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

by CL Skelton

  ‘Well, he had a hell of a way of saying thank you,’ she snapped. She faced him, both her hands on his upper arms, smiling and shaking her head, ‘I really don’t understand, Sam. Really I don’t. He loved you so.’

  ‘Jane, why are you expecting me to be hurt?’ Sam asked again. ‘He gave me his two dearest possessions. I know he loved me.’ Her chin came up and she gave one of her angry and scornful sniffs, looking at him down her long nose.

  ‘His dearest possessions?’ she whispered. ‘You and I both know what his dearest possession was.’

  Sam finally understood her, and slowly shook his head, ‘No, Jane,’ he said.

  ‘For God’s sake, Sam, we all knew.’ She looked hard at him, trying to read emotions she assumed must be hidden in him somewhere. ‘He should have given you Hardacres,’ she said bluntly, at last. ‘You know, as well as I.’

  Sam shook his head again, and said, his voice serious, ‘No, Jane. He should not have. Hardacres is Noel’s. By right, Jane. By right. I’m not his son, Jane.’ She looked wearily about the room, and shrugged. ‘More’s the pity,’ she said, at last. She turned to go, but Sam stopped her.

  ‘No, look. You must understand about this. I never realized, or I would have explained. It is not like you think, and you mustn’t blame Harry.’

  ‘He’s my brother, Sam, and I will blame him,’ she said.

  He shook his head again and took her arm, determined now to make her understand. But the door opened, disturbing their peace, and Madelene was standing there. She had obviously heard the end of their conversation, and she said, her voice brittle and barely controlled, ‘No. You’re not to blame Harry. Sam’s quite right, Jane. Sam knows exactly who’s to blame.’ She stepped slowly into the room and closed the door. Sam’s eyes met hers and saw in them the confrontation that had awaited him there in Harry’s deathroom, and which had finally come to him now. She sighed softly, and tightened her lips momentarily before she spoke. She was still a beautiful woman, even with her face lined with grief for her lover of so many years. Her eyes were as dark and as beautifully expressive as those of her sons, but they had a hardness about them the twins had not inherited. It was something life had done, that could not be carried in the blood. They hardened more as she said, ‘Are you quite pleased now?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Sam said.

  ‘Oh yes, you do.’ She stepped closer. ‘You’ve got what you want now, haven’t you?’

  Jane suddenly intervened, knowing it was not her business, but overcome by confused anger. ‘Madelene, he has got nothing from all this. Nothing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘And precisely what he wanted.’

  Sam shook his head and raised his hands slightly, as if shielding his face. He turned to go, ‘I want out of this,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you leave this room.’ Madelene’s voice dropped to a hiss and Jane was suddenly aware where Sam’s famous temper came from. She thought for a moment that she wanted out of this, but she wasn’t leaving Sam alone. Instinctively she even moved closer to him. He had frozen at Madelene’s command. He also was of a generation that did not openly defy their parents. Madelene looked long and hard at him and whispered, ‘He took me into this house when I was a widow of seventeen, a pregnant widow. He kept me all my life. He raised you and Terry like his sons; he spared nothing. You sat at his table and slept under his roof for all your childhood. He put you through school, and to Cambridge. He gave you every start in life. He gave you as much of a father’s love as your own father, God rest him, could ever have done. And the only thing, the only thing, he ever asked of you, you denied him.’ She gasped, fighting tears of fury. ‘How could you do this to him? How could you break him so?’

  ‘Madelene,’ Jane suddenly intervened, her voice indignant and hurt, ‘please. What are you saying? Sam has given … he has given so much, he has done nothing but give …’

  ‘Money,’ said Madelene with distaste. Her eyes darted just once to Jane, knowingly, and then back to Sam, who was utterly silent. ‘He knows,’ she said bitterly. ‘He knows.’ Her face softened slightly but her mouth twisted as she spoke, and she never took her eyes from Sam’s. ‘He wanted to give it to you, Sam. He had to give it to you; it was all his life’s work and purpose, and there was no one else. He wanted to give it to you, and you would not let him.’

  Jane turned in amazement to Sam, but he was not looking at her. He was looking at Madelene, and he did not even look angry, only stunned. He said, very softly, ‘I know.’

