Between Friends Page 28

  He smiled his compelling smile, then turned to wink at Mrs Whitley. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come as well? You can sit on Tom’s knee, oh and don’t forget those oyster patties of yours. Motoring, not to mention flying, gives you a good appetite!’

  ‘Oh Martin!’ she gasped, then, relieved, ‘… you great daft thing!’ when she realised that he was only joking.

  Blackpool! Mecca of the Lancashire holiday maker, it was called. Compressed like the fingers in a glove in the small motor car the three of them left Liverpool at six-thirty and at a spanking speed of twenty miles an hour which was all that was allowed, made for Ormskirk which they reached by seven-thirty. Another hour and they were through Preston and on round the coastal road through the villages of Freckleton, Lytham, the smart little seaside holiday town of St Annes-on-Sea and on to the outskirts of Blackpool and the Lancashire Aero Club where the meet was to be held.

  ‘My God, I’ve never seen so many people,’ Tom gasped, ‘not even in Liverpool on a Shrove Tuesday. Where the hell have they all come from?’

  ‘All over the place. There are excursion trains from at least a dozen places in Lancashire alone and then that doesn’t account for those who have come in their own motor cars and on motor cycles. They have been preparing for this for months, you know, Tom. It’s the first air meet in the country and this aviation ground has been built especially for it. Members from Aero clubs all over Europe have come, bringing their machines, and I heard you can’t get a bed to sleep in if you were willing to pay a fiver a night.’

  ‘But where are you going to leave the motor? There isn’t an inch of space to spare,’ Meg was looking about her, her head turning wildly from side to side for there was so much to see she was afraid she might miss some of it. There were more motor cars than she had ever seen in her life, jammed bonnet to tail along the road into the town, most illuminated in some splendid way and all the streets were decorated just as though royalty was expected. Indeed it had been hoped that His Majesty might honour the town with his presence but unfortunately he had been unable to attend.

  ‘Look, oh look up there.’ Meg pointed excitedly and taking his eyes from the road for a moment Martin, and Tom looked up to where Meg’s quivering finger pointed. ‘What are they, Martin? Oh will you look …?’

  ‘They’re hot air balloons, Meggie. There’s one on each of the three main roads into the town to direct motorists on the most direct route to travel.’

  ‘And look up there … on the tower …’ Meg stood up, nearly losing her balance in her wild exhilaration, for indeed the air was tense with a strange intoxication which was infectious and had Tom not held on to her it seemed certain she would climb up on the bonnet in order to get a better view. She looked quite glorious and each young man found his eyes wandering constantly to the special glowing beauty of her face. She wore a simple tailored costume of apple green cloth with a narrow skirt and a close fitting long ‘Russian’ jacket which had buttons of a darker green down the sleeves. The skirt just touched the arch of her foot and was also buttoned down one side. Her cream straw boater had apple green velvet ribbons two inches wide round the crown, tied in a flat bow at the back and the ends fell down her back to her shoulder blades.

  ‘Where? Where d’you mean?’ Tom was filled with the same heady stimulation which was turning Meg’s eyes to the brilliance of burnished gold and his gaze followed hers to the breathtaking top of the great lattice work tower which dominated the centre of the town.

  ‘There … those flags … what do they mean, d’you think?’

  ‘What colour are they?’ Martin shouted, his own breath beginning to quicken in his chest for the splendid day, the joy of the crowd, the delight and elation which seemed to have captured this enormous seething mass of people was growing in him. He was, of course, well used to the excitement, the tension of the race track but this was like nothing he had ever experienced.

  ‘They’re red.’ Meg shaded her eyes against the sun. ‘Yes … red!’

  ‘That means someone’s up.’

  ‘Up? What d’you mean … up?’

  ‘Someone is already flying.’

  ‘Oh my God … where … where?’

  She swivelled round in the car, her eyes searching the heavens for her first sight of a magical flying machine but there were only serene blue skies, the only thing in flight a solitary seagull floating over the promenade.

