Between Friends Page 20

  ‘He was bad …’ she muttered, ‘bad.’

  Robert Hemingway put out his hand, his own horror gripping him fiercely for though he was unworldly, an old fashioned and courtly gentleman, he sensed there was something more to what this young girl wept over. Certainly her mind had suffered a tremendous shock and her body was in pain, burned about the hands. She grieved for her friend and was outraged by what Harris and through Harris, what she imagined he himself had done to her, to all the servants, but there was something she was holding back and he meant to get to the bottom of it.

  He turned swiftly, agile as a man half his age and with the certainty of someone who is used to being obeyed, spoke crisply to the two young men.

  ‘Martin.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Take Fraser over to the stable block and get him settled in with you. Tell one of the footmen to help with a truckle bed … Fraser is unable at the moment. Then see that he is comfortable.’ He turned to Tom.

  ‘Fraser.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘I think it best that we postpone this talk until tomorrow. I am going to put Megan in here with Mrs Whitley. They will be company for one another. You understand?’

  ‘Yes sir, thank you.’ Tom looked relieved. Meg and Cook would do better together in this big, unfamiliar place if they were allowed to share a room. He was afraid Meg might have nightmares but with Mrs Whitley to watch over her and with Meg having the task of looking after Cook, they would be a comfort for one another.

  ‘When you have all had a good night’s rest we will talk again. Perhaps in a day or two.’ Robert Hemingway smiled kindly and Tom felt himself drawn to him. He could scarcely credit that they had believed that this genial, gentle old gentleman could be the ogre Harris had made him out to be. They should have known really. The bad times had started with Benjamin Harris. Before that, though they had worked hard they had been fairly treated, decently fed and clothed and their wages had been no less than the average domestic servant was paid. It had been him who had done it, that … that devil, but Tom was no longer concerned for had not Mr Hemingway told them they were to be given work here. His family was to be provided for at last. He turned to direct a last reassuring smile at their Meggie but her head was bowed and her riotous hair hung over her face and she did not see him go.

  The door had closed behind them when Robert Hemingway turned again to Meg. ‘Now then, my dear.’ He spoke softly, deceptively mild as though what she said made no difference one way or the other. ‘Would you like to tell me the rest. They are gone now and there is no-one to hear but myself and Mrs Whitley.’

  There were two police constables standing before the blackened ruin of what had once been the Hemingway Shipping Line emigrant house in Great George Square and as the cab turned the corner from Upper Pitt Street Benjamin Harris’ face fell slackly into grey-white folds, and it was possible to imagine how he would look when he was dead. His mouth opened in consternation and though the cabbie had jumped down from his box and opened the door, his own face bewildered, Harris sat for several moments, frozen to the leather seat.

  The two constables moved forward as he stepped on to the soot-stained pavement, but neither spoke. Their very silence had an air of menace about it and Harris felt a slight sense of unease at their presence.

  He looked up at the sky where once the high roof had been and then to the houses on either side, damaged and empty for they were considered unsafe, but still standing and his face was quite dazed.

  ‘That’ll be a shilling, sir.’ The cab driver held out his hand, plucking at Harris’ sleeve for the gentleman looked quite mazed and could you wonder? ‘Great George Square,’ he had said in that disdainful way the gentry have at times, when he had climbed into the cab at Lime Street Railway station and now it appeared that his destination, this house, had been burned to the ground in his absence.

  He climbed back on to his box wondering what the ‘scuffers’ were after, hesitating a moment or two for there was nothing an inhabitant of Liverpool liked better then a bit of scandal but the constable lifted his hand and indicated quite rudely that he was to move on.

  When he had gone they both turned to Benjamin Harris, one on either side of him somehow, as he gazed in stupefaction at the space where the house had been.

  ‘Excuse me sir,’ the first constable said politely. ‘Could I have your name, if you please?’

  ‘What?’ Benjamin Harris looked at him, his shock turning now to outrage for the two constables appeared to be almost jostling him and Benjamin Harris had not been jostled since last he had been in a schoolboy tussle with his own brothers.

