by CL Skelton
‘Too late,’ Emily crowed, ‘you’ve lost your chance.’ She pretended to brush Sam off and turned back towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve found a new love,’ she said, winking over her shoulder. She was dressed in black, with a striped, neat apron over her cocktail dress, and her jewellery flashing incongruously in the late afternoon light. Sam followed the conspiratorial wink, letting her lead him into the kitchen, where he expected to find young Paul, or perhaps the old gardener, Bemrose, as the object of her ‘flirtation’. He bent his head beneath the low lintel of the hall and followed Emily’s quick high-heeled footsteps down the dark corridor. The kitchen door stood open and to his amazement he heard a man singing, Italian accented and with a terrible voice,
Bless thees house, Oh Lord we pray
Make it safe by night and day …
The last notes were strung out in a horribly off-key tremolo. There was only one person who could sing that badly.
‘Riccardo?’ he guessed, astounded.
‘Ah, there she ees, my lovely one, my little cabbage, my …’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ Emily said, her eyes glowing, pleased with herself. She shoved him roughly in the ribs, but he only engulfed her in his long lithe arms, still singing over the top of her head. ‘Riccardo’s helping with the meal,’ Emily protested, her voice muffled against his shirt. Sam looked hard at Riccardo. Riccardo grinned, his white beautiful teeth showing a devastatingly rakish look of innocence.
‘So I see,’ Sam said, not sure what to think. Riccardo was twenty, or twenty-one, no more. But he was also Italian, and street-wise. He’d no doubt had lovers since he was barely old enough to do up his own fly buttons.
‘She is wonderful woman,’ Riccardo protested suddenly, reading Sam’s gaze. Emily caught his eye and for an instant read his suspicions. She looked shocked. It was clear that what was going on in the kitchen was only play in her mind, whatever it was in Riccardo’s. ‘I come up to do the pasta, and the feesh. It is a big meal. I think she need some help.’
‘Of course,’ Sam said. It was none of his business, anyhow. And Emily looked so happy, playing like a girl. ‘What a kind thought.’ Riccardo audibly breathed out. He rushed forward, and shook Sam’s hand.
‘My pleasure,’ he said, still nervous. His restaurant business, thriving though it was, still was utterly dependent on Sam Hardacre and the thought that he might have offended an unexpected streak of prudishness in his principal backer had shaken his nerve.
‘How’s business?’ asked Sam.
‘Oh, she is splendid. Splendid. I find just the new site for our second Riccardo’s. Earls Court. Ground floor with a little garden at the back. We put out tables in summer, dining under the stars. Oh, it ees so romantic,’ he said, his dark eyes wandering once more to Emily.
‘It ees also London,’ Sam said drily. ‘Where it rains all summer.’
‘What a killjoy,’ said Emily, still glowering at Sam for his suspicions. She waved him away, and he left the kitchen rather readily, feeling out of favour with them both.
Vanessa and Rodney had arrived and were stamping around the public bar in their usual manner. Vanessa was drinking Guinness from a pint mug. ‘Sam, old thing. Great to see you, jolly, isn’t it?’ She slapped his back and sent him careening against Rodney who said, ‘Do tell,’ apropos nothing.
‘What a pity we’re not at Hardacres,’ Vanessa said loudly, putting her finger on a sore spot. Harry coughed and Sam looked uncomfortable but Vanessa continued gaily, ‘Got a splendid bay mare the other day, suit you perfectly. Thought you’d try her out this weekend.’ She tilted her head sideways, sympathetically, ‘What with you being so busy these days, bet you haven’t had a good ride in months.’
Terry creased up in unclerical delight against the far wall, pointing a finger at Sam and gesturing over Vanessa’s back. Sam struggled to keep a straight face and conceded that a ride on Vanessa’s mare might be just the thing. A few moments later he cornered Terry alone and said, ‘Thanks a lot, brother,’ punching him in the shoulder, ‘I was having a hard enough time without your help. A little decorum from the Church might be in order.’ Terry only laughed harder, enjoying himself.
