Between Friends Page 11

  The last time! In the midst of his great joy he could think of nothing else and the pain of leaving these two who had been like an extension of his own mind and growing body for what seemed to be all of his life, was almost more than he could bear. He could not recall when he had been without them! They had not consciously been aware of the bond which had tied them inextricably together, at least not to put into words but it had been there just the same. It was no good telling himself that this was what he had wanted to do since he had first seen the strange and wonderful invention called the ‘horseless carriage’, now that the time had come to leave them, and he knew it would be for good, his bewildered heart ached with it!

  He had thrilled them all with the splendour of Mr Hemingway’s hallway and the picture of the lovely silver-haired girl whose portrait hung upon it’s wall, the Victorian grandeur of the drawing-room and the incredible loveliness of the glass room filled with flowers. He had seen Meg’s eyes glow with wonder and longing, and Tom’s widen at the incredible idea that Mr Robert and Mr Charles Hemingway owned not one motor car but three, one a racer, and had gratified Mrs Whitley with his assurance that the kitchen at Silverdale was not a patch on her own! He had tried in his way to let them see the wonder of the life he would be living and to reassure them that in every way he could he would share it with them! No, he should not be sad for this was the next, inevitable step towards his future and both Tom and Meg knew it and accepted it, or would when they became used to his absence but that step would take him away from them and that was hard!

  The ‘three of ’em’ were to be split up at last!

  Meg turned and put her bent arm across his knee. Resting her chin upon it she looked up at him, her eyes so lost and depthless he felt the incredible need to lift her up into his arms and hold her close and pet her back to the blithe young girl she usually was.

  ‘What is it?’ he said gruffly, his young manhood once again in jeopardy.

  ‘Will we still go for rides, Martin?’ she said. ‘You an’ me an’ Tom? When you’re home, I mean?’

  ‘Of course we will, you daft beggar,’ relieved that it was to be no more than that. ‘I’ll take the bicycle and you and Tom keep the tandem. Every chance we’ll go off somewhere, won’t we, mate?’ He winked at Tom and as he had intended, hoped, she brightened and sat up, smiling.

  He smiled himself, a man suddenly, with a man’s fate before him but before he went he must ensure that what he had begun over nine years ago still went on.

  ‘And you behave yourself, lady, or I’ll know the reason why when I come home!’ He looked across at Tom and his expression said quite clearly that his words meant something else entirely and that they were directed not at herself, but at Tom. Their Meg was placed in his care from now on.

  Tom nodded briefly, understanding!

  Chapter Seven

  THEY MISSED HIM, of course they did, they said a dozen times a day and how on earth was Tom to manage all the lifting and carrying he and Martin had done between them; and that dratted clock, the one Martin had put right years ago and which had ticked away merrily ever since, had suddenly decided to stop and who was to mend it now? It was the same with the mangle which inexplicably refused to turn its rollers, jammed it seemed to eternal inactivity, and poor Meg, forced to hand wring the dozens of heavy cotton sheets was close to tears as the skin of her hands cracked and broke open in the icy chill of the wash-house.

  Tom did his best. Mr Lloyd had thought enough of him to give him a rise in pay when Martin went saying that Tom was to consider himself the agent’s deputy and that when he was absent Tom was in charge. In charge! Promotion, and what’s more he was to have a lad under him when one could be found but somehow the wondrous pride of it seemed to evaporate before he really got to grips with it in the atmosphere of sudden and constant bickering which arose between himself and, of all people, Meg! They just could not agree on anything from who should eat the last piece of Mrs Whitley’s summer pudding to the choice of where they go on a bicycle outing. Tom’s once bright and cheerful face became moody as the weeks wore on and Meg developed what Mrs Whitley called a look of the ‘mulligrubs’ with a most uncharacteristic peevishness about her which set them all on edge. Her temper, always volatile, was even more menacing in the many flaring quarrels which erupted between herself and Tom over nothing at all.

