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

by CL Skelton

  But Joe aside, there wasn’t a one of them fit to stand in Sam Hardacre’s shoes. Nor was there, ironically, room any longer in the Britain of 1950 for a man to step the length of Sam Hardacre’s stride. From boyhood, Harry had known that he himself would never be his father’s heir. Even when his inheritance was only a fought-for stance on the fish quays, Harry knew that Joe was his father’s son: tough, independent, fierce if necessary, though Joe, God help him, had always lacked old Sam’s inherent decency. But Harry was his mother’s child, a gentle, contemplative person who rose to challenges of the intellect, not the body. He was no coward and no weakling, having distinguished himself in his brief military career. But he was no fighter either, and Sam’s world had been a fighter’s world. Harry had sheltered serenely in the backwater of the role of second son until, of course, Joe’s suicide thrust him unwillingly to the fore. Since that day, he had done the only thing he could do; he had conserved. But conservation, he was beginning to discover, was a fool’s paradise, as his son Noel was always quick to point out. Harry did not mind that life, and changing fortunes made it impossible to advance. He had no wish to advance. What he did wryly resent was that there was no way, in the tumultuous, inflationary world of postwar Britain, simply to stand still. Death duties, rising taxation, rates, fuel costs and wages all chipped away at his fortune. Harry was left like a seaside child with his sandcastle under siege by the tide.

  Harry thought it distinctly odd, if not downright unfair, that none of all the family had inherited the financial genius of his father, but it appeared none had. Of the original family, there was only himself and his younger sister Jane left, of course. Jane had done her best, actually, Harry thought with a smile, at least in the terms that their Edwardian coming of age had allowed. Jane had married money; old money, too, and a title, becoming the wife of the heir to the Macgregor of Strathconon. But Jane’s husband Ian had died at sea in the First War; Peter, the son of her brief marriage, died in the air in the Second. The title and Estate had passed to distant cousins, and though Jane was well provided for, and even maintained a house in Strathconon yet, the Hardacre connections with Scottish wealth were more or less severed. In fact, two wars had dealt harshly with all the family, so much so that they had become a microcosm of the nation itself, which had by the end of the first half of the century lost so much of its wealth, territory and human potential, to violent history.

  In fact, Harry thought, warming to the premise, it was quite possible that the wars, between them, really offered the answer to the decline of his family. What might have happened had Jane’s son Peter lived? Or if Joe’s son, Arnold, had survived the 1914-18 conflict and taken his young French wife on into his father’s business world instead of leaving her behind, a widow at seventeen? Harry scratched his head ruefully, recalling the long-ago entrance of the lovely black-clad young Frenchwoman into his household and his life. It would have made his own life, and Hetty’s, very different, no doubt. Harry was sure the key lay with Arnold, for Joe’s two daughters, Maud and Emily, had taken their own ways in life, and neither way had led to real money. Emily had married the detective Philip Barton and had led, until this year, a solid middle-class existence as he rose through the ranks of the London police; until, that was, Barton had taken this mad idea of owning a pub and had moved his protesting family, lock, stock and London accents, to The Rose at Kilham. Maud’s marriage had at first promised even less financially than Emily’s, when she had wed the father of her illegitimate daughter a year after the young lady’s birth. Albert Chandler was then a hardworking, hard-up trumpet player, with as uncertain a future as possible. That had not stopped the artistic and romantic Maud, and for once the Hardacre luck held. Albert was in Hollywood now, with Maud and their daughter Janet, and though none of his film compositions had quite touched the heights of ‘Theme for a Lonely Woman’, there was hardly a major film made these days that didn’t find his name on the credits somewhere. But that was nothing compared to his daughter, of whom he was, in his letters, understandably proud. Janet Chandler was exactly twenty-four, by Harry’s information (although by Hollywood’s she was nineteen for the third year running) and in her latest film, Destiny’s Daughter, her name was above the title. The film had amused Harry no end; Sam’s great-grand-daughter, with platinum hair and glowing lips, played a resistance heroine in wartime France, the poor child of a Breton fisherman. Still, Janet Chandler’s almost unreal wealth would be of little use to Hardacres. It was a place she had last seen twenty-two years ago at the age of two, when she had been singularly unimpressed.