‘What are you griping about? I haven’t had a good ride in seven years.’ He wandered off to talk to Harry. He was having a wonderful time, Sam knew, remembering back to the way the sudden release from the orderly world of the monastery would also delight him when he too belonged within the walls of Ampleforth. As for himself, Terry’s presence completed the evening for him; he felt totally at home, as if he was once more back in their school or army days, when they were always inseparable and every party was a joint adventure to be played through together, with their unique twinned solidarity, and laughed about afterwards. There had been one infamous occasion when the Hardacre brothers jointly seduced a young lady who was none the wiser that the twin who had nipped off to the hotel bathroom was not the same twin who returned, moments later, to her bed. In retrospect, they were both a little shocked at the memory, but it was an opportunity provided by their doubled lives that was simply too good to miss. It had actually only happened once, though rumours abounded of repeat performances. They had only to remind each other to be reduced to hysterical laughter, and the young lady’s name alone was sufficient reminder. To this day, neither could speak the name with a straight face, and each had been terrified during more solemn moments of their lives that the other would pronounce the fatal syllables, ‘Jeanette’. Terry had long threatened to save it for Sam’s wedding, whenever that was, at which he would undoubtedly be best man. Sam was now keeping his sabotage for Terry’s ordination, and they both knew that the dual threat would keep each in line.
Still, there were occasional backslidings. When, that evening, the family were solemnly gathered around the dinner-table, all present with the sole exception of Noel who wouldn’t have come even if it were at Hardacres, half a mile from his cottage, and most certainly wouldn’t come here; and Harry begged them, after the meal, to be upstanding for the Loyal Toast, Sam knew it was coming. Terry hated anything remotely resembling pomp and ceremony, except in Church, and as glasses were charged he stepped back from the table as if in search of another bottle, drifted in remarkably ecclesiastical solemnity past Sam and leaned briefly over his shoulder, gesturing across the table to Jan Muller.
‘Get back to your place,’ Sam hissed, seeing Harry’s offended eyes upon them.
‘If Jan had a little sister …’
‘Shut up.’
‘What do you think she’d be called?’
‘Bugger off.’
‘Jan-ette,’ said Terry, giggling and topping up Sam’s glass as Sam collapsed in helpless laughter.
‘The Queen,’ intoned Harry, sharply.
‘God bless her,’ Sam giggled, tussling with his brother, as the rest of the party looked on with their usual bewildered amazement.
‘They’ve never learned how to behave,’ Madelene apologized later, as everyone sat around over coffee, more relaxed, and Harry, mollified with port, had got round to forgiving his two nephews. ‘I suppose it was growing up without a father.’ She shook her head but didn’t look in the least sorry. She was inordinately proud of them both and didn’t care who knew it. At the moment, she had even forgiven Sam for his absences from Hardacres. It was just so nice being together again, all her family.
She looked only mildly disapproving as Sam and Jan Muller closeted themselves on a bench inside the inglenook and talked business, as they always did. After a while Terry joined them, glass in hand, and leaned lazily against Sam’s shoulder, happily listening to their discussions of ships and shipping, subjects which he knew little about but found interesting enough. Madelene, watching them, thought them very alike, even with Jan’s blond hair in such startling contrast to that of her two dark sons, and the incongruity of Terry’s monastic dress. They could all three be brothers. She was pleased with the friendship and partnership between her son and that of Heidi Muller. Though Jan was hardly much old
er, he seemed to her always steadier than the twins, and she relied on him to provide the steadying influence to Sam’s mercurial and inventive nature. It was a good combination; she had been in business, in her own way, for a long time, and understood the need for solidity to be balanced by imagination, lest it become stolidity, and likewise for the quickfire sharpness of the Sam Hardacres of the world to be anchored by the realism of someone like Jan. They sat together, the three of them, for the rest of the evening until Terry suddenly looked up, startled, from his drowsing by the fire.
