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

by CL Skelton

  ‘Alma, that’s another round on me,’ he said, gesturing to the multitude of glasses and to Sam as well.

  Sam sat down, a little amazed and said, eyeing the old fisherman warily, ‘You just won the pools?’

  ‘Ye could say that, lad,’ Mick returned, grinning, and there was a circle of laughter around the table. A pint of brown ale was placed before Sam and he drank it, still puzzled at Mick’s sudden extravagance. When he offered, a little uneasily because of the size of the party, to get the next round in, he was quickly dismissed by more laughter, and he began to realize something was going on he didn’t know about. He asked Mick, then, about the fate of the ship’s crew.

  ‘Safe and sound, lad, every one. Bit wet and cold, mind, but nothing that won’t repair.’

  Sam nodded, pleased, and said, ‘And the ship?’

  ‘Broke in two, just as they brought the last man off. Stern half’s gone down on her side and her bow’s breaking up on the rocks.’ He paused, as if in respect, and then, surprisingly, his grin returned. ‘Still ’tis an ill wind, lad, that blows no good.’

  Again there was laughter and the Navy man, Haines, suggested another round. Mick looked at his brother-in-law and they made a little nod. Mick rose from his place, tapping Sam’s shoulder as he left the table, and Sam realized he was meant to follow. Mick went out through an end door of the room into an alleyway beside the pub. Sam recognized the brother-in-law’s car parked up the side street, and followed the old fisherman to the vehicle.

  Mick flung the boot up and reached in for something shadowed and bulky. Then he paused and said, ‘What d’ye say, Sam, does we give ’em salmon again, or d’ye think peaches fer this ’un?’

  ‘What?’ said Sam, mystified.

  ‘I can give ’em this ’un, too, only your guess is as good as mine. Labels are so drenched it could be owt.’

  ‘What could, Mick? What are you talking about?’

  Mick stepped back and let the dim light of a distant street lamp fall on the car boot. ‘These,’ he said.

  Sam leaned over the old fisherman’s shoulder. The boot of the Austin was crammed with battered wooden cases, through the splintered boards of which he glimpsed the shine of smooth metal.

  ‘Tins,’ he said. ‘Cases of tins.’

  ‘Salmon, pears, peaches, pilchards and one of beans. Bit wet on t’outside, but reeght as rain within. Dandy thing about tins; don’t mind a bit o’ salt water at all.’

  ‘Where’d they come from?’ Sam demanded, and at the same moment he knew. ‘The wreck.’

  ‘Seas breached her forrard hold. Seems she come from Canada. Ain’t seen so much good food since afore the war,’ Mick grinned. ‘An’ t’ sea weren’t askin’ for ration cards.’

  Sam was silent, staring at the carload of booty. ‘You’ve been paying for the drinks with this.’

  ‘Two salmon and one of peaches. Alma says we can drink all week on yon.’

  ‘But Mick, it’s not legal, surely. I mean, these belong to someone, surely. The shipowners, or the shipping company.’

  ‘Weren’t no sign of any shipowners up to necks in t’ surf that I could see.’

  ‘But Mick …’

  ‘Treasure trove, lad, finders-keepers.’ Mick grinned again, slightly the worse for his night’s drink, and then grew momentarily morose. ‘Aw, lad, ye’d nay spoil our fun.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘It’s not me, Mick. But if anyone finds out it could mean trouble. It is rather stealing, after all, isn’t it?’

  Mick was silent. He lifted out his case of tins, declining Sam’s offered hands. He set it on the cobbles and closed the boot with a lonely click in the silent alley. The sound of the storm still moaned from the distant bay and the air was heavy with salt. Mick turned to face it and then turned back to Sam.

  ‘Yon bitch,’ he said, nodding seawards, ‘owes me an arm. She’ll needs toss a good lot more than this my way afore we’re even.’

  Sam nodded and said, ‘I’m sorry Mick. I spoke out of turn.’

  ‘Nay lad. You’re most like reeght, leastwise where the law’s concerned. What lies in her holds I’d nay touch. But the odd case on the shore’s just flotsam. If’n it wisn’t me, would be the next bloke, so it may as well be me.’ He lifted his case and trundled it morosely off to the door of the pub and Sam hated himself for having in some way tainted the old man’s night of glory.

  When they returned they found the party had broken up, and only Haines and Mick’s brother-in-law, Rob, remained at the table. They shared another round, and drank, but the high humour had gone, and each began to sink into inebriated somnolence. While they were sitting thus, in silence, a large man rose from his place at another table and walked with slow, heavy steps to their booth, settling without invitation at the end of Mick’s bench. When he spoke his voice was surprisingly high, coming as it did from so big a body, and his tone was plaintive and sad.

