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‘Long enough. It were me grandad’s to start with.’
‘Yes. I was talking to Mrs Windibanks in London and she gave me something of the family history.’
This was enough to shatter any barrier of reticence.
‘Old Windypants? What’s she know about owt? Nose stuck in the air when it weren’t stuck up the old girl’s bum! Well, she got as little for her pains as me, so that’s some consolation. But you don’t want to pay any heed to owt she says about the Hubys. Listen. I’ll tell you how it really was.’
He settled down in his chair and Goodenough followed suit, like the unlucky wedding guest. Though, in fact he was not incurious to hear Huby’s version of the background to this old business.
The landlord began to speak.
‘This place were the cottage belonging to the mill that stood behind it, alongside the river. Well, it’s long gone now and it were pretty much a ruin even when my grandad got the cottage. He were just a farm lad, but he had his head screwed on, and he set up an ale house here with his sister to keep house for him. Lomas’s were a small brewery then, just starting, and their eldest lad come round to try to get Grandad to sell his beer. Well, Lomas had no luck selling the beer, but Grandad’s sister, Dot, took his fancy and off he went with her instead! Grandad weren’t best pleased by all accounts, but there was nowt the poor devil could do except get himself married so he’d have someone to help around the place. And this is what he did, and him and Grandma had twin sons, John, my dad, and Sam.’
He paused not in anticipation of any challenge to this interesting view of marriage, but to fill and light an ancient and malodorous pipe.
‘Come 1914 and they both upped and offed to the war,’ he resumed. ‘What’s more, they both came back unscathed, which was more than most families could claim. Grandma had died early on, and Grandad went too in 1919. The pub was left between ’em, but Uncle Sam had been left all restless by the war, so he took his share in cash and left Dad with the pub. Sam disappeared for a year doing God knows what. Then one day he came back, stony broke. He turned up here, asking my dad for a sub till he got on his feet again. Now Dad were a fair man, but he weren’t soft. He’d got married by then and he was just about making ends meet, but only just. So he told his brother he were welcome to his supper and a bed for the night, but after that he’d have to make his own way. That sounds fair enough to me, wouldn’t you say? Sam had made his bed and now he had to lie on it.’
Goodenough nodded agreement. The consequences of dispute were not to be lightly provoked. Besides, he had some real sympathy for the viewpoint.
‘And what was Sam’s response?’
‘Well, he were a hard man too,’ said Huby, not without admiration. ‘He told Dad to shove his supper and wedge the bed in after it, and went right back to town the same night. Next thing Dad heard, Sam had sweet-talked Auntie Dot into making Lomas give him a job as a salesman for the brewery. That did it. Grandad would’ve turned in his grave. He never made it up with Dot. Always felt she gave herself airs. Well, that’s what mixing with them bloody Lomases does to you, I’ve seen it for myself. Still, Grandad would probably have had a laugh at what happened next.’
‘And what was that?’ inquired Goodenough, recognizing the straight-man’s cue.
‘Well, Sam did well at his job, he had the gift of the gab, it seems. And not just for selling ale either. Lomas had a daughter, Gwen. Big plans for her, evidently. He’d made a pile of brass, bought Troy House in Greendale, and was in a fair way to setting himself up as a gentleman though he were no better than my grandad to start with. Gwen was going to marry a real gentleman, that was the idea. Then it happened. Her poor cousin Sam put her in the club!’
Huby chortled at the family memory.
‘And that’s how Sam came to marry into the Lomases?’ said Goodenough.
‘Aye, that was it. Lucky for them he did, too! Everyone says Lomas’s would’ve gone under in the depression if it hadn’t been for Sam. He kept ’em going and when things got better, he was the boss of the whole shooting match. By the end of the Second War they were booming and they amalgamated with one of the really big firms and went national, though they kept the name. That’s what sticks in my throat! All that so-called Lomas money, it’s Huby money really. They’d have been in the sodding workhouse if it hadn’t been for Sam.’
