by CL Skelton
She shook her head firmly and Harry, in frustration, demanded, ‘What’s the matter with you? Do you prefer adultery or something? Have you simply got used to it? Why not please God when you’ve got the chance?’
‘Do you think,’ Madelene said, with a decisive clink of teacup on saucer, ‘that God is so easily fooled?’
And so there it was ended. Harry knew he would not budge her from the position she had taken, and so acknowledged defeat. Whether she would live with him, or no, remained a future decision. But if she chose to, it would be yet in her familiar role, as mistress rather than wife. Dimly he wondered how he would handle the resulting social disturbance, but decided he was too old to worry about it. So be it; one aspect anyway was made easy for him. Wed or unwed, she still bore his name. Only those close to the family need know it had been given her not by himself, but by his nephew. She was Madelene Hardacre regardless.
Madelene dusted her hands together in a peremptory gesture, ending the discussion. ‘I’ve heard from Sam,’ she said, abruptly.
Harry paused, not as adroit as she at the quick change of mood. He said, slowly, ‘Good. No doubt you’ll be better pleased with him now.’
‘Of course I’m not pleased,’ she returned at once. She was, at times, hard to keep up with. Harry sighed patiently, and sipped his tea. ‘Just because he’s telephoned me now doesn’t mean I’m any less angry about the other day.’ By ‘the other day’ Harry knew she meant the funeral. He was slightly confused, actually, in which capacity Sam had been judged to have failed them. Was it as Hetty’s great-nephew by marriage, or her husband’s mistress’s son? He decided it must be the former; precedents for funeral attendance by the latter were lacking.
‘I wouldn’t be so hard on him,’ he ventured. ‘He is terribly busy.’ It was true. Since the disastrous gales of that January, Sam had had more work than he could handle. Harry wanted to add, also, that Sam was, as well as busy, making a great deal of money suddenly, and was generous with it. A recent attack of dry-rot in the perennially damp east wing had been dealt with and paid for by Sam before Harry had time even to worry where the money was to come from. He opened his mouth to venture this defence, but Madelene was not in a mood to hear her son praised.
‘I’ll be hard as I like, thank you. It was a family responsibility that he be here.’ Her lips were firmly set and traces of French matriarchy lingered in her aggrieved eyes. It was not just the English who cared about family and duty, Harry reminded himself. ‘Besides,’ Madelene continued, ‘he has developed an alarming habit of assuming he can delegate others to carry out his duties. It’s all very well in business. But not here.’ She was thinking, clearly, of Jan Muller’s attendance in Sam’s absence. ‘As well,’ she continued, ‘as a totally despicable tendency to use money instead of time. Just because he’s invited us all to that warehouse he’s living in for another of his abominable parties, we’re all to forgive him everything. Well, I won’t for a start. And you’re not to either,’ she added sharply. ‘And, quite frankly, I’m really not at all sure we should even attend.’
‘Attend?’ Harry said dimly, as her diatribe ended. He couldn’t remember what future event she referred to or even, alarmingly, if he’d already been told of it. Hetty’s death had had a shattering effect on his mental processes. He suddenly found himself forgetting things for the first time in his life, as if senility had crept up and struck him as he stood by her deathbed. Madelene blinked, looking at him as if he’d gone mad.
‘The Coronation,’ she said. ‘Of the Queen,’ she added drily, ‘in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘Good God,’ said Harry, because he had. June the Second, just three days away. The major event of the world’s social calendar; the biggest piece of history of the year, most likely, and he had forgotten. To such private recesses does personal grief drive a man, in lonesome solitude. ‘I had quite forgotten,’ he said. ‘Do you think I’m losing my faculties?’ He said it with such honest concern that she softened, forgetting her row with her son. She rose and hastened to his side, and stood by his chair with her arms around his proud, straight old body, gently stroking his thinning white hair. She could remember it as dark as Sam’s when she first saw him. He had seemed though, then, quite old to her, being so many years her senior and she just a widowed girl.
