Between Friends Page 27

  And then there were the wines, the running of the grill room, the restaurant, the work of a waiter, the maître d’hôtel, the meaning of ‘table d’hote’, ‘a la carte’, the purchase of delicacies from all over the world, the arranging of balls and banquets, and of people! The accounts, the auditing, bills, receipts, the work done by receptionists, the board of directors, cellar men, electricians, engineers and the dozens of men and women who kept the hotel running smoothly without effort, or so it must seem to it’s guests!

  She knew she had a knack for it. A flair! She knew she had the capacity to work for nineteen hours in every twenty-four. She was obsessed with it, knowing instinctively that it was right for her, as Martin knew that the world of the motor car, of the flying machine was his, but before she moved on she must acquire the technical knowledge, as he had, to carry it out.

  It became known in the months that followed that Megan Hughes was willingly at the beck and call of everyone who might need a helping hand and in return she demanded no more than the knowledge that was in their heads, cramming into her own receptive mind like a sponge soaking up water. She forced herself on with fierce, hungry resolution so that when the opportunity should occur she would be ready for it, preparing for the day she was convinced would come. She picked up, by listening and watching others in the kitchen and in every corner of the hotel where people worked, everything they themselves had learned or been taught, working every spare moment of the day and night. She made herself manage on three or four hours of sleep a night and the twenty remaining were spent in learning.

  By helping everybody she helped herself. She learned to understand others and what interested them and made them speak of it. She learned kitchen administration for what working area will work if it is not efficiently managed and the people within it properly organised? She picked the brains of the wine waiters and the engineer in the boiler room. She became on the friendliest terms with the meat buyer, the meat carver, the head floor waiter, the French, the Italian, the Viennese chefs, the pastry chef, the entrée chef, the soup chef moving from crowded rooms bustling with industry to one in which a man laboured in solitary delicacy! Bakeries, cakeries, still rooms, they became as familiar to her as the tiny cubicle in which she took a few hours sleep each night.

  She worked herself to a slender shadow and Tom said she looked like a bloody scarecrow and what the hell did she think she was doing to herself but she took no notice. She meant to learn how to run this great hotel with one hand tied behind her back if needs be, she told him blithely, and blindfolded into the bargain!

  Chapter Eighteen

  IT SEEMED THE three of them could do no wrong now and Mrs Whitley grew dewy-eyed with proud emotion each time she spoke of them, which was often, to everyone who called to see her. Of course, their Martin had been a success for a long time now in his chosen profession, travelling the world alongside of Mr Robert and mixing quite naturally with the gentry and, she whispered confidentially, it was rumoured he had even spoken to His Majesty who it was well known took a great interest in motor cars and had not a few of his own! Martin had his very own motor car himself now, bought with the money he earned as one of Britain’s foremost young racing drivers, a golden boy, Mrs Whitley had heard him described as in the newspapers, to match the golden era, driving round Liverpool when he was home, quite the man about town in his dashing little Austin two seater motor car. It was a glossy green, decorated with a trim of gold with bright brass lamps, a luggage rack to take the growing number of suitcases which held his fashionable wardrobe and a leather hood which he put up only when it rained. He had offered to take her for a ‘spin’ in it, she told one and all, not boasting exactly but pleased as punch just the same! She had declined, naturally, for she was past the age when she cared to hazard herself as their Meg did, in one of those wicked machines. He had told her privately that he had won Mr Robert many thousands of pounds in prize money and – she could not keep this to herself for he was the only person she had ever known to have done it – had finally persuaded Mr Robert to allow him to fly! Yes, John Tabner and his wife might well stare open-mouthed, she told them, for she had done the same when she had heard. He had flown solo, which meant, she explained kindly, that he had gone up completely alone in what he called a ‘box-kite’, only last month. He had received his official Aero Club Certificate and if they didn’t believe her she’d ask him to show it to them the next time he was home. There was a belief that the motor car was a rich man’s toy and the aeroplane a young man’s folly and what did she think of that, John Tabner asked her tartly but Agatha Whitley knew her boy was neither rich, nor foolish so she soon had him in his place!

