by CL Skelton
‘I think you’re being a bit unkind,’ Terry said.
‘Unkind?’ Sam jested. ‘Shall I drive, then?’
‘You know what I mean.’ Sam did, too. The change of locale of the VE Day gathering was Sam’s doing entirely. It wasn’t that he had any real objections to going to Hardacres. It was, more or less, his family home. He had been raised there. And now that his mother and Harry had made their unorthodox arrangements rather courageously open, he was in a real sense, the son and heir. Noel, to whom the place would one day undoubtedly belong, regarded it more as a wart on the landscape of his farm than anything. His own residence in his farm cottage was totally, ingrainedly established. The place, full of wellington boots and bachelor oddities, was no longer a stop-gap residence. It was impossible to conceive of him as ever again inhabiting the Big House. Terry, of course, had his own family at Ampleforth, and his stay there, too, now had developed a solidity. The uncertainties, like the bridal period of a marriage, were all behind. He had taken solemn vows now, and no one imagined any longer that he, like Sam, might leave there. He was growing older, in that peaceful, unlined way that members of religious orders aged. Oddly, he looked older than Sam, who was the one out in the battlefield of the business world, where stress and tensions were expected to take their toll. They’d taken no toll yet, on Sam. He thrived on them, and looked it, and had learned early on to balance the frustrations of paperwork and working luncheons with healthy doses of physical labour. When he got too much of anything, he’d go to sea with Mick and Pete and be totally unreachable for days at a time. Jan said it was no way to do business, but Jan was tense and irritable more often than not, and his lean, farm-worker’s frame had softened slightly and developed the slight paunchiness of muscle gone to flab. And, anyway, the business was doing just fine. If he missed a deal, or lost out on an untimely shipwreck, by his North Sea sabbaticals, he gained in his relationship with the men who worked under him. There were more by far now than just Mick and Pete Haines. And their original diver had retired to professional rather than amateur alcoholism and been replaced by four others. The newcomers were businesslike and the whole, perhaps, lacked the careless camaraderie of the early days but, like most working men, they liked a boss who worked beside them, and did the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks as well.
And it was dangerous work. By definition, it meant going to sea in the worst of weathers; weather that caused shipwrecks. It meant playing risky games of tag round a floundering, disabled vessel, trying to get a tow-line aboard in a gale. It meant riding out such a gale on a powerless, and sometimes sinking, ship under tow. Even the tools of the trade were dangerous; high explosives for underwater demolition, taut steel winch lines that could, in an instant of overstrain, snap and cut a man in two; and they used those tools always in the worst of conditions. It was the sort of work that demanded concentration, co-ordination and trust, and men working together in such conditions won one another’s respect. Accordingly, they obeyed Jan Muller, politely, but they really liked Sam, and would do anything for him. So he continued in his own way, going to sea whenever he could, or whenever he felt the need, and leaving Jan to man the ship-to-shore radio, awaiting the calls of distress that meant work. It was a vulture’s role, salvage, and that aspect was one he could neither get used to nor forget. Generally, he could thrust it aside; after all, it was work that needed doing. Shipowners needed salvage men even if they didn’t always like them. And most of the time he was too busy to worry over emotional or moral implications. He was too busy, actually, to worry overmuch about anything, and that included, perhaps unfortunately, family.
‘I really had to, Terry,’ he said, ‘I didn’t have the time to spare. I haven’t got this time to spare, damn it.’
‘No one said you had to pick me up. Harry could have.’
‘I wanted to pick you up. You’re the one bit of family that really …’
‘That really matters?’ Terry glanced across, slowing the car, prepared to argue. Sam shrugged. ‘Thank you,’ Terry said. ‘Don’t think I’m not flattered.’
‘Don’t push your luck, mate.’
‘I’m serious. I am flattered. I know we’re close. And I’m glad we’re close. You’re my brother and I love you more than anyone with the possible exception of God. But the rest of the family has rights too, pal.’
‘I know that. Look, I’m here, aren’t I?’ He raised both hands, in an annoyed gesture.
‘Yes, here. You’re not at Hardacres though.’