  No, Joe’s daughters would not provide the Hardacre heir nor, most certainly, would his own. Vanessa was the chief sinner his bank manager had in mind. She had been shovelling Hardacre money down equine gullets for the past ten years, with the able help of Rodney, her husband. The Gray contingent came down heavily on the debit side of the book.

  And then there was Noel. Noel was the true enigma of the family. He had energy, toughness, an unimaginable capacity for hard work, untrammelled by the slightest trace of, say, Maud’s romanticism, Harry’s own conservatism, Vanessa’s dim county pretensions, or the slightest touch of sentiment at all. Far from having to cry out for practicality as Harry for ever was obliged to with Vanessa, with Noel he had to take constant blocking action or else Noel’s ruthless practicality would have wiped every trace of dignity and beauty from the face of both house and land. Harry personally felt that Noel was never happier than during the war, when the national emergency enabled him to take progressive and destructive steps that peacetime would never allow. It was then, tearing out the centuries-old yew hedge, sowing the grand sweep of lawns in corn, turning Mary Hardacre’s treasured grape arbours into impromptu chicken runs, that Noel had excelled. Hardacres to Noel was not a treasure but an adversary: he did not husband it, but raped it at every chance. Only Harry, hemmed in by debts, stood between Hardacres and Noel’s full brutal intent. And yet Noel, and Noel alone, kept it running and made it grudgingly, and only just, pay. Even were Noel not his son, Harry knew he would never give in to the terrible temptation to send him packing. Hardacres needed Noel as it needed no one else, and like a battered wife it must cling to him to the end.

  And yet Noel, Hardacres’ grudging saviour, had brought about the one disaster that would inevitably, Harry was sure, lead to its destruction. For, six months ago, Harry had made the first, only, financial coup of his life; a stroke of his father’s wily genius descending in solitary splendour on his modest second son, as effective as it was uncharacteristic. And Noel, God damn his feisty temper, had in one moment tossed it away and, with it, their financial salvation.

  Hardacres was a unique house. It stood in Yorkshire where great houses were built of stone and it had, for reasons lost in Tudor antiquity, been built in red brick. There wasn’t another like it in the county. Artistically, that was no great loss; it was not and never had been a pretty house. It was square, massive, flat-roofed, graceless. Windows trimmed in sandstone were set in regimented orderly rows, like fussy buttons on a spinster’s frock. The roof was festooned in chimney pots and circled by an illogical sandstone balustrade. It stood on an artificially enhanced small natural rise, like a big square brooding hen. But it had stood there for hundreds of years, while history rolled serenely by and Yorkshire winds and rain had weathered it to a soft colour impossible for man alone to create, an old tree had grown around it and fallen and regrown. It was as impossible to re-create, once destroyed, as an aged oak tree, and inspired the same, mortal awe. And in the late summer of 1949 Harry Hardacre quietly let it be known that he intended to tear it down.

  Anyone who even remotely knew Harry would instantly take this announced intention for the bald lie that it was. But the officials of the National Trust didn’t know Harry from Adam. They did know he was the son of a Yorkshire herring gutter and drew their own, ready conclusions about New Money. Whereupon they promptly marched up to Hardacres (alias Watton Manor by Great Driffield) and confronted
the Philistine in his den. Wherein Harry Hardacre gave the sole theatrical performance of his life, a performance of such stunning veracity that the representatives of the Trust genuinely believed they were facing a heartless heathen who would shortly reduce the place to a massive heap of used brick and promptly build a bungalow on top. They argued; Harry pleaded poverty. They withdrew. Upon their return they made Harry an offer; the Trust would take over and maintain the property, allowing him and his immediate family the use of the West Wing in perpetuity. In return, Harry would stay execution. Harry dithered, hemmed and hawed and at last, graciously, over a glass of madeira, allowed himself to be thrown in the briar patch. It was a master work of which his father would have been justly proud.

