by CL Skelton
When he released them, he looked carefully around and saw to his amazement that not only were Noel, Vanessa and Rodney present, but both the Bartons, all three of their children, Mary Gray, and Albert and Maud Chandler. Only Jane was absent, and for a moment he had a horrifying fear that the gathering, so like the funeral party of six weeks ago, was for an equally dire cause. But then, like a jester sent to amuse a royal court, a small dapper figure appeared who by no means would have any place in a gathering of family sorrow.
‘Bernie?’ Sam said, unbelieving.
‘I remember you. You were the wise guy in Janet’s bedroom,’ said the little man. ‘Do me a favour, don’t try any of that stuff again, please.’ The entire company, jarred suddenly out of their concern for Sam, turned to face him, visibly wondering what that was about.
Sam said, ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’ He glanced instinctively towards his mother the next instant, and apologized.
Albert Chandler stepped forward. He looked excruciatingly uncomfortable. He said, ‘Sam, had I any idea you would be here, I would never have allowed this to occur.’
Sam shook his head impatiently. He raised his hands in a gesture of placation and said, ‘Look, everyone, please. I’m all right. I’m fine. I’ve just been away, working, and I’m fine. You’re all terribly kind, but it isn’t necessary. But will you please tell me what’s happening?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ Noel said. He alone of all the family had shown no great concern for Sam’s feelings, and he had treated Terry’s death like he treated all death, the natural summation of the rather raw deal he regarded life to be in the first place. He said, ‘What’s happening is that her Royal Bleedin’ Highness is throwing a royal fit up in t’ master bedroom and her loyal toadies are all tearing their hair out in sympathy.’ Noel slammed down his tankard, from which he had been heartily drinking brown ale, and stalked out. ‘Ye can all call me for t’ bluidy curtain,’ he announced, disgusted, as he slammed the drawing-room door.
Sam watched, mystified, and his Aunt Maud approached tentatively, touching his arm. ‘Sam, I’m terribly sorry about this. My daughter … Janet … agreed to some publicity photographs at the house. It was all rather sudden. Naturally Harry arranged a family dinner …’ she trailed off, and Sam nodded, remembering the crowd of reporters at the gate.
‘Those people,’ he said, gesturing behind himself towards the door and beyond, ’is that why they’re here?’
‘Miss Chandler has an immense following,’ Bernie put in, remembering his job.
‘I gather,’ said Sam, drily. He was feeling more than a little resentful as well as bemused. Albert Chandler cast a miserable glance towards the hallway, and the main stairs. ‘I’m sure in a moment or two …’
‘Do you think perhaps she isn’t happy in the room …’
Harry ventured. ‘There are others. Only, it is the biggest …’
‘I’m sure she’ll be all right,’ Maud comforted Harry. ‘The journey was wearing,’ she added doubtfully, as if she didn’t believe much of what she was saying.
‘I wouldn’t have planned the dinner had I known,’ Harry apologized. ‘Oh dear, I’ve made a mess of it, haven’t I?’ He looked plaintively for Madelene, who took his arm. Sam looked around the room, carefully, his resentment turning to anger.
Albert Chandler, his tall dignified form still elegant in his shabby evening dress, looking humiliated and weary, as any parent whose offspring was causing difficulties beyond his control, said, ‘No, Harry, it’s our fault. You’ve done your best. It’s all just unfortunate, that’s all.’
Bernie hopped around pouring people drinks and soothing everyone in sight. He turned briefly to Sam, who still stood in the centre of the room, his dungarees and oily jacket in stark contrast to the rest in their dinner-suits and long gowns.
‘Miss Chandler, she’s very high-strung. She’s very tired,’ he shrugged. ‘You know.’
‘Yes,’ Sam said coolly, yet eyeing his embarrassed family, ‘I know. You mean she’s drunk.’ There was a silence. Nobody would reprimand him; they were still a little afraid of his recent grief in spite of his reassurances. But they all slowly stopped talking, and stared. Bernie, like an agitated penguin in his dinner-suit, came to a halt.
