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

by CL Skelton

  His concern heightened when a survey of drawing-room, library, and the small study off the gunroom, all of which were occupied by happy crowds of chatting guests, did not reveal Erasmus. He poked his head round the edge of the dining-room door, where Mrs Dobson and three village ladies drafted for the day looked up in startled disapproval from their preparations of the large buffet luncheon. He waved lamely and dashed away, now really worried. Supposing the big sad man had just wandered morosely away, got into his dilapidated car, and driven off? Visions of Sam’s future tumbling around his ears haunted Harry as he pursued his quarry even into the upstairs corridors of his house. Once there, passing a bedroom door, he was dismayed to hear the sound of a woman sobbing, and guessed quickly that it was Emily. He hovered helplessly, his hand on the figured ceramic knob, but slipped away. No doubt his presence would be more of an embarrassment than a help. Making a mental note to have a severe discussion with Philip, who he had last seen in the billiards-room with a renegade tankard of brown ale in his hand, Harry descended once more into the public rooms. He thought suddenly of the morning-room, where Hetty usually stayed during this sort of event, which invariably tired her. Surely not there though; the morning-room and Hetty were usually centres of feminine retreat, where the ladies stopped in to check their appearance in the large mirror over the fire and share feminine inconsequentials with their retiring hostess. Still, it was the last room he could think of. Unless Erasmus had simply retired to the gunroom and shot himself.

  The door was almost closed as Harry approached, and he heard a soft murmur of feminine tones. Uneasily, he tapped lightly on the smooth panel and was greeted by Hetty’s own voice, ‘Come in.’

  He entered hesitantly, still expecting to find a clutch of ladies annoyed at male intrusion. But there were no ladies other than Hetty, who was seated in the centre of a large plush settee, at right angles to the graceful marble fireplace. The only other occupant of the room, perched with startling incongruity on a narrow, velvet-cushioned ottoman, almost at Hetty’s feet, was Erasmus Sykes. He looked to Harry like a large brown bird that had landed by error on a much smaller bird’s nest. He looked up and beamed a smile of genuine pleasure, which wrinkled up his face about his small shrewd eyes.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Hardacre,’ he said, ‘for monopolizing your utterly charming wife.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Harry,’ Hetty said breathlessly, looking at the brass clock on the mantel. ‘Are we late for luncheon? I’m afraid I’ve been so absorbed in Mr Sykes’s conversation that I’d quite forgotten the time.’ Erasmus beamed again.

  ‘Not at all,’ Harry said, with a mixture of relief and amazement. ‘Plenty of time. Shall I get you both another drink?’

  ‘No, I shall,’ said Erasmus, getting at once to his feet. ‘What can I get for you, Mrs Hardacre? No, no! You’re not to move. I’ll be back at once.’ And with a confident nod to Harry, he plodded happily off.

  Harry stood watching in astonishment until Hetty said, ‘What a charming man. Do you know he’s in business with Sam?’

  Harry nodded. ‘Yes. I had heard that.’

  ‘It sounds terribly exciting. Raising ships from the sea. He was telling me all about his plans to save a freighter that sank off Whitby. Imagine. And Sam is helping too.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Harry, swallowing hard. But Sykes had returned with a sherry for Hetty. He hastened about the room, finding just the right sized little table to set beside her before presenting her with her drink, and settled once more on the ottoman with his own.

  ‘Oh, do continue,’ Hetty begged. ‘Just where you left off.’

  ‘I suppose I’d best do the rounds,’ Harry said lamely, but no one noticed and he slipped quietly away. Once outside the closed door of the morning-room he stood rubbing his thinning grey hair, smiling to himself. Of all the people to win the heart and attentions of the irascible Mr Sykes, who would have imagined Hetty? And yet, of course, who but Hetty? Erasmus Sykes, he realized with sudden insight, was lost, lonely and afraid despite his bulk, and his shell of cynicism and his posturing of misery was a complex screen. He was afraid of the world. But no one could possibly be afraid of Hetty. Weak, half-willed, as retiring as a small brown mouse, always half-lost in her own house, just as its previous mistress, Mary Hardacre, had been before her; Hetty would appear to Erasmus Sykes as something frail, needing his care, much as his famous black poodles needed the same. Her sorrows were self-evidently greater than his, her shyness more complete. In her company, Erasmus became a gallant, a knight, a protector. As unlikely a friendship as was ever to be found, Harry was sure, but also as sound. The effect on Sam Hardacre’s future, he realized, was incalculable.