  And then Noel bought his Nissen hut. It was, in its way, the ultimate Noel purchase. He got it for next to nothing, at a military surplus sale at the nearby and now disused wartime aerodrome of Hutton Granswick. Not only that, but he managed to persuade a fellow purchaser to load the dismantled structure on to his own newly purchased army lorry and cart it to Hardacres, all for the price of a couple of pints. Proudly Noel returned homeward in his pre-war Vauxhall, tailing the lorry like a happy sheepdog. The whole procession arrived at Hardacres almost simultaneously with a clutch of National Trust officials and solicitors all about to attend the final meeting with Harry Hardacre, at which all necessary papers regarding the transfer of title deeds would be signed.

  Unbelieving, they gathered in a wide-eyed pin-striped circle as Noel unloaded his treasure directly in front of the house. To be fair to Noel, he did not actually intend to keep it there; it was destined for the back of the stable-yard where it would become an instantaneous feed store, and the bargain of the year at that. But he was also genuinely very proud of it. He had saved a lot of money and got himself a tidy little much-needed feed store. He was fond of it. Noel was like that; he took fancies to things, and had favourites among his tools, his vehicles, his various farm structures. It was his pet, and now it was surrounded by a circle of citified dandies poking fingers at it and maligning it with well-bred narrow-vowelled tongues. It was late, he was tired and, deep in his heart, the sight of his father surrounded by the mockers of his new treasure was a little too much. Noel lost his rag.

  Noel’s temper was legendary through the pubs and auction rings and all farm gatherings of the North. He had thrown erstwhile companions through windows in his younger days, and was still known to fly into a towering rage at market if a favoured beast failed to make its price. Now Harry’s little cluster of Trust members and solicitors got their first view of it. Noel raged, told them to get their hands off his property and their feet off it as well. He was huffily told the property was imminently theirs and while things were being got off it, he could start with his prefabricated abomination. Whereupon Noel announced the deal was off, Harry intervened in desperation, Noel threatened physical violence and a solicitor offered to telephone the local constabulary. Noel said he needn’t bother since they were all just leaving anyhow, weren’t they. An unfortunate Trust member suggested it might be wise if they withdrew for consideration, taking their documents with them. Whether it was a genuine move or a threat Harry never knew. Noel took it as a threat, which toppled what was left of his limited restraint. He suggested that the documents be rolled up tight and stored by the Trust member in an unconventional place. The delegation withdrew, quietly and for good.

  Harry was left alone in the placid spring sunshine watching Noel construct his Nissen hut with delighted relish and counting the ultimate cost of that extravagant afternoon as the shadows of the great beech trees crept inexorably closer and evening descended on his great brick house. One day, he knew, that battered RAF pre-fab would prove to be the most expensive Nissen hut in the world.

  Oddly, he forgave Noel at once. Something in his mindless attachment to his tin treasure reminded Harry of himself, clinging as desperately to three floors and forty rooms of ageing brick. They would go down together, his son and he, Hardacres both, in their separate ways. And unless the most unlikely occurred and his bachelor son decided at this late date, and nearing fifty, to wed, their going down would be the end of it. There was no one left beyond them to carry the Hardacre name. Except of course Sam and Terry, but their brand of bachelorhood was, unlike Noel’s, no casual accident. And more even than Noel’s, theirs was for keeps. Which as far as the family was concerned was more of a loss, Harry knew, than Noel. For they, Sam and Terry Bisset Hardacre, twin sons of Madelene and Arnold’s fleeting wartime marriage, had always in his mind been the future. They alone carried the Hardacre name into the present generation. They alone, grandsons of his determined brother Joe, had within them the old verve and inventiveness and reckless courage that the rest of the family had lost. They were Sam’s heirs in this world if anyone was and they, lively, bright, social, extroverted troublemakers throughout their youth had, in early manhood, turned their backs on the world entirely. The Hardacre twins, famed through school for audacious pranks, through their army careers for outlandish devilment and no small degree of high living, the charmers of the family and its favourite rogues had, at the age of thirty, followed their mother’s Catholic faith to its ultimate conclusion. Side by side, as they had done everything throughout their twinned lives, they entered the Benedictine Abbey of Ampleforth, and left all worldly inheritance behind. It was a turnabout that was, to this day, beyond Harry’s comprehension.