‘Mr Hardacre,’ he said, with puffy dignity, ‘Miss Chandler is tired. ‘
‘That’s right. Drunk,’ said Sam again. Bernie glowered at him but Sam suddenly looked dangerously angry and, in his working clothes, rather formidable, and Bernie stepped back. Harry stepped to intervene, but Sam whirled about and stalked out of the room.
‘Where are you going?’ Bernie shouted.
‘Upstairs.’
‘You can’t.’
Sam stopped and turned around in the doorway and caught Bernie by his jacket lapels and lifted him half off his feet. Harry mouthed protest, but Sam just held the kicking little man there as he said, ‘I can bloody well go upstairs in my own house.’ He dropped Bernie, whirled about and slammed the door. He went up the stairs, despite his weariness, three steps at a time, turned down the first corridor, up the next and was at the door of the master bedroom before anyone downstairs had moved. He paused just a moment, and then slammed the thin panels three times with his grimy, oil-stained fist.
‘Bernie, you bird-shit, I said leave me alone.’ The voice was high, sharp and had the thickness of recent tears. Sam paused, hesitating only a moment, and then slammed the door open with his hand, knowing it wasn’t locked. There weren’t any locks in the house. Old Sam hadn’t believed in locks. He’d thrown every key away the day he moved in.
‘I said, stay out,’ she shrieked, and then she saw him, or saw, at least, that he wasn’t Bernie. She was wearing a white silk dressing-gown and standing by the mahogany dressing-table on which was prominent a large, open bottle of Scotch and a full ashtray into which she flicked desultory ash, even as she stared. ‘Who in hell are you,’ she breathed, in a mixture of shock and fury. Then, quite suddenly, she recognized him, which Sam found surprising considering how long it was since they had met, and how differently he was dressed. She nodded, a nod of assessment and said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Yes, madam,’ he said sourly.
She partly turned away, looking at her half-filled glass, and then she looked back, met his eyes and said, ‘Look, I’m not very good at this sort of thing. I’m sorry about your brother.’
Sam was startled, and slightly unnerved. He feared her shaking his fragile equilibrium and said quickly, ‘So am I. I don’t want to talk about it.’ She shrugged, annoying him with her apparent nonchalance.
‘Okay,’ she said. She drew on her cigarette and blew out smoke, and then abruptly shook her head, regaining momentum. ‘Now kindly leave.’
‘No.’ She stared.
‘Get out of my bedroom,’ she said. She stared again, and then looked around, as if she were in a hotel, for a phone, or bell to ring. ‘I’ll call someone,’ she said, defiantly.
‘You can call the bloody Horse Guard if you like,’ he said. ‘I’m not leaving until you get yourself together, and downstairs.’ She looked uncertain, partly frightened, partly furious, and mostly drunk.
She murmured, ‘Bernie,’ in a trembling voice, and then suddenly shouted, ‘Bernie. Bernie, help!’
Sam had no worry of Bernie hearing her. Bernie, he suspected, was not likely to have followed him. But he said, ‘If I see Bernie again I’ll throw him out of that window,’ and she, looking as if to believe him, stopped shouting.
‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Now, get your evening clothes, unless that is your evening clothes, and get your face washed, and get downstairs. I’ll be waiting just outside your door, madam, and you have five minutes. Dinner,’ he added, ‘is served.’
He made a step towards the door, and she stood silent and open-mouthed. He thought he’d succeeded, but as his hand touched the knob she regained her voice. ‘Now wait just a fucking damned minute, you pompous prick.’ He turned around again, his eyes widening with a
mazement. ‘Yeah, that’s right. You listen. I’m not sure who sent you, or just where you fit in around this circus, but I’m telling you for a start I am not going downstairs. I am not having dinner with that bunch of clowns in penguin suits. I am not getting sent off with “the ladies” for coffee or any of the other dumb things you stuffed shirts get up to. I never wanted to come here, it was all Bernie’s bright idea, and I never agreed to any smart-ass dinner. So piss off and tell them that, and,’ she gasped as he caught her upraised forearm which had been brandishing a small, decorative fist, ‘let go of my arm and don’t you dare touch me.’
