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

by CL Skelton

  ‘Friendly, wasn’t he?’ said the blonde. But she saw then another pair of girls walking up the road and, behind them, a small giggling group of four, and decided they’d come to the right place, after all.

  They waited an hour, as their little group slowly became a small crowd, before the first car appeared. It was followed immediately by another, as what amounted to a small cavalcade came up the road from the direction of Beverley. The man with the keys got out of the old black shooting-brake and ambled unhurriedly to the gates as the first car drew up. He scrutinized its occupants, who looked a little nervous, and shouted something, perhaps a name, to him. He seemed to be enjoying holding the keys to the kingdom and only let them in with a slow, teasing grin. He stopped the next car as well, with the grim stare of a traffic warden, but eventually let it, with its flower-hatted ladies in the back seat, through. A red soft-top E-type Jaguar suddenly roared up behind it, and the girls squealed, thinking it would be their awaited heroes, but the driver was a tall old woman with a stern grey bun of hair. The gatesman ran, grinning, to let her in, so she barely had to slow down, and bowed elaborately as she roared by, and up the drive.

  Another few cars made their mundane, closely scrutinized way past the gaoler. The next likely candidate for Paul Barton’s vehicle was an antique red MG roadster, but it contained no handsome long-haired young men, only a pretty dark woman of indeterminate age and, beside her, another woman, younger, with lovely soft-coloured hair, holding a tiny baby wrapped in mountains of antique lace. One or two of the more motherly of the girls leaned over and stared as it passed, momentarily forgetting their heroes in favour of a more timeless delight.

  ‘Where are they?’ Cathy moaned.

  ‘There, surely,’ said her dark-haired friend.

  Behind the MG, a silver-grey Jaguar, of considerable age and immense style, pulled discreetly up to the gates. The little crowd of girls momentarily surged forward, but relaxed back in a moment with a small sound of disappointment. The driver of the car was a man, but he was neither Paul Barton nor Geordie Emmerson. He was tall, grey-haired and very distinguished-looking, rather handsome actually, Cathy thought, as older men go. Beside him was a beautiful woman, in a striking black suit that set off her long, waving white-blonde hair. She too, was holding a shawl-and-lace-wrapped infant, and looking down on it with an expression of some amazement. The keeper of the gate put on his biggest grin, and leaned, unmoving, against the gatepost, nodding to the barrier as if it were nothing to do with him.

  ‘Open it,’ the grey-haired man shouted.

  ‘Any ID?’

  ‘Open it, you sod.’

  ‘Driver’s licence? Credit cards?’

  ‘Open the damnable gates, Noel, or I’ll give you back the bloody title deeds.’

  That did it. The gatekeeper tugged his forelock and rubbed his hands together obsequiously and hurriedly unlocked the gate. The cluster of long-haired girls leaned closer, staring, momentarily won over by a new attraction. The blonde woman looked around and flashed a stunning smile.

  As they passed through the gates, Janet said, ‘Do I wave regally, or do you?’

  ‘I somehow feel it’s not for us,’ said Sam.

  ‘I do know that,’ she said tartly. ‘You don’t have to rub it in.’

  He smiled, gently. ‘Do you mind, sweetheart?’

  She laughed, ‘Ladies who get Oscar nominations for best supporting actress don’t mind.’

  ‘Good,’ he said slyly, ‘maybe next time you’ll even win.’

  ‘If I weren’t holding a baby, I’d hit you.’

  ‘You be careful of that baby.’

  ‘I am. But why worry? You’ve got a spare.’ She looked down, still bemused.

  Behind them a thin, squealing cheer suddenly arose, far down the driveway.

  ‘Looks like the boys are home,’ said Sam.

  ‘I hope they make it with their trousers intact. Those girls don’t fool around.’

  ‘I somehow doubt they’ll care.’ Sam grinned. ‘Ah, to be young,’ he said.

  Janet snapped, ‘Include me out of that, please. Just because you’re getting paternal, doesn’t mean I have to leap blind into middle-age with you, you know.’ She looked down at the baby again and said, ‘Thank God I didn’t marry you. Catholics breed.’

  ‘Non-stop,’ said Sam. ‘We’re going to have fifteen.’

  ‘Don’t laugh. You’ve had three in three years.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Two in one go doesn’t count.’

  ‘Oh, pardon me. You’ve only done it twice.’

  ‘That’s right, sweetheart.’