  ‘How could you?’ she cried impotently. He half-raised his hands, dropped them, turned to look away, and then made himself look back. His eyes met Madelene’s and they were totally honest.

  ‘I couldn’t live his life for him again, Mother. I couldn’t live his dreams. I can’t live Terry’s life for you. It’s right back to that again. All I want …’ he shook his head and covered his face momentarily with his hands, then dropped them, looking wildly about the room, as if for somewhere to run. ‘All I ever wanted was just to live my own life, my own way. Why can’t any of you ever understand?’

  ‘No,’ Madelene shouted, ‘all you’ve ever wanted is to do precisely what you want, and when you want it, and God help anyone who gets in your way.’ She paused, stepping back from him as if she would leave. ‘And God help,’ she added, ‘the woman you marry, if you ever do.’

  He looked down and said, almost to himself, ‘Well, there’s not much chance of that now.’

  Jane stepped forward, and took his arm. She said quietly, ‘Madelene, we are all overwrought and overtired. I think we should leave this, please, now?’ Madelene, exhausted by her own outburst, looked almost about to relent. She still glared at her son in a distorted mixture of hurt and anger, but she said nothing.

  Sam said, again to himself, ‘I loved Harry.’

  She shook her head again, knowingly. ‘No, Sam,’ Madelene said, quietly wise. ‘You did not. You’ve never loved anyone. No,’ she corrected, closing her eyes briefly, ‘you loved Terry. That was true. You loved Terry and you’ve never loved anyone else. Not Harry, not me, not any of your women. Not even Janet, though it may surprise you to hear it. You can’t love people, because you are too selfish. You are a very selfish man.’

  ‘No, Madelene,’ Jane said, tightening her almost possessive grip on Sam’s arm. ‘I won’t have this now. You are being hurtful without reason.’

  ‘I am being truthful,’ Madelene said with great composure. ‘Actually, it’s all quite amusing, because selfish is the last thing anyone who doesn’t know you would think of you. They all think you’re so generous, and the men who work for you think you’re wonderful, and Mick Raddley worships you. I know all that. But they don’t know you. I do.’ She crossed the room, and absently lifted a log from the log box by the fire and set it, with another, across the lowering flames, exactly as she would have done had Harry yet been sitting there, with his books, by the hearth. ‘You give. Of course you give. But you only give what you don’t want anyhow. Money? What’s that to you? It’s never meant anything to you. Look at yourself. You are a rich man, but you live like a poor man. This is the first time I’ve seen you in a decent suit for weeks. You live in a warehouse and you drive around in great wrecks like that thing sitting outside the door. What’s money to you? All you care about, all you’ve ever cared about, is adventure. Even Janet was just the biggest adventure of your life.’ She shrugged. ‘You give,’ she said. ‘Of course you give. But you are only buying your freedom. From us, from responsibility, from having maybe once in your life to give something you care about. Time. A little of yourself. Love.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes, Sam, to give is to take. Sometimes it is a great sacrifice to take something. Something we don’t want, that will tie us down, something someone wants us to have. You owed it to him, Sam. You owed him the acceptance of his quite beautiful gift.’ She looked around the grand old room and shrugged, a shrug of Gallic mournfulness and despair.

  Sam had listened all the while with his he
ad down and no sign of either argument, or apparent remorse. But he looked up then and said clearly, ‘Mother, it was not mine to take. I admit I did not want it. But it was not mine. It was Noel’s. It was Noel’s by right.’ She looked round from the fire with utter impatient disgust.

  ‘Noel?’ she said. ‘Noel will destroy it.’ She shrugged again, studying her son. She said, ‘Do you know, Sam, we love our children by instinct. And of course I love you. And I certainly loved Terry. But I haven’t liked you for years, and I don’t like you now.’ She turned from him and walked out of the room.

  Sam felt Jane’s arm, which had held his, slip around his waist and join her other, so she quietly embraced him. She leaned her fine old head against his shoulder and whispered, ‘Oh, Sam. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to hear all that.’

  ‘Is it true?’ he said.

  ‘She is grieving. She is grieving and angry with grief. You know what it is like.’

