Between Friends Read online

  Between Friends

  Audrey Howard

  Random House (2012)

  Tags: Saga, Historical, Fiction

  * * *

  Synopsis

  Brought together by friendship, torn apart by love... Meg Hughes, Tom Fraser and Martin Hunter were friends who had grown up together in the grinding poverty of a Liverpool orphanage. Their prospects looked bleak until the friends were sent to help out at Hemingway Shipping Line's emigrant lodging house. Then their youthful high spirits blossomed into their plans for the future. But the First World War brought an end to those plans, and threatened to separate them. As time passes, Meg grows more and more beautiful, and the love the two men feel for her becomes passionately possessive. Meg, in different ways, is in love with both Tom and Martin . . . and is to bear a child by one of them. Grief and suffering, as well as happiness and hope, must all play their part before the childhood friends' deep and complex relationships are finally and tragically resolved.

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Audrey Howard

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Brought together by friendship, torn apart by love.

  Meg Hughes, Tom Fraser and Martin Hunter were friends who had grown up together in the grinding poverty of a Liverpool orphanage. Their prospects looked bleak until the friends were sent to help out at Hemingway Shipping Line’s emigrant lodging house. Then their youthful high spirits blossomed into their plans for the future.

  But the First World War brought an end to those plans, and threatened to separate them.

  As time passes, Meg grows more and more beautiful, and the love the two men feel for her becomes passionately possessive. Meg, in different ways, is in love with both Tom and Martin . . . and is to bear a child by one of them.

  Grief and suffering, happiness and hope, must all play their part before the childhood friends’ deep and complex relationships are finally and tragically resolved.

  About the Author

  Audrey Howard was born in Liverpool in 1929 and it is from that once great seaport that many of her ideas for her books come. Before she began to write she had a variety of jobs, among them hairdresser, model, shop assistant, cleaner and civil servant. In 1981, out of work and living in Australia, she wrote her first novel The Skylark’s Song. She was fifty-two. This success was followed by The Morning Tide, Ambitions, The Juniper Bush and Between Friends. The Juniper Bush won the Boots Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 1988. Audrey Howard now lives in her childhood home, St Anne’s on Sea, Lancashire.

  By the same author

  THE SKYLARK’S SONG

  THE MORNING TIDE

  AMBITIONS

  THE JUNIPER BUSH

  THE MALLOW YEARS

  SHINING THREADS

  A DAY WILL COME

  ALL DEAR FACES

  THERE IS NO PARTING

  THE WOMAN FROM BROWHEAD

  ECHO OF ANOTHER TIME

  THE SILENCE OF STRANGERS

  A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE

  BETWEEN FRIENDS

  Audrey Howard

  I would like to dedicate this book, with my dearest love, to my sister and brother-in-law, Wendy and Bob Beverly.

  Chapter One

  THE KITCHEN DOOR stood wide open and the young girl who came through it paused for a moment in the doorway as the full force of the midday sun struck her. The heat seemed to be sucked down the narrow steps to the basement door of the tall house and she narrowed her eyes in the glare, lifting her left hand to shade them from its brightness. In her right hand she held an iron bucket filmed with coal dust.

  ‘Lord, it’s hot!’ she exclaimed over her shoulder to someone in the kitchen, then began to climb the worn steps, the bucket held well away from her full, grey cotton skirt and the fresh whiteness of her well-starched apron. When she reached the gate at the top of the area steps she opened it, stopping to lean for a moment or two on the iron railings which surrounded the area, savouring the languorous heat of the sun and the dust-filled peace of the square.

  A youth on its far side who was indolently shovelling horse droppings from the cobbled roadway into a bucket straightened up slowly when he saw her and his small eyes gleamed. He turned his head quickly to look about him but apart from himself and several curiously dressed small children who sprawled listlessly on the pavement, their feet in the gutter, the square was deserted.

  The sun shone brassily on well-painted window frames and the open doors of the terraced Regency houses which surrounded the square and winked back from polished windows. The houses were elegantly simple though well past their best, once the homes of Liverpool’s merchants and men of shipping before they had amassed their wealth five decades ago and moved out to Everton and West Derby and the mansions they had built for themselves there. They were narrow, constructed from the locally produced bricks before the days of mass production, before the days of the railways which had transported them, the façades a warm red, edged at each flat window and arched, ornamental doorway in white.

  The youth put down his bucket and stepped lightly across the heap of stinking manure. The small garden in the centre of the square was dry now, the grass a lifeless brown, the marigolds and lavender which had been so lively several weeks ago wilted and parched in the still and withering air. The dessicated leaves of the sycamore trees cast a deep shade about him as he moved across it but the usual assortment of old, pipe-smoking men and mongrel dogs who normally sought its sanctuary were missing today, electing to lounge in the cooler shade of a back yard or a shadowed doorway, too enervated in the dense heat to totter even to the garden’s wooden benches.