  Now their Tom, though not quite so … so remarkable in his advance as Martin, had made good progress in the employment of the Hemingway family and was well nigh indispensable to old Mr Atkinson who, it seemed, could do nothing without his young assistant beside him. Well, you only had to see their Tom directing the other lads in the planting to know who was really in charge of the gardens. The old gardener was past his best but no-one commented upon it in Tom’s presence for he was a kind lad and let the old man think he still ran the place. Tom was interested in new methods, she told her visitors sagely, not knowing exactly what they were, but you could see the results of the books he read on the subject in the splendid rows of pure, creamy cauliflowers, the sweet green cabbage, the shapely, plump marrow, French beans, potatoes and artichokes which lay like shining ribbons across the dark earth of the vegetable garden. The Hemingway’s and their servants had never seen such fine asparagus and courgettes on their dinner table; old Mrs Hemingway had said so personally in the hearing of their Tom who had told her himself. He tended apple trees, damson and plum and had brought her the fruit of them for the very pie her visitors were eating! He had become quite an expert, Mr Atkinson had said on the growing of the exotic such as passion fruit – had they ever heard of it … no … well neither had she until Tom brought her some – fig, melon and mango. He had an aptitude for it. Well, she’d always known he was a patient sort of a lad and that’s what you needed in his job, but he had a head on his shoulders and he’d be head gardener one day, she said, you mark my words.

  And then there was Meggie! Was there ever a girl like her? Work! She could polish and clean a whole floor before you could say Birkenhead ferry and, if Mrs Whitley was any judge, would end up Head Housekeeper before she was twenty! She had her own floor now as head chambermaid and her only there eighteen months. There was no doubt about it, a girl could get on these days if she put her mind to it, and without creating a fuss like that Mrs Pankhurst and her two daughters who were playing havoc with life up in London, so she’d heard. Breaking windows and setting fire to schools and railway stations. They’d slashed a picture or two in the public art galleries and dropped burning rags through the slits of letter boxes so that decent folk were deprived of their rightful mail but they’d get nowhere with that sort of nonsense. Gentlemen didn’t like unfeminine behaviour, she could have told them that and could you wonder they got themselves arrested? Thank God their Meggie had no time for it, sensible lass that she was and had made a good start in her own career without the help of universal franchise, whatever that might be!

  Yes, there was a lightness of heart in Mrs Whitley’s ramblings on the endlessly interesting subject of ‘her three’, just as there was in the whole of the country. Though there was misery and poverty endured in the cottages and dwelling places of the working class for unemployment was rife that year, high spirits marked the era of King Edward the seventh for he had given his people a unity and a pride in themselves which, though the nation had been wealthy then, had not existed during the reign of his mother. He loved ceremony. He was gracious and charming and his passion for pageantry resulted in parades and processions, bringing life and colour to a people who had just moved from the prim, widowed puritanism of Queen Victoria. He liked State occasions with all their pomp, giving a show to those who had none. He moved about the co
untry, letting all those about him know where he was and what he was up to and he was much loved by those he ruled. He liked the theatre, opera and the music hall and he encouraged the nation to do the same.

  Yes, there was an air of enthusiasm and hope in the air. They were a generation standing on the threshold of a new era and Mrs Whitley’s ‘three’ were to be amongst them.

  The previous summer, just after she had begun working at the Adelphi Hotel, Meg had bought a cheap, second-hand bicycle from Mr Hale. He had let her have it for next to nothing since he still remembered the days when he and ‘that lad’, spoken with wistfulness in his voice, had worked side by side on the old tandem. He had shaken his head wonderingly when she called at the shop, saying he should have known the lad had something special about him, even then, tickled to death to have been a part of it. She could see it gave him immense pleasure to talk of his protégé’s exploits, ‘and if he should be up this way sometimes I’d be right glad to have a chin-wag with him,’ he said. Aye, he could sort her out a cycle right enough. He had one this very minute which would suit, hardly used for the young lady who had owned it had been bought a motor car for her twenty-first birthday by her doting father and no longer needed the cycle. Would she like to see it, he said, and perhaps a cup of tea might be welcome.