  He nodded but said again, ‘But is it true?’

  She stepped back a little so that she could look at him, yet keep her hands linked behind his waist. She smiled, shrugged her shoulders in her elegant way. Her eyes were warm with love. ‘In part, Sam, I suppose. In part, it’s true.’

  He was silent, shaken, standing with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets like a recalcitrant but guilty schoolboy. His fingers closed suddenly on the guttie’s knife he’d slipped without thinking into his pocket, and it felt warm, comforting, as if it held yet the warmth of another’s hand. He said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She smiled, released her grip, and drew his arms forward towards her. He took her hands, and she shrugged again, and smiled more broadly. ‘Perhaps because I like you the way you are?’ She leaned back, still smiling. ‘I’m an old woman, Sam. An old, self-indulgent woman. You’re my last indulgence, my dear.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  ‘You’ve seen this, of course,’ Emily said. Sam, sitting in the May sun coming through the kitchen windows of The Rose, nodded, and took up the stapled sheaf of papers that she had laid on the table before him, studying the top sheet idly. The photograph was not very clear, but he’d know the old place, even in silhouette. Beneath, the title, ‘Watton Manor by Great Driffield’, cleared up any doubts.

  ‘I don’t see why they didn’t use our own name,’ Emily said, faintly hurt.

  ‘It’s better known by the original,’ he said.

  She was busy making pastry at an edge of the table. Without looking up she said, ‘Did you know he was going to do this, Sam?’ He did not answer for a long while, riffling absently through the pages, only lightly glancing at each. He knew the details like the back of his hand, anyhow.

  ‘I knew he was going to have to, Emily. He couldn’t possibly afford to keep it going by himself. And he wouldn’t take any help.’ Her hands stilled on the pastry, and she looked up, her lined, strong face registering amazement.

  ‘Help?’ she said. ‘Did you offer to help?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sam said.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because I could. I was quite happy to. I could have continued, just as I had with Harry.’

  ‘Sam, I don’t understand you.’ Emily shook her head.

  He smiled and sipped the tea she had set before him. ‘Join the club,’ he said, ruefully. Then he straightened up in his chair and set the cup down. ‘He wouldn’t take it. He’s a proud man, Emily.’

  ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘he’s a bastard.’

  She was expressing the family judgement, he knew, which he did not quite share. Two months to the day of his inheritance, Noel had put Hardacres on the market. He had retained, of course, the home farm, and his own cottage. The rest, as the particulars of sale Sam held indicated, was offered either as a whole, a major investment, with its gardens and policies and two large tenant farms, or in several variable lots. The beech wood was kept apart as a potential development site for housing, and as such was worth another small fortune by itself.

  ‘He’ll be the richest farmer in Yorkshire,’ Sam said with a grin.

  ‘Oh, it’s not funny, dear.’ Emily looked coldly at him over her pastry. He was still looking through the thick sheaf of papers.

  ‘I’m not really laughing,’ he said. He didn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what will become of Rodney and Vanessa. I mean, it is their home.’

  ‘Emily, I’m very fond of Vanessa and Rodney but they’ve lived off Harry, and off Noel, all their lives. Maybe it’s time they stood on their own feet.’

  ‘Sam, people like Vanessa and Rodney don’t have feet to stand on. We’re not all like you, dear. Maybe we should be, but we’re not. I frankly don’t know what they’ll do.’

  Sam tilted his chair back against the wall, stretching his long legs under the table. He reached in the pocket of the heavy cotton fisherman’s smock he wore for his cigarettes and his hand closed instead on the guttie’s knife that he carried everywhere. It was surprisingly useful. He ran his fingers along the worn string handle, and looked at the flagstone floor. He felt pressure from Emily to suggest some salvation for Harry’s daughter and son-in-law, but he didn’t speak. He hadn’t any suggestions.

  Emily suddenly turned, brushing flour from her hands and dismissing the subject. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t all talked about it a few thousand times before. She said, instead, ‘Have you been to London lately?’

  ‘No. I’ve been in Orkney for three weeks.’ He’d been in Orkney when Noel had dropped his bombshell and he rather wished he was in Orkney now.