‘Didn’t he try to put any of it his brother’s way, when he was doing so well?’
‘Oh aye. He came round once when he were coining it. Offered to make things up. Fancy clothes, fancy car, fancy wife, he had the lot, and Dad was still just keeping things together here. Never had the money, you see. That’s what this place needs. Capital. Brass breeds brass, that’s the way of it.’
He stared gloomily towards the window where the beginning of the extension stood silent in the evening sunshine.
‘And your father’s response?’
‘What do you think?’ snarled Huby. ‘He told him to sod off again. What else could he say? Well, that did it!’
‘I suppose it would,’ said Goodenough. ‘Now, about your uncle’s son, your cousin, the missing heir …’
‘Missing?’ exclaimed Huby. ‘Bugger’s as dead as Gruff-of-sodding-Greendale, and everyone knows it. She knew it too, I reckon, only her conscience wouldn’t let her believe it.’
‘Conscience?’ said Goodenough, puzzled.
‘Oh aye. Between her and Sam, the poor devil had a hell of a life. Her wanting him to be a proper gentleman, him wanting him to be a proper he-man!’
‘And what did Alexander want?’
‘Just to be a lad, I reckon. I didn’t know him well though we were born within a month of each other. He went off to some fancy school, of course, while I just went local, and only when they caught me! But we’d bump into each other in the holidays sometimes and I’d say how do? and he’d say hello, all very polite, like. Being of an age, we got called up at the same time in 1944. We went off on the same train and did our basic at the same depot, so it were natural we should chum up a bit, being cousins. He asked what I wanted to do. Stay alive, I said. I were good with engines and so on, so I was looking for a berth in the REME and I got it too, ended up a Lance-jack at a depot down near Tunbridge. He sounded dead envious when I told him this. What about you? I said. He was going for an officer, he said. His mother would like that, the uniform and people sirring him and all. And then he thought he might volunteer for training as one of them Commandos. I looked at him as if he were daft. Anyone less like a commando I couldn’t imagine. But he did it, the poor sod. I heard later his dad were chuffed to buggery. My son, the officer, Gwen would say in that hoity voice of hers. My lad, the Commando, Sam would say. Well, between ’em, they did for the poor sod. Me, I never left these shores. Him, he’s picked clean on the bed of the Med by now. Sam finally accepted it. She never did. Couldn’t. She knew whose fault it was he ended up like he did.’
With this interesting bit of deep analysis, Huby seemed well satisfied. His pipe had gone out and now he relit it.
‘But you were reconciled with your uncle’s family to some extent,’ prompted Goodenough.
Huby laughed and said, ‘I thought so. Our dad died in 1958. Uncle Sam came to the funeral. I talked to him, man to man. Well, it weren’t my quarrel. Me and Ruby got invited to tea a short while after. That were a frosty affair, I tell you. But I said to myself, I can thole frost if it’s going to bring brass. I even started selling Lomas ales in the pub. Me dad must’ve turned in his grave! Then just as I felt I were getting on champion with uncle Sam, what does he do but keel over and die, not a six-month after our dad! Well, her ladyship got the lot, not a penny for any bugger else. But fair do’s, I said. It were hers by right. And didn’t she get hold of me after the funeral and say it’d been her Sam’s particular wish that this new friendliness between our families should continue and she’d like me and Ruby to come to tea? But she’d not changed, not her!’
‘What do you mean?’ said Goodenough.
‘Guilt! That’s all it was. Like she knew she’d buggered her lad up, now she must’ve wondered if she’d helped push Sam into the grave. All right, it sounds daft. But why’d she do it, else? More than five-and-twenty years of having us to tea once a month. For what? I’ll tell you for what, from my point of view. Gruff-of-sodding-Greendale, that’s what!’
He banged his pipe against the wall so hard he left a mark in the plaster.
Goodenough said, ‘I sympathize with you, believe me.’