  ‘Friends gone already, Mick?’ he said, and then when the distinctly drunken Mick made no answer, he said, to no one in particular, ‘Isn’t it always the way?’

  ‘Erasmus Sykes,’ said Mick, leaning heavily on Sam’s arm as they made a weaving course for home from the door of the pub. ‘Sorry to rush ye, but a night uv that ’un moanin’ wud make an angel want to hang hisself.’

  ‘Quite all right,’ Sam said, laughing. ‘I’d think we’d all had enough.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mick muttered. ‘Happen Rob’s had enough en’all, but he’s still at it. Ye’d not catch me risking the wrath uv a woman with a tongue like Betty’s. Still, Ah’d rather walk than listen to Erasmus tellin’ how the world an’ its brother ’as let him down again.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Sam asked, steering the wandering Mick in the direction of his own street.

  ‘Erasmus Sykes?’ Mick muttered with drunken surprise. Then he said, ‘Sorry, I’m forgetting again you’re not one of t’ locals.’ He grinned. ‘’E’s one of the Sykes. You know, down the Promenade, Sykes Amusements, t’ big Arcade smack in the middle oft’ whole place.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Sam said quickly, knowing Mick would think him a total, not just a partial idiot, if he failed to identify it. An image of sleazy salt-faded signs over street-fronts boarded for winter gradually rose in his mind, where it had been imprinted by the sort of casual glance an uninterested adult would cast such a place. Sam smiled to himself, remembering how such Aladdin’s caves of tinny joy had drawn him as a child upon visits to the seaside. Madelene Hardacre had invariably drawn him away with a disgusted sniff. Surprisingly, it was his great-uncle Harry, the most refined of all his family, who had gleefully led him on secret expeditions to those caverns of shadowed glitter, where ghost trains rode through mysterious tunnels on clanking tracks, and endless games offered wondrous rewards and tricked away the pennies in his pocket. ‘Of course,’ Sam said. ‘The big old place. I remember it. I was forever trying to get inside when I was a child.’

  ‘Aye, nay doubt. It were there as long as I can remember. Oldest and biggest in town. Erasmus’s dad put ’er up. Erasmus an’ his brothers run ’er. Made a pretty penny or two, the Sykes lot. Queer folk though, like gypsies, the Arcade folk. Like carney people the world o’er. Clannish, keep themselves ti themselves; nowt ti do wi’ any other.’

  ‘He seemed friendly enough,’ Sam commented, nodding behind him to the pub and Erasmus.

  ‘Yon’s not friendly, lad. Nay. Just thought he’d the chance uv a good moan. Moan ti anyone, just ti hear ’isself.’ Mick grinned again. ‘Never met the like. All ’is life, Erasmus ’as sung t’ same tune; how poverty’s got him by the neck. In spite uv the Arcade, and the whole town knowing what it brings in in t’ summer. And never mind the greyhounds he keeps and the string uv thoroughbreds down Malton way, he’s still poor as t’ poor old church mouse is our Erasmus.

  ‘But then, back uv t’ last year, old Erasmus gets hisself a winner. Bonny wee mare, name uv Dainty Girl, wi’ two white feet an’ a streak down ’er face an’ she leaves t’ lot at ivry st
artin’ post in the North. So Erasmus has a winner at last. An d’ye know, lad, it’s well nigh the end uv ‘im? Nowt ti moan about any more. Folk for ever coming up, all cheery-faced, saying isn’t it grand? Old Erasmus is like ti drown in all yon cheeriness.’ Mick stopped to light his pipe, fumbling it with his one good hand, shielding the light from the strong wet wind. ‘Good lot of us thought ’twas the end uv the old bugger. But nay, ye’ll nay keep ’is like down. Soon enough, Erasmus found a new song ti sing. Now it’s the sufferin’ o’ the wealthy in this greedy world. Beggars at his door, taxmen climbing down his chimney, a’ his friends away wi’ jealousy, a’ his new friends just hangers-on after the money. Nobbut t’ same song, all reeght, wi’ a new tune.’ Mick puffed at his pipe, grinning around its edges. ‘Trouble with Erasmus, lad, is all ’is days ‘e’s had more brass than wis good for ‘im. ‘E still disn’t know what t’ do wi’t.’

