by CL Skelton
He was, at just forty-three, the acknowledged patriarch of the family, simply by virtue of capability. It was to him they all turned if anything was wrong and, considering the number of them and their various quirks, there was usually something wrong somewhere. Between family and business, he got little peace. Ordinarily he did not mind at all, but just now he was tired, and content to let everything go.
It was all quite marvellously peaceful, like a spiritual retreat, and an occasion for a great deal of thought. One or two thoughts, born out of the experience in the icy water, came to rest with him with considerable force. Foremost in his mind was that he had come within a hair’s breadth of dying and had been quite cheerfully oblivious of it at the time. Death was an unpredictable bastard; he flashed no lights and gave no warnings, but waited where he chose to wait in odd nooks and crannies of one’s life. A moment’s ill-conceived boyish horseplay on the deck of the Mary Hardacre had very nearly cost three lives.
He understood now at last, why Mick Raddley hated the sea, and why Pete Haines treated work with such cold, humourless intent. The sea was merciless to error. She was a whore, as Mick had always said, and a vengeful whore as well. He had used her to his great advantage, and like any whore she would demand, one day, to be paid. The only open question was when.
And the second, most pressing thought, that went hand in hand with the first, was that he had nearly walked out on Mavis Emmerson through the same door as Peter Macgregor, and left her, as he had done, without station or rights.
He telephoned her from Jane’s house every day, and she called him as well, whenever work permitted a moment free. Partly, he felt the need to tie himself to her with words, as if in apology for almost leaving her. But, also, he simply missed her, and needed to talk. They always talked a great deal and, oddly, when he remembered his romance with Janet Chandler it was difficult to recall any long conversations. They must have been there, and yet they faded from memory. He remembered long and lavish arguments, but that’s not the same thing. And he remembered action, going places and doing things, and being in bed. What he did not remember was words.
And yet, with Mavis, words were everything. It was doubly odd considering that she was by no means an erudite person, and her education was extremely limited, particularly compared to his, which, though erratic, was considerable. But there was never a subject, from marine engines to the complexities of the great Church philosophers, that he could not discuss with her. If she did not understand something, or a word was new to her, she would stop him and ask, with the candid curiosity most people leave behind as children. And thus, as children do, she learned, and he never would meet with her that blank wall of bored incomprehension that he met often from more educated, but less inventive minds. She was a delight, and he courted her mind as much as her body.
Jane always left the room when he telephoned Mavis. After bringing the phone to him and setting it on the table by the sofa she would hurriedly, and discreetly depart. He tried to tell her it was not necessary, but she was adamant that he have his privacy. He felt guilty though, because they talked so long, and on the first Sunday he was there they spoke at such length that the fire had nearly burned to ash by the time he hung up. And he’d done so then only because the talking had made him cough so much that Mavis got worried and refused any longer to speak.
Jane came back in when she heard the phone ring off, carrying a silver tray set with her tea service. She put it down on the table and removed the telephone to its proper place.
‘I must pay for the call,’ he said. ‘We talked for an hour.’
‘Yes, dear, and bed and breakfast besides. How is Mavis?’ She poured tea and handed him a cup, and knelt by the hearth to restore the fire.
‘Let me do that, please,’ he said, guilty again.
She gave him her most imperious look. ‘Shall I drive you back to Aberdeen?’
He gave up. He sipped his tea, watching her and said, ‘She’s fine. Marvellous.’ Finished with the fire, Jane rose and settled on the arm of the sofa behind him, balancing her own cup on her knee. He was staring into the reviving fire, dreamy and distant. ‘Geordie and Paul are playing together again in Scarborough. I think it’s going to be every weekend. Mavis says they’re using every penny on new equipment. It really costs, all that electric stuff they use.’
‘You mean people are paying to listen to that cacophony?’ Jane sniffed.
‘Paying very well, my dear. And you’re getting old-fashioned,’ he said, with a grin.
