by CL Skelton
‘When have you ever?’ She paused, and then said perfunctorily, ‘I’m glad you didn’t drown.’
‘You sure now?’
‘That’s not funny, Sam.’ He shrugged. The one person in his life he would always fail to amuse or charm was his mother. Then suddenly she ran down the stairs and flung herself into his arms, tearfully clutching him to her and sobbing, ‘Oh God, I can’t lose you both. I can’t lose you both.’ He stopped teasing then, and held her close, stroking her yet beautiful hair, now blacker than his own.
He kissed her face and said, ‘Nor shall you,’ but even as he embraced her he felt the familiar, subtle distancing, even within the circle of his arms. He let her go. She composed herself, and became in another moment as calm and controlled as before.
‘Tea is waiting in the drawing-room. You’ll join me?’
He nodded, and as she went on before him, he turned to follow her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mavis slip towards the door. He stopped. ‘Where are you going?’ he said.
She smiled. ‘I’ll see you later, tomorrow perhaps.’ She turned to leave.
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I want to see you now. I’ve not seen you at all for three weeks and I’ve missed you terribly. Come in and have tea with us. I want to talk.’
‘Later, Sam.’ She looked towards the closed door to the drawing-room. ‘Go on, your mother’s waiting.’ And before he could protest further she said; ‘Your family need you with them now.’ She smiled gently once again.
He stared at her, then turned quickly and strode to the drawing-room door, opening it half-way. He leaned in and said, ‘I’ll be five minutes, Mother, there’s something I must do.’
Mavis didn’t hear any reply Madelene may have made, because he shut the door almost at once. He crossed the room with such purpose that she was a little frightened, but he only took her hand and led her out of the door. Once outside, he continued walking down to the steps that led in a graceful sweep to the lawns. He yet held her hand, and she was obliged to follow. He walked quite a long distance so that they stood eventually in the midst of a great sweep of green, with the big red-brick house dreamy behind them in frosty winter sunlight.
‘If anyone,’ he said fiercely, ‘is my family, it’s you.’
She shook her head. ‘Family is the tie of blood, Sam.’
‘Family,’ he said, ‘is the tie of love.’ He was still holding her hand, and she’d drawn back from him so they stood at the lengths of their two arms. He was looking down on her, his eyes solemn.
She nodded slowly. ‘She’s your mother Sam. She does love you, whatever you think. And she’s had a hard time. She was terribly, terribly distraught. She needs to have you to herself, just for a little while. You owe her that. Now go back and don’t tease her. You’re cruel, without realizing it, but you’re cruel.’
‘We understand each other,’ he said, with solemnity.
‘You don’t understand her. She was desperate over you.’
‘She was desperate, my love, because I’d become the lost sheep for a little while. In a week she’ll be back to normal. We all know, after all, who the lost sheep really is.’ She stared at him sadly, and he said, ‘She’ll never forgive me, you know.’
‘Oh, surely she has. Surely now.’
He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Why should she? I killed her son.’ He said it calmly and rationally, with no trace of bitterness.
‘How can you accept that?’ She was suddenly hostile to Madelene, on his behalf.
‘Accepting is the art of living.’ He looked up at the house and back to her. ‘And of loving.’ He smiled. ‘Will you marry me, please?’ he said.
She twisted round so the link of their hands was broken. She stood with her back to him, facing the beech wood. After a long while she spoke and her voice was deliberately light.
‘Let’s talk about it next week,’ she said. ‘You’ve been ill. People get sentimental when they’re ill.’
‘I’m not being sentimental,’ he shouted illogically. ‘I love you.’ He glared at her. ‘And I’m perfectly well now, anyhow.’
She folded her arms and studied him, faintly belligerent, as she always got when he shouted. ‘All right, I suppose you are. The answer’s no.’
‘What?’
‘You heard the first time, Sam. No.’
He blinked. ‘You can’t just say “no”,’ he said disbelievingly.
‘Oh yes I can. And if you think not, you’ve not been said no to enough lately. That’s what happens when you get rich and important.’
‘I’m neither rich nor important,’ he returned at once. ‘I’m in debt up to my eyes and everyone I employ still tells me what to do. Now give me a reason.’