  Sam smiled again, but in himself he felt sad. There was something pathetic about the big friendless man lurching with his imaginary sorrows from table to table in the pub.

  He said, ‘One feels rather sorry for him.’

  Mick snorted. ‘Lad,’ he said, as they parted company in front of his darkened house, ‘the likes uv you an’ I can’t afford t’ feel sorry for the likes uv ‘im.’ He stomped off up the shadowy close to his back door, but as Sam walked away down into the town again, his thoughts were filled with the incongruous bulk of Erasmus Sykes.

  Twice more in the following week Mick Raddley made forays down to the stony beach of the bay, in which the freighter lay wrecked, to search for more of her cargo washed ashore. On each occasion he added to his bounty with an extra crate and a scattering of loose tins amidst the splintered wood of their shattered boxing. But on neither day did he find the bonanza of the first, and on the last, on which he had brought along not only his ex-Navy friend, Pete Haines, but Sam Hardacre as well, the pickings were so lean that Mick announced that he’d not bother coming back.

  ‘There must be more out there,’ said Sam.

  ‘Aye,’ said Mick. ‘An’ it’s staying out there, en’all. Leastwise, it’s staying out there long enough that it sarn’t be any use when it dis come in.’ He shrugged. The bounty of the sea was as fickle as it was unexpected. He did not question beyond the obvious fact that there was nothing more to be had on the beach. He lifted one end of the crate and waited for Sam to take the other. But Sam was still looking out at the sea, where the starboard rail of the sunken freighter was barely visible, at low tide, as a line of disturbed, whitened water.

  Pete Haines turned from the sack of loose tins he was gathering and called, ‘Thinkin’ uv swimmin’ out for t’ rest?’

  Sam still stood looking out to sea. At last he turned to the two older men and said, ‘Surely, it can be done?’

  ‘What can? Swim for it?’ Mick demanded, his bushy grey brows twitching as he chomped on his pipe-stem. ‘Wouldn’t fancy yer chances.’

  ‘No, but surely there must be some way. Surely someone will try for the rest of it, won’t they?’

  ‘Who?’ Pete Haines asked, with a shrug.

  ‘I don’t know. The shipowners, or the shipping company. It must belong to someone?’

  ‘Sure it does. Or did,’ Pete Haines said. ‘An’ they’ve had the insurance money by now. They’ll be happy enough. Yon hulk’ll be the proud property of Lloyds of London,’ he added, with grandeur. ‘Their latest acquisition.’

  ‘What about Lloyds then?’ Sam asked. ‘Won’t they want to try to salvage something from it? Get some of their money back?’

  ‘Well, lad,’ Pete Haines, getting settled into the conversation, seated himself on the crate that Mick had been about to lift, and launched into an explanation of the vagaries of shipwrecks. ‘No doubt they’d like to. Now the question is, what’s worth salvaging, and who can they find to do it? You see the thing about salvage is, it’s summat uv a fool’s paradise. T’ sea is full uv treasure, but she’s most tenacious about hanging on t’ the lot. Now if’n they can find some blighter foolhardy enough to take up a contract, they might well have a go at her. Not that she’s any use now for anything but scrap.’

  ‘But the cargo?’

  ‘Like Mick said, if’n it can be got out before t’ sea gets at it, it might be worthwhile. On t’other ’and, it might not. It’s worth a bob or two, nay doubt, but it’s nay gold either, lad. Job like yon’ll take a few bob en’all, getting equipment out to her; ye’d need a salvage boat an’ a diver, an’ some grabs, an’ yer compressors, a generator or two, yer winches … an’ then ye’ve got t’ bring enough up t’ pay everybody’s keep, an’ just hope there’s enough left over from what ye salve to make it worth yer trouble. An’ if ye run into some snag, find her lying awkward so ye can’t reach her holds at all, ye just may run out a’ brass afore ye ever raise anything at all. Chancy business, lad, a bad ’un, if’n ye ask me.’

  Sam nodded, chastened. ‘Sounds it,’ he said. ‘And,’ he added suddenly, ‘one that you know something about. Am I right?’