  The last straw came one day when he and Meg were about to take a short spin on the tandem up to Aigburth Hall and back one bright frosted Sunday afternoon. Their route would take them along Aigburth Road and past the gates to the Silverdale estate and with a bit of luck they might see Martin, they said. They were themselves again that day, in affectionate harmony and eager to be away together on a jaunt, teasing one another, joking with Mrs Whitley on the prospect of one of her kidney and mushroom casseroles on their return.

  They were to get no further than Upper Pitt Street and as they hobbled home, Tom dragging the crippled tandem on which the chain had broken, Meg clutching the grazed elbow she had suffered as she was flung from the machine, Mrs Whitley could hear their high, angry voices coming from the Square even in their cosy nook by the chimney corner. Meg’s face was crimson with temper as she burst into the kitchen and her eyes glared furiously into Tom’s. She had snatched her boater from her head, crushing it between frenzied hands and her bright hair sparked about her head and fell dramatically over her forehead. She pushed it back impatiently as she continued to heap recriminations on Tom’s head, tossing her own as he met her fury with his.

  Emm and Mrs Whitley sat, appalled and speechless, their mouths open, their eyes wide as saucers as the frustrated rancour of the two young people filled every corner of the room. Their expressions said they could not really believe what they saw and heard and for a bewildering, stunned moment they were frozen, unable to move or even utter a remonstrance. Emm, never one to say much at the best of times, a silently cheerful little presence scuttling busily about the place, looked as though tears were imminent but Mrs Whitley’s face had begun to turn a truculent puce and her eyes narrowed, their gooseberry green depths turning pale as her own temper rose to the surface. She stood up abruptly and reached for the wooden baking spoon, her symbol of authority, or so the gesture implied and Emm shrank back since she was convinced Cook was wild enough to lay it about the shoulders of the threatening couple who were bridling up to one another so dangerously. She had never seen them like this and her bewildered, frightened mind – for surely they had lost theirs – considered what it was that had brought them to such a ferment. Their Meggie had a hot temper and could you wonder with that hair of hers but Tom was so amiable, sweet tempered, as free and easy as the breezes which blew off the river and just as carefree. Would you have believed he could snarl in such black anger, that his blue eyes could burn that bright and snapping blue? He was what Emm secretly called a ‘laughing boy’, unembittered by his sad start in life. Though she did not know the word, if she had she would have described him as uncomplicated, peaceable, patient, always the one to pour oil on the troubled waters stirred up by the other two. As he went about his work he gave the appearance of someone who will stroll idly, blithely through life, a whistle on his lips, perfectly content to let the world go by whilst he stood back to admire its passing!

  Now he looked as though he wanted nothing more, indeed could hardly restrain himself from striking their Meg with all the force he could muster and if Mrs Whitley didn’t act quickly Emm could see him doing it. But Mrs Whitley was in control of herself and the situation by now! She’d never, in all her years in service, seen such a commotion between two members of her own staff and she’d had one or two volatile maidservants in her charge over the years and though as yet she had not got fully to grips with what was going on between these two it was beginning to infiltrate into her astute mind what the trouble was.

  She grasped Meg’s upstretched arm in the strong grip which had stood her in good stead when she herself had been a young skivvy, and thundering in her best, her
most authoritative tone to ‘give over, the pair of you or I’ll crack your heads together’ she hauled Meg a foot or two away from the fierce, knife-edged anger of Tom Fraser. She pushed her short, full-bodied superiority – was she not the mistress here? – between them, glaring from one turbulent face to the other, placing a hand firmly on each heaving chest and in the midst of the savage, inexplicable defiance which flared in her kitchen she found herself understanding at last!

  It was as though a triangle, a shape which will stand confidently on any of its three sides had suddenly been deprived of one of them and the two remaining are left, unstable, unbalanced and bewildered by the strange and confusing lack of equilibrium. They had been three for so long, a perfect immutable relationship which had nurtured each of them. They were different in temperament, wondrously unique and yet they had made one perfect whole and now, for the moment, until they could accept and re-build themselves the two who were left could not function properly nor deal with the complexity of it. They had been left behind. Martin, who had been the natural leader had gone ahead and in the void his going had left, Tom and Meg were turning on one another. They did not understand why they did it, they only knew that the turmoil inside them was set fiercely free; the unhappiness, the emptiness was filled only when they were quarreling with one another. They glared with narrowed eyes but there was an uncertainty about them, a bewilderment which seemed to ask hesitantly how they had come to be in this predicament and were relieved when she set them each to some task.

