Child's Play

Chapter 7

Yorkshire is the only English cricket club which still requires its players to be born in county limits. Foreigners, however long domiciled, can never be trusted not to revert to playing the game for pleasure.

A similar high seriousness of approach is required of Yorkshire publicans and John Huby was well qualified to open the batting for any county side of licensed victuallers.

‘John, love, it’s turned six,’ said Ruby Huby.

‘Oh aye.’

‘Shall I open up? There’s a car in the car park.’

‘So what? Let the bugger wait!’ said Huby, continuing to stack bottles of light ale on his bar shelves.

Ruby Huby looked anxiously out of the window. Happily the newcomer did not seem impatient. He was standing by his car examining with speculative interest the foundations of the restaurant and function room extension which, begun in anticipation of Aunt Gwen’s will, looked like being its first casualty.

‘Right,’ said Huby looking round to make sure everything was as serious and sombre as it should be. ‘Let him in. But he’d best not want owt fancy. I’m not in the mood.’

As ‘fancy’ when John Huby was not in the mood could include any mixture from a gin and tonic to a shandy, the odds on a clash seemed high.

Fortunately the man who entered, in his thirties with a dark beard, a mop of strong crinkly hair and a broad-shouldered athletic-looking torso, had driven far enough to develop a simple thirst.

‘What’s your pleasure?’ asked Huby challengingly.

‘Pint of best, please,’ said the man in a soft Scottish accent.

Mollified, Huby drew a pint. First of the night, it was rather cloudy. He looked speculatively at the stranger, who looked speculatively back, sighed, drew another, got a clear one at the third time of asking and handed it over.

‘Cheers,’ said the man.

He drank and looked round the bar. The landlord’s ambition for development had clearly not begun here. The furniture and fittings would probably have pleased Betjeman. Even the inevitable fruit machine belonged to a pre-electronic age. There was a deep recessed fireplace which contained real coal piled on real sticks for lighting, if and when the landlord decided his customers deserved it. On the brick hearth lay a sleeping Yorkshire terrier. A stout woman of mid to late forties was bustling around the room, laying out ashtrays and a girl in her late teens with a mass of springy blonde curls and an even greater mass of even springier bosom was polishing glasses behind the bar. She caught his eye and smiled invitingly. Pleased at this first sign of welcome, the stranger smiled back.

Huby, intercepting the exchange, snapped, ‘Jane, if you’ve nowt better to do than stand about grinning, bring us some fresh martini up. We’ll mebbe be getting a rush of the gentry tonight.’

The stranger put his glass down on the bar.

‘Mr John Huby, is it?’ he asked.

‘That’s what it says over the door.’

‘My name is Goodenough, Mr Huby. Andrew Goodenough. I am the general secretary of the People’s Animal Welfare Society. You may recall that the Society was mentioned in your late aunt’s will.’

‘Oh aye, I recall that well enough,’ said Huby grimly.

‘Yes. I fear it must have been something of a disappointment to you.’

‘Disappointment, Mr Goodenough? No, I’d not say that,’ said Huby lifting up the bar flap and coming to the public side of the bar. ‘I’d not say that. It was her brass, to do with as she liked. And she didn’t forget me; no, she didn’t forget me. And I’ll not forget her, you can be sure of that!’

He had walked across to the fireplace, and as he spoke these last words with great vehemence, to Goodenough’s horror he raised his right leg and delivered a vicious and powerful kick at the sleeping dog. The force of it drove the animal against the brickwork with a sickening thud.

‘For Christ’s sake, man!’ cried the animal protectionist, then his protest faded as he realized the dog, though now on its back, still retained its sleeping posture.

‘Can I introduce you to Gruff-of-sodding-Greendale?’ snarled Huby. ‘I were going to stick it on the fire at first, but then I thought: No, I’ll keep the thing. It’ll lie there as a lesson to me not to waste time being friendly to those who don’t know the meaning of gratitude or family loyalty. Now, what can I do for you, Mr Goodenough? It’s not the welfare of Gruff here that’s brought you all this way, is it?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Goodenough. ‘Could we talk in private?’

‘Instead of in this crowded bar, you mean? Ruby, you look after things in here when the rush starts, will you? Come through, Mr Goodenough.’

The living quarters behind the bar proved to be distinctly more comfortable than the public area, though the same air of antiquity reigned.

‘Been in the family a long time, has it?’ said Goodenough.

‘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?’