crying mournfully, hanging in the air above like a kite on a string. The young man turned to look at it, before it swept away in a widening arc towards Flamborough. Loneliness descended upon him, as it departed, a loneliness as deep, and physical, as grief.

  He found the café at the Harbour end of Queen’s Street. It was a small, dingy affair, with tired black and white checked curtains half-shielding its windows, and dust and grime obscuring the rest. But its light shone out welcomingly on to the wet cobbles of the old street, and the tang of vinegar and hot oil drifted into the windy evening. The young man stopped, setting down his suitcase, and studying the front of the building. He did not remember it, and yet it was clearly of considerable age; not something that could have sprung up in the three years of his absence. He felt in his inner pocket for his new wallet, and glanced within, in the dim street light, counting the few bills carefully. He replaced the wallet, and reached into his trouser pocket, withdrawing his small collection of silver. He counted that, too, smiling wryly. Three shillings and sixpence. He replaced it, also carefully, picked up the case, and crossed the road to the café. From the look of it, he wouldn’t likely find anything cheaper, anyhow.

  Outside the door he stopped, looking up, surprised, and a slow smile spread across his face, lighting his dark, somewhat sombre eyes. Across the doorway an ancient wooden board was fastened to the brick wall, and on it, in peeling painted letters, was written the name of the café. Or rather a name of the café, since the window boasted a painted sign of its own, proclaiming, ‘Charlie’s Chips’. But the name above the door, disused and weathered, said simply, ‘Hardacre’s’. He reached up slowly, and touched it with the tips of his fingers.

  Inside, the atmosphere was warm and steamy, smelling of oilskins and the fishy reek of sea-gear, and the air was thick with tobacco smoke. There were several small square and round tables, mismatched in size and finish, their surfaces marked with cup stains and cigarette burns. All but one were occupied by clusters of men in fishermen’s gear, smoking and talking. They all stopped for a brief moment as he entered, and eyes followed him as he walked uncertainly to the small counter at the far end of the room, where a woman in an apron stood by a large brass cash register, totting up a bill. He waited while she finished her transaction, and gradually the conversations recommenced. The young man sensed he was being discussed. He had ventured into one of those establishments whose customers were so regular and unvarying as to comprise virtually a private club.

  The woman, square-faced and unsmiling, handed him a stained, hand-printed menu from the limited fare of which he selected cod and chips and a pot of tea. She accepted his order and motioned to a solitary empty table beside the door to the kitchen. The young man sat, sliding his suitcase under the table, and swung
open his heavy coat. He did not feel at home enough to take it off. While he waited for his meal he looked around, discreetly, so that the fishermen would not think him rudely curious. The room was shabby, the tiled floor grubby with boot marks. The upper walls were stained darkly yellow with years of smoke. The whole place was permeated with the stench of stale cooking oil. On the walls was a selection of seaside postcards of large-bosomed women and skinny men in preposterous situations, and a few fading framed photographs of the Harbour, the Priory, and the Old Town. Half covered over was an ancient poster, printed in red on deeply yellowed white: A HARDACRE CAFÉ WELCOMES THE FAMILY. Below the lettering was a Victorian romantic watercolour scene of fanciful children on a fanciful, long-ago shore. The young man studied it for a long while, and then turned away.

  When the aproned woman brought his order, a grease-sodden portion of fish surrounded by limp barricades of chips on a smeary plate, he interrupted her hasty place-laying by pointing to the poster.

  ‘Begging your pardon, but could you possibly tell me where that came from?’ he said. The room stilled again, in response to his public-school tones.

  ‘What, dear?’ the woman said, not looking up. She used the word with tired, affectionless boredom.

  ‘The placard. The Hardacre Café placard,’ he said, pointing to it once more. She poured his tea for him, splashily, and looked up, vague eyes searching the wall.

  ‘Oh, that. Was always here, best I can recall,’ she said. She turned and was already making her way back to the kitchen when he stopped her again.