‘Do you now? Well, that’s good on you. But you’ve not come all this way to sympathize, have you? What are you, any road? Some kind of lawyer?’
‘To some extent,’ smiled Goodenough who, under parental misdirection, had in fact studied law instead of the veterinary science he would have preferred. When the chance had come of a poorly paid organizational job with PAWS, he had leapt at it, and in a dozen years he had helped build it up from a rather ramshackle semi-amateur body to one of the top animal charities. Large legacies like Mrs Huby’s were rare, and it was his frustration at the thought of waiting all those years as much as advice from the Society’s official legal advisers that had made him choose this course of action.
‘Let me explain,’ he said. ‘We at PAWS are naturally eager to get our share of the estate sooner rather than later. To do this, we’ll need to challenge the will in court and get Alexander Huby’s unlikely claim put aside. You follow me?’
‘You want the brass now,’ said Huby. ‘I can see that. What’s it to do wi’ me?’
‘To maximize our chances of success we need to keep things simple as possible. One thing is that all three beneficiary organizations must act in concert. I’ve got CODRO’s consent to go ahead in their name and while I’m up here, I intend sounding out these Women For Empire people.
‘The second and more important is for the judge to be presented with a clear line of vision. He must be able to see that the only possible hindrance to our collecting the money in 2015 is the return of Alexander Huby, which we will then persuade him is so unlikely as to be negligible.’
Huby had been listening closely.
‘What other hindrance could there be?’ he asked.
‘You!’ said Goodenough. ‘And Mrs Windibanks. You’re the two closest relatives. In fact, I believe you occupy precisely the same relationship with the deceased …’
‘What? She told you that, did she? Bloody liar!’ cried Huby indignantly. ‘The old lass were my auntie. Windypants is nowt but a sort of cousin, well removed!’
‘In matters of this kind, it’s blood relationships that count,’ said Goodenough crisply. ‘Mrs Huby was your aunt only by marriage. Mrs Windibanks’s father was her cousin on the Lomas side, just as your father was on the Huby side. That’s the relationship that matters. What I would like from you, Mr Huby, is a waiver, acknowledging that you will not be making any claim on Mrs Huby’s estate, now or ever.’
The pipe hit the wall with such force, the bowl cracked wide. But Huby didn’t seem to notice.
‘Well, bugger me,’ he said. ‘Is that all? Bugger me!’
‘Yes, it isn’t really much to ask, is it?’ said Goodenough, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘I mean, I assume you’ve already consulted your own solicitor and been advised on the feasibility of contesting the will on your own behalf.’
‘That’s my business,’ growled Huby.
‘Of course it is. I do not wish to pry. But if his advice was that it would be such a chancy business that it was hardly worth risking the necessarily large legal costs, and if you have decided to accept this advice, then what do you have to lose by signing the waiver?’
‘What do I have to gain, that’s more to the point,’ said Huby cunningly.
‘There would possibly be a small compensatory payment for your time and trouble,’ said Goodenough.
He was disappointed but not too surprised when instead of asking How much? Huby said, ‘You say you’ve spoken to old Windypants?’
‘To Mrs Windibanks, yes.’
‘What’s she say?’
‘She’s mulling it over, but I’ve no doubt she will make the wise decision.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ said Huby. ‘I learnt early not to jump when lawyers crack the whip. So I think I’ll do a bit of mulling too. You’ve got other business up here, you say? Well, call back in a day or so, and I’ll mebbe be better placed to make a decision.’
Goodenough sighed. He’d been hoping that need and greed might have made the man grab at a cash offer, but he judged that to make one now would merely be to weaken his position.
‘Very well,’ he said, rising. ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’
‘What? I’ve given you nowt, have I?’ For some reason this seemed to touch his conscience and he added magnanimously, ‘Listen, have a glass of beer on your way out, tell Ruby I say it’s on the house.’
‘Thank you, but the one was enough. I noticed, incidentally, you no longer serve Lomas’s?’