  ‘Reckon I should do,’ Pete Haines said, with a reminiscent grin spreading across his weather-beaten face. ‘Spent most uv the war raising ships for His Majesty. He was forever droppin’ ’em down in the damnedest places, too.’ He leaned back with his hands on his knees, looking out to sea and the distant wreck. ‘An’ afore that, lad, I had ten years in commercial salvage. Raised everything from 2000 tons of freighter to a bloody Rolls-Royce some idiot drove into t’ sea one fine night.’ He laughed, remembering. ‘Any road, during wartime I got my fill fer good an’ all. Settled down ashore in the scrap business yince I got out, an’ there’s where I’m staying. A good living an’ a nice dry one, at that.’ He stood up, lifting the crate with Mick and edging with it back towards the difficult path leading up to the top of the cliffs and the road. ‘Mind now,’ he said, ‘I won’t say that I don’t get tempted, now and again, when I see something like yon. It’s like a lovely batch uv cream cakes behind t’ shop window. Wouldn’t be half as tempting if’n it weren’t so damned out a’ reach.’

  Sam nodded thoughtfully. He hoisted Pete’s hessian sack of tins on to his shoulder and, with one more glance at the grey North Sea curling around the curving white pebble shore, he turned to follow the two older men up the cliff path. At the top they set the crate down for the rest, and he lowered his sack to the wet grey grass.

  ‘Mick,’ he said, turning again towards the windy sea, ‘I want to have a talk with Erasmus Sykes.’

  ‘Do ye, by gum,’ said Mick. ‘Yer more uv an idiot than I thought.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam, with a small, rueful smile. ‘And I want you there when I have it.’

  ‘Bluidy hell,’ said Mick.

  Chapter Six

  Erasmus Sykes lived in a long, rambling flat above one segment of his sprawling amusement arcade. It was reached by two flights of narrow stairs, through the gloomy darkness of which Sam Hardacre climbed on the Sunday afternoon after the day of the shipwreck, with a protesting Mick Raddley in tow.

  ‘If’n ’is bluidy dogs are there, I’m bluidy leaving,’ Mick grumbled. ‘Yappy wee buggers.’

  ‘What dogs?’ Sam asked, but Mick’s reply was drowned in a sudden burst of shrill, sharp barking from behind the plain door at the head of the stairs. Over the torrent of yaps and yelps, Sam heard the high-pitched voice of their master cajoling, ‘Hush, hush, Daddy’s babies.’

  ‘Hush, hush,’ Mick imitated, prancing about on the stair landing behind Sam. ‘Daddy’s pains in t’arse.’

  The door opened and Sam was deluged in small black poodles. Four of them, bouncing and scrabbling with stiff black claws, assaulted his trouser legs, worried his shoe laces, and then abruptly turned their attentions to Mick. Mick shuffled and fumed, detaching one and then the other while Erasmus Sykes stared mournfully at the melee as if it was totally beyond his power to control.

  ‘Stand still, Mick, happen they’re wanting your scent.’

  ‘Happen they’re wanting my leg,
damn them,’ Mick snorted. ‘An’ I’ll nay spare them one. I’m an arm short already.’

  Erasmus, still ignoring the chaos caused by his pets, extended a fleshy hand to Sam. ‘Erasmus Sykes,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be Mr Hardacre?’

  ‘Sam Hardacre,’ said Sam, shaking the proffered hand. A faint smile momentarily crossed the wide, perpetually worried-looking face of his host.

  ‘Reeght. The new Sam Hardacre.’ He turned briefly to the circle of yapping poodles. ‘Hush, Daddy’s darlings,’ he murmured to no avail, but as he led Sam, Mick and his little herd of woolly dogs into the interior of the flat he added, ‘A name to live up to, lad.’

  Sam said nothing, hoping Erasmus would not proceed on the obvious course and ask if he was of the same family. It was not an admission he chose to make, knowing how connections with supposed Hardacre wealth would make the proposal he hoped to make appear ridiculous.

  Erasmus did not. He led them, instead, into the long sitting-room of the flat, and offered them seats on a huge sofa covered in dark red plush and ornamented with a multitude of lace antimacassars. The sofa was Victorian and ancient, sinking beneath their combined weight so that Sam found himself sitting with his long legs folded up and his knees nearly up to his chin. All the furnishings in the flat were of a similar era, chairs and other soft furnishings of the same red plush, and deep maroon velvet curtains looped heavily over the tall windows. Any light they allowed to enter was further screened by swathes of white netting, and the darkness was accentuated by layers of dark oriental rugs piled one on top of the other. Everywhere were small tables and glass-fronted cabinets and every surface was covered first in fading lace or fringed brocade and then with dusty ornaments of china and glass. For all its antique grandeur the room resembled, in Sam’s eyes, nothing so much as a gypsy caravan of the older kind, all dark woods and fringes and velvet and lace, and he fancied that Erasmus could hitch it all up to his team of black poodles and draw it away down the road.