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

by CL Skelton

  ‘Harry?’ he said. The old man at first did not stir. Sam had seen him just over a week ago, but the change was massive. He had always been thin, but now his face was all bony points and hollows and, when he did then open his eyes, they were murky, their colour gone indeterminate, and one lid sagged, still half-closed, ‘That you, Sam?’ Harry said, his voice surprisingly clear.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Took you long enough.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Harry peered at him in the dim light, and gestured him closer with one claw-curled hand, on the counterpane. Sam leaned closer, smiling gently.

  Harry said, ‘You been fighting again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Harry made a small grunt of acknowledgement. ‘Looks like you lost,’ he said.

  ‘I did.’

  Harry, quite suddenly, laughed, a dry sound that ended in a cough, but he looked intensely amused. ‘You’ll never learn, will you?’

  Sam shook his head, still smiling. ‘No, sir.’ He knelt beside the bed, put his long arms around the old man, and buried his battered face in the dry hollow of his neck. Harry laughed again, lightly, absently stroking Sam’s silvered hair as if he were yet the repentant child he had helped to raise.

  He said suddenly, ‘Now where the hell’s Terry.’

  Sam raised his head abruptly, looking straight into the old man’s eyes. He heard a sigh go round the room, and again willed them to silence. He said clearly, ‘Terry’s been delayed. He’ll be here soon.’

  Harry lifted his head from the pillow, struggling up on one elbow to stare straight into Sam’s face. Sam knew he realized he was being lied to.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Harry said sharply. ‘What are you saying that for? You’re the one who’s always late everywhere, not Terry. Terry’s not late. He was here before you. He was here just a moment ago,’ Harry grumbled looking around him. He flopped back on the pillow. He looked exhausted, but his voice was still strong, and old-man querulous. ‘The trouble with you two is, you still think I can’t tell you apart. Well, I can.’ Sam nodded, not knowing what to say. Harry’s eyes roved round the room, from face to face, with quiet satisfaction. ‘That’s better,’ he said at last. Then abruptly his tone changed. ‘Now go away, the lot of you, I want to sleep.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Hardacre family solicitor was a man called Appleby who resided in Driffield, a gentleman of some seventy years who was the professional descendant of old Sam Hardacre’s legal adviser, the venerable Saunders. He had presided over family affairs since the latter’s decease, which was coming up for thirty years now. Naturally, he knew all the family well and when, on the day set for the reading of Harry Hardacre’s will, he was met at the door of the house by young Sam, he greeted him warmly.

  Sam did not employ Appleby for his own legal needs, but used a big London firm. The complexities of salvage law were not for Yorkshire country solicitors. But he met him socially, often, over the years.

  ‘Terribly sorry about your uncle, of course,’ Appleby said, formally.

  Sam smiled. ‘An old man, dying in his own house, among his own family. Not a bad thing, surely.’ Appleby nodded, still looking grave, as he thought the occasion warranted. But Sam only smiled again. He was at peace over Harry. It was not an unexpected death, though a little sudden, its suddenness only ensuring a relief from wearying descent into senility. He had known Harry was dying, all that autumn, and accepted it. He would miss him greatly, but that was all. No death would ever again affect him as Terry’s had, he knew. When he had at last, and only very recently, accepted that death he had accepted also the will of God over life, the first step towards religious maturity, which wasn’t too bad, at forty.

  Sam showed Appleby into the library, where the family was gathered. He had become, in the intervening weeks since Harry’s death, the acknowledged master of the house, which bemused him, since it was not really right. But he was the only one there among their men who knew how to behave in that manner. He was the only one comfortable in the place, easy with the staff, aware of social needs and priorities. Jane, of course, knew what to do but Jane was a woman from a generation who turned always to their men, even to do what they well knew how to do themselves. It was gracious and old-fashioned, and he loved it as much as he was exasperated by it.

  Rodney, of course, was useless. Social events were things at which he arrived late so as to miss the introductions, and during which he depended on Vanessa to direct him to do and say the appropriate things. Philip Barton was not bred to this world, and Noel Hardacre, who most certainly was, couldn’t care less.

  Noel, actually, had been surprisingly subdued by his father’s death, and had stood quite humbly in the deathroom, a shaggy gnome of a figure, and shambled out afterwards, lost into the night. He seemed like a man interrupted in the middle of a long acrimonious argument, suddenly without anyone left at whom he might direct his venom. He had responded to the situation in an old way that he had long abandoned. That is, immediately after the funeral he went on a bender that lasted a week. And it took another week to sober him up. Now he sat in a corner of his father’s library, morose and silent, as if feeling yet the old man’s resentment of his unseemly presence there.

  Emily and Philip Barton were present, though Maud and Albert Chandler were not. They had taken brief winter employment aboard a cruise liner in the Mediterranean, a job less glamorous than it sounded, comprising as it did long evenings of work in a pitching, water-bound ballroom full of half-interested people, followed by nights in the cramped, noisy quarters up in the bow allotted to lesser performers. But they sent happy postcards, all the same, and even found the occasion to sun themselves quietly in a secluded corner of the deck. And it was better than Blackpool in February.