‘No! I had the bloody stuff taken out right after the funeral,’ snarled Huby. ‘Can you find your own way? Good night, then.’
After the door closed behind Goodenough, Huby sat in silence for several minutes staring sightlessly into the fireplace. He was roused by his wife saying, ‘Phone, John!’
He went through the bar to the pay-phone in the entrance passage. It was a continuous complaint of Jane’s that they didn’t have a phone of their own, but the more she complained, the more Huby was confirmed in his economic policy.
‘Old Mill,’ he grunted into the receiver. ‘Huby speaking.’
He listened for a while and a slow grin spread across his face.
‘I were just thinking about you, Mrs Windibanks,’ he said finally. ‘Fancy that, eh? You’re at the Howard Arms, you say. Well, it’s a bit hard for me to get away from the pub tonight … you’ll come out? Grand, that’ll be grand. Always glad to have a chat with a relative, that’s me.’
He put the phone down and laughed out loud. But his amusement died as he tried to refill his pipe and discovered the cracked bowl.
‘Bloody hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘What rotten bugger’s done that?’
Chapter 8 (#ulink_1e708d14-d282-5a00-b0d3-2bee35dc60f6)
‘Good morning, Lexie.’
‘Good morning, Miss Keech.’
Pascoe, as the nearest thing in mid-Yorkshire to a sociological detective, might have read much into this exchange. Miss Keech’s connection with the Hubys had started as a fourteen-year-old in 1930 when she had been taken on at Troy House as a nurserymaid. By the time young Alexander left for boarding-school some eight years later, she was fully in charge of not only the nursery but most of the household management. Came the war, and young, fit unmarried women were called upon to do more for their country than look after the houses of the rich and, despite Mrs Huby’s indignant protests, Miss Keech was sucked into the outside world. Contact was lost, though it was known through her local connections that she had risen to the dizzy heights of being a WRAC driver with two stripes. Then in 1946 she returned to Troy House to convey her sorrow at the sad news of Alexander’s loss and there she had stayed ever since, first as housekeeper, gradually as companion, eventually as nurse.
Mrs Gwendoline Huby called her Keech. Alexander Huby had called her Keechie. John Huby generally called her nothing to her face and ‘that cold calculating cow’ to her back. It irked him greatly to hear old Windypants using her surname as to the manner born, and even more to hear her poncy son drawling out Keechie as if he’d got a silver spoon stuck in his gob!
To the Old Mill girls, she was always Miss Keech, which was right and proper, for children should be polite to adults, however undeserving; but Huby did nothing to discourage their private conviction, fostered by the more imaginative and better-read Lexie, that this dark-clad figure was really the Wicked Witch of the West.
‘Notice the Beurre Hardy, Lexie. In all the years I have been at Troy House, I do not believe I have seen a more bountiful crop.’
Lexie duly noted the pear tree. She did not resent Miss Keech’s gubernatorial manner, nor was she offended (as her father claimed to be) by such a pedantic style and affected accent in one of such humble origins. But she hadn’t liked Miss Keech from her earliest memories of her, and had been consistent in this dislike as in most things.
The feeling, she suspected, was mutual. Only once had it come near to open declaration. On visiting Sundays, the two girls were normally allowed to escape after tea and play in the garden with Hob, the donkey, and the two goats. On wet days, they would descend into the capacious cellar which was used for storage of old furniture and other junk. Well lit and relatively dry, it provided a marvellous playroom for the children. At one end of it was a small oaken door with a Norman arch which looked as if it should have been in a fairytale castle, and Lexie invented various enthralling tales of what lay beyond for her wide-eyed sister. Then one day as she finished one of her stories, she became aware of Miss Keech standing at the head of the cellar stairs.
‘Is Lexie right, Miss Keech?’ piped up Jane. ‘Is there really a magic garden through that door?’
‘Oh no, Jane,’ said Keech in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘That’s where we keep the old bodies of everyone who’s died here.’
