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

by CL Skelton

  Sam and Kevin were back on her empty, spray-swept deck. Ahead, the lights of the Mary Hardacre were steady and reassuring, and in the dim summer light of the far north Sam could just make out the tow-line joining them across the sea. The gale was lessening, he felt, if only slightly, and the rain had, for the moment, ceased. It was colder though, as high pressure built up in their corner of the North Sea.

  ‘Bloody freezing,’ Kevin said, huddling into his woollen seaman’s jacket. Sam nodded. Other than woollen jumpers and jackets they had no protection against the weather, and even below working with the pumps they had hardly managed to dry out.

  ‘We’ll get some shelter in the shack,’ he said. Kevin looked mournfully at the so near and so unreachable lights of the tug. ‘Aye,’ he said, wearily.

  ‘They’ll get us off in the morning,’ Sam said. ‘The wind’s dropping.’ He wasn’t sure it was, or that they would, actually, but felt Kevin needed cheering up. With luck they’d be able to launch their dinghy again some time the next day. One thing was for certain; they weren’t going back the way they came on.

  They found a couple of tarpaulins in the shack, and unfolded them, wrapping the uncomfortable stiff canvas lengths around themselves for warmth, and huddled in the shelter of the little structure, watching out through its open doorway at the tow-line and the lights. If they lost each other in the night, Sam wanted to know about it, though no doubt the recoiling hawser would remind them. And if they did part company, he was well aware there was nothing at all that he could do. Still, he watched. Kevin dozed beside him, waking up with sudden starts, nervous and uneasy. Sam realized that there were different kinds of nerve. At eighteen, challenge was everything. Kevin had jumped the six feet of ferocious sea without a thought. But the slow patience of the long, dangerous night; that kind of nerve came with age. The jump hadn’t worried Sam either, at the time. His own confidence had carried him. Now, looking back, the dark chasm of water and the speeding weight of the Mary Hardacre’s hull came back to haunt him.

  He shrugged into the tarpaulin, shivering, not choosing to think, and wishing he had a cigarette. The freighter lurched over a heavy swell, and the line tautened. Sam watched it, tense, waiting for the low hum that preceded danger, but it eased off, and the freighter ploughed forward. Kevin woke, grabbing the side of the shed, ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing. A swell.’

  Kevin peered out into the dim light, at the tow-line. ‘What if she breaks, Mr Hardacre?’

  ‘We’ll put another on,’ Sam said, hoping Kevin wasn’t going to ask how.

  The youngster nodded, sleepily. ‘D’ye think we ought to check t’ patch?’ he said.

  ‘I did. Half an hour ago.’

  ‘What if it goes?’

  ‘It won’t,’ Sam said, with new confidence in his work.

  ‘But what if it does? She’ll roll right over, won’t she?’

  ‘Then we’ll swim,’ Sam said. ‘Go to sleep. I’ll wake you if she sinks.’ Kevin grinned nervously, but in another moment he was snoring, leaning against the wall of the shed. Outside, dim night turned to grey, early, three-in-the-morning dawn. Sam thought of Scotland and summer mornings in Strathconon, fishing with Terry. He instinctively thrust the thought aside, but then, experimentally, allowed it room in his mind. He felt he was walking out on to thin ice on frozen water, feeling his way. The ice held.

  It was midday before the weather cleared enough to allow Pete to send the dinghy across with a relief boarding party, and take Sam and Kevin back to the tug. By that time he felt he had seen more of the freighter than he ever wanted to see of any freighter again. Grey clouds still scudded across a white sky, but the wind was lessening all the while. A patch of blue broke free as they crossed to the Mary Hardacre and sun splashed them momentarily. It was hard to believe that only a day had passed since he had stood at the rail, with Mick, enjoying the sea.

  They sat in the wheelhouse as the tow got underway again. Pete handed him coffee that seemed to be literally half rum, and gave Kevin the same. He was so cold he could not stop shaking. Mick came in and threw a blanket at him, which he caught gratefully and wrapped around his shoulders. Kevin finished his coffee and lay down on a bench and went instantly to sleep. But Sam sat, sipping the hot liquid and luxuriating in returning warmth, and feeling inordinately pleased with himself.