  The girl withdrew a scrap of white linen from a pocket in her apron and delicately wiped the perspiration from her upper lip. She was tall. Though her waist and hips were slender with the child-like shapelessness of adolescence, her breasts were already budding, promising a full roundness, a womanliness to come. Her skin, a rich creamy-white, was revealed by her rolled up sleeves and the buttons she had undone at her throat but it was her hair which immediately drew the eye for it was a shining flame, like copper caught in the sun’s rays, a vividly abundant warmth which curled vigorously, riotously about her shapely he
ad.

  She began to saunter towards the side of the house, the bucket still held carefully away from the full folds of her skirt. She swayed gracefully, her young body relaxed and dreaming, her skirt swinging from side to side, her left hand twitching the hem away from the pointed toes of her black boots as she had seen the grand ladies do in Dale Street. The house was the end one of a row and when she reached the narrow passage which separated it from its neighbour she turned into it and for several seconds, though she continued to move along its familiar length towards the strip of yard at its rear, she was blinded. It was like stepping into a long dark tunnel, cool and completely shaded from the sun and her eyes narrowed as they adjusted to the sudden change. A thin strip of vivid blue sky divided the high walls which rose on either side of her and she craned her neck to look up to it, still, it appeared, deep in the strange relaxed torpor the heat of the day had induced in her.

  She sensed rather than heard his footsteps at her back. Though the old cobbles which lined the passage were of stone, moss and grasses had grown up through them, carpeting the ground, softening the sound of his boots and he was almost upon her when she whirled about.

  He stopped at once as she faced him, holding up his hands in a supplicatory manner. He grinned foolishly, moving from one foot to the other, swaying in the fashion of a wrestler looking for a weak spot in an opponent but it seemed the girl was irritated rather than afraid though she swung the bucket defensively nevertheless.

  ‘What do you want, Fancy O’Neill?’ she said sharply.

  ‘Nowt really, Meg. I seed yer from across the square an’ I thought seein’ as ’ow you an’ me are friends I’d nip over an’ pass the time o’ day, like.’

  ‘Friends!’ she snorted derisively. ‘Since when were you an’ me friends, Fancy O’Neill?’

  ‘Now don’t be like that, Meggie.’ The youth took a step towards her and she moved back, going deeper into the trap he had set for her.

  ‘Like what? You’ve got no friends! Who’d want to be your “wacker”, I’d like to know and what d’you think you’re doing following me down this ginnel. You’re trespassing, that’s what you’re doing and if Mr Hemingway was to hear of it you’d be for it so clear off, d’you hear me.’

  ‘Now Meggie.’ He moved another step nearer, the size of him effectively blocking out the sultry sunshine which fell about the entry to the passage and as his shadow loomed over her he put out a hand and laid it tentatively on her upper arm, stroking it as though she was a restive mare.

  She sprang back and her pale amber eyes flared to blazing gold.

  ‘Don’t you touch me, Fancy O’Neill. You put your hand on me again and I’ll hit you so hard with this flaming bucket I’ll bash your brains in.’ Her voice was scornful. ‘Not that it’d make much difference since you never use what few you’ve got. Now get out of me way. Go on, clear off!’

  She hissed the last words through clenched teeth and the look of revulsion on her face was so strong it twisted her mouth into a grimace and she gave the appearance of having stepped into something unmentionable. She swung the empty bucket menacingly in her work-strong hand and the echo of its clangour as it hit the wall of the narrow passage rang hollowly upwards. A flock of house martins, disturbed by the noise plunged frantically low over the walls which split the yards at the back of the houses, diving and twisting up again and over the roof to the next street, but the sparrows which pecked fearlessly at the sour soil, used to human commotion, scarcely lifted their beaks.

  The girl was clearly becoming angry and her free hand clenched into a fist.

  ‘Let me get by, you filthy beggar. Go on, shift yourself.’

  ‘Aah Meg, I’ll not hurt yer. I only want a little kiss. Only one, honest. Go on, yer’ll like it, really, just one little kiss. It’s not much to ask, is it, seein’ as ’ow you an’ me’s such good friends. What’s one little kiss? Yer’ll never even miss it!’

  The enormous youth who blocked the passage smirked in what he imagined to be an engaging manner and began to move in a crab-like crawl along the wall of the house ready to leap aside should the swinging bucket come too near him. His smile widened to reveal teeth greened with the slime of decaying food. The dirty flesh of his face and the stubble of his unshaven chin was crusted with some inflammation and he scratched it vigorously, drawing nasty matter to the surface.

  The girl shuddered and took another step backwards. The youth followed eagerly. ‘Come on, Meggie, be nice to Fancy. Give us a kiss.’ He plunged one hand into the baggy reaches of his trousers to fondle the bulge which grew there whilst the other continued to scratch the purulence on his jaw.