  ‘Your name, sir, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘My name! What the devil has that to do with you.’ He was clearly displeased, then he turned again to stare at the pile of rubble which was all that was left of the house, his displeasure swamped by his curiosity. ‘What on earth happened here,’ he said, his silver grey eyes wide and staring.

  ‘There has been a fire, sir.’

  ‘I can see that, you fool, but how did it happen?’

  ‘Now then, sir, there is no need to be rude. You asked me what happened and I told you. Now, if you will give me your name we can all go about our rightful business.’ Though he spoke in the adenoidal tone of those born in Liverpool, there was still a trace of County Limerick in his lilting voice. The constable, Constable O’Shea who had known them all at Great George Square and was perfectly well aware of who this splendid gentleman was, though of course he did not recognise the likes of a common policeman, kept a perfectly straight face despite the fact that he did not care to be called a fool.

  ‘Rightful business! Do you know who I am?’

  ‘That is what we are trying to find out, sir.’

  ‘I am Benjamin Harris and I am in charge … I was in charge of this house!’

  ‘Thank you, sir, then I’d be obliged if you’d come along with me and Constable Jackson here. They want a word with you at the station, sir, if you’d be so kind.’

  ‘At the station!’

  ‘Aye sir.’

  ‘What the devil for?’

  ‘Aah well, that I wouldn’t be knowing, sir. I’ve just been sent along to escort you, like. Me an’ Constable Jackson.’

  ‘The devil you have! Well, you can just escort one another back again. If anyone in the police force, no matter what rank wishes to see me he can call on me at my club. Here, I’ll give you a card. Now, if one of you can run to the end of the square and whistle me up a cab I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘Aah … no sir. I think not.’

  Benjamin Harris’ face had become a dangerous shade of coppery yellow with high and ugly spots of vermilion on each cheekbone and his eyes narrowed to slits of pure, acid rage. He straightened ominously giving Constable O’Shea the full benefit of his savage, scarcely controlled fury but the policeman had come to grips with wills more obdurate than that of Benjamin Harris. Liverpool Saturday night where Scot clashed with Irish and both with those of Welsh ancestry, settling old racial scores, had taught him how to deal with the most recalcitrant and he was quite unmoved.

  ‘Goddammit to hell!’ Harris’ voice was no less than a full-throated snarl. ‘Do you seriously believe I had anything to do with this?’ He swept his arm in a furious circle in the direction of the burnt-out house. ‘I was away with … with a friend and can account for every moment of my time. Good God, constable, do I look like a man who sets fires?’ He was almost beside himself in his venom and Constable Jackson put out a restraining hand for it seemed to him that the gentleman was about to strike Constable O’Shea. Instantly Harris turned, knocking it away, his face so livid, his white-lipped anger so intense, the two constables leaped together to hold him, one on each of his arms, in an iron lock from which he could make no further threatening move. No-one impeded the law in the carrying out of its duties, not when Constable O’Shea and Constable Jackson were in charge. They were quite sorry when the apprehended man ceased to struggle
for it would have given them both an inordinate amount of pleasure to put the handcuffs on him!

  Chapter Fourteen

  TOM WAS MADE up with it, he said constantly. He had never worked in the open before unless you could count lugging buckets of coal from the back yard to the kitchen or the tramp he and Martin had taken with the emigrants to the dockside. He liked the simple and unhurried pace of the work in the gardens, geared as it was to the slow change of the seasons. Silverdale was set in a splendid twenty or so acres of parkland bordered by a stand of trees. It ran down to the River Mersey in a series of terraces, lawns and ornamental gardens laced with shaded gravel paths, and a stream divided it, clear and slow moving over smooth stones. A stout wooden bridge crossed the running water and further down were stepping stones, slippery with moss.