  ‘You look like t’ bluidy Cheshire cat,’ Mick grumbled. Sam said nothing, leaning his head back against the cabin side still smiling. His eyes kept closing, but he stayed awake.

  ‘Proud uv yerself?’ Mick said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be. Yer a bluidy fool. Happen you didn’t notice, but you nearly got killed out there. It were stupid. Lump uv scrap metal ain’t worth a life.’

  Sam only smiled. He’d never felt in real danger. He knew he could do it. He said, ‘Risking our lives for lumps of scrap metal is what the job’s about. You and Pete do it all the time.’

  Mick grunted. ‘Ye’d never catch me doing a thing like that. Or Pete.’ Pete, at the wheel, said nothing.

  ‘Ah, you’re just getting old, Mick,’ Sam teased.

  Mick growled, but Pete, letting his eyes rove just a moment from the sea ahead of the Mary Hardacre’s blunt, hessian-padded prow, said suddenly, ‘Let me tell you something. Young salvage men do things like that. Old salvage men don’t do things like that. That’s how they get to be old salvage men.’ He nodded briefly towards Sam with a look of knowing authority, and returned his eyes to the sea. Sam thought, momentarily, of the hungry black water beneath the rail of the freighter and shivered as much from memory as from the cold. He felt sleep closing in, but fought it, savouring the incalculable relief that the remembrance of fear brought to him. Death, that for so many weeks had appeared his only friend, had taken its rightful place as his enemy once again. The whole night was worth that.

  He got up, went below and fell across a bunk. When he awoke they were in Norway.

  Chapter Eighteen

  From Hull, Sam drove directly to Hardacres rather than returning home to his flat in Bridlington. He had been nine days away in all, and in his new peace of mind he was suddenly aware again of duty to family. He could hardly credit, much less justify, that he had actually gone off by sea to Norway without telling anyone where he was going or when he’d be back. He wanted to see his mother and offer her the comfort he had failed to offer her before, and to see Harry and reassure him. That they had worried about him was something he could not have failed to realize, but until now he had been unable to care.

  He was driving one of their lorries, a big grey monster of a thing, which he had liberated in rather cavalier fashion at the dockside in Hull, leaving a grumbling Mick and Pete to make their way back crammed into the other with half the crew. He had as yet no car of his own, and had not even considered replacing or repairing the Jaguar. He simply did not wish to see it and doubted he’d ever feel differently. It was dark when he made the Driffield road, but as he approached the black iron gates of Hardacres, which had stood open so long that he had always rather doubted they’d move, he was amazed to see them not only shut but padlocked and, more shockingly, firmly defended by two officers of the law. A police vehicle and several other cars were parked awkwardly along the narrow roadway. For an instant, the sight of the cluster of hurriedly parked vehicles, and the turning blue light, brought back wrenching memories of the accident, and he found his hands suddenly shaky on the wheel of the big lorry. But the moment passed and, with it, the nerves. There was something reassuringly casual about the stance of the constables at the gate, one of whom was chatting with a man in a trench coat. And the small crowd of onlookers, mostly men, mostly dressed the same as the constable’s companion, in trench coats, against the light July rain, had nothing of the grim air of the scene of a tragedy.

  Sam slowed the lorry and brought it to a halt in front of the gate, and sat staring. One of the constables straightened up from his comfortable slouch against the wrought iron and str
olled across to Sam. Sam lowered the window with difficulty; the lorry was not in pristine condition.

  ‘Can I help you, mate?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Sam said, glancing at the gate. ‘I’d like to get in, for a start.’

  ‘Sorry mate, no chance.’

  ‘What?’ Sam only half-smiled; he was tired, and it was late and, whatever was going on, he didn’t really feel like being delayed. ‘What’s happened?’ he said then, getting concerned again. ‘Has there been an accident?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, mate. Just a private family matter. You just move along now, and come back tomorrow.’

  The constable stepped back authoritatively, and gave him a businesslike wave down the road.