‘All right,’ she said, cocking her head sideways in that devastating way of hers, and pointing over his shoulder to the big red brick house. ‘That.’
He turned round slowly to look at it, as if it had just arrived there and suddenly caught his notice. Then he looked at her. ‘That,’ he said slowly, ‘is my home. And I’m not apologizing for it, to you, or to anyone.’ He was beginning to get angry, which was a side of him she, unlike Janet, rarely saw. When she did see it, however, it produced in her a slightly nervous rebelliousness.
She glared at him and at the house with equal resentment and said, ‘You know, my brother says when his lot get into Parliament next time, they’re going to nationalize all that sort of thing.’
Sam was very quiet. He folded his arms and looked down at the velvety grass, tinged with frost. He looked up at her through narrowed eyes. ‘You tell your brother, whom I like and respect, by the way, that I’ve earned every penny I have, and furthermore if he or anyone attempts to touch that, I’ll break his bloody neck, Parliament be damned.’
She smiled, a long cool smile of satisfaction, ‘Aye,’ she said, on an outward breath, ‘so blood will out. Happen I hear the old robber baron at last.’
Their eyes met and locked, and they teetered a moment between fury and humour, but neither of them would budge. She was every bit as headstrong as he, in her own quiet, unassuming way. At last he looked away. When he spoke his voice was serious, and a little sad. He said, ‘My great-grandfather, if that’s who you mean, was neither thief nor lord. He was a working man. Like me.’ He smiled wryly and held out to her hands more calloused by far than those of her brother, who carried the labour banner and spent his days behind a desk, ‘And if,’ he went on, ‘you’re too much a snob to marry me, so be it. I’ve been turned down before.’ He turned and walked away from her to his lovely house, alone. When he reached the stone steps, she shouted after him in her old-fashioned voice, ‘Sam.’
‘Aye.’ He turned to face her.
‘I love thee,’ she said.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Sam gave Mavis the engagement ring that Harry had given Judith Winstanley before their wedding in South Africa at the close of the Boer War. It had gone to Jane in Harry’s will and she insisted Sam have it for his future wife. It was a very beautiful antique and worth marginally more than her rented house in Halifax. She looked at it on her ring finger, gently shaking her head.
‘This is going to play havoc with the story about the scrap-merchant,’ she said.
‘Tell them I nicked it,’ he replied, which was precisely what she did.
Still, secrecy was not easily maintained. Not that it really mattered, only Sam wanted a week or two to get his family used to the idea, before the whole world knew. The family actually were remarkably co-ordinated in their response. They were universally delighted, which slightly surprised him, if only because he’d never seen them so united on any single issue. Madelene’s response was the most startling, and also the most gratifying. She was thrilled. Later, he realized he should have expected that, but he’d grown so accustomed to her disapproval since the day he left Ampleforth that he had long regarded it as the only possible form of communication between them. As Noel cursed his dog, his mother opposed his every action. But not thi
s one. Madelene was a conventional lady in some ways, and an unconventional one in others. Madelene was not the slightest distressed at either Mavis’s bastard son or her own illegitimacy. Madelene had long held, with Gallic frankness, that had timings worked out only marginally different, Sam and Terry would have been bastards as well. In any event, they were born a scant seven months after her wartime wedding to Arnold Hardacre. Such things did not disturb her. What did disturb her was having a son of forty-three wandering about the world thoroughly unmarried. She liked Mavis anyhow, but she no doubt would have liked any woman who promised to turn Sam into a family man. Just as, years before, when the twins had made their religious profession, her one regret had been the lost possibility of daughters-in-law and grandchildren, now the one circumstance that would have her forgive Sam’s defection from the religious life would be a daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
He happily accepted his partial return to the fold. A daughter-in-law he would indeed give her. Grandchildren were another matter, and he dodged the question for reasons of his own.
As for the rest, Emily Barton got frankly sentimental, Jan Muller was delighted and perhaps ever so slightly relieved, Vanessa waxed lyrically romantic, which was enough to make Sam reconsider the whole thing, and Noel actually bought him a beer to celebrate. He thought he’d pulled it all off beautifully when a day or two later the telephone rang and when he picked it up there was the familiar airy crackling of the transatlantic cable. He said hello.