‘I’ve a right Sam. I’m nearly seventy. I got as far as jazz and swing, and a little of this skiffle they were doing, but I’m calling a halt.’ She paused. ‘Is Albert still with Paul in this?’ she asked curiously.
‘Oh, right behind him. Steady as a rock. He’s the best of us. You know that. Noel’s a bastard. A delightful bastard, but a bastard all the same. Philip’s an ass. Rodney’s beneath mention. And I’m a rogue. But Albert’s a gentleman. Like Harry.’ She laughed, but he was quite serious. He said suddenly, ‘You should have them up here.’
Jane had absorbed her new-found grandson into her fold just as she absorbed all the others of the young. They got on beautifully. Indeed, she had welcomed Mavis back into her life after eighteen years with warm grace, as if she had only slipped out a moment for a breath of fresh air.
‘Up here?’ she said. ‘To make that noise?’
‘No. Just to be here. They’d love it.’
She shook her head. ‘It crossed my mind,’ she said. ‘But no. This is for the very young and,’ she paused, adding slyly, ‘the mature. Like you and me. The young are bored up here in a trice. At that age, they want bright lights.’
‘Terry and I loved it here at that age.’
‘Oh well,’ Jane said softly, remembering. ‘That was a while ago. You were different. We all were different. You were quite innocent, you know, the two of you, compared with the young today.’
He laughed suddenly, a laugh that ended in a fit of coughing that brought her anxious eyes to him at once. He waved her away. ‘Just thinking,’ he said, ‘of Willie Campbell’s daughters down the way. Whenever you’d send us down for eggs, they’d take us behind the byre. They taught me everything I know.’
‘Sam!’ she said, shocked. ‘I was not aware.’
‘You weren’t meant to be,’ he said, laughing and coughing again. She told him to be quiet then and he obeyed, relaxing back against her heap of cushions while she reached across him, leaning over his shoulder, and wrapped the tartan rug more firmly around him. The pneumonia had frightened her; she was old and remembered it as a killer. She laid the long cool fingers of her right hand against his forehead, as she did a dozen times a day, guarding against a return of the fever. He said, in her father’s voice, ‘Stop tha fussin’ woman, I’m a’ reeght.’
She laughed, dropping her hand and linking it with her other loosely around his neck.
‘Oh, I suppose, Sam,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. But you gave me a scare.’
‘Nothing to be scared about,’ he said, ‘I just got too cold, that was all.’ He felt her linked arms tighten against him, and said, ‘You’re a worrier. See, you’re getting edgy now.’ He lightly patted her hands.
She said, drily, ‘Well, my dear, when they let me in to see you first in Aberdeen, the hospital chaplain was giving you last rites. That sort of thing always makes me edgy.’
‘Somebody was being a little excitable,’ he said. Actually, he had no recollection of any of that, and no way of knowing if any of that caution had been justified. He did know, however, that he was all right now. Still, he understood her fears, and let her fuss. It was the least he could do in return for all she’d done for him. He closed his big hand over both of hers, holding them gently, and said, quite suddenly, ‘Would you mind if I married Mavis Emmerson?’
She was quite silent for a moment and he waited, a little uneasily, for her answer. Then she said, ‘Mind? Why should I mind?’
‘Peter?’ he said so
ftly. She shook her head.
‘Oh, no, dear. On the contrary, nothing could give me more pleasure.’ She felt him relax and lean his head back slightly against her, and was surprised at how much her response had mattered.
‘Are you going to do that?’ she said.
He was a long while in answering and then he said, ‘I don’t want it to happen to her again.’ He still held her hands, but he felt her straighten, almost pull away, and after a while she said in her unassailably direct way, ‘You mean, you want to leave her a rich widow.’
He shrugged, ‘If I must leave her, yes. I’m not expecting …’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Of course you’re not. But that’s what’s on your mind, is it not?’
‘It’s on my mind.’
‘Sam,’ she said slowly, ‘that is very kind. But it’s no reason to marry.’
He had half-turned his head, but he could not see her face, for she sat yet, straight and regal, behind him. ‘Well that’s not all, for God’s sake,’ he said hurriedly.