  There was a small lake, a summer house, vegetable gardens at the rear and glasshouses in which grew summer fruits all the year round. All this had to be meticulously nurtured under the guidance of the head gardener, a silent and dour man named Atkinson but he and Tom formed a laconic yet equable relationship, sparing of words and based mainly on Tom’s willingness to do any job, mucky or not, that was put to him. He worked about the stable yard in the evenings – trying his hand at everything, he said – and even laboured on the home farm during the sowing. He discovered quite amazingly that he liked animals, never having had anything to do with them before, and could spend an hour leaning on the gate of the pig pen watching the patient sow with her young ones, or lending a hand in the grooming of the fine carriage horses, but most of all Tom liked the earth and all that grew in it!

  ‘But you’re still doing all the odd jobs nobody else wants, just like me,’ Meg wailed, ‘and where’s that going to lead you?’

  ‘Does it have to lead anywhere?’ Tom asked mildly enough but Meg only pulled a face as though in despair at his lack of ambition. She didn’t like it at Silverdale, she said, just as often as Tom voiced his delight in it, but Mrs Whitley was settled at last, her cough was better and she was in seventh heaven in her small cottage, her only sadness the fate of poor Emm.

  ‘She’d have loved this,’ she remarked every time Meg had half an hour to call on her which was not as often as the old lady would have liked. But Meg was done no favours under Mrs Stewart’s charge even if she was considered, like Martin, to be something of a favourite of the old gentleman. All through that spring and summer she worked hard from six-thirty in the morning when she brushed up the kitchen range, lit the fire and cleared away the ashes before she was allowed to put on the kettle for that first cup of welcome tea, until after the family had dined at eight in the evening when she was then free until bedtime. She scrubbed floors and scoured tables and cleaned pots and pans and endless dishes and cutlery and windows. She helped anyone who needed a hand, taking orders from those she considered beneath her in the hierarchy of the servants’ hall, maid of all work with no particular duties but to be where she was most needed in the kitchen. The house above stairs was an enigma to her. She rarely saw Tom, for Mrs Stewart allowed no fraternising between her girls and the men outside, and it was only when they could slip away at the same time to Mrs Whitley’s cottage they managed to meet.

  Martin might have been a member of the family, or some privileged friend of Mr Hemingway for all they saw of him, away most of the time, or so it seemed, on inexplicable journeys concerned with the world of motoring, and when he did return he and the old gentleman spent all their time shut up in the vast garages and workshops Mr Hemingway had devised from the stables. Tinkering, he said vaguely when he was asked, and sharp with her when she was persistent, telling her it was part of his job and to get on with hers! She complained bitterly to Tom whenever she got the chance.

  ‘I’m just a skivvy, Tom, at everyone’s beck and call and neither you nor Martin seem to care! Even the damn scullery maid orders me about. I’ve no-one to talk to now, with you outside, Martin off God knows where all the time and Mrs Whitley out here.’

  She badly missed the family atmosphere which had prevailed in Great George Square, the sense of belonging to one close unit, each part of that unit helping another and the impersonal regimentation of the Silverdale kitchens irked her. She missed the freedom she now realised she had been allowed, when Mr Lloyd had been in charge of them, the camaraderie of Tom and Martin and she resented the loss of the feeling of self-worth Mrs Whitley had unconsciously given her. She had been an important member in the running of the emigrant house, even at fifteen. She had made decisions, particularly when Mrs Whitley had been poorly. She had done most of the cooking, trying her hand at and being amazingly successful with Cook’s quite epicurean dishes and now she had been demoted to being less than the scullery maid!

  They were sitting round the plain deal table which had come from the Silverdale attics along with all the other bits and pieces which furnished Mrs Whitley’s new home. A cheerful fire blazed in the grate of the tiny kitchen-cum-parlour (despite the warmth of the day for Cook delighted in her freedom to use as much coal as she cared to) and on it was one of her lamb stews and a kettle whispering steam, and in the small oven beside it was bread baking and an apple turnover and all for her three, whichever one of them could get over to see her. She missed them sorely, she said, and Emm too, tears coming to her eyes, but there, she was lucky to have this little place and Mr and Mrs Hemingway were saints, saints, that’s all she could call them! She had a cosy kitchen all of her own, a snug bedroom above it with mullioned windows looking out on a bit of garden and them lovely trees but she did wish … Here she would sigh, content enough, well fed, warm and cared for but it would have been perfect if only Emm …!