  Overwhelmed at the notion of a ‘young lady’ being bought, and driving a motor car, even in these enlightened days, Meg could only nod and allow herself to be led through the familiar clutter of ‘Hale’s Modern Bicycle Emporium’.

  Each Sunday afternoon she was free from two o’clock until six and clad in her sensible skirt and jacket, leaving her ‘best’ dove grey behind, her straw boater firmly pinned to her errant hair, she would cycle down to the Pier Head and, putting the machine in the guard’s van, board the overhead electric railway to Otterspool. From there it was but a few minutes cycle ride to Silverdale and by two-thirty she would be sprawled before Mrs Whitley’s pantingly hot fire, a cup of tea in one hand and a coconut macaroon in the other. If the weather was warm they would sit in the tiny square of garden at the back of the cottage beneath the canopied shade of an old Cedar of Lebanon whilst the fat bees bumbled, heavy laden, about the borders of crimson poppies and the daisy starred grass. The sun streamed in benevolent warmth through the branches of the trees and Mrs Whitley’s black cat hummed contentedly on her lap and Meg would feel the tension of her hectic week slip away. Her active mind and aching muscles, pushed to the limits of their endurance in her effort to cram three years’ learning into one and a half, would become hushed and languorous and Mrs Whitley’s voice would fade away to a pleasant drone. She needed this moment of complete inanimation to recharge the energy she used in the week as the old lady brought her up to date on the innocent gossip up at the house. What Mrs Glynn had said to Mrs Stewart when the housekeeper had criticised the cook’s excellent paradise pudding! How it was rumoured that Mr Ferguson had a ‘friend’ in Liverpool and what could it mean, did Meg think? Mrs Hemingway’s increasing quaintness and Mr Hemingway’s everlasting kindness and patience with her and the score of quite unremarkable happenings which made up Mrs Whitley’s contented life.

  ‘… and of course when Martin said to me that he meant to take part I said he was quite barmy, which you would, wouldn’t you? and where was he to get a flying machine I said and d’you know what he said? Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I’ll make one, he said, proud as a peacock. Well, you know what he’s like! If it moves or makes a noise our Martin will put wheels on it, or in this case, wings. It’s only forty odd miles to Blackpool, Mrs Whitley, he says, and I mean to show the old gentleman …’

  The words drifted about Meg’s head, their humming refrain blending in a pleasant melody with those of the bees and the sharper call of the birds. A sentence here and there penetrated her cocoon of inertia and it might be said that her brain had almost come to a halt until, from the drift of trifling verbiage the words began to sharpen and make sense, to run cogently and she opened her eyes and sat up slowly.

  ‘What did you say, Cook?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Mrs Whitley was clearly confused for she had said a lot of things.

  ‘About Blackpool and …’

  ‘I thought you were listening.’

  ‘I was, but I missed the bit about …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About the flying machine … and Martin.’

  ‘Well, he can tell you himself because here he is!’

  He stood at the fence, his tall, broad-shouldered figure casually dressed in pale grey flannels, immaculately pressed and a long sleeved polo neck sweater in a shade of blue which accentuated the sun bronzed flush of his face. He was grinning and his warm brown eyes did not waver as they ran audaciously over her own reclining figure for though she was their Meggie, she was still a bloody attractive woman, they seemed to say. He pushed open the small gate and sauntered up the narrow path, his hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets.