  When they had left the kitchen Emm and Mrs Whitley sat knee to knee before the roaring fire, the second or was it the third up of tea in their hands. Mrs Whitley spoke thoughtfully.

  ‘We’ll have to watch them two for a while, Emm,’ she said.

  Emm nodded understandingly.

  ‘I’d no idea they’d missed him that much, had you?’

  Emm shook her head and sighed.

  ‘Where shall we go then?’ Meg asked the next week as they wheeled the repaired tandem across the pavement. They were disappointed that Martin, when asked in a hurried note to Silver-dale, was not able to come, but they had begun to accept now that he had a new life, a job in which they had no part and could not always take time off when they did.

  ‘How about Chester?’ Tom asked airily.

  ‘Tom! You devil!’ She smiled, her good humour quite restored. ‘You’ll be saying London or Edinburgh next!’

  ‘Hey, steady on Meg Hughes!’ They smiled into each other’s eyes and on a crisp, sparkling, clear December day, when the earth seemed to lie quiet in that last moment before finally settling to sleep for the winter, when the air was sharp and still, Meg and Tom set off together.

  The houses and the factories and the quiet Sunday streets of Liverpool fell away and Meg’s spirits rose, the familiar feeling of joy which cycling, or being on the move, always gave her, filling her veins and flooding her fast beating heart.

  They did not speak as they sped along the empty country lanes from Toxteth and on through Garston and Hale to Warrington. It was cold but the exercise put warmth in their limbs and a flush of rose in Meg’s cream cheeks and as Tom turned she grinned with that infectious good humour which was peculiarly hers. Her eyes glowed and Tom winked at her to let her see he was as happy as she was to be out on the road, the mad rush of the machine’s wheels skimming across the ground and the satisfying feeling of blood surging through bodies young and eager and glad to be alive!

  At Warrington they turned west and with the estuary on their right hand they cycled on until they reached Frodsham. At the ‘Bears Paw’, an old sandstone inn with lovely mullioned windows, and a favourite stopping place on their rides, they cycled through the gabled archway and into the courtyard to drink hot coffee and eat home baked bread, hot from the oven, with strong cheese and pickled onions.

  They sat for fifteen minutes on a drystone wall and let the pale sun warm their faces. Meg leaned comfortably against Tom’s shoulder, inhaling the clean smell of him and the fresh country aroma of the fruit of the dogrose which grew in profusion at their back. Two black and white magpies fluttered arrogantly close to Tom’s lounging legs and bold finches fed on the berries behind them and Meg was reluctant to leave. She felt peaceful here with Tom. His arm was strong and hard beneath her cheek and she liked the way his hair caught the sun and turned to a cap of gold on his well shaped skull.

  ‘Come on, daydreamer,’ he said and his blue eyes were no less bright than the periwinkle which grew on summer days in the meadow on the far side of the lane.

  They rode into the Delamere forest just before one o’clock and the tall conifers planted, Meg had heard, by the Crown in 1818 closed in about them. The sunshine made a torch creating shadows and lighting the pines to splendour. They stood still and quiet in perfect solitude and peace and Meg felt it enter her heart. She took Tom’s hand trustingly, as she had always done, when they alighted from the tandem to walk between the tall, straight trunks and a soft bed of pine needles moved beneath their feet. He turned to smile and gripped her hand more tightly as they climbed the slight incline which came out at last on the upland crest of the New Pale and the view to the south and west took their breath away, as it always did no matter how many times they saw it. There were forest meres and tiny lakes, studded like jewels on a bed of dark green velvet and the pale, pale blue of the winter sky surrounded them, almost close enough for them to touch.

  They stood for half an hour, leaning against one another, speaking only now and then to point out something of beauty but Tom said they must get on for the days were short now and they had promised Mrs Whitley they would be home before dark.