‘Good God,’ he said, ‘I’m going to turn into a pumpkin if we don’t get back to Ampleforth smartish.’ Sam looked at his watch, seeing it later than he’d imagined and got up as well. Rather hastily they made their farewells, Terry leaving the pub with one arm around his mother and the other around Harry’s shoulders. Harry was much softened by the evening’s gentle drinking and was exhibiting his amusement at Terry’s slightly weaving steps.
‘A drunk monk,’ he cried, delightedly. ‘Always wanted to see a drunk monk.’ Harry was a bit tipsy himself. Terry grinned. He tossed the keys across to Sam.
‘I’m plastered,’ he said, flopping into the passenger seat. ‘You drive.’
‘Just as well I’m not, isn’t it?’ Sam said, climbing behind the wheel. Terry had closed his eyes and looked about to go to sleep. Sam started the engine and carefully backed the car away from Jane’s XK 120, waving to the family gathered before The Rose as he did so. Then he turned the car into the village street, driving back the way they’d come.
He was, as he had said, thoroughly sober. He’d seen the way Terry was headed early on in the party, and knew he’d be driving home. Besides, he wanted Terry to relax and had deliberately curbed his own drinking so that his brother might freely indulge. It was something they had always done for each other, when out together, and driving together. Almost by instinct, one always maintained sobriety, though very rarely both.
The road was as dry as it had been in the afternoon and the night air faintly crisp with early summer chill. Above, the stars were bright, only occasionally veiled by thin wisps of cloud. Small curls of moorland mist crossed the road once they were up high, away from the village, but even those were frail streamers that broke harmlessly over the bonnet of the Jaguar. Sam drove hard, enjoying the invigoration of the night air and the emptiness of the darkness after the crowded hours of the party. Terry was asleep beside him.
He passed Sledmere and headed towards Malton. The roads were empty. He’d not seen another pair of headlights for twenty minutes. He was moving along, flooring the accelerator on the straights, his foot just flickering across the brake before the curves, slowing only slightly, changing down at the last moment, and up again as she cornered beautifully, his eyes already on the far reach of his headlights, striking the stone walls of the next bend. Ahead was a dark shadow of heavily foliaged trees, blacking out the stars, a stand of chestnuts. Something tugged at his memory from long ago, in the afternoon, but was fogged and lost behind the hours of talk and laughter, that lay between. There was a sharp bend. He took it well, gunned the car out of it, beneath the dark shadow of chestnut trees. The only warning he had was the flash of some light-coloured object by the roadside, a broken crate lying by the verge. A fish crate.
Oh God! He hit the fishy slime almost sideways, coming out of the bend, and it took the wheels of the Jaguar like a pool of oil. She broke free, losing all traction, and the steering wheel became airy and light in his hands. He fought it, but it was like fighting with water. The car slewed, he corrected, it slewed the other way, he almost won. ‘I’ve got it, Terry, I’ve got it,’ he heard himself shouting. But he hadn’t got it.
She mounted the steep nearside verge with two wheels, as on to a ramp, and instantly was in the air. In a slow, impossible blur he felt her turn, bounce, strike something, turn again, and felt air take him, and suddenly his flight was not that of the Jaguar. He was apart from it, flung with ferocious force on to the grass verge to lie stunned and winded, as in a fall from a horse. He could not believe how easily she had flipped, how simply it was done. How quickly it all happened and how he was now lying on the same smooth blur of grass that seconds before he had driven by disdainfully at such graceful speed.
Sound reached him first; a distant, remembered crashing, dying away. Then a whirring sound, as one wheel of the overturned car still spun on in a phantom journey. And another sound, a dripping of liquid, water, or petrol. Then silence began to swallow it all. The wheel came to a whispering halt. The dripping faded. A night bird sang off on the moor. Pain crept in on its voice. Not bad pain. In fact, so little it had not occurred to him that he might be hurt. He tried to move, and found it difficult but not impossible. He was surprised to taste blood in his mouth, but knew it was not of consequence. He sat up, feeling winded yet, and remembered he had not been alone in the car.
‘Terry,’ he called. His voice was almost casual, expecting a ready answer from where Terry would also be sitting up, thinking the same thoughts of amazement he was thinking himself. That was close. And like a million times before, they’d been lucky.