‘Bastard!’ shouted Janet from New York, and hung up. He sat looking at the receiver for half a minute, wondering about women, life, love, and why he’d ever left the monastery in the first place.
When the telephone rang again, a few minutes later, he was almost afraid to answer it, but eventually did. The caller introduced himself as a reporter from the Chronicle.
‘Sam?’
‘Aye?’
‘I’ve been hearing some rumours, Sam.’
‘Not good journalism, surely, listening to rumours.’
‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’
‘Call the fire brigade. Goodbye.’
‘Eh, hold on, Sam.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Happen you don’t recall, but we’ve met, you know.’
‘Not likely.’
‘Oh, but we have. It were outside t’ gates uv a bluidy great house. Gates were locked, I recall. Bloke in a lorry, looking like a bluidy tink, havin’ a spot uv bother gettin’ inside.’
‘What a memory.’
‘Never let a journalist do you a favour, Sam. They never forget.’
So he gave him the story, thinking it was time enough, and the following day put his own announcement in The Times. It was four days later that George R. Emmerson, ex-miner, labour stalwart, and brother of the bride-to-be rang.
‘Sam Hardacre?’
‘Yes.’
‘George Emmerson.’
‘Geordie, how delightful, I’ve not seen you in years.’
‘Stuff that, Sam. We’ve got some talking to do.’
Which was how he realized that his family’s happy accordance was not about to be matched by that of hers. George Emmerson, one-time RAF mate of Peter Macgregor, was not Mavis’s only living relative. Both her parents were yet alive, but they’d thrown her out on the day she’d told them of her pregnancy, nineteen years before, and she’d seen neither since. But her brother George had been faithful, loyal, and fiercely protective all her life. Nor had he forgiven Peter Macgregor his unfortunate, and innocent defection.
‘All right,’ Sam said, ‘come to dinner.’
‘Don’t need bluidy dinner in your bluidy big house.’
‘Geordie.’
‘George to you, mate.’
‘George. Today’s Thursday. On Monday I’m going to be a hundred miles off Fair Isle, with any luck. You can meet me for dinner here tomorrow, or you can hire yourself a boat and meet me in the middle of the North Sea. Which is it going to be?’
George Emmerson decided to come to dinner. Mavis was visibly shaken when Sam told her. She admitted that George’s response to her wedding plans had been less than gracious, but she’d hoped he would cool down before he and Sam had occasion to meet.
‘Seems the occasion has just arisen,’ he said.
‘Must it be dinner?’ she asked nervously.
‘Most people are more civilized sitting down at a table over a meal, than just standing in the middle of the street.’
She shook her head, ‘You don’t know George that well.’
She looked around the drawing-room as she spoke. ‘And I don’t think any of this is going to help.’ Mavis had conceded slightly on her reluctance to visit Hardacres, and she had even spent a night there, after a family party a few days before. But she had spent it chastely in a guest bedroom and Sam, even engaged, had not the effrontery to knock on her door. She still clung so fiercely to her independence that he had once, only half-jokingly, asked if she intended maintaining her house in Halifax even after they were wed.
She said now, ‘Will it have to be terribly formal?’
‘Not terribly. Black tie, that’s all.’ He was grinning.
‘Couldn’t we do something casual. I mean, just for George?’ she asked uneasily.
‘Fish and chips in the summer-house?’ He laughed. ‘No, Mavis. He’s meeting me on my terms, not on his. And let’s not get carried away with his common-man’s simplicity. George is a politician, not a miner. He’s attended more formal dinners than I have. You know that.’
She sighed. ‘Am I hostess?’ she said in a small voice.
He was more gentle then. He said, ‘My mother will be here. She always does that for me. She’ll be quite happy to, if you’d rather not.’ He bent and kissed her. ‘It’s just a game, like any other, once you’ve learned the rules.’
She smiled gratefully, and in the end she agreed she would take her rightful future role, with Madelene’s discreet assistance gladly offered. Young Geordie wandered in then, with Paul Barton in tow.
‘Saw that,’ he said, slyly. ‘You were snoggin’.’
‘You didn’t,’ Mavis said angrily. ‘You’ve just come in. Besides, we’re engaged.’