‘So. We’ll still be together.’
‘May the Eighth is the biggest event in Harry’s year. He looks forward to it for months. It’s about the only social event he does look forward to. You know how shy he is. But this is his. He’s sure of himself in this. It’s his yearly occasion for playing the patriarch. And damn it, Sam, he has a right to it.’ Terry gunned the car with surprising vehemence.
‘If you smash up my damned Jaguar I’ll throttle you.’
‘I’m not smashing anything.’ They were out on the open road, crossing the moorland between Malton and Sledmere, and stone walls and hedges were making a May-green blur, speckled with the white of summer blossoms. The road was dry, and perfect.
‘Look,’ Sam said, conscious of labouring a point as one is inclined to when uncertain of one’s position, ‘if we had the party at Hardacres, it wouldn’t just be the party. You know what Hardacres parties are. It would be the whole bloody weekend. And the weekend would have started on Thursday. And by the time we had the “ just the family dinner” and the “everybody dinner”, and the party itself, and the “day after the party just us again supper”, God Almighty, it would be Wednesday. I have to be in London on Monday. And I should have been in London today. And once I go to the old place I can never get away. Harry wants me to see everything. And Mother gets furious if I don’t do everything Harry wants.’
‘What would you do if Noel Hardacre was your only son?’
‘Shoot myself, but what has that got to do with anything?’
‘Precisely. Noel’s the biggest flop of a son since Cain. Can you blame Harry if he lets his paternal pride lap over a bit on to you. And he’s only saying thank you. You do practically keep the place running, I gather.’
‘Hardly as much as that.’
‘You pay for everything,’ Terry returned bluntly.
Sam shrugged again, ‘I oil the wheels a little. I can afford it.’
‘But you don’t have to.’
Sam looked across at him again, and said, ‘I don’t understand. First you’re saying I don’t do enough. Now you’re saying I do too much.’
‘No. I’m saying only that you’ll do anything money can buy.’ Terry glanced across, a knowing sharp look in his dark unpredictable eyes. Sam looked away. He started to protest but in glancing up saw a flash of bright yellow beyond a heavily foliaged chestnut tree at the bend in the road ahead. ‘Watch it!’ he shouted, clutching instinctively at the side of his door. But Terry had also seen it and hit the brakes, hard and skilfully, and the Jaguar, shrieking protest, came to a slithering but controlled halt in a shower of gravel just three feet from the tailgate of a fish lorry, wedged at an impossible angle across the road.
Terry let out a long sigh. ‘Maybe you better drive,’ he said.
‘I don’t see why,’ Sam answered, hearing his own hard breathing shaking his words. ‘You handled that well enough.’
‘Didn’t see it,’ Terry whispered.
‘Well, who the hell would have expected it?’ Sam defended him. ‘And what’s it doing here, anyhow?’ They both climbed out and walked round the front of the lorry, where they found a scene of busy chaos. It had apparently attempted to take a sharp turning in the road a fraction too quickly and had slipped into the off-side ditch, tilting enough to spill half of its precariously balanced load of crated fish.
‘Phew,’ Terry said, sniffing the aroma on the warm May air. ‘If they weren’t rotten when they started, they sure are now.’ Broken crates and spi
lled contents littered the road surface, coating it with a greasy mix of broken fish, entrails, fish scales and thin sea-watery blood. The lorry was being further lightened by the removal of additional crates, which were being stacked by the driver and a couple of local farmers on the verge. A constable had arrived and when sufficient crates were cleared from the road, he signalled to Sam and Terry that they might continue their journey. As always, Terry’s clerical garb won him special deference.
‘Just come along this way, right over to the verge, Father,’ one of the farmers called. Sam buried his face in his sleeve to keep from laughing, as Terry solemnly steered the Jaguar through the fishy slime on the road and out beyond the scene of the accident on to the open road. He waited until the constable and respectful farmers were thoroughly out of earshot beyond two bends before he opened the throttle and the black car leapt forward once more. If he was chastened by the near miss with the fish lorry, it didn’t show. Sam was still laughing.