‘Terry,’ he called again. Then suddenly terror seized him and he struggled to his feet. The headlights of the overturned Jaguar probed uselessly, frighteningly into the tops of the chestnut trees. ‘Terry!’ Silence came down on the black moorland, and with it a loneliness such as he had never, in all his life, endured.
Chapter Sixteen
Everyone was so kind. The passing motorist who stopped and summoned the police. The police constables themselves who stayed with him until the ambulance came, and had not the slightest interest in apportioning the blame that Sam so desperately needed to shoulder. They praised his calm behaviour after the accident, and said the accident itself was unavoidable considering the state of the road. The ambulance driver and his assistant were kind. Not that they were needed; Sam was not hurt and Terry was beyond all helping. Jane, when she came to pick him up from the casualty ward where they insisted on taking him, was inimitably kind.
Jane held the family together. She was their rock. She had been so before at other times of family tragedy, and became so at once, as soon as they were notified. When it happened, what Jane later called, ‘what all families dread and none should ever have to endure’, the telephone call in the night, the clutch in the darkness at the throat, there was no one else capable of responding. Jan Muller had left for London and was out of contact. Madelene collapsed in numb hysteria and Harry became in an instant a frail, helpless old man. Jane left them in the charge of Philip and Emily Barton and motored to the hospital alone.
She drove Sam back to Hardacres. On the journey she repeated those sad comforts that the police constables had offered her. That there had been no suffering. Death had been instantaneous; so quickly had it all been over that it was more than possible Terry had never awakened, even, before the overturning car had flung him, as it had flung Sam, on to the verge of the road. Only Terry had been unlucky, and the fall had broken his neck. Sam sat beside her staring straight ahead through the windscreen into the still pleasant May night. She could not be sure he was even hearing her.
‘He wouldn’t have known about it, Sam.’ There was no answer. ‘They said there wasn’t a mark on him.’ He knew that. He’d sat in the dim starlight beside him for half an hour before help came. ‘He was just unlucky.’ Unlucky. All their lives they had been lucky. So lucky. The scrapes they’d got through. London, the Blitz, the whole of the war. Unharmed. The famous Hardacre luck. They’d pushed it just once too often. And it ran out. ‘Sam, it could as well have been you.’ Would God, would God that it were. So fast, so fast. Before the spinning wheel of the overturned Jaguar had whispered to a halt, Terry was dead. He knew that because that was when the black cage of aloneness had locked around him, that held him still.
Three days later, it held him yet. The funeral bell at Ampleforth was still tolling when they drove away. Sam seemed to hear it for days. His entire
being focused on it, as if it were his only voice. He had neither thought nor desire, wanting only to throw himself literally into the grave with Terry and, short of that, to prostrate himself at the feet of the abbot and beg to be taken back. But neither was a possibility, he knew. He was thirty-eight years old and the time had finally come to grow up once and forever. He would never be really young again.
They returned to Hardacres. Jane made him drive, an act as necessary as it was cruel. Later, he thanked her. At the time he simply obeyed. He was numb with grief and did whatever he was told to do. She watched, unspeaking, as he took the wheel with painful hesitance, handling the machine that so recently had been as a mistress at his command like something alien and fearful. His hands were white on the wooden-rimmed wheel, and he drove slowly and with terrible jerky uncertainty down the winding country roads. But she would not relent and in the end he got them home.
Jane was not at all sure that Hardacres was the best place for Sam to be. But she did realize that it was perhaps only at Hardacres that he would come to terms with what had happened, if he was ever to come to terms with it at all. Which was something over which, from the very beginning, she had haunting doubts.
He had not so much shown his grief as been visibly shattered by it. He had never wept. He neither sought people out to speak nor deliberately avoided speech. When spoken to he answered rationally and without emotion. When not spoken to he sat alone staring into space or walked about the house or gardens like a ghost. She imagined he was reliving his childhood with Terry, a necessary act of mourning if it were so, but could not really be sure of that.