‘So I was right,’ he said, grinning. He was amused and delighted by his mother’s marriage plans, and in the way of the young found the whole matter far funnier and far less significant than did the principal participants. It was ironic, because they had been intensely concerned about breaking to him the news which he received with the cheerful concession that it was about time.
Geordie had none of his mother’s qualms about Hardacres. He and Paul Barton had taken the major step, some months earlier, of quitting other forms of employment and taking up their embryonic musical careers in earnest. They were getting plenty of work, and still using most of their earnings to improve their expensive stock of equipment. Rehearsals with their five-man group were naturally noisy affairs and they had been thrown out, virtually, from both their homes, trailing plugs and wires, and Sam had given them refuge. The upper corridors of Hardacres now echoed incongruously with the vibrant throb of electric guitars. Sam didn’t care. The house was big and he could, and did, like Harry before him, retreat to the library and shut the door.
There were limits however, and on the Friday evening, with George Emmerson and his wife due in fifteen minutes for dinner, Sam stood in the middle of the central staircase, tying his tie and glaring down the corridor, which shook with the steady drum-beat so much that he thought the plaster would fall.
‘Geordie,’ he shouted loudly, so as to be heard.
‘Aye, Dad.’
‘I’m not your bloody dad yet. Turn the damned volume down. The ceilings are falling and my guests are due.’
‘Reeght, Dad.’ Sam stood listening, but the sound continued undiminished.
‘Geordie, I’m going to throw the mains switch. We can always eat by candlelight.’ There was another un-silence for several bars of music, and then
down the corridor a figure appeared, shuffling amiably towards him, snapping fingers and swaying with the rhythm. He was tall and slender, wearing tight trousers and a peculiar-looking jacket with no collar. His hair was smoothed down in an even circle, like a pudding basin, and hung an inch and a half over his ears. Sam had never seen him before in his life.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked curiously.
‘I’m t’ drummer, Dad,’ he said.
‘Jesus Christ, I’m not your Dad, whatever.’
The drummer shrugged, unperturbed. ‘I’m Bill,’ he said. ‘I came with Greg and Taffy.’
‘Who are they?’ Sam said.
‘Paul said it would be all right,’ Bill said hopefully.
Sam thought a moment and shrugged. ‘Fine. Just put the volume down, please.’
‘Geordie says it won’t go any lower,’ said the unfortunate drummer, who clearly had been sent as sacrificial lamb. Sam looked at him, thought about throwing him down the stairs and decided he rather liked him, instead. ‘Shut some doors, please,’ he said at last.
‘Sure, Dad,’ said the drummer, with a happy freckled grin.
Sam waited until the music marginally diminished then gave up and went down the stairs, where Mavis was already greeting their guests at the door.
George Emmerson was a short, solid, tough-looking man nearing fifty. His hair was cut short and stubbly and was something the colour of his sister’s with a redder tinge that came out noticeably in his small, bristly moustache. He wore a dinner suit with an aggrieved air, though it was well-tailored and had seen plenty of wear. His wife followed him through the door, looking around with cool, assessing eyes. She was younger, no older than Mavis, and tall, slender and attractive in a clear-eyed, intelligent way. She was a dustman’s daughter with a degree in economics, and she was nobody’s fool.
George Emmerson shook Sam’s hand as a concession to good manners, and little else, and introduced his wife as Maureen. She also shook Sam’s hand, abruptly, and met his eyes for one cool moment. She was that sort of well-educated woman whose manner had grown abrasive through struggling in a man’s world. Her response to any man who had the misfortune to be found attractive by her was clever and witty aggression. And she did find Sam attractive, which was not surprising. He was, without doubt, in the prime of his life. He had lost, over the years, the rakish playboy look that George Emmerson remembered. He had been through a lot, and it showed on him. His face was lightly lined and weathered, wind- and sun-tanned from his life out of doors. His hair was now totally grey, but as thick and luxuriant as ever and seemed always incongruous with his otherwise youthful appearance. He was forty-three and apart from the hair looked thirty-three. He was light on his feet and as athletic as he’d been as a boy. He was also happy, which does wonders for anyone’s appearance, and his always expressive eyes, though no longer boyish and playful, were no longer sombre either, only faintly chastened and wise. Maureen Emmerson took one careful look and decided she could understand Mavis falling for that, and decided as well she’d cut him down to size.