  ‘Now wait just a damned minute,’ Sam said, feeling his already frayed patience thinning. The journey back from Norway had not been much easier than the one across. Granted, they were free of the cumbersome tow, safely delivered to the breaker’s yard in Stavanger. But the Mary Hardacre had got fussy, her diesels giving them trouble, and he’d spent a lot of the voyage below, struggling with recalcitrant engines. Once back in their home port, he’d been engaged for most of the afternoon, side by side with Mick and Pete, covered in oil and grime, trying to sort a persistent and intermittent fault. On top of that, the weather had been as unkind for their return as for the outward journey, and he had found to his annoyance that he could not seem to get warm again after the night on the freighter. His shoulder and back still ached from the fall he had taken on her deck, and whereas his young companion Kevin Hawes was, within half a day, totally back to normal, Sam was obliged to admit that he was not. For the first time the fact that he was nearly forty seemed significant and the thought did not please him. Now he was tired, dirty, cold and hungry and wanting very much to be sitting by the fireside in Harry’s library with a large whisky. ‘Just open the gates,’ he said, struggling to remain cool before an officer of the law, ‘and we’ll leave it at that.’

  The constable eyed him gravely, and his companion ambled over to join him. They stood shoulder to shoulder, and the crowd of men in trench coats perked up like a flock of sheep about to be fed. Sam realized suddenly they were journalists; recognizing one as the representative of the local Chronicle. He could not imagine what they were doing here, and didn’t particularly care.

  The second constable said, to his companion, ‘Having trouble?’

  ‘Gentleman wishes to go in,’ said the first, formally.

  ‘Sorry, sir, no one gets in tonight,’ the second said politely. ‘Nothing I can do. Orders.’ He was obviously the team diplomat.

  ‘Damn your orders,’ Sam said. ‘I live here. Now undo the gate and let me in.’

  ‘Gentleman says he lives here,’ said the diplomat to the other, in spite of the fact that they were standing side by side, just outside the door of Sam’s lorry. The first constable, big and beefy with a look of real Yorkshire malevolence about his small eyes, said, carefully surveying Sam’s lorry, and then Sam, ‘Lives here, does he?’ his voice ringing with incredulity.

  ‘Yes,’ Sam said, his own voice rising. ‘I don’t know or care what all this is about, but I’d very much like to go home.’

  ‘Your name, sir?’ said the diplomat.

  ‘Hardacre.’

  ‘Like the house?’ said the diplomat, writing something down.

  ‘Like the house,’ said Sam.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the diplomat. He withdrew to the iron gate and stood talking with his companion. They both returned to the lorry. ‘Would you mind stepping down, sir?’ the diplomat said.

  ‘Yes, I would mind. And in half a minute you’d better get all those people away from the gates of my house because I’m going to drive this lorry right through them.’ The officers stared. Sam was a little chagrined. He hadn’t meant to sound so vehement, but the tiredness was getting the better of him. ‘Look,’ he said, opening his door, and swinging down from the high seat, ‘my name is Sam Hardacre. My great-uncle is Harry Hardacre, who lives in that house with my mother.’

  ‘Your mother is Mrs Hardacre?’ the officer said. Sam noticed one of the trench-coated gentlemen writing busily.

  ‘Yes,’ he said sharply. ‘My mother is Mrs Hardacre.’ It was true in its own way. He stood glaring at the gate, wishing someone from the damned house would get down here, explain everything, and let him in.

  ‘Could we have some identification, sir?’

  Sam looked blank. He said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and then remembered he had nothing remotely resembling identification on him. He was wearing worn and oil-stained dungarees, a torn navy pullover, and his navy seaman’s jacket. His passport was on the Mary Hardacre and his driving licence was in his flat in Bridlington. If pressed, he wouldn’t be able to prove ownership of the lorry, even, in spite of the fact that his name was written across the side. He shrugged and grinned suddenly, in exasperation. ‘No, I’m afraid you can’t,’ he said. The constables studied him. The grin had softened them, but not enough. They were at an impasse and Sam suddenly realized that they really were not going to let him in, and he was genuinely going to be obliged to leave, either to find a telephone and ring the house and find out what was going on, or drive back to Bridlington through the night.

  ‘Could you kindly tell me,’ he said, controlling the tremendous urge to leap back in the cab and drive right through the locked gates, ‘on whose orders you’re keeping people out?’