  Still musing, Harry made his way to the main entrance hall, ready to meet any late arrivals. He glimpsed Madelene, on the arm of her son, being whisked into the drawing-room. He did not follow. On occasions like this, he and his mistress studiously avoided each other rather than practise the hypocrisy that the situation demanded. Harry was about to make a discreet retreat to the library when he heard, beyond the closed glass-panelled inner doors, the sound of a motor car on the smooth pink chippings of the drive. He made his way out into the large tiled entrance-way, with its elaborate wicker-backed watchman’s chair and its array of walking sticks and hunting trophies from Strathconon, and stood just inside the open front door, trying to place the new arrival among the cluster of remarkably mixed automobiles before his house. It took him a moment to spot it, so low and sleek that it was nearly hidden behind a tall Bentley. But a curve of gleaming grey wing revealed itself, and a flash and glitter of one wire wheel.

  ‘I know that car,’ he muttered to himself as a tall man appeared, straightening up from the low seat. He didn’t know the man, however, and stared curiously at the handsome face, half-turned away towards whoever else was emerging from the vehicle. The most striking feature of the newcomer was his hair, a bright Nordic blond, almost white in the pale sunlight creeping through the moorland clouds. The other party then stood up into view beside her motor car.

  ‘Jane,’ Harry shouted, delighted. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’m most dreadfully sorry, my dear,’ she called over the nose of the Bentley. ‘I had no idea. May we gatecrash, or shall we scuttle off into the mist?’

  Jane was not, of course, permitted to scuttle away. Her arrival could not have been more fortuitous for Harry for whom she held, as always, the position of favourite relative, the one person without whom no social gathering was completely satisfactory. She was to him still the little girl whose babyhood in his early adolescence had been the first occasion in his life of real love, that is, not the love of gratitude as to his parents, or desire as for a lover, but the love of caring, as parent to child. She would always be thus, his baby sister, in spite of the incongruity of their two grey heads, since age can alter only the individual, not his relation to others. He greeted her, as always, as if her arrival was the highlight of whatever event she was attending, and turned politely to welcome her companion as well. It did not surprise him to find his sister in the company of a handsome and youthful gentleman. Her companions were drawn from all age groups and he assumed himself to be meeting some past associate of her son, perhaps a school friend or comrade from the Forces.

  ‘Muller,’ the young man said, extending his hand, ‘Jan Muller.’ Harry was shaking that hand and smiling politely up at the tall blond man, when the name sank into his consciousness. His smile altered from one of social good nature to one of wondering and he half-turned to Jane, who was suddenly overcome with emotion. She shook her head, blinking at tears.

  ‘Heidi’s son,’ she said.

  The party, then, that had begun as a celebration of the establishment and first success of Hardacre Salvage took a sudden swerve of course and re-emerged as a party in the honour of Jan Muller’s return. No one was more pleased at the turn of events than Sam himself, whose long acquaintance with Heidi and long standing affection for her allowed him to quite literally sha
re her rejoicing. He welcomed Jan into their midst as if he were a second brother, leading him about the house, introducing him to everyone in sight, and repeating again and again, ‘You must meet Terry. I can’t wait until he gets here, he won’t believe this.’ Harry had initially called all the guests into the dining-room, making the announcement of Jan’s arrival a public matter and coincidental with the announcement of lunch. For the rest of the afternoon the guests were thus divided between those intimates of the family who knew Jane and Heidi and the entire story, and who now surrounded Jan, plying him with questions about the years of his absence and those more distant guests who had never heard of any of them, and therefore spent the afternoon asking each other what was going on.