  Janet studied the baby again and said, ‘Which one is this anyhow? Peter or Michael?’

  Sam glanced across and shrugged. ‘Damned if I can tell. Ask Mavis.’ He paused. ‘You’d better get it straight, though. You’re the godmother.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Janet, drily. She wasn’t quite sure whether she was honoured or insulted by that. ‘I hope you don’t expect me to look after their spiritual welfare for real, Sam,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘I’m not up to it. You’ve got the wrong lady.’

  He reached over and patted her hand. ‘No, pet. Gerry will see to that. He’s a good Catholic.’

  Gerry Flannigan was First Mate on the Jane Hardacre, a solid, steady Irishman who took his religion seriously, and he was godfather to Sam’s twin sons, as a solemn counterpoint to Janet.

  ‘Not all that good,’ Janet sniffed, ‘from the way he was looking at me in Church.’

  ‘You, my dear, would tempt a saint. He’s a good family man. Keep your hands off him.’

  She grinned and, in answer, slid her free hand down his thigh. ‘Come up and see me sometime,’ she whispered throatily, but she withdrew the hand at once and wrapped it innocently about the bundle of lace in her arms as the grey Jaguar arrived at the front door of Hardacres. He gave her one, quick, warning look and she said, ‘I’ll behave. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  The christening party was held in the gardens. A marquee had been set up on the lawn by the summer-house, and there were tables with platters of smoked salmon, bowls of strawberries, and cases of champagne. The conservatory doors stood open to the garden, and the ladies of the house had gathered there. It was Mavis’s private retreat, as the library was Sam’s. She had restored it from the sad, empty shell it had been throughout Sam’s childhood and youth, to the rich, tropical splendour it had boasted in the days of Mary Hardacre. There were figs and grapes and peach trees, and a wealth of tropical palms, and wicker chairs and tables set out on the ancient tiled floor, in the warm sheltered sun. Mavis had kept the pram there, for her little daughter, and now for the twins, as Mary Hardacre had done with her own daughter’s pram, seventy years before.

  Mavis had not, as Mick Raddley confidently predicted, given Sam his twins by July, but she had indeed given him a daughter within a year of their marriage, and now, a year and a half later, his two sons. None of the three children looked the slightest bit like Mick, though he never relented an inch on his claims of paternity. The children, like her entrance into the Church, were another of the many things Mavis did without consulting him at all. He had, about them, the delight that only a man who has abandoned hope of ever having his own children, and indeed, abandoned it twice, can possibly have. He was understandably thrilled by the twins, for obvious reasons, but it was his little daughter, barely two years old, who was without doubt the chief joy of his life. He had called her Jane, of course, and the only sorrow in his world now was that he must, at times, be apart from her. He would willingly have taken her with him everywhere, had Mavis and good sense, allowed. He would return from a trip to sea, late on a winter night, tired and cold, and run directly from his car up the great stairs to the nursery before he would even stop to speak to anyone else. Mavis did not resent his devotion; no one could; though at times the sheer fierce strength of it was frightening. Still, she accepted it, and let it pass. The man had enough love in him to share with many.
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  Now, he got out of the car and carefully helped Janet out with her lacy burden, and escorted her with great propriety down the lawn to the gathering by the marquee. He could see the slender figure of his mother carrying the other twin around, showing him off to everyone in sight. They were dressed in the same ageing christening robes in which Sam and Terry had been brought out of heathendom into the Church, and Madelene was as proud of them as ever she’d been of her own sons. They were the last, fated chink in the wall between them; on their birth the barrier had fallen, and his mother had, at last, welcomed him home. It was as if only a life, and another male life, could pay the price of the son he had taken from her. Whatever, he was glad the price was paid. As he grew older, disruptions and sorrows in the family of which he was head, brought him increasing pain. He wanted them together, and at peace with each other, as Harry had wanted before him. He smiled, seeing Ruth Cirillo leading her own toddling daughter across the lawn to the waiting arms of her deliriously proud Italian father. He was not sure Ruth was totally happy with the marriage, but she couldn’t be that displeased either, because there was no doubt that she was pregnant again. He shrugged. There was a kind of Hardacre woman, like Emily, like Ruth, indeed like Janet, he would never quite understand.