The effect had been devastating. Jane had fled from the cellar and refused ever to go down there again. On wet Sundays thereafter they had found themselves constrained to sit in the dull drab drawing-room looking at dull drab books. Miss Keech had told Jane not to be silly, but Lexie had detected the edge of malicious satisfaction there and knew it was directed at her. She had boldly demanded the key to the oaken door from Miss Keech, ready to explode her own fairytales in the cause of revealing Miss Keech’s lie. The woman had produced it without hesitation, saying, ‘Of course you may look inside, Lexie. But you must go by yourself. I have no time for such childishness.’
Again the malice. She had known full well that a small girl of eight, no matter how self-possessed, was not impervious to such imaginative fears.
But Lexie had descended alone. Terror had weakened her skinny legs, but something stronger than terror had urged her on. There was no way she could articulate it, but it had something to do with a sense of what was right.
The door had swung open without even a creak to reveal a small inner cellar lined with wine racks, empty since Sam Huby’s death. His widow admitted a little sweet sherry in the drawing-room but had no need of wine. As for Lomas’s beers on which her fortune rested, she had tasted a light ale once at the age of twenty, and never repeated the disagreeable experience.
Lexie had gone to fetch Jane to show her the truth of the matter, but the words of an adult are stronger than the word of a sister, and Jane had only collapsed in tearful refusal while Miss Keech looked on in silent triumph, knowing she had ruined the cellar for them for ever.
All that had been ages ago, but it had stamped a seal on their relationship. Only once had Lexie had cause to waver in her judgement and that was three years ago when Great Aunt Gwen had had her first stroke. The degree of Miss Keech’s distress had amazed everyone. ‘Must know she’s been left out of the will!’ John Huby had posited mockingly. But the woman’s concern and agitation and unsparing attendance on her sick employer had impressed most observers deeply, causing even Lexie to admit a slight modification of her judgement.
‘Is Mr Lomas, Rod, ready?’ she now asked.
‘Just completing his breakfast. Have you time for a cup of coffee? Do step inside in any case.’
It was Lexie’s first visit to Troy House since the funeral meats. Externally, the square, grey Victorian building was little changed. The well-kept garden with its gloomy shrubberies still had the goats on long tethers at the foot of the lawn while Hob the donkey grazed nearby, indifferent and free.
Inside, however, there were signs of change, subtle but significant. Several of the doors off the large but gloomy entrance hall were closed for a start. In Great Aunt Gwen’s time, no door and few windows were ever closed as this interfered with her animals’ right of total access to every part of the house. Also the hall itself was surely not quite so gloomy as before. The heavy velvet drapes which, even when drawn open, still inhibited ninety per cent of the light entering via the stained-glass windows on either side of the door, had disappeared, and on the dark green silk wallpaper two lighter rectangles showed where half-length portraits of King Edward and Queen Alexandra had glowered out of gilded frames these past seventy-odd years.
The kitchen had changed too, but not subtly. There were bright new chintzy curtains at the windows, a new sink unit in stainless steel had replaced the ancient deep-crazed pot one, yellow and white vinyl tiles covered the old stone floor and there was a new drop-leaf formica table in bright blue in place of the old solid-state wooden one which had impeded passage for all but the very slimmest.
At this table sat Rod Lomas, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.
‘Lexie,’ he said, ‘you must be early.’
‘You’ve got two minutes,’ she said.
‘Time for another coffee, then,’ he replied.
She didn’t answer but stared at him with that expression of nervous determination he was beginning to recognize.
‘All right,’ he said, rising. ‘I’ll get my jacket.’
He left the room. Miss Keech poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Lexie. The Old Mill Inn girls had always thought of her as old, but today, aged about seventy, she looked somehow younger than Lexie could ever recall. It was perhaps the touch of colour which varied the hitherto unbroken blackness of her clothing; a red silk scarf at her neck, a diamanté brooch at her bosom.
‘You’ve got the kitchen nice,’ said Lexie.