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Forgive me. I forget what it is like. I, who should know better.’ She was thinking of her own husband and her first mindless physical grief after his wartime death. A physical grief for the physical body, she thought. Even Harry would feel that; even for Hetty. The detachment of one human creature from the lifeless husk of another was a slow and surgical process, even when love between them had withered from passion to gentle familiarity and no more. ‘When Arnold died,’ she said slowly, ‘I forgot everything. France, the War, my ruined village. Nothing mattered. My country itself seemed to die with him and, poor Arnold, he was not even French.’ She smiled privately and Harry tried vainly to figure the logic of that last non sequitur. He gave up.
‘We’re to go and watch it all on Sam’s new television then, aren’t we,’ he said tiredly.
‘Only if you wish,’ said Madelene. ‘It does not matter.’ Harry was silent, swamped suddenly by history, thinking of the other coronations he could remember throughout his long life. They, like the wars his nation had endured, punctuated his lifetime, like chapter headings. His childhood, in the long endless security of Victoria, the Edwardian years: the brief idyll of his first marriage, and the agony of his first widowhood. Then George V and the war years and Madelene; the brief, shattering uncrowned reign of Edward VIII and then, on the eve of the next great war, gentle, retiring George VI, the King everyone loved. Harry had not really expected to see another Coronation; surely this King would have outlived him. But then one day, in that same Festival year of 1951 that had brought so many subtle changes to the Hardacre family, he had chanced to be walking on a street in London used often by royal vehicles in non-processional royal journeys. It was late autumn; the King had undergone his lung operation in September. News was scanty, as it always was in those more formal, less inquisitive days, but it appeared a recovery was to be expected. But on that street, quite empty but for himself, Harry Hardacre found himself suddenly overtaken by a large black, royal car, discreet flags flying, and glancing into the windows glimpsed a face thin and pinched and bewildered as a boy’s; the King on his way to Sandringham. To Harry, at least, his death in the following February came as no surprise.
And now, thought Harry, a new young queen, a queen who he remembered well as only a pretty child of the Duke of York, with no likelihood of succession, was to be crowned. A new Elizabeth and, with suitable romance, the tabloids declared a new Elizabethan age. Harry Hardacre looked round the slightly tatty grandeur of his widower’s drawing-room, and wondered. But he said, aloud, ‘Oh yes, I must see her crowned.’
* * *
THE BARTON KIDS
SPECIAL
CORONATION PERFORMANCE
The sign, boldly painted in red on the white card-back of a MacFarlane’s Biscuits placard begged from the village shop in Kilham, was propped up beside the weathered stone of the Victoria Terraces. Olive, who was good at that sort of thing, had made a bunting of red, white and blue to drape over it, matching the special trimmings she had sewn, also, on to their ‘costumes’. Ruth eyed it critically as Olive fidgeted hopefully, and awaited her too-rare praise.
‘It’s all right,’ Ruth said at last, doubtfully, and Olive beamed. From Ruth that was a high accolade, and Olive, unlike their brother Paul, cared terribly what Ruth thought. Paul, disinterested in the discussion, had wandered off down the beach, and was now engrossed in a long ribbon of seaweed freshly washed up on the pebbly sand. He watched some town boys, slightly older, or at least older-looking, walking with fishing rods over their shoulders, towards the harbour. They would be out for a morning’s fishing from the pinnock steps, and he half-wished he was with them. He looked down at his ba
re legs, infuriated with his mother for keeping him yet in loose shorts, when the town boys were already in long trousers. He had lost any sophistication his early London years had given him, and was a little afraid of the Bridlington lads he met around the harbour. They had a toughness, a working man’s short-spoken manner, in imitation of their elders that he envied. He kicked at a buried timber, part of a decaying bulwark. Even if they’d let him join, it was still no use. Ruth wouldn’t let him go. And since he was only permitted to stay in Brid with Sam Hardacre if he was daily, hourly supervised by Ruth, he had no choice but to do what she wanted. It was that, or another long summer at Kilham, with his mother and father too busy with the pub to ever talk.