She swung the other fist and Sam caught that one too, and she began to kick with her fluffy little slippers. ‘Let me go,’ she hissed. He did, afraid he would hurt her wrists if she continued to struggle, and she looked startled. She stepped back, her eyes blue and hard, and said angrily, ‘Hey, you’re really some smart-ass, aren’t you?’
‘Miss Chandler,’ Sam said quietly, realizing everything was out of hand, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I broke into your bedroom, and I’m sorry I touched you. It was unforgivable.’ His anger was cooling rapidly into tiredness. He became suddenly, abstractedly aware of quite how stunningly beautiful she was, even drunk, tear-stained and angry. The realization shook his confidence. He said, still quietly, ‘Look, I’ve just spent nine days at sea, and I’m exhausted and I just want a quiet dinner with my family.’
‘So who’s stopping you?’
‘You are,’ he snapped, feeling the calm going again. ‘Everything’s impossible down there. My uncle is miserable that he hasn’t pleased you, and your father is mortified.’
‘I can’t help that,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s Bernie’s fault.’
‘Yes, you can damn well help it, you spoiled brat,’ Sam said. ‘My uncle’s the sweetest man in the world and your father runs him a damn close second and I won’t have you treat them this way.’
‘You won’t?’ Janet Chandler whispered, as if she doubted her hearing. ‘You? And what are you, in all this? and what for Chrissake gives you the holy right to set yourself up as judge and jury around here? I’m not going to be lectured to by some …’ she looked him, and his oil-stained clothing, up and down with distaste, ‘some dirty, ignorant lout.’
‘I was at Cambridge,’ he said, feeling a childish need to defend himself suddenly against her heavy scorn. He didn’t mention that he’d not been there very long.
‘Big deal. What did they teach you? How to be an asshole?’ Sam shook his head, exasperated, and she said, ‘You’d have thought they’d have taught you not to come into a lady’s bedroom in filthy dungarees.’ She looked at him again with disgust.
‘I work for my living, madam,’ he said.
‘And you think I don’t?’ she exploded. ‘Shittin’ hell, I work my ass off, just being Janet Chandler, half the time. You think it’s easy, you think it’s fun? You dumb shit.’ She grabbed for her cigarettes and lit another.
‘You know,’ Sam said, wonderingly, ‘I’ve been at sea for nine whole days with ten Yorkshire seamen and every one of them has a cleaner mouth than you.’
She glared. ‘Oh yeah? Nine days at sea with you, it’s a wonder they can still talk.’ Then suddenly she smiled round the cigarette, and a mischievous look caught her blue-green eyes, softening them. She turned towards him, and tilted her hip dramatically sideways, lowering one hand to it and giving an ostentatious little wriggle. She whispered, throatily, ‘On the other hand, nine days at sea with me, and they’d have something to talk about.’
The fact that he knew she was acting did not stop him feeling the sudden devastating stirring of the loins that the vamping hip and the voice engendered. Physical exhaustion always brought with it, for him, a sort of weary renegade randiness, a flicker of rogue interest from a body that was no doubt too tired to perform. The room, warm from the flickering coal fire in the grate, and sensual with dim lighting, and her perfume, did not help. She saw the effect she’d had in the uncertain way he stepped back from her and her smile broadened.
‘Hey, how long did you say you were at sea?’ she said, teasing.
‘Too long. Madam, please get dressed. The family are waiting for dinner.’
She grinned, drawing on her cigarette, and pushing her luck a little. ‘I bet they’d wait a little longer,’ she said in the same throaty voice.
Sam, fully aware she was playing with him, said, quite quietly, ‘Another time, madam, if you’re that eager. Right now, I want you to move your selfish little arse and get downstairs, and stop playing havoc with my family.’
She was offended at his abrupt end of her game and said coldly, ‘Me playing havoc? That’s rich. The whole damned place is coming apart at the seams, as far as I can tell, with the strain of everyone tiptoeing around you …’
‘Don’t,’ Sam said.
‘ … ever since …’
‘Don’t.’ He stepped forward, willing her to silence, but she just flicked ash a little drunkenly from her cigarette and looked him coolly in the eyes.
‘Ever since you killed your brother in that damned car.’