  ‘Oh Martin … hurry, hurry … we don’t want to miss it. Oh Lord, what if it should all be over before we get there. Can’t you find somewhere to leave the motor so that we can get there quickly.’ Her voice shrieked over the sound of the vehicle’s engine, the shouts and laughter of the crowd and the brass band which was marching to meet them down the promenade.

  ‘I’ve got to find this place I saw advertised in The Autocar. It’s some chap with a garage and a large plot of ground which he’s renting. There are parking spaces for over a thousand motor cars and motor cycles. It’s not far now and then we’ll catch a tram back along the promenade to the meet.’

  Meg swore when the day was over she really did not believe they could ever, ever have a better one, which was sad really for one did not like to think the peak of one’s life had been achieved, then she laughed and kissed Mrs Whitley’s cheek since she was young and did not believe it.

  There were huge hangars … sheds, she explained kindly when Mrs Whitley looked mystified in which were housed at least fifty airplanes … well, a dozen and standing about, having their photographs taken with such notable personages as Lord Lonsdale who had opened the Air Meet, and Lord Derby, were the aviators, Alliott V. Roe, Henry Farman, Rene Fournier and many others.

  ‘And guess who else I saw, Mrs Whitley, go on, guess, and I swear he smiled at me.’

  ‘Well, he would, a pretty girl like you,’ Mrs Whitley said fondly, ‘but go on, tell me for I’m sure I can’t imagine.’ She was quite captivated for it was almost as good as being there herself.

  ‘Grand Duke Michael, that’s who!’

  ‘Eeh, well I never!’ Mrs Whitley was not awfully sure who he might be but he sounded splendid.

  ‘He’s the cousin of the Czar of Russia!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, could you believe it? There were special stands built which could seat 250 spectators each and special boxes for folk with money. Guess how much to sit in one. Go on.’

  ‘Eeh Meggie …’

  ‘Twenty-five guineas for the week!’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘… and there was a dining-room with a band playing and one lad told me there were thirty-six of them, lads I mean, including himself who had been brought all the way from Manchester just to organise the selling of the programmes. Can you imagine it! It cost us two bob to sit in the enclosure and when we went to get something to eat … well, Cook, you and I would have been out of our depth, I can tell you. They had quartered 300 sheep on just that one day, with 300 of beef and a 1000 hams just to make up into sandwiches. There were eleven marquees …’

  ‘No …!’

  ‘Yes, it’s the honest truth and the chap in the bar told Martin when he went to get us a drink that they sold 500 hogshead of beer, 36,000 dozen bottles of stout and 600 cases of whiskey each day!’

  It had been a wondrous day, the summit of which had been when the first airplane was towed out across the field ready for take off. It was Mr Henry Farman’s bi-plane, looking to Meg no more than a wooden crate on which a child might have stuck two flimsy wings. It began to move and she held her breath and her hand clung to Martin’s and the flush of her cheeks and the glow in her eyes was quite beautiful. She felt the exhilaration flow through her veins as the machine gathered speed and she watched in total fascination the caressing separation of wheels and soil as the aircraft imperceptibly took wing. Its stately progress through the open air, had about it a grandeur she could not put into words, forging gracefully ahead into sheer space with nothing to hold it up until it was majestically aloft and flying! Away
it went, disappearing into the pale blue sky above Lytham and for twenty minutes the crowd was almost completely silent, as one would be in church until at last the beat of the engine was heard and the airplane came back into sight. As it approached the field the aviator shut off his engine and was obviously about to attempt to bring the plane down from over the club house into the middle of the ground. As soon as he turned off his engine the machine stopped absolutely still and began to drop vertically and somewhere a woman’s voice cried out, the only sound to be heard, but for the wind, in the whole of that vast crowd. Suddenly, with a sound like thunder the engine was switched on again and the machine veered up and to the left, lurching, as Tom put it later, like Kelly’s drunken dog, and after a terrific swerve in which the machine was in danger of landing on the spectators’ enclosure, indeed Meg swore she could see the aviator’s face, landed sweetly at the far end of the field.