All of which put Ruth in a position enviable by many an impresario; of the three-member cast of her fledgling theatrical company, one was herself, one was a sister devoted solely to pleasing her, and one was a brother held in thrall by parental dictate. Of course, even that situation had disadvantages. The hero-worshipping of Olive made her emotional and vulnerable and Ruth was often regretful (for purely business reasons, so to speak) of her waspish tongue which could send her sister into panicky tears. And Paul, well aware of his key position as the one less than willing member of the troupe, was not above a bit of brotherly blackmail. Fortunately he could as yet be fobbed off with sixpence worth of broken lettered-rock from one of the multitude of seaside confectioners with which he held an addict’s familiarity. Still, he knew his limits. One threat too many of ‘I think I’m going back to Kilham next week’ and Ruth would simply hit him. Paul Barton learned early that not even a star is totally indispensable.
For Paul was, undoubtedly, the star. Obviously, when Ruth first concocted the idea of a performing group to entertain the trippers on the summer shore, ‘The Barton Kids’ was intended merely as a vehicle for her own talents. It was a logical assumption: she was the oldest, she could sing, tap-dance, and recite. Olive, three years younger, could only make a pale imitation, childishly eager, of her big sister’s smooth, well-practised performance. And of course Paul was just the baby. But Paul had only to open his mouth and music tumbled out, like the silver coins of some fairy-tale. His gift had been discovered only by accident when he overcame an initial early childhood shyness and happily regaled the dinner-table with the filthy lyrics of playground ditties in a voice as liquid and clear as birdsong. Had Emily more time, and Paul himself more interest, voice training would have been obvious, and indeed she always intended in a distracted way to ‘do something’ about Paul’s extraordinary talent. But it was left in the end to Ruth to make use of it.
It was to her credit that Ruth never displayed any of the resentment she must have felt at having her starring role usurped, right from their very first performance. It was also a measure of her genuine devotion to the theatre, a devotion that would never desert her, even when the object of her love was less than kind. It was Ruth’s great misfortune to first experience the bright kiss of the spotlight only in its brief sweep over her head to settle upon that of her brother. Heaven knows what would have happened had it been Olive who won their first audience’s hearts; no doubt such unintended treachery by a pretty young sister would have been that much harder to take. But a brother, her baby brother at that, and one with a talent that delighted her even as she envied it, was somehow more acceptable. And yet, when it first happened, Ruth had been obliged to dismantle their little stage, and take away the costumes in a fretful hurry so that she might find comfort in tears in a darkened corner of Sam Hardacre’s flat.
It had been late August, last year. ‘The Barton Kids’ had been performing now for almost a year. Ruth, bored even with the picture houses and her film magazines had conceived the idea of a little wandering troupe and developed it, scripting their jokes, choosing their songs, even constructing her little tap-dancing stage, all in two frenetic days. The next step had been to win permission from her mother for the jaunts to Bridlington to perform amongst the donkey-rides and paddling trippers. Sam Hardacre, her handsome and charming older cousin whose kind attentions to her at Janet Chandler’s première she had not forgotten, proved to be her saviour once more. He had then only recently moved into a spacious, if unusual flat, the entire upper floor of an old warehouse down on West St, near the harbour, that he had recently purchased as a storeroom. He had divided the upper area into an extravagantly designed many-roomed apartment, doing half the work himself, using the carpentry skills he’d learned at Ampleforth, and hiring a motley collection of harbour hangers-on to do the rest. The result was an interesting and surprisingly pleasant home; the first home he had ever owned, and he was both proud of it and generous with it. The Barton children were invited to stay whenever they were in town, performing or otherwise. Emily, thus mollified, approved Ruth’s scheme, and within a week Ruth was setting up her little tap-dance platform in a quiet corner of sand below the stone sea-walls of the Victoria Terraces.