  But before they could reply, a man broke off his conversation among the cluster of onlookers in trench coats and made his way over to the lorry. It was the one Sam had recognized as a reporter from the Chronicle. He looked at the lorry, and at Sam and he said, suddenly, ‘You’re Sam Hardacre, aren’t you?’ Sam nodded. He had not met the man before, though he’d seen him about. The two constables looked up from their notepads.

  ‘Can you identify the gentleman?’ one asked rather eagerly, as if he wanted a way out of this now, too.

  ‘Aye, I can that. Yon’s old Joe Hardacre’s grandson. You must be new in these parts, or ye’d know him.’ Sam looked at the officers, who exchanged a glance and went off to the gates and began unshackling them.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to the reporter, an elderly man with thinning grey hair and sharp, shrewd eyes. ‘But I don’t know you, do I?’

  ‘Nay, lad, nor I you. But I knew your great-grandad. And old Joe. Figured anyone around here talkin’ posh and dressed like a tink is bound t’ be a Hardacre. Queer lot, t’ bunch uv ye. Figured you needed helpin’ out.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sam said again. ‘I really am who I said,’ he added, as reassurance.

  The old man nodded as Sam climbed back into the lorry. He watched solemnly, and then said, ‘Damned sorry about your brother, Sam.’

  Sam nodded, acknowledging the kindness, and put the lorry into gear. A reporter of course; naturally he would know. He drove through the gates hurriedly, lest anyone else try to stop him, and because he did not want any other stranger to speak to him about Terry. Grief did not cure in a moment’s revelation like in films or books. It took a damned long time.

  The house was lit from one end to the other as he approached it through the beech wood. It looked beautiful, as if a wonderful party was going on inside and he felt a sudden surprising wave of emotion for it, his childhood home. He parked the lorry off to the side of the house by the empty conservatory, because the semi-circle of gravel above the balustrade and stone steps leading to the lawns was already packed with vehicles, some family, some he did not recognize. He climbed down from the cab, stiff and aching from the long day and the drive in the uncomfortable vehicle, and made his way round to the front door. It was shut, even the big heavy outer door that they never shut but, as he reached it, that was flung open and light spilled out on to the gravel. Someone had heard the lorry approach. Sam stepped into the light spill and Noel suddenly appeared, his grey hair wild and his face animated by real fury.

  ‘Just get the hell out, whoever …’

  �
�Noel? What?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Noel’s anger faded to his ordinary glower, touched slightly with surprise. ‘How’d you manage to get in?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘With difficulty,’ Sam said. On the drive up he had reflected that only his public school accent had got him through those gates. The thought had amused him; his great-grandfather who founded the whole line would have been locked out by his ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ and be standing there yet. ‘Would you mind telling me what’s going on?’

  ‘All bluidy hell’s going on,’ said Noel, turning his back and stamping unhelpfully off into the house interior. Sam was left to follow, lightly shutting the door behind him. As he crossed the main hall, he heard Harry’s voice, suddenly old and quavery, he thought, asking who was there.

  ‘It’s t’ bluidy prodigal,’ Noel’s voice, sour-tempered, returned, and Sam heard his uncle’s old, limping footsteps making hurriedly across the floor to greet him.

  ‘Sam,’ Harry said as they met in the doorway, his voice tinged equally with warmth and tension, as if he never knew what Sam was about to do next. They, all of them, had addressed him that way since Terry’s death. ‘I had no idea. I am so sorry. Did they stop you? Oh, I do hope they didn’t give you trouble.’

  ‘No trouble, Uncle Harry, no trouble,’ Sam said, smiling, embracing his uncle with both arms and realizing with a start that the old man had shrunk somehow and seemed barely to reach above his chin. He rested his cheek briefly against the grey thin hair, and caught sight of his mother, across the room, watching him with uncertain hope. She, too, seemed years older than he recalled her, and he was aware that he had not seen either of them clearly since the accident. Its effect on all the family was written on the cluster of faces in the drawing-room, and he yearned to ease their mutual pain. He extended one free arm to Madelene and she ran sobbing across the room to him. He held them both, two old people, like two children in his arms.