  As it came to a halt Meg Hughes had tears on her face!

  Records were broken that day in the art of aviation. They flew to the staggering height of over 1,000 feet into the air and as far as forty-eight miles, and at the frightening speed of forty-seven miles an hour and when Henry Farman claimed the first prize for speed and distance of £2,400 the roar of the crowd could be heard in Southport, they said.

  At the end of the day, with the black flag fluttering on the top of Blackpool Tower to indicate that there would be no more flying due to the gusting breeze which had sprung up, the three of them followed the crowd along the promenade until they came to Church Street and Parkers Restaurant where they ate fish and chips and peas, with a sticky bun to follow before going on to the Palace Theatre to see Miss Amelia Bingham, ‘the American Ellen Terry’, as she was billed, and ‘Coram, the great ventriloquist. They sat, just like royalty, Tom said, in a box which cost one whole guinea!

  They walked back along the promenade under darkening skies, Meg in the middle, her arms through those of the other two and they talked of what they had seen that day and Martin was on fire to get started on it, he really was, he said for though he had not managed a flight he had heard one chap asking another, a Mr Compton-Paterson of the Liverpool Motor House, if he might order one of his machines and Mr Compton-Paterson had replied that normally he could give a very quick delivery but that he had had so many orders from the Aerial Rendezvous, deliveries might now be delayed. He was heard to say he turned out his machines at a very competitive figure of £500!

  ‘£500! My God, what an industry it will be in a few years …’

  Meg was certain she would take to flying too, and really, when Martin had his own machine he must promise that she would be his first, his very first passenger …

  ‘Well, I dunno,’ Tom remarked amiably, scratching his head and grinning. Everyone’s to be off doing something but me. Our Meg’s to be head cook and bottlewasher at the Delly, that is after she’s flown in Martin’s aeroplane which he is to build after he has put every man and his wife on the road in a motor car whilst all I do is watch the bloody grass grow on the Silverdale lawn!’

  It was said without rancour, since, if the truth were told, of the three of them Tom might be said to be the most content. He strived for nothing since he had what he wanted. His pleasant face was just visible in the dusky light and it had a strength and a stillness, a simplicity which spoke not of lack of intelligence but of peace of mind. He was that rare being, a complete man, lacking nothing he needed, needing nothing he lacked. He did not dwell on the fashionable but simple elegance with which their Meg had begun to dress beyond telling her she looked a ‘real treat’. He was not especially impressed with Martin’s ‘nippy’ little sports car, nor his ‘natty’ pale grey flannels, worn without braces, since to Tom nothing had changed between them. It was doubtful he noticed that both Meg and Martin were leaving him behind, the reason being that when they were with him they were just as they had always been.

  Mrs Whitley’s ‘the three of ’em’.

  Those on the road on that lovely autumn evening, cyclists, pedestrians and the growing mass of motor cars turned to stare, open-mouthed as the three attractive young people in the speeding, southbound Austin motor car flashed by them and the song they roared floated for several moments on the disturbed air they left behind,

  ‘Ta ra ra boom de ay,

  Ta ra ra boom de ay,

  Ta ra ra boom de ay,

  Ta ra ra boom de ay!’

  Chapter Nineteen

  FOR THE PAST week or so the Adelphi Hotel had been at its busiest. Numbers of sportsmen had daily and nightly crowded its corridors, its suites and its parlours. Everywhere in the extensive and magnificent building there was a rush of life, and business. It was one of the busiest days of the busiest weeks of the year for the ‘Waterloo’ coursing fever was at its height.