‘Do you love her, Sam?’ asked Jane. She was smiling with bewildered affection down on to his grey head.
When he answered, he spoke very thoughtfully and said only, ‘There are so many kinds of love.’
‘Does that mean yes or no?’ she said bluntly. She was thinking simultaneously of Janet Chandler and of Harry and Hetty. She had her own opinion of marriages of kindness. He did not answer at all, but stared into the fire. She offered him more tea and he refused. She tried another tack.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Who did you think of when you thought you were drowning?’
He laughed. ‘Did my whole life and all my mistresses pass before my eyes? No. I’m afraid it didn’t. There wasn’t time. One moment I was fine, or I thought I was, the next I was really in trouble. That’s what the sea is like.’ Her arms tightened around him again. ‘All I thought of was sleep.’
She was silent for a while after that, but then she said brightly, ‘All right then, who do you think you asked for, when you were in hospital?’
He was wary suddenly, ‘Is this a test?’
‘Maybe.’
He took his hand from hers and brushed back his hair, uneasily. He said, ‘That’s unfair. I won’t be held to that.’
He paused and said slowly, ‘There’s a kind of woman a man dreams about when he’s young, and maybe remembers when he’s dying. It doesn’t mean she’s a woman he could live with.’
Jane laughed, delighted. ‘Oh, jolly well done. I took two years trying to get that through to you, and never managed it.’
‘What I’m trying to say is, it isn’t significant. It’s passion and passion guides us at times like that. It’s not significant that I asked for her.’
‘No,’ said Jane wisely, ‘but it’s significant that you thought you did.’
He half-turned again, looking around to see her face, but she avoided his eyes. ‘Didn’t I ask for Janet?’ he said.
‘No dear,’ she shook her head. ‘You asked for Terry, of course. Just like Harry did. That was what scared me Sam, not the chaplain.’
He nodded slowly and then asked, suddenly curious, recalling Harry outfoxing him on his deathbed, ‘Whatever did you say?’
‘I said he’d gone out to the pub. It was what first came to mind.’ He laughed. ‘You said something indecent and went to sleep. I thought I handled that quite well, actually.’
He laughed again, ‘Very. Better than I did with Harry, anyway.’
She said suddenly, ‘You’re not certain, Sam. That’s why you were afraid you’d said the wrong thing when you were ill. You don’t know your inner mind, or you don’t trust it. Or both.’
He got suddenly angry. ‘Are you trying to make this hard on me?’ he said.
‘Oh yes, dear, I am. I want you to be certain. Marriage isn’t a kindness to bestow, dear, nor a place to run to hide. It’s a commitment of love, and with you it’s a commitment for life.’ He leaned against her again, his anger gone.
‘I don’t understand love,’ he said. ‘I never have. I’m certain of one thing only. I want her with me for the rest of my life, however long that is.’
‘That will do,’ said Jane. She sat with him until he slept, and then rose and drew the curtains on the fading winter day.
Mavis met him in her red Mini at York when he returned by train from Scotland. He had done all he could do to persuade Jane to let him travel that way, since she was ready and willing to drive him the whole distance. But it was still February, and snowy, and half the roads in the North were blocked. Eventually he won her round by convincingly demonstrating, by chopping a stack of firewood for her, that he was perfectly well, which he was. She drove him as far as Inverness, and he parted from her there, on the grey station platform, with snow blowing by. He found himself suddenly too emotional to thank her, or even say a proper goodbye. She just smiled, kissed him, and walked away, her tall old figure dignified and appropriate beneath the Victorian glass-arched roof of the station. It had been, in an odd way, two of the best weeks he could remember. There were times he thought quite seriously that she was perhaps the only person, other than Terry, he had ever really loved, without complexity or doubt. It bemused him, because it was virtually what his mother had rather bitterly accused, three years before.
At York railway station Mavis forgot all her reserves and restraints and embraced him publicly and passionately, clinging on to him like a child. He was surprised and delighted, and only regretful that she eventually pulled away. She took his hand and walked with him to her car.