  The one exception was Martin Raynor, the diver, who occupied his time cruising happily from room to room sampling every manner of drink available, and there was a considerable variety and, from his assessment, an apparently unlimited quantity. The only cloud on his horizon was Mick Raddley who had set himself up as Raynor’s watchdog and whom he was obliged to avoid. Seeing his approach, at one point, down the long passageway from the dining-room, Raynor panicked, and grabbing a handy bottle of Scotch and a glass he bolted out of the front door. He found himself in the tiled entrance-way, with the inner doors shut between himself and the party, and nothing now outside but patiently waiting automobiles and the occasional straying peacock. He shrugged, settled in the hooded watchman’s chair with his bottle at his knee and gave himself over to serious drinking. An hour later, and with the Scotch bottle considerably lighter, he was still there. Within, the sounds of partying had grown quieter as guests replete with food and drink settled in comfortable groups around fires, in that pleasant hiatus before late coffees and farewells. Outside the light was beginning to fade, and the peacocks had crept away. A distant sound of an approaching motor car fell placidly on Martin Raynor’s ears, but he did not stir. He must have slept then, briefly, because he had no recollection of the car’s arrival, or the sound of closing doors, or of footsteps. When next he opened his eyes, reaching companionably for his bottle, a dark figure was standing in the open doorway, blotting out the light. Raynor started, leaned forward and his eyes opened in a widening stare. He had just taken in the flowing costume when his eyes settled on the face and, in the dim light, suddenly recognized it. With a howl of terror he leapt up, kicking over the clattering whisky bottle, and fled shouting through the inner doors, leaving them open behind him, and on into the body of the house.

  Somnolent guests, aroused by the noise, stumbled out of various rooms, but there was only one that Martin Raynor wanted to see, and he howled louder.

  ‘Mick! Mick Raddley! Help! Mick!’

  ‘What the devil’s with you?’ Mick shouted, emerging from the billiards-room. He was glowering with suppressed fury and looked ready to tear the diver limb from limb.

  ‘Mick, you were right. I’ll nay touch another drop as long’s I live. I swear it. I swear it,’ he moaned. He was shaking visibly and huddling into his rumpled jacket as if to hide in its depths somewhere.

  ‘Talk sense, you bloomin’ idiot,’ Mick growled, still advancing ominously.

  ‘It were him,’ Raynor moaned.

  ‘Who?’ A curious onlooker gasped.

  ‘It were him. I just saw him,’ he glanced warily over his shoulder to where the main doorway was obscured now by the gathering crowd. ‘I just saw t’ boss himself, standing in the doorway.’

  ‘So what?’ Mick demanded.

  ‘So what? So he were wearin’ a dress, that’s what. I just saw ‘im, in a bluidy great black dress, Sam Hardacre, I’d know ‘im anywhere.’ But his eyes were widening again with amazement as he spoke, for the crowd had parted and Sam, in blue-suited normality was standing before him. ‘It’s you,’ he moaned.

  ‘You blitherin’ drunken fool,’ Mick roared.

  ‘But it were … in a dress … I saw you …’ Martin trailed off, looking about frantically for an avenue of escape.

  Then the crowd parted behind him to allow someone’s entrance, and he turned towards the door. Terry Hardacre was still standing there, looking faintly bewildered at all the commotion, in the long black habit of a Benedictine monk.

  Chapter Ten

  Four days later, Jan Muller was still at Hardacres. In the confusion after Terry’s arrival, Sam had lost track of Jan, and when he went looking for him, found him in a corner of the drawing-room, unexpectedly engrossed in conversation with Pete Haines, the salvage master. As he came within earshot, Haines turned and said matter-of-factly, ‘Jan here thinks we’d be best to seal yon forrard bulkhead and try a tide lift, wi’ pontoons, if’n we can find some old tanks or somesuch.’

  ‘What?’ said Sam, startled.

  ‘I figure maybe summat from Army surplus.’

  ‘Ellsberg used old gasoline storage tanks at Massawa,’ Jan went on. ‘Liberated them from Shell Oil. Of course you’d not need anything as large as that.’

  ‘Ellsberg?’ said Sam.

  ‘Commander Ellsberg,’ Jan replied, as if the name should readily come to anyone’s mind. ‘US Navy. Did the salvage work at Massawa.’

  Sam looked blank and Haines said, a little proudly, displaying knowledge he had gleaned in the last fifteen minutes, ‘That’s on t’ Red Sea. In Ethiopia,’ he added, struggling slightly with the pronunciation.

  Sam nodded, still looking puzzled, and touched Jan Muller’s shoulder. ‘Were you involved in that or something?’ he asked.