  ‘Is this a Hardacre café, then?’ he said. He was aware of the perversity of the question, in that he knew the answer, and was asking it, anyway, for reasons of his own. The woman stopped and looked queerly at him, perhaps in response to the faint note of displeasure in his voice.

  ‘Happen it were,’ she said, ‘would it make any difference?’

  She was defensive, and he quickly said, gentling his tone with a small smile, ‘It might. Is it?’

  She shrugged, more defensive and said, ‘It were a Hardacre café when we bought.’ And then, hedging, ‘Mind, that were a while ago. My father ran it then.’ She turned and hastened to the kitchen door, leaving the young man alone with his thoughts, and his cod and chips. He began to eat slowly, finding himself startlingly hungry and yet repelled by the quality of the food and the atmosphere of his surroundings. From time to time he glanced at the poster with something like annoyance. On one glance, his eyes met those of a big, weather-beaten man, with straggles of greying sandy hair plastered on his lined forehead, under his navy blue knitted cap. The man, dressed in yellow oilskin trousers and deep-cuffed fisherman’s boots, was conspicuous for having but one arm. His left sleeve ended in an amputee’s metal hook.

  He said, without introduction, ‘Now you’ve done it. Crossed our Mabel, you have. Be a long time before you get a smile out of her again, lad.’

  ‘Since when have you ever got one?’ a companion of the fisherman asked, over the pipe he was trying to light.

  The young newcomer grinned, an engaging grin that won a responsive smile from the one-armed man in the blue cap. ‘Sorry about that; I really meant no offence. Just curious, actually.’ He was aware of the quality of his voice sounding distinctly out of place.

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ the fisherman said. Then glancing to the kitchen door, from whence the sound of running water and clanging pots indicated Mabel’s preoccupation, he said in a lowered voice, ‘Aye, but you touched a sore point. Mabel might like to pretend that Hardacre sign’s an accident, but we’re no fools. Free bit of advertising, that is, and Mabel’s not one for passing up anything free.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the young man said, ingenuously.

  ‘No, reckon you wouldn’t. Now, you wouldn’t know about this, seeing as you don’t belong here,’ he explained quickly, ‘but time was when the name Hardacre over a café door meant something. Trippers used to come over from the West Riding and make for a Hardacre tea-shop first off.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the young man, finishing the last of his chips.

  ‘You mean you never heard of Hardacre?’ the man with the pipe said.

  ‘And how would he?’ the blue-hatted fisherman cut in at once. ‘His sort wouldn’t be eating in Hardacre’s in those days. Reckon he’s too young, anyhow, don’t you? Been a long time since Sam Hardacre’s day in the East Riding.’

  They discussed the young man pleasantly, as if he were not present. ‘You’ll have heard of Sam Hardacre, though?’ the fisherman said then.

  The young man nodded, sidestepping the question slightly. ‘He ran tea-shops?’

  There was a pause. The fisherman leaned back in his chair. ‘Lad, in my father’s day he didn’t just run tea-shops. He pretty much run the East Riding. Mind now, them’s bygone days. He was a reeght ’un, old Sam Hardacre. My grandfather knew him, down Grimsby way. My grandfather had a good herring coble and he knew Sam when Sam was just a quayside guttie. That’s where Hardacre money come from, you know. Started out selling rollmops, at the race meets. Opened cafés then, like this ’un. Made a lot of money at it. Time went on, he got big, got into hotels, heard he got into railways too, but who knows? Men get big like that, they end up with a finger in every pie. Though I’ll say for old Sam, he never changed much. Even when he was living in bluidy great house, down Driffield way, he still would come down to Grimsby and stand around harbourside, chat to folk, like he always done. Was a good man, Sam Hardacre. Ran good decent places, too, not like this rubbish,’ he waved a disdainful hand around the rudely decorated walls, mindful to keep one ear cocked towards the kitchen door and Mabel’s domain. ‘There was a day families could count on a Hardacre place, everything neat as a pin, clean, fresh. Used to say his wife, old Mary Hardacre, hersel’ used to come and check up on all his cafés, and if she found anything out of place, or a speck of dirt anywhere, she’d be down on her knees scrubbin’ it up hersel’. Then old Sam would hear and there’d be hell to pay. He was a hard ’un to work for, but straight, straight as a die.