  Janet walked placidly beside him as far as the summerhouse. Mavis had had Noel restore it, a remarkable trick, indeed, winning unnecessary labour from that savagely practical man. But he’d done it for her. Sam was a little sorry. It had memories like it was that he would have gladly left untouched, but there was no way he could tell that to his wife. Janet eyed it, perhaps thinking the same. It was full of wrought-iron chairs and tables now, rather than bales of hay, but the wisteria grew as ever. Janet smiled, and rocked the baby, who yawned and looked up with dark long-lashed eyes.

  ‘God help it,’ she said. ‘It’s going to look like you.’

  ‘You know, that suits you,’ he said, watching, ‘and Jan was looking positively wistful in Church. I think you’re going to have to do something for him.’

  Janet gave him a stony stare. ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘I’ll get him a cat.’

  There was a distant beeping of a shrill horn, and the small red Mini suddenly appeared out of the beech wood, with Geordie and Paul Barton in the front seat. They parked it and leapt out, laughing, with two long-haired girls tumbling out of the back seat after them, and came running across the green lawns to the marquee. The girls squealed and chased and the boys didn’t run all that fast for such long-legged, athletic young men. They got caught somehow, and had to slow down to a walk, burdened as they were with the clutch of female arms about their necks, and the silky weight of long, loose hair. Geordie, thus encumbered, arrived at the marquee by Sam and Janet and the baby. He said, ‘Can we keep them, Dad, they followed us home?’

  Sam smiled wryly, at the big-eyed girl peering uncertainly at him around Geordie’s neck. She was clearly terrified of him and it always bewildered him that anyone could be. Like everyone else of forty-six, he still felt eighteen in his heart, and didn’t see why he should so strike awe into the young. ‘As long as they don’t eat too much,’ he said. ‘You’d better find your Uncle Albert,’ he said to Paul. ‘He’s looking for you, I think.’

  Paul nodded. He was the more serious of the two, and he was always very responsible about family, and most particularly his uncle, Albert Chandler, whom he worshipped. ‘I’ll find him,’ he said, wandering off into the crowd, holding his new young friend by the hand.

  Mavis, with little Jane in her arms, found Sam then, and began directing him to gather the strays among his guests, but he only caught up his little daughter from her, and said, ‘Where’s my darling,’ and was at once lost in his own world with her.

  So Mavis went off and organized his family for him, for the christening photographs which would sit, one day, with all the others, in silver frames on the mantel of the drawing-room. Mavis was terribly good at organizing things, in her quiet-spoken unobtrusive manner. Like Jane Macgregor, she held everyone together, and created peace and harmony, while her husband went his erratic and cheerful way.

  After the photographs, Paul Barton found Albert sitting in the summer-house with Maud, holding hands and talking with Emily and Philip about London, long ago. He knocked on the rustic wood doorpost before he entered the open, airy little building, as if it were somehow a private room. Albert stood up to greet him. He was still tall, and straight as ever, and looked rather appropriate in the antique grace of morning-dress beneath the soft shadows of wisteria. Sometimes, looking at him, Paul got a little ashamed of his own generation, with their rough and scruffy clothes, and their sloppy manner on stage. Sometimes, although he knew it was not possible, he wanted it all to be more like Albert Chandler in the ballroom of the Savoy. He said, politely, ‘Sam said you wanted to see me.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Albert put his hand on Paul’s shoulder and looked down at the wooden floor. ‘Just a thought. You playing tonight at the club?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Usual time?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Ah good. Friend of mine, up from London. Like to take him in to see you. Just for a little, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not, sir.’ Paul paused, thinking, and said tentatively, ‘You sure, Uncle Albert? I mean, it’s awful noisy, and all. You know what it’s like in there. You sure he’ll like it?’ Albert smiled, distantly, his thin moustache twitching.

  ‘He’ll like it,’ he said.

  Paul wandered off and found Geordie and his find from the crowd at the gate, and they went into the marquee and introduced the girls to champagne, which neither had ever tasted before. They liked it, after an initial suspicious wrinkling of noses like small puppies. Which was not surprising, seeing as how it was from Harry Hardacre’s cellar, and quite splendid; Sam was liking it as well. As the afternoon progressed, warm, sunny, and soporific with the rare splendour of a perfect English summer day, he got gently plastered, and wandered around the gardens contentedly with his little daughter on one arm, and a bottle of champagne in his free hand, with which he topped up any glass he passed. He was quite resplendent in morning-dress, and looked every bit the aristocrat that he occasionally was.