‘Oh God, I was so worried about you,’ she said. She was studying him carefully as they sat together in the Mini before she drove off, as if to be quite certain he was as well as he outwardly appeared.
‘You needn’t have been,’ he said. ‘I told you on the telephone. I was fine. Just tired, a little, but fine.’
‘Oh, not then,’ she said, starting the car. ‘Before. When I talked to Jane. She rang me, you know, right away from Aberdeen. The first night. I didn’t even know she had my number.’
‘Pete had it,’ he said. ‘He was still there then. He waited in Aberdeen a couple of days, for the other two.’ He laughed. ‘He said he was going to take them out as soon as they were released and throw the first poor sod back in the sea. He was fuming, I gather.’
‘I was surprised,’ Mavis said. ‘I didn’t know she was that aware … you’d not told her anything?’
He shook his head, ‘Not then love. I wasn’t talking to anyone just then.’
‘So I gathered. I was so frightened. I wanted to come right up there, but there was no way … I felt I couldn’t.’
He looked at her oddly, but said only, ‘I think Jane must have exaggerated a bit.’
‘Jane never exaggerates,’ she returned at once. ‘She just gets more and more restrained. She was so restrained that night from Aberdeen, I was terrified.’ She paused. ‘Your mother’s at the big house,’ she said. ‘I went to see her the day after Jane rang, and she was terribly upset. I took her up to stay with Vanessa. I hoped you wouldn’t mind me interfering, but it seemed the best thing.’
He smiled gratefully, and said, ‘I’m sure if you thought of it, it was the best thing. That was terribly kind.’ He was surprised, actually, to imagine his mother that concerned; her whole attitude to his choice of profession, if he could call it that, had been that whatever dangers might befall him eventually would be both inevitable and well-deserved. ‘I’m sure she’ll recover,’ he added drily.
‘She’s really concerned,’ Mavis said sharply. ‘She’s waiting for you there, right now.’
‘Take me to Halifax,’ he said, with a grin.
She glanced across, not particularly amused, and she took him to Hardacres, anyhow.
They met Noel half-way up the driveway. He was coming down to the bottom field, in which he had the heifers, with the tractor and a barrow laden with hay bales. Mavis had to squeeze the little Mini on to the grass verge to get round h
im. He recognized the car and halted the tractor, staring glumly down at them.
Sam wound down the window and said, ‘Aye, Noel, how goes it?’
‘I see you’re alive.’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘On the contrary. I’m delighted. Another lot of death duties and this family’s going under. Then I’d end up feeding t’ bloody lot.’ He glowered again and then touched his grey forelock, ‘Afternoon, Mavis,’ he said.
‘You could always send them to market, Noel,’ Sam shouted as Noel clattered away.
Mavis stared at his disappearing figure, hunched up on the tractor seat, and drove back on to the drive and continued on her way. She looked at Sam, and at Noel’s reflection in the mirror. ‘He is joking,’ she said nervously. ‘He means every word,’ Sam said, with a grin. ‘I assure you. Underneath that crusty exterior is a heart of pure lead.’
‘Why do you like him so much?’
He laughed. ‘Would to God that I knew.’
When he arrived at the house, he paused for just a moment before the door, suddenly terribly glad to be home. Then he went in with Mavis, the slightest bit reluctant yet, at his side. His mother was half-way down the stairs when he entered the great hall. Perhaps she had heard a car, perhaps she was simply coming down anyway. She stopped, on a step several up from the bottom, and stared silently. In spite of Mavis’s protests of her concern, she looked not one whit happier to see him than Noel had. She said, in her usual sanguine way, ‘It is not good enough that you must be an idiot. Now you must be an heroic idiot as well?’
‘Mother, I assure you, it wasn’t that. If I’d had a moment to think I’d have let the silly bugger drown. It was his own fault anyhow,’ he heard himself suddenly sounding like Pete Haines. ‘The trouble was, I didn’t think.’
