Child’s Play

‘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.