  They had just pedalled furiously through Lower Hargrave when they came upon it. They still had fifteen miles to go, another three hours Tom reckoned and he was urging her on and they were both laughing. She saw it first and stopped pedalling at once and Tom looked back in annoyance bringing the machine to a tumbling halt as his feet hit the ground.

  ‘Look Tom,’ she said and her hand lifted to point.

  ‘What?’ he asked, seeing nothing but what appeared to be a farm building about to fall down into a forest of weeds. A tree grew before it, thirty or forty feet high, the top of it level with the roof of the building. It had a dense, rounded crown and its trunk was gnarled, sinister and furrowed, the roots standing in the exact centre of the overgrown garden. It was covered in a glorious mass of bright red berries.

  ‘What?’ he repeated, his eyes going beyond it to the stand of trees at its back. Was it something there she looked at, his astonished expression asked?

  ‘The house! It’s … it’s lovely, isn’t it, Tom?’ she whispered reverently.

  ‘What house?’ Surely she could not mean the laughable monstrosity before them?

  ‘That one.’

  ‘What? That one there?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Lovely! But it’s falling down!’

  ‘No, oh no!’ She stepped away from the tandem. Her face was absorbed and her eyes were looking far away into some shadow world of her own and Tom was curiously reminded of Martin, he could not say why!

  She pushed at the old gate and stepped on to the overgrown path, brushing aside the faded sentries of delphinium, phlox, lupin and lavender. Tom followed her, as he had once followed Martin into Mr Hale’s Bicycle Emporium, mesmerised by her stillness and the bemused expression on her face.

  ‘Look at the lovely bricks, Tom,’ she breathed. ‘They’re hand made. You can tell by the size.’

  ‘What about it?’ he said but she did not answer. She was at the small, mullioned windows and she rubbed her hand across the filthy glass to peer inside but there was nothing to see as far as Tom was concerned, only darkness and muck and bits of old, broken furniture.

  ‘Oh Tom!’ she whispered again and Tom was quite spellbound by her for she really looked as though she had stepped into another world! He didn’t know whether to laugh or jeer, for really, she looked very peculiar! And you never knew wi
th Meg how she would react.

  A climbing plant grew up to the roof, unrecognisable for there was not a leaf on it and for a horrid moment he thought she was about to attempt to scale up it for she seemed intent on looking into even the upstairs windows! There were two massive chimneys, one at each end of the building and a porched doorway in its centre. A sign, half buried under the weight of a creeping convolvulus said it was for sale or rent and as she read it Meg Hughes turned to smile her lovely but quite unreadable smile at Tom.

  Chapter Eight

  THOUGH IT WAS cold Martin had removed his old jacket and the woollen pullover he wore for what he called ‘mucky’ jobs and had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. It was March and a stiff breeze blew across the river and up the sloping lawns which led to the terraces surrounding the house but in the yard at the back where the motor cars stood it was sheltered and the sun had some warmth in it.

  He worked in perfect harmony with the machine he had just driven from the garage and though he was doing no more than the routine work of cleaning it, a job usually performed by one of the grooms, leaving himself to the more important task of maintaining it’s engine, he did so with all the loving tenderness a mother might lavish on a new born infant. He even crooned what could be described as a lullaby as the wash leather moved steadily across the shining surface of the bonnet. Back and forth his arm swept. Where the sun had caught it the skin was already brown, the fine dark hairs upon it, soft as swansdown curling to the knuckles of his hand. He was long-boned, hard muscled and his back had broadened in the months he had been at Silverdale. As he bent over the machine the flesh beneath his thin shirt rippled, hard and lean. His narrow waist lengthened with the movement and the tight breeches he wore clung to his hips and strong thighs and clearly revealed the small hollow which was carved out of each slim buttock. His legs were long and shapely in their leather knee boots and were in perfect proportion to his tall frame. His deep brown eyes glowed with health, with the content of a man well pleased with his world and his strong, uncompromising young mouth turned up at each corner in the most appealing manner. The sun caught his hair, turning the darkness to polished chestnut.