  ‘Well, well, look who’s here and pretty as a picture, if I may say so though why you wear that drab grey I’ll never know. You should be in green or a vivid blue with that hair of yours, our Meggie.’ His eyebrows tilted and the corners of his mouth turned in an ironic smile and Meg felt the small glow of pleasure his first words had induced in her, dash away in irritation for she knew he was right. If she had known she was to see him she would have put on a smarter outfit. She had a new one in a beautiful shade of apple green but it was so lovely she was reluctant to wear it on her bicycle for fear she might spoil it … But why should she care what Martin thought? Her own confusion made her sharp.

  ‘Well, I can hardly wear my ball gown and diamond tiara on the bicycle, can I, though I would have done so if I had known you were to be here, my lord. After all, mixing with the posh and the privileged as you do all the time, you must expect it. But I’ll know next time!’

  ‘Now then Meggie. Don’t get your dander up though I must admit you look a treat with those eyes of yours flashing like golden guineas. My word, but it’s a little tiger cub when it gets going …’

  ‘You’re the one who gets me going, Martin Hunter.’

  But the day was so pretty and so was Meg and Martin’s admiring eyes told her so and she felt quite inordinately pleased with herself somehow so she grinned to let him know there was no ill-feeling.

  ‘Now, what was it I was to tell you? I heard Mrs Whitley say …’

  ‘I was telling her what you said about that aeroplane meeting in Blackpool next week, Martin and …’

  ‘Ah-ha! and I suppose she wants to come with me?’

  He grinned even more widely and Mrs Whitley regarded him fondly for had you ever seen such a charmer? Those lovely brown eyes of his and those strong white teeth and that air of knowing quite definitely that he was irresistible.

  Meg straightened her long, supple back and her face became alight with excitement. Her eyes were as bright and glowing as Mr Hemingway’s new electric lamps and she put her hands together like a child in prayer. She had become more controlled during the months she had worked at the Adelphi, for in her position as head chambermaid on her floor she had duties which called for a clear head, an organised mind and the need to appear calm and unruffled in the most trying circumstances. The young maids who it was her responsibility to direct and supervise must be able to turn to her in the sure certainty that Miss Hughes could deal with any problem which might trouble them and she did! But beneath it all was still hidden the star-flash, joyously fun-loving Meggie Hughes who had liked, nothing better than an unexpected outing, a good laugh and the company of her childhood companions.

  ‘D’you mean it, Martin?’ Her voice was a reverent whisper. She had heard Martin enthuse, as who had not, on the marvel of Samuel Cody who only this year had flown an aeroplane from Laffans Plain to Danger Hill in Hampshire, a distance of just over a mile, the first man to do so in this country. Two months later, in July, the Daily Mail had offered prize money of 1,000 for the first pilot of an
y nationality to fly across the English channel. Martin had been in an agony of frustration since, if he had been able to get his hands on an aircraft, he said, he could have won it, certain in his youthful arrogance that even Louis Blériot, the Frenchman who had triumphed would not have done so had Martin been in on it! And in all this exciting time Meg Hughes had yet to see an aeroplane.

  ‘If you can get the day off,’ Martin said lazily.

  ‘It’s my monthly day off on Thursday.’

  ‘You’re on, then, our kid!’

  ‘Can Tom come?’

  ‘My God, you’ll want to take the whole damn kitchen staff next. I have only got a two seater, you know,’ but he was laughing indulgently for really she looked quite the prettiest thing he had seen for a long time. He met many attractive young ladies wherever he went, some of them from wealthy, good class families. They were all of them excited by what he did, for he had found there was something almost sexual in their response to the thrill of seeing him court death or maiming on the race track. They would cluster round him and the other drivers when the race was over, their smooth, well-bred young faces flushed, their breath quickened, their eyes wide and shining and promising all manner of delights. Most were strictly chaperoned by father or brother, but some who were married and did no more than accompany a husband, an enthusiast of the sport, to the track, were seldom reluctant to indulge in a flirtation and some to go even further! He was successful with women despite his youth for though he was single-minded about his career and would let nothing stand in his way, he had a masculine charm which allowed him the company, not just of the ladies with whom he mixed but their menfolk who respected his courage and clever mind.