‘No,’ he whispered, and lunged for her, ‘No, no. No.’ He caught her upflung hand, oblivious of the sudden real fear on her face, feeling nothing but the need to silence her. He had come so far; he could not let her, anyone, plunge him back into that dark valley he had inhabited. ‘Please,’ he whispered, ‘just be quiet.’ He fought to not hear her words. But she was, after all, very drunk.
‘It’s the damned truth. The big damned truth no one’s talking about. Time someone did.’
‘No,’ he begged, but he had both her wrists in one hand, and was fighting to cover her pretty, painted and frightened mouth with the other. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror of the wardrobe and was dimly, shockingly aware of what she was afraid of. He looked dishevelled, unbalanced and dangerous. He paused, his big, dirty hand by her face, fingers outspread, and she took that moment of uncertainty to foolishly bring up a treacherous knee. He weaved out of the way and she missed, but he fell then, heavily, and had just time to twist enough so that he hit the floor first, with her landing on him, rather than the other way around. The fall stunned them both into sense. He gripped her tightly, where she sprawled across him, and whispered, ‘Jesus. I didn’t mean to do that. Have I hurt you?’
She was silent for a moment, her face buried against his shoulder, her white-blonde hair spread over his face, and he was frightened for her. Then she said, adjusting her body quite comfortably so that she lay full length on his, ‘No. And I hope I’ve hurt you, you bastard.’ Her head came up and her eyes met his for a moment, malevolently, and then, quite suddenly, they filled with tears and she buried her face against him and whispered, ‘Oh Christ, did I really say all those things. What a rotten thing to say. What a rotten thing. I’m a drunken bitch.’ She sobbed so that her whole body shook, and he knew she was not acting, and knew, in the same moment, that the drink was no longer remotely a joke. The firelight fluttered in the room, making odd shadows about her tumbled hair. He stroked it, absently, and relaxed on the floor. It was soft, heaped with Persian rugs, one on top of the other, a century of flagrant wealth tumbled over Hardacre floors. He forgot his anger, and that he had hurt his back again in the fall. Weariness, grief and pain dissolved mercifully in the smooth honey of sex. When he lifted her wet face and sought her mouth she did not even hesitate but was instantly returning his kisses with hunger and passion. The drawing-room, the waiting family and dinner downstairs seemed very, very far away. It was she, not he, who remembered them.
‘Oh God,’ she said, pulling back. He released her gently, and she slid from him and drew herself together, kneeling in her white dressing-gown on the floor.
He sat up. ‘Do I apologize?’ he said softly.
She shook her head, smiling a small, very real smile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I do. I’m sorry. I’m in a mess.’ She waved somewhere near the whisky bottle, and shook her head. ‘Please forgive me. I’ve …
I’ve had a hard time lately. A personal thing. Lousy damn thing,’ she said to herself. He knew she meant a love affair and was illogically hurt. ‘I’m getting over it,’ she said, ‘only every now and then it comes back a little, you know?’ Sam nodded. ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll know.’ She shook her head again. ‘Look, what I said … I didn’t mean … it was drink talking …’
Sam closed his eyes and held up his hand to her, to stop her, and she quite surprisingly caught the hand, taking his fingers in her own. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Bigmouth will shut up.’
When he looked at her again she was smiling at him, gently and wisely and, whereas a short while ago he had thought she behaved like a twelve-year-old, now it seemed hard to imagine she was only twenty-seven. ‘I think I’d better get dressed,’ she said.
‘So had I,’ he answered, standing up and reaching to help her to her feet. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I need a bath.’ She looked ruefully from his oil-stained clothes to her once white satin wrap which now was smudged darkly.
‘So do I,’ she grinned. Then she tilted her head and dropped her voice, ‘Shall we share?’
He looked at her very steadily, and more than a little hungrily, then shook his head, ‘Madam, with all due respect, I’m too tired just to play. You’d better mean what your eyes are saying.’ She smiled and shrugged.
‘Okay, separate baths. Separate beds. As you like it.’ She grinned as he went to the door, and tilted her hip and made her Mae West voice, ‘Come up and see me sometime.’ He was half-way out of the door when she suddenly thought and came running after. ‘Do you know where it is?’