  Paul Barton, therefore, who was with them more than with his own parents, usually, was also at Hardacres with his mother and father. Sam was surprised to see him grown suddenly into a tall and lanky adolescent, with his ever-cheery face quite unchanged. His voice had indeed dropped and, as his sister Ruth had predicted, indeed also kept its beautiful quality. Sam knew he was studying music seriously now, and Albert was excited both by his voice and his ability with the piano. But Paul’s great love was his guitar, which Albert had somehow scraped the money together to buy for him; a really good guitar, too, which he played with absolute devotion by himself all week, and in the company of his three-man skiffle group at weekends in Scarborough and Brid. The other instruments were cheaper; a washboard and thimbles, and a home-made double bass constructed from a tea-chest and a broom handle. They played Lonnie Donegan numbers all night, and affected American accents, and Albert said they sounded like hell.

  ‘Look at him,’ Emily mourned in disgust, indicating her son. He was dressed in the fashionable drainpipe trousers, black shirt, and long, velvet-cuffed jacket of the coffee-bar set. ‘I do apologize, Sam, but I couldn’t get him to change.’

  ‘He’s young,’ Sam said, laughing, but Emily did not laugh.

  ‘I’m ashamed of him,’ she said. He kissed her cheek.

  ‘How’s Ruth getting on?’ he asked. She shrugged, suddenly evasive.

  ‘All right, I suppose,’ she said, and then added sharply, ‘Frankly, I haven’t heard.’ Ruth was at drama school, in London. Not at RADA, or anything of that stature, but at one of those small drama colleges opened by failed actors to bring other future failures into the profession. Janet had told Sam it was a waste of time and money, and Albert Chandler had said quietly to Ruth that if she couldn’t make RADA, she should quit now, while she was ahead. But Ruth was determined, and her father was dutifully paying. She had been in London since the autumn but Sam, preoccupied with business and his own personal life, had not managed to see her, either there, or in the North.

  ‘I’ll try and see her, when I’m down,’ he said now, with a twinge of remorse. ‘What’s her address, Emily?’ Emily looked at him, sideways, as Appleby made his way to Harry’s desk, which had been turned to face the company. She smi
led suddenly, without humour.

  ‘Ask Riccardo,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Sam whispered, but she shushed him, as the solicitor began to speak.

  Jane Macgregor came in just then, quietly and hurriedly from the drawing-room where she had been sharing coffee with the ladies of the family. Sam rose instinctively as she entered and found her a place beside him. She sat down, and he took her hand for a moment and said, ‘Are you all right?’

  She squeezed his hand and released it and said, ‘Of course, my dear.’

  Jane had been calm throughout the whole three weeks; her attitude to death was marvellously serene, with a serenity based less in religious faith, which she did not really share with him, than in her aristocratic nature. One did not complain. One accepted. One made the best of things. He admired her immense control, just as he knew he could never emulate it, even if he lived as long as she. She was so British, and his half-French blood would always deny him that marvellous aplomb.

  Appleby was making the sort of speech he had made at similar occasions for fifty years; regrets, and formalities, and professional respectfulness. Jane Macgregor, listening to him, could hear, as he carefully, reverently opened the seal of the will, the echoes of his predecessor Saunders reading her own father’s will, in this very room. She smiled. Almost forty years ago, and it seemed like yesterday. That was what age meant, that the young could never understand, how the years, once spread so bountifully, folded up tight like a pack of cards, diminished, in a trickster’s hand. Forty years. The tall greying man beside her, whose hand rested gently on her shoulder, had been an infant in the Hardacre nursery on that day.

  Appleby read out the opening formalities, then quickly the instructions for the settling of debts, and the long, detailed list of small bequests to faithful staff, old acquaintances, more distant family. Sam glanced across to Noel, who was sitting yet in his corner, with one booted leg drawn up sideways across his knee. He peered at the solicitor as at some beast he was assessing for market.

  Appleby reached the main part of the will, and read out Harry’s provisions for Madelene, the cottage on the grounds that she had used for so many years; a sum of money as generous as he could afford, for her yearly support, of which she, with her own business and her extremely wealthy son, had no need. But that was the way it was traditionally done, and Harry was a traditional man. He had made small bequests, in trust with Sam named as trustee, for each of the family’s children under the age of eighteen, again as generous as he could afford. There wasn’t much free money about, and they all knew that. There were token, sentimental bequests to Jane and others, paintings, bits of silver, things admired over the years that Harry had not forgotten. There were small nods about the room, and a little laughter, and the occasion was warm, far different from the reading of old Sam’s will in which Joe and Helen had been cut off without a penny. As for Helen and Mike Brannigan, there was no mention, and none expected. For Janet Chandler Harry had selected a Victorian oil painting of Edmund Kean. Heaven knew where it had come from, but it had been in the house as long as any of them remembered, and Janet had once admired it, and Harry did not forget. Sam smiled, listening, remembering the occasion, a family dinner, early on in their affair, at which she and Harry had held each other in equal awe.