Of course they were not half so sophisticated then as they were now: there was no sign, no playbills for Olive to deliver, no costumes to catch the eye. That had come later. On the first day they had simply stood on their little plank stage, arms around each other and sung together, at the top of their lungs, until a crowd, small but curious, began to gather. They sang ‘Home on the Range’ because it was Paul’s favourite song. Then Ruth did her tap-dance, and Olive played the ukelele, quite badly, and finally when Ruth had solemnly recited ‘Gunga Din’ and Olive had told some terrible seaside jokes, Paul was thrust on the stage, alone. He was supposed to sing, ‘How Much is that Doggie in the Window?’ but forgot the words and so he stood and sang the only thing he could remember, which was the favourite of Emily Barton’s one daily ‘help’ at The Rose, delivered always in her warbling soprano, ‘Oh, for the Wings of a Dove’. The audience, which had been watching and listening with that good-natured patience adults reserve for children’s performances, suddenly began to really watch and really listen. Only once was there a sudden outburst of laughter, and that was aimed at Olive who had turned about in such comic amazement to stare at her own brother’s unexpected new song. The laughter did not disturb Paul in the slightest, even though he assumed it was directed at himself. He hardly cared what anyone thought of his singing, anyhow. It was just a thing he could do, like standing on his head. But when he finished, and they clapped and cheered, he grinned happily and then made a dramatic bow which, like the song, he had learned from watching someone else, in this case a local village performer in the pub. Cheers came again, for the bow, and shouts for more. But Paul wouldn’t do any more. He was bored then, and wanted to go and play on the sand. Ruth let him go, pride and envy warring in her heart. But she was as shrewd as any hardened vaudeville producer, and Paul Barton sang ‘Oh, for the Wings of a Dove’ every day of that summer.
‘I’m sick of it,’ said Paul now, coming only reluctantly from his retreat by the bulwark, with the seaweed still draped about his head and shoulders. ‘It’s a sissy song. Can’t I sing something else?’
‘Everybody loves it,’ said Olive helpfully, but Paul didn’t care about that.
‘Well they can sing it themselves. I hate it.’
‘Hey, look what I found,’ Ruth said, drawing from her pocket a crushed paper-bag. Paul took it, suspicious.
‘Gobstoppers,’ he shouted. Ruth snatched it back.
‘Hey, give it here.’
‘Not unless you sing it.’ Paul glowered. He reached for the sweets, but Ruth held them out of reach until he promised. He thought briefly of sabotaging the song with rude words, but knew he wouldn’t. The truth was, when he was singing he forgot everything else, even being angry at Ruth or hating the lyrics. It was the liquid delight of his own notes that seduced him and obliged him to continue, following his own vaulting soprano into its own high, airy land.
‘You’d better be nice to me, now,’ he said, sucking a sweet. ‘Next year my voice will change and I’ll be no use at all. Like that croaky old frog in the pond at Kilham.’
&nbs
p; ‘No. You’ll still be able to sing,’ said Ruth calmly, hoping she was right. Ironically, it was she, and not the possessor of that lovely voice, who cared. ‘Just different songs,’ she added.
‘Roll on the day,’ said Paul, extending to her a sugared pink tongue. ‘Come on, let’s get it over with, I want to go back and see the Queen.’ Ruth had promised them an early morning performance only on Coronation Day, so they could gather, a little self-consciously, with the family about Sam’s new television set to watch the great event. Paul was more intrigued with the television itself, a new thing in his life, than with the Queen’s coronation, and would have happily watched even the blank screen.
In spite of their bunting, and Ruth’s fervent recitation of patriotic favourites from Kipling and Henry Newbolt, in honour of the day, ‘The Barton Kids’ were a failure on 2 June. People had other things on their minds and were hunched over wireless sets, and crowded around rarer televisions, or simply reading and rereading the newspapers with their joint celebration of the royal event and the conquest of Everest. Only Paul’s sweet soprano diverted them, and that only momentarily, and in the end Ruth gave up in ill-humour and packed up their gear to go home. Midway through she was obliged to drop everything and go running up the stone steps to haul Paul down off the high balustrade, twenty feet above the sands where he was prancing back and forth waving one of their Union Jacks and proclaiming himself Edmund Hillary on top of the world. But just as she reached him, tottering terrifyingly there, a tall man in a buff trench coat suddenly appeared beside the balustrade and snatched Paul off.
After a moment’s surprised struggle he suddenly grinned and shouted, ‘Uncle Albert. It’s Uncle Albert, Ruth!’
He happily allowed himself to be swung in a wide circle and set, dizzy-headed, down on the pavement and began at once to babble questions about Albert’s arrival, and the band, and his aunt Maud, because they were his favourite people. But Albert Chandler was busy talking to Ruth and only patted his head in reply.