  ‘Mind now, he’d turn in his grave if he could see this place, with his name yet hanging over the door. An’ our Mabel pretending she’d not got round to taking it down in forty years. Reckon there’s still the odd country soul comes into town is fooled yet, and if there’s one penny left to be fooled out of someone, our Mabel will have it.’ He laughed, swigging at his tea, but the young man didn’t laugh with him.

  ‘A course,’ the man with the pipe put in, ‘there aren’t any real Hardacre cafés left. Old Sam pulled out just after the war, the first one. Went into other things, I suppose. And his son Joe were a different kettle of fish. A different kettle of fish entirely.’ The first fisherman nodded sagely in agreement.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘Joe Hardacre. There was a reeght bastard, if there ever was one. Opened sweatshops all over t’ place until his own father had to come and close ’im down. Ran off to America then and got hisself in so much trouble he ended up jumpin’ out a window. Reeght funny how life is; two like that in t’one family. Still, it’s the way uv things.’

  ‘Aye,’ the pipe-smoker laughed. ‘Where there’s muck there’s brass, an’ on t’other hand, where there’s brass, there’s muck.’ They both laughed.

  The young man did not join in the laughter. He finished his meal solemnly, and laid his knife and fork carefully down, with an orderliness that defied the casual clutter of the table with its ketchup stains and sticky-necked bottles of fruit sauce and vinegar. Before he finished his tea, a process he was dragging out to allow himself a little longer in the sheltered warmth, he turned around in his chair and addressed the two fishermen who had spoken, ‘I wonder if you gentlemen could give me some advice?’ He was aware of the sideways glances from the other denizens of the café, as if any advice given must first be vetted by the entire company.

  ‘Happen we could,’ said the man in the blue cap, ‘if it were the sort uv thing we’d know anything about.’ He said it
with a mixture of reserve and modesty that signalled to the young stranger that he might just be overstepping the bounds.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, carefully. ‘There are two things actually. I am needing a place to stay for a while. That’s the first.’ He paused, judging himself wiser to obtain the first answer before venturing the second query.

  ‘Happen you’re at the wrong end uv town,’ the fisherman said slowly, tugging at one weather-reddened ear. ‘Hotels uv t’ sort you’d be wanting are all up t’other end. Mind, there’s the Station just up t’ road, but I don’t reckon you’d go much on’t.’ He shook his head, and his companion nodded sagely.

  ‘Actually,’ the young man said, ‘I wasn’t thinking in terms of a hotel. Something more permanent. A guesthouse, a boarding-house, really.’ He paused, and then said quickly, ‘Something a little less dear.’ There was a silence, as the room took in this admission of financial insecurity, and the blue-capped fisherman appeared to be assessing it, uncertain whether he would choose to believe it.

  ‘Something less dear,’ he said at last, to be sure he heard right. The young man nodded and gave one of his bright grins, which on this occasion won no response.

  The two fishermen whispered a moment together. ‘Reckon Jean Hewitt might have a room. Clean enough there, anyhow.’ They were talking, still to each other. A nod passed between them. The first fisherman again addressed the newcomer.

  ‘Place up St Hilda Street, Jean Hewitt’s, might do. Food’s good, tariffs fair enough. Jean’s a good sort, underneath. Mind you, takes a while to get underneath. Still and all, her bark’s worse than her bite. Jean Hewitt might do you. You’re sure now, though, you’d not rather a hotel?’ he added uncertainly.

  ‘Quite certain,’ the young man said, with another smile. ‘I’ll try Mrs Hewitt right now.’

  They nodded, and one said, ‘It’s number eight. Will I show you how to find it?’

  The young stranger shook his head. ‘I’ll find it,’ he said. He rose to his feet, wondering if he’d asked enough questions for one night. He imagined he probably had, but time was pressing. ‘And the other thing,’ he added. ‘I’m looking for work. Do you know of anything going?’