‘Father Terry, wad ya be after hearin’ my confession?’ he said in his best Irish accent. Terry slammed a free fist at him, missing.
‘Anyhow,’ he said suddenly, ‘I’d be Father Erkenwald.’ He grinned. Sam had never got used to Terry’s monastic name. He did not return the grin, seeing something both teasing and secretive in it, like a challenge. Eventually, he took the bait. ‘Oh, you’re not really thinking of that?’
Terry shrugged.
‘Come on. Tell me you’re not.’
Terry said nothing. After a while he said, ‘You know, I’m terribly grateful to you, leaving when you did.’
Sam looked up, startled. ‘You didn’t seem grateful at the time.’
‘Of course not. I was really hurt. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. The funny thing was, I was thinking of leaving myself.’
‘You were?’ Sam said, amazed.
‘Of course. We’d been there three years. The honeymoon was over. Everybody thinks of leaving sometime. Usually about then.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’ Sam said stiffly, still ill-at-ease about his own decision, even after all this time.
‘Because you did. Naturally, I wanted to, but I couldn’t then. It would have been like all the other times, with me following you. I just couldn’t let it happen again. I was furious. I felt you’d stolen my exit.’
‘You following me?’ Sam said. ‘It was never you following me. I was the one doing the following. Always.’
Terry looked startled. ‘Surely you don’t mean that?’
Then, when he saw that Sam obviously did, he just laughed softly for a long while, driving smoothly and easily down the narrow country road. ‘I suppose,’ he said at last, ‘that’s what being twins is. We were even alike in that. The blind leading the blind.’ Sam was still too astounded by that revelation to say anything. Terry continued, ‘But then, I thought I’d break away. I’d stay. And I was glad. I am glad. I’ve found my place. I know it now.’ He paused, glancing quickly at his brother. ‘I hope you’ve found yours.’
‘You’re going to do it, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve a long way to go,’ Terry said. ‘Ordination isn’t just a snap of the fingers.’
‘You smug bastard.’
‘Please don’t be like that. It won’t make any difference between us.’
‘Of course it will.’ Sam turned away, glowering at the countryside fleeing past. Then he caught hold of himself and apologized. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Do you know, I feel jealous. As if you were getting married.’
Then he laughed again, ‘I should congratulate you, but I can’t because I’m jealous as all hell. Do you remember that time you were going to get married …’
Terry turned briefly to face him, and blinked, and then turned his eyes back to the road, puzzling. Suddenly he recalled and shouted with laughter. ‘Louise. Louise Scrimshanks. Oh my God, I’d quite forgotten. Do you remember she had the most enormous …’
‘The most enormous,’ Sam broke in.
‘The most Enormous Tits in the World,’ he and Brother Erkenwald chanted fondly, together. Terry smiled privately and said, ‘Oh, I was so much in love. I was nineteen. What a disaster that all would have been.’ He was silent, remembering, and Sam felt the unreasoning jealousy and anger leave him. They would still be together, no matter what.
Terry said softly, ‘You are right though. It is like getting married. It does cut you off in a certain way from the family. Though no doubt it joins you in another. That’s why they lay off me, always, of course. ‘
‘Who?’ Sam said, puzzled.
‘The family. You get the brunt of it. You’re the unmarried son. For me, it really is as if I already had a wife. And if I’m ordained, it will be that much more so. They wouldn’t think of objecting if my duties keep me elsewhere. So it all falls on you. I’m sorry. I’ve rather landed you in it, haven’t I?’ Sam shook his head, no longer angry at anyone.
‘I’ll try a bit harder,’ he said, as if Terry really was already a priest.
‘Nothing for it,’ Terry said smoothly with a grin, ‘you’ll just have to get married, that’s all.’
‘Not bloody likely,’ said Sam.
Upon their arrival at Kilham, Sam mischievously directed Terry to draw the Jaguar up beside Jane’s silver-grey XK 120, and they left the two parked side by side. Sam went to the bay window of the pub, knowing the family would be gathered in the front room, drinking tea around the coal fire in the brick fireplace. He rapped on the window, was greeted by shouts of hello from the assembled company, and managed to gain Jane’s attention. She glanced out of the window, nodded briefly and disappeared within the room, to emerge a moment later at the front door. She looked carefully at the two, near twin motor cars, and her two twin great-nephews.