  Harry had accompanied Madelene to Arnpleforth on that day. Hetty had refused to attend, not because of any resentment of Madelene but because the occasion was Roman Catholic and Hetty’s deep, wary distrust of Rome was the one remnant of her Yorkshire country background she could never shake. Madelene had wept, in a mixture of pride that her sons had given themselves to the Church, and sorrow over the lost hopes of grandchildren, and Harry, watching, said goodbye to Sam Hardacre’s brief dream of dynasty. It was over. Two wars and half a century later the family of the Herring King was nearing its end.

  A soft gravelly sound of horse’s hoofs outside the window caused Harry to raise his head from his paper-strewn desk. Vanessa rode by the window at a brisk determined trot and a moment later he heard her authoritative ‘Whoa, up,’ followed rapidly by the clatter of the big outer front door and the solid click of riding boots on the tiled entrance way.

  ‘Father?’ she was shouting, even as she strode down the hallway, colliding in the library doorway with Mrs Bennett who had come in answer to his bell. Mrs Bennett attempted to duck and scuttle rabbit-like away, as she always did when confronted by Vanessa of whom, for no logical reason, she was afraid.

  ‘Just tea Mrs Bennett, please, when Mrs Hardacre arrives.’

  ‘I can’t possibly stay, Father,’ Vanessa interrupted, unaware that she hadn’t been invited.

  ‘For two, then, Mrs Bennett,’ Harry said, with relief.

  ‘Father, the most outrageous thing has occurred,’ Vanessa continued, still panting from her ride, and her now full-blown indignation. ‘The most unbelievable, outrageous thing.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ Harry asked mildly, knowing it could be anything from a social gaff by some member of the Hunt, to another world war. Vanessa lacked proportion.

  ‘It’s a travesty,’ Vanessa went on, ‘a positive travesty. The consequences would be sheer disaster. Disaster.’ She shook her head, alarmed at her own thoughts, untying her blunt-cut hair and ruffling distraught fingers through its length.

  ‘Consequences of what, my dear?’ Harry asked, still mildly fumbling for his pipe. ‘And, by the way, have you seen Madelene? She’s late.’

  ‘I frankly doubt Rodney and I could possibly go on. We might as well write off the winter’s meets right now. Just write them off. Tragic for Rod of course, and a complete disaster for Mary.’

  Mary was Vanessa and Rodney’s five-year-old daughter, and the entrance of her name into the catalogue of sufferers intrigued Harry to repeat, ‘What, my dear? Consequences of what?’

  To which Vane
ssa replied only, darkly, ‘Noel.’

  ‘Ah, Noel.’ Harry was getting the picture. He found his tobacco pouch, unfolded it and plumbed its damp sweet-smelling depths with practised fingers. ‘You haven’t seen Madelene?’ he asked again.

  ‘Madelene?’ Vanessa looked blank. ‘Of course I’ve seen her. She’s in the ditch.’ Her tone of dismissive boredom seemed to indicate that the ditch was Madelene’s natural habitat.

  ‘Where?’ Harry shouted, instantly alert. ‘How? Has she had a smash? Is she all right?’

  Vanessa blinked, looking surprised at his excitement and said in an ordinary voice, ‘Of course she’s all right. Do you think I’d be standing here if she wasn’t?’

  Harry thought solemnly for a moment and said, ‘In your case, I’m just not sure. Why didn’t you tell me she was in trouble? I’ll go down for her right now.’

  ‘You needn’t bother. I’ve sent Noel on the tractor to haul her out. Everything is quite under control. You see, I am quite responsible,’ she added, miffily.

  ‘I’m sorry, pet,’ Harry soothed, ‘I was just rather taken by surprise. Concerned.’ He tried to bury his worries over Madelene. ‘Now tell me, what’s the trouble with Noel?’

  At that instant there was a heavy thud on the closed door of the library as a fist was slammed against it, and a voice growled, ‘That’s right, baby sister, talk about me behind my back.’ The door swung open and Noel, in his customary plus-fours and straw-covered tweed jacket stood glowering under his shock of grey hair at his father and sister at once. ‘What’s she been telling you, while I had my back turned, eh?’