  ‘Get out of my way or I swear I’ll take your eye out with this bucket.’ The girl sketched another vicious circle in the air with the heavy iron utensil. Bobbing his matted head the youth only grinned. He had been watching and waiting for this moment for weeks now and the girl’s threat was taken lightly. He was big and strong and she was only a little bit of a thing and as soon as he found an opportunity to duck beneath that whirling bucket he would nip in and wrench it from her hand, taking it from her as easily as he would a sweetie from a baby. He might not have another chance like this and he promised himself he would make the most of it. It was not often she came out on her own for Mrs Whitley, the cook-housekeeper, kept her close and them two lads were always knocking about but he’d seen them himself setting off no more than an hour ago. They had been shepherding a large group of emigrants who were to sail on the ‘Lacy Osborne’ on the two o’clock tide, helping Mr Lloyd, the shipping agent to see the bravely marching assembly safely stowed away on the steamship, and would not be back for hours!

  Fancy O’Neill bunched his muscular shoulders and his voice dropped to a wheedling whine. ‘Come on, Meggie, be a sport. Just a little kiss. You’ll enjoy it, honest. Fancy’s a good kisser. Ask anyone!’

  He smirked ingratiatingly. ‘There’s no-one watching, Meggie,’ he continued, as though that was what held her back. He spoke with all the confidence of one who knows he is physically the stronger but there was still a wary cut to the way in which he scuttled along the wall keeping it to his back as though, despite this advantage he held in some respect the girl’s show of spirit. He pushed his face towards her and licked his lips and she recoiled in disgust, moving another step away from the safety of the sunlit square, from the community which lived in and around it and into the dim, empty danger of the back yard.

  Fancy O’Neill’s hand left the infection on his chin and went out to her, again in the placatory way of a man attempting to soothe a nervous animal but she jerked away from it and the bucket slashed out and he stumbled hastily backwards. On his face began to grow an expression of peevishness but the girl was still not afraid. She was too outraged to feel fear. Her clear eyes blazed like freshly minted golden sovereigns and the firm flesh of her throat and bare arms became flushed. Her hair appeared to take on a life of its own. It sprang upwards and outwards, blazing in as furious an anger as its owner. A ribbon which had held a thick plait of hair to the back of her head, broke loose and the plait which fell almost to her buttocks began to unravel itself, the bottom half escaping immediately into a mass of springing curl. A soft, twisting strand fell across her face and she blew it upwards impatiently. She took a stance like that of a boxer and the bucket swayed dangerously.

  ‘A kiss, is it?’ she shrieked, her dander really up now. ‘Kiss you? You could stick a knife in me and throw me in the Mersey before I’d kiss a pig like you! You great daft tub of lard! Dear God, have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror, have you, because if you have you’ll see why the very idea makes me want to puke! Now get out of me way before I brain you!’

  The youth, through whose small mind most of the insults, and even the words themselves had sped by without the smallest understanding, merely grinned and edged a little closer, putting out both hands as though he was about to encircle her waist. They were huge, splay-fingered and the wrists which supported them were thick an
d hairy. The girl watched with fascinated loathing, balancing the handle of the bucket on the palm of her right hand. It was heavy, used to carry coal from the cellar beneath the house to the kitchen. Coal dust clung to its inside, floating in a shifting black mist as she moved it. It brushed against her smooth white apron and drifted upwards to her nostrils and before she could suppress it or even take another step backwards away from the growing threat of the youth, she sneezed. For a moment, a fraction of a moment as the sneeze shook her she was defenceless. Her eyes closed and in an involuntary gesture she raised her free hand to cover her mouth and nose.

  He had her then! Dim-witted he might be, illiterate and slow to understand, or carry out an order, Fancy O’Neill knew an opportunity when it rose up and bit him. In an instant he had the handle of the bucket in his massive grip and the vessel was hurled backwards up the passage before Meg had her hand from her face. Thick arms held her and a face as big and round as the full moon loomed over her and those thick, slimy lips seized upon hers, sucking them into his mouth. She felt his teeth against hers, and his tongue and her stomach rose and churned like the waters of the Mersey in a winter storm.

  Holding her easily with one arm, now he had her secure, his other hand was at the open neckline of her bodice, pulling it away from her so that the buttons were torn from it right down to her waist. Only her white, pin-tucked chemise stood between him and the small, ripening mounds of her new young breasts and the sight of her soft flesh so tantalisingly half revealed shattered Fancy O’Neill’s control completely. The beast in him surged and his filthy hand fumbled at her whilst his mouth gorged on hers. To do him justice he had meant to do no more than steal a kiss from the lively, haughty young girl whose gaze had always passed over him with as much interest it might a pile of rubbish in the gutter. Had Meg giggled, or acquiesced, or even made light of the matter and treated the incident in the manner in which it was intended it would no doubt have ended there for he was ignorant, harmless and easily managed and though he had taunted her with cat-calls of ‘princess’ and ‘your majesty’ as she had gone by him, he had intended no real offence, but the feel and the smell and the taste of the girl whose surging, struggling body moved so maddeningly against his own was more than he could resist. He grunted with pleasure as small pink nipples erupted into his hand and renewed his efforts to keep her wildly avoiding lips beneath his.