‘It’s the new XK 140,’ Sam said, grinning, in case she hadn’t noticed. Jane had noticed. She looked it over carefully and sniffed.
‘A little flashy in black, don’t you think?’ she said. Sam just grinned, fastening down the tonneau. The May evening was warm and fine and no doubt they would return, as they had come, in the open air. Jane took Terry’s arm, directed another haughty glance down her long nose at Sam and his Jaguar, and re-entered the pub. Sam followed, still grinning.
Inside, Harry was standing before the brick hearth, doing his best, no doubt, to recreate his patriarchal position in this new setting. If he resented the changed circumstances of the party he did not show it, greeting Sam instead with great warmth. Philip Barton was in his favourite place, behind the bar, holding forth about hill sheep in his yet inadequate Dales accent. Emily was nowhere in sight, and Sam suspected, guiltily, that she was in the kitchen, another consequence of the change of venue. He looked quickly around the room, assessing who had arrived and who was yet to come. Maud and Albert had an engagement in Brighton and had sent regrets. Rodney and Vanessa were yet absent; they always arrived everywhere last, usually via some market or stud farm where they would have spent half the day, enabling Vanessa to wear her usual mixture of perfume: Chanel and saddle leather. As always, she would be in workaday tweeds and headscarf and, as always, she would apologize profusely, as if such apparel had never been known before to grace her back. As he thought of her, Sam heard the familiar rough note of the Hardacres Land-Rover arriving outside and smiled. Across the room, Heidi Muller, seated at a small table and in earnest conversation with Ruth Barton, caught the smile and smiled back. Sam crossed to her. She stood in her formal way and shook his hand.
‘So good to see you again,’ she said, shyly. Heidi did not often venture down from her inn in Strathconon. This was their first meeting since the same day, a year ago. ‘I trust my son will soon join us too.’
Sam nodded. ‘If he’s late, it’s my fault. There were one or two points to clear up about a tow job we’ve contracted for, so he might still be on the telephone to Holland. Some of these people aren’t that easy to contact.’
‘You for one,’ Philip put in. ‘Tried to ring you all last week, wh
ere were you?’ Sam sat down beside Heidi and thought a moment. His days were so busy that it was often difficult to remember a week back.
‘Tuesday?’ he asked.
‘And Wednesday and Thursday. And Friday.’
‘Tuesday in London. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday on the Mary Hardacre off the Aran Isles.’
‘How lovely,’ said Ruth Barton dreamily. ‘The Aran Isles.’ Sam looked properly at her. She had changed. Her face was older, set already in faint shadows of Emily’s own lines of disappointment. She made up too heavily, like Emily, and dressed too fussily. As always she tugged at his heart, making him wish to reach out to her and turn her again into the little girl she should be yet, not the sad woman she already was.
‘They can be lovely, sometimes,’ he said. Not in a Force Ten gale with a bad-tempered barge in tow, however, but he decided not to spoil her picture of them.
‘I’d like to go to sea sometime,’ she said. Sam grinned, pretending flirtation.
‘You’ll have to run away with me then, when your mother isn’t watching.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that,’ she said solemnly, shocked. She was not a girl to jest with, he remembered, a little late.
‘Who’s that trying to seduce my daughter?’ a voice called from the kitchen doorway. Emily emerged, arms outstretched, hips tilted forward, shoulders back, in her dramatic way of greeting people she really liked. Ruth blushed again, receding into her corner. Flirtation worried her; flirtation on her mother’s part, no matter how innocent, even more. But Sam knew the part he was expected to play and leapt up to accept Emily’s embrace. He liked Emily, anyhow, but he knew she must have her moments of glamour or the evening would be misery for her. So he made much of greeting her, pretending to hustle her out of Philip’s glance for a mock-passionate kiss. Philip never noticed anyway.