  ‘Massawa? No. I met Ellsberg in Oran, in Algeria. Clearing up the mess the Vichy French left behind.’ His smooth, sun-tanned face lost for a moment its look of pleasant good humour, revealing a harder man beneath.

  ‘Salvage work,’ Sam said, just to be quite certain.

  Jan Muller laughed, tossing his heavy forelock of white-blond hair back off his face. ‘You could say. Twenty-seven ships sunk in the harbour, six blockships across the harbour mouth. It was, how you say, a ballsup.’

  Sam grinned, still rather stunned at the coincidence, which he pointed out to Jan.

  ‘Yes,’ Jan said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose it is surprising. But you see, it was just a small part of my life, and long ago. It only comes to mind as I talk with Mr Haines. I have done other things,’ he added simply.

  ‘E’s done bloody everything,’ Haines said with a grunt. ‘An’ been bloody everywhere.’ He nodded towards the young Israeli with definite admiration.

  ‘Yes, it seems that way,’ Sam said, interested. ‘How ever did you end up in Oran?’

  Jan was silent. His forehead wrinkled with a look of almost painful thought and he said eventually, ‘I was in France … I did some work there, with the Free French. When it became necessary for me to leave, I went first to Gibraltar, then North Africa.’ He made a small circular motion in the air with one sun-dark hand, vaguely tracing the course of some long-ago journey.

  He looked uncomfortable, and Sam sensed he should not pursue the conversation too far but, still curious, he said, ‘As an Israeli?’ because it seemed so unlikely.

  ‘We were under British authority …’ Jan paused, looking vague, and full of recollection. ‘It was not unusual at that time … members of Haganah …’ His voice faded again as if each phrase was wrested from a cavern in his mind into which he rarely ventured. ‘There were others,’ he said at last. ‘It was not unusual.’

  Sam nodded, knowing he must bring the conversation to an end. He turned quickly, spotted a tray of glasses left by one of the temporary staff and quickly uplifted it, offering drinks. Jan took one, nodding a double thank you. Sam understood. He knew many men who’d had the kind of war one didn’t choose to talk of any more.

  Sam did not raise the issue again and it would have remained just as passing conversation had it not been for a chance comment by Pete Haines, as the party was breaking up.

  ‘Ain’t it just t’ way,’ he said. ‘First bloke I find in donkey’s years can teach me a thing or two about salvage, an’ he’s just stop
pin’ over on ’is way tot’ bluidy Near East.’

  ‘You serious, Pete?’ Sam asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That he can teach you a thing or two?’

  ‘Dead right he can. I mean, I know my trade, don’t get me wrong. But he’s worked wi’ t’ big lads. Damn, but I’d like to show him t’ Louisa Jane, see how ’e’d handle her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam said, and by the fading look in his eyes Pete assumed he was no longer interested, and shrugged and turned away. Sam was the boss, anyhow, not him.

  But Sam was interested, indeed, and his look of preoccupation was merely the reflection of a quick mental tally of ways and means of getting Jan Muller on to the Louisa Jane. He quickly settled, with shrewd confidence, on the one person he suspected of having more influence than anyone in sight on Heidi Muller’s son: his great-aunt Jane. It didn’t take much, actually; a heartfelt plea to Jane, with loyal Terry drafted in for support, an apologetic begging of further hospitality from his always hospitable uncle (fortunately with the less hospitable Noel out of earshot) and, by the time the last guests were leaving, the nucleus of Hardacres and their nearest and dearest were settling down to a country weekend. Except for the unfortunate Terry of course who, having added his sympathetic weight to Sam’s request, was then obliged to return almost immediately to Ampleforth in time for benediction.

  ‘Lucky devil,’ he said, as he parted with Sam with a moment’s boyish horseplay reminiscent of their earlier days, now oddly discordant with his costume. Sam ducked the light punch thrown by his brother and returned one for good measure. ‘I can see a splendid booze-up building,’ Terry went on, ‘and I even helped to set it up. I’m jealous as all hell.’ Sam grinned as the two stood alone facing each other in the empty hallway, both tall and lean, and astonishingly alike with their dark French eyes and hair, in spite of their radically different dress.