  ‘I believe that completes most of the details,’ Appleby said. He looked down at the paper before him, and up at Sam and Noel. He was as aware as anyone in the room who had really carried Hardacres for the past five years. The bills came through his office and he knew who paid them. He looked down at the paper again, running a finger behind the collar of his shirt. He cleared his throat. He was evidently, clearly embarrassed.

  He coughed again and read, quickly, so as to complete the whole thing in a breath, if possible, and get it done.

  ‘“To my great-nephew Samuel Hardacre I leave the contents of the envelope vested with this will, and the books of my library. With respect, he is the only one of all of you who could put either to proper use.”’

  The solicitor paused and looked up at Sam, who was smiling faintly. He looked down, and read, ‘“He well knows how gladly I would have given him more.”’

  Appleby looked up again, over his spectacles. He said, ‘I really don’t understand that last bit at all, Sam.’ He was apologetic, and shrugged. Sam heard Jane next to him quietly sigh. His smile broadened.

  He said, ‘Never mind. I do,’ and reached across the desk to take the envelope that had lain beside the will. It was unsealed, and his name, just his first name, his, and that of his great-grandfather, was written across it, in Harry’s fine old spidery hand. He opened it, grinning, knowing what it was. The room watched. The contents of the buff envelope slipped easily into his hand and rested against his calloused palm as if it belonged there. It was a short, stubby knife, with a string-bound handle, the string sweat-stained from his great-grandfather’s hand.

  ‘Father’s gutting knife,’ Jane said, amazed. She had not seen it for years, since her mother died and they cleared the old cottage. She had not known it to be yet in her brother’s possession. ‘Harry,’ she whispered disapprovingly. But Sam closed his long hard fingers around the handle, and grinned with delight.

  ‘Harry, God bless you,’ he said. ‘Who knows, I might need it yet.’ The assembled company squirmed round to look at him, slightly unnerved by his illogical pleasure, and the solicitor looked as if he frankly thought Sam insane. Sam nodded to him to continue, still grinning. The solicitor shrugged.

  He read quickly, ‘“As to the house and lands known as Hardacres, I choose to do as my father before me, and vest it in the trust and care of one, for the benefit of all. I realize it will leave some of you dependent upon the judgement and good grace of another, but so it must always be in families, and should such an arrangement fail, it will be, I regret, a judgement only upon myself and my failures as parent. Therefore I do bequest this property to my only son Noel, that it be his, by all rights, and with the wish that he will, perhaps, learn one day to love it as I have done.”’

  The solicitor stopped reading and removed his glasses, and waved a vague hand in the air. ‘And then there are the usual signatures and witnesses.’ He looked at Noel Hardacre, still sitting with one leg crossed lazily across the other, as if at his cottage fireside. Appleby studied him a long while and then turned his glance once to Sam and then he simply shrugged, and folded and stacked neatly the pristine papers on Harry’s desk. There was a small murmur around the room, and Noel yet sat, unmoving. He raised his eyes from the floor, searched the room with their quick, canny and darting glance. They met Sam’s for an instant and Sam lightly touched the fingers of one hand to his forelock of black hair where it lay across the healing scar above his eye. He grinned, and Noel grinned, and a look passed between them like that between two Border collies that was nine parts irascibility and one part sheer respect.

  Noel got up, walked through the room, and stood for a moment looking out of the window of his father’s beloved library. Then he turned back to the waiting family and said with a slow needling grin, ‘Well, here I am. Master of all I bluidy survey.’ He grinned again, and then, with the clomp of his heavy boots echoing on the polished floor, stamped out of the room, and out of the door.

  The gathering began to stir and break up. Luncheon had been laid in the long dining-room, and Sam stood and turned to escort Appleby, since the now-confirmed Master of Hardacres was apparently not quite ready to take up his inheritance, and rightful role as host. But Jane caught his arm and stopped him, holding him there in the library until the room was emptied of all but themselves. He turned, questioning, towards her and saw to his astonishment that she, who was ever candid, was not able to meet his eyes. She looked away, absently, out of the window where thin February sunshine shone on frosted lawns. When she did speak her voice was, amazingly for her, both flustered and emotional. She said with a little laugh, ‘Do you know, I’m really most annoyed with my brother. Most annoyed. When I see him next I�
�m going to have a very severe word.’ She was smiling that wry smile she used for changing circumstances beyond her control. Her sanguinity about death was an integral part of her age, and he knew she really did mean to have it out with Harry in some very low-keyed, very British hereafter. But he did not know why.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, bending over her, trying to look into her face. She turned to him suddenly and he had rarely seen her look so angry.

  ‘Oh, Sam,’ she said, her voice very low. ‘How could he hurt you like this?’

  He stared at her, amazed, and then said quickly, ‘He hasn’t hurt me, Jane. What can you mean?’

  ‘Oh really, Sam. I told him, years ago, he couldn’t keep taking money from you, taking everything, if he didn’t change his will.’ She shook her head. ‘The damned thing is, I thought he had. I was sure he had.’

  ‘Jane,’ he said urgently, ‘I never gave anything to Harry that I didn’t want to give. You know that.’