  ‘Then you’ve not seen Riccardo.’

  ‘No. But he’s doing well enough. He’s opening the new restaurant in June. A bit upmarket, Emily. I think I’ll even take you.’

  ‘No thanks,’ she said coldly. ‘Then you don’t know, do you?’

  ‘What?’ He straightened up and tilted the chair forward again. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Except that he’s living with my daughter. Or she’s living with him.’

  ‘Ruth?’ he whispered.

  ‘Well, hardly Olive. She’s still at school.’ He stared, his eyes narrowing, and then suddenly reached for her with both hands.

  ‘Oh, Emily.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ she said, holding her arms up in front of her in a funny tense gesture, the knuckles of her hands pressed together. ‘I can stand everything but sympathy,’ she said, trying to grin, shaking her head from side to side. ‘One ounce of loving kindness and I’m going to break down.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said, and he got up and pulled her towards him and held her while she began to shake and then she turned and buried her face against him and wept uncontrollably. He led her to the window-seat and sat with her, his arms about her, rocking her like a child, back and forth, stroking and kissing her hair.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ he said, so quietly that she believed him.

  She looked up, shaking her head, suddenly mature. ‘None of that, Sam,’ she said warningly, and then abruptly she pulled away from him, patted her hair, and dabbed her face with the end of her apron. ‘We’re all too old for that sort of thing. Much too old,’ she said grimly, wiping her eyes. ‘Besides, why not? He probably loves her. He’s apparently begging to marry her. You know, Italian, Catholic.’ She paused. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, still trying to absorb it. ‘So when’s the wedding?’ he added stiffly. Emily shrugged.

  ‘Oh, it’s Ruth holding that up, not him. She’s busy being Bohemian or something.’ She smiled faintly. ‘It reminds me of Maud, all those years ago, with Albert.’

  Sam said, ‘Well, if it goes the way that went, no one could possibly complain.’ She smiled again, more composed, and straightened her back, turning briefly to look out of the window to the pretty gardens and the pond.

  ‘Oh, I suppose not. Just think of it, I’ll probably soon be a granny.’ Her mouth twisted wryly, ‘Won’t that be nice.’ Then q
uite suddenly she wrapped her arms about his neck again and sobbed, ‘Oh God, Sam, I keep lying to myself and saying he’s having her because he can’t have me, but it’s such a stupid, childish lie. How can I be such a fool?’

  ‘Maybe it’s true.’

  ‘Of course it’s not true,’ she said with immense self-directed scorn. ‘He’s young. She’s young. And I’m an old woman. That’s what’s true.’ She sniffed. ‘Oh, he made such a fool of me.’

  ‘He loved you, Emily. It may not have been right, or appropriate, and it certainly had no future. But he loved you. You and I both know that.’ She looked into his eyes and smiled, looking as if she wanted very much to believe him, but could not. He saw, in the softening of the hard ageing lines of her face, the warmth of past memories crossing her mind.

  She shook her head and got up. ‘No, Sam. I guess I’ll just have to live out the rest of my life with Philip like I was meant to.’ She paused. ‘Ageing gracefully,’ she laughed lightly. But when she turned to face him her face was as youthfully defiant as a girl’s. ‘And I know I should be sorry but, damn, I’m not. It was the sweetest thing in my life and I’ll live on it for the rest of my days.’ She brushed her hair back with the spread fingers of one hand, suddenly lithe and sexy. Then she composed herself, a look of nervous embarrassment crossing her face, followed by another of concern.

  ‘Sam, you do know, don’t you, there was never anything … I mean it was all terribly proper.’ She reddened, not looking at him. ‘It wasn’t physical, Sam.’

  ‘Emily,’ he said clearly, ‘I would not possibly care if it was.’

  ‘But it wasn’t, Sam, it wasn’t.’

  ‘All right. But it wouldn’t matter. Not one whit.’

  She studied him and said, ‘Doesn’t anything ever shock you?’

  Sam thought it an odd question and was silent, thinking about it, before he answered eventually, ‘Not much, I suppose.’ He thought again. ‘It’s like judging really, being shocked. And I don’t like judging.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘I’m hardly in a position the way I’ve lived.’