  Mick Raddley approached with some trepidation, a wary Pete Haines at his side. The advent of the twins, as predicted, if a little late, had given Mick such devilish delight that he’d actually overcome all his wary restraint and attended the christening, in battered, rented, formal attire. Sam was delighted and he smiled happily as he met them, poured champagne into Pete’s glass, and over Mick’s head, and said, ‘No, he’s not the bloody father, so don’t ask.’

  ‘Weren’t going to ask that,’ said Pete.

  ‘Nay,’ said Mick. ‘We got summat else on our minds.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ Sam said. ‘It’s not bloody work, is it? Because if it is, it can go to hell. I’m getting drunk today.’

  ‘Aye, we’ve noticed. No. It’s about the names.’

  ‘Don’t you like them?’

  ‘Fine. We like them fine,’ said Pete.

  He rocked on his heels and Sam said, giggling, ‘My God, you look a proper toff, Pete. There must have been some blue blood on the wrong side of the blanket in your house once.’

  ‘Nowt but good Yorkshire stock,’ said Pete sourly. ‘Now I know there was a Peter in the family somewhere, but it’s the Michael we can’t figure.’

  ‘Lovely name,’ said Sam.

  ‘A’reeght, stop beatin’ round t’ bluidy bush,’ said Mick. ‘Did you name t’ little bastards after us?’

  Sam stared, as well as he could with the slight lack of focus caused by the champagne, and shifted his little daughter carefully so that she was more comfortable, leaning over his shoulder. He said, with a look of imperiousness worthy of his great-aunt Jane, ‘After you? You two? You’re getting ideas above your station, the pair of you.’ He paused, swaying slightly, and said, ‘They’re after the archangel. And the bloody saint.’ He poured more
champagne over Mick’s head and walked away.

  ‘Reeght,’ Mick shouted after him. ‘As long as we all know our place.’

  ‘The Club’ ‒ it had no other name ‒ was a cellar beneath a shopfront, in a less attractive corner of Scarborough. It opened its doors when the pubs closed theirs, serving no alcohol, of course, but its customers didn’t come for that kind of intoxication. They sipped cokes and drank endless coffees and smoked too many hand-rolled cigarettes, so the atmosphere was thick and sour, full of the scent of tobacco, a faint trace of marijuana, and the unabashed stench of sweat. The Club was packed from ten until two, with young, healthy dancing bodies, and all they came for was the music that had no end.

  On the night of the June day on which Sam Hardacre’s sons were christened, Paul Barton and Geordie Emmerson Hardacre, with Bill, Taffy and Greg, the three supporting players, held the stage at The Club for four hours straight. It was a stunning feat of energy and musical resource, but at midnight, when they’d played steadily for two hours already, Paul wasn’t even tired. He was lead singer, and Geordie lead guitar, and between the two of them was a rhythm and understanding that was almost mystic.

  Offstage they were just pals, two young men with a tenuous family link, who went their own ways and chased their own women. But on that stage they were brothers, more than brothers, they were twins, two minds and bodies so close as to share one soul. They never had to plan a performance, nor even hint which song came next, or when they would make that devastating slip into the minor key that made the girls shriek and grow faint. It just happened; like with the old black jazzmen Albert had told him of, they improvised and teased, flirting with each other through the tangle of melody and rhythm, never a note out of step. The Guttie Boys were a good group, five good competent musicians, but it was that pairing of the two leads that set them streets ahead of the rest.

  Paul could just see Geordie out of the corner of his eye, over the edge of the mike; swaying, his eyes half-closed, lost in the sound, feeding back the musical seduction that Paul threw to him, and tossing it, like crumbs to the hungry, to the audience below. The girls shrieked; white, upturned faces, huge eyes made huger by great splodges of eye shadow and cakes of mascara; all hunger and desire. Paul grinned, and they shrieked again; he could play them all as if they were all in his bed. And yet he did so with no pride. That they took sex from him was an accident; what he was giving was music. And as always, music was his whole being. He stood and sang, and forgot everything, just as he had eleven years before on the sands of Bridlington beach. Oh, for the Wings of a Dove. Paul needed no wings; he was flying and music alone was the source of his flight. Albert Chandler came in in the middle of a number, and Paul didn’t even see him until the last chord came crashing through his soul. Then he stopped, breathing in great gasps, his face and body coated with sweat, as the real world of boys and girls and cokes and coffees and fags came suddenly jarring back.