  ‘I’m worth more than this, Cook, and you know it.’ Meg turned passionately to Mrs Whitley who nodded in agreement, her sad reflection on the death of poor Emm pushed to the back of her mind for the moment.

  ‘D’you know what she had me doing this morning, do you?’ Meg’s face was crimson in her indignation.

  ‘No lass, what?’

  ‘Scrubbing out the dairy if you please whilst that fat lump they call the dairy maid scoured the milk pails! Me, scrubbing dairy floors when I could cook a meal for a hundred people and better than that there Mrs Glynn! D’you know what she does, Mrs Whitley? She tastes the soup with a spoon then puts the spoon back in the pan! Can you imagine it and when she does braised leg of mutton she doesn’t put any parsley in it like we do and she doesn’t use the juices to glaze it neither! She throws them away! You never saw such waste in your life and when I asked her if I could just show her what we do, she told me to mind my own business and get back to the mop-bucket!’

  Privately Mrs Whitley sympathised with the cook in the Silver-dale kitchens for she herself would have said the same to any maid who had tried to tell her what to do in her own kitchen, but she said nothing for she knew Meg was fretting badly in those first months for the old happy days, for Tom and Martin, and for herself and Emm. She’d settle soon. She’d have to, but best not agitate her further by telling her she was in the wrong.

  ‘She’s reckoned to be the best cook in these parts,’ Meg continued, ‘or so she’d have you believe but she’s not a patch on you, nor me either for that matter,’ with the supreme confidence of youth! ‘And that Mrs Stewart! I was only crossing the yard to see if I could catch Tom to tell him I was coming up here this afternoon or to ask one of the stable lads to give him a message when she screams from the kitchen door …’

  ‘Oh give over, our Meg! She wasn’t screaming. She only called your name and asked you …’

  Meg turned sharply to Tom who was just about to take a bite from a thick wedge of the hot apple turnover, and her eyes narrowed ominously. Her expression was truculent for she was in the mood for an argument with him, with anybody. What she needed was to pour out her grievances, her sad remembrance of the past, of Emm, of her own inability to settle in this strange place, her unrest and dissatisfaction with the work she was doing. What did she want to do, she wondered? She
did not really know, but Tom’s interference in her need to exorcise it in Mrs Whitley’s sympathetic ear and his defence of the despised housekeeper made her even more wild.

  ‘She screamed, Tom Fraser, she said coldly, ‘and asked what I thought I was doing giggling in the yard with a stable lad! Me, giggling with a stable lad indeed when all I was doing was asking him where you were and the poor beggar got what for from Andrew just for stopping when I called him …’

  ‘Well you know the rules, Meggie. We’re not allowed to hobnob with the maids during working hours …’

  ‘Bloody hell, there’s a difference …’

  ‘Megan! Your language if you please.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Whitley, but there’s a difference between passing on a simple message and “hob-nobbing” as Tom calls it. Are we to walk about with our mouths shut all the time?’

  ‘You can talk to each other, just like we can.’

  Meg, unused to the company of other girls, as young and younger than herself and unable to understand the need in a big household for the keeping of strict discipline, snorted derisively. She had held, in her own opinion a position of some authority and trust at Great George Square and could see no necessity for the strict watch kept on the maids and menservants at Silverdale. Besides which she was accustomed to the far more interesting conversation of young men like Tom and Martin and the adult guidance and affection of Mrs Whitley. Even Emm had been better than this lot! At least she had listened which was more than could be said for her present working companions. Giggle and whisper was all they seemed to do in her scornful view and though she liked a good laugh herself there was no-one with the same sense of fun she had shared with Tom and Martin and not one of them could have done what she had done at the emigrant house!