  There were all kinds and conditions of gentlemen to be seen in the entrance hall with only one topic of conversation and that was dogs and should a gambler have listened carefully he might have picked up a tip for the winner of the Waterloo Cup which was to be run that day. There were sportsmen aristocratic, democratic, plebian and any other kind you cared to mention though these might have had some trouble with the law should they have been spotted. There was the well-to-do gentleman of leisure, the home spun moderate man who just this one time of the year ventured a bet, the ‘owning’ gentleman, the ‘laying’ gentleman and the ‘backing’ gentleman, all mixed together in the common love of gambling, especially on the ‘dogs’. Tall hats mixed with low hats and slouched hats and evidently they all had plenty of money in their pockets for they moved about the elegance of the hotel as only gentlemen of means can do.

  Mr Willmer, the manager had been at his best for was that not the mark of a good hotelier, he who rises to the occasion and produces perfection under the most trying of circumstances. There were at least an extra hundred guests on top of those who stayed at the hotel on a regular basis, and he and his staff had been on duty each day from six in the morning until two of the following day. The number of calls and callers in this one single day had been above 200 and he had dealt with at least double that number in telegrams, letters, telephone calls and applications from callers wishing to book a room.

  Forty-five passengers, Americans from two of the Atlantic liners had arrived only that morning and were, it seemed, everyone of them, crowding the entrance hall surrounded by an enormous weight of luggage. There were hatboxes, suitcases, vanity cases all stacked and waiting to be taken up in the lift to the private suites which awaited them. Outside on the road porters were wrestling with straps which secured boxes and trunks to the back of hansom cabs and one or two of the new taxi-cabs which plied between town and the pier head, vying with one another to catch the Americans for they were known as good ‘tippers’.

  A well-dressed gentleman moved through the melée with the high-nosed arrogance of one who is not a little put out by the restless activity which surrounded him. His face wore an expression which spoke plainly of his contempt for the mass of humanity, all speaking at once, or so it seemed, and intent on capturing the services of the receptionists, the porters, the crimson coated attendants or indeed anyone who would listen.

  The gentleman was incredibly thin. His back was arrow straight and he walked with the boldness of a man who is in complete command of himself and his destiny and is quite, quite sure that when he snapped his fingers those put there to serve him would jump to it! He wore a single breasted Chesterfield overcoat of fancy black cashmere woven with a faint self-colour stripe. It had a fly front and four silk basket buttons. It was lined with black silk which continued on to the front of the lapels to form a facing. In his hand he carried a black silk top-hat. His hair was smoothly brushed, a silvery grey and liberally applied with pomade, and his eyes were the same colour.

  Without hesitation and in a way which surprised those about him for they had really no intention of making way for anyone, he cut a path through the crowd until he stood directly in front of the reception desk. The at
tractive young woman who worked there, about to attend to a querulous, extremely tired American gentleman, just docked that morning and who wanted to be taken immediately to his suite he declared, found herself drawn quite strangely to the newcomer and before she knew it she was asking him if she might help him.

  ‘I have a suite booked,’ he said. No more.

  ‘Yes sir, and your name?’

  ‘Here is my card.’

  She took it nervously for really the gentleman was very … very forceful. She glanced at it and then at the register on the desk, then she smiled.

  ‘Aah yes sir, here it is, Mr …’

  He cut her short abruptly. ‘My luggage is in a hansom cab outside. Have it brought to my room. Is that the key? Thank you,’ and before she could speak another word he had taken it from her and was making his way towards the lift. As he left, the hubbub which had died at his appearance, broke out again and the young receptionist forgot him as she was swamped again by the demands of the guests.

  Meg had gone down to the basement that evening for only the second time in eighteen months for of all the working areas in the hotel in which she had hung about since starting work at the Adelphi, the cellar which contained the hotel’s famous turtles was the one she liked the least. Large steam-heated tanks contained up to 250 live turtles at a time and from these inexhaustible reservoirs turtle soup was sent all over the country, and even to Europe and America. At the height of the trade, an industry in itself and one very profitable to the hotel, more than fifty quarts of soup a day were sent out, much of it to London dealers who then directed it further afield. The situation was ironic for the turtle caught in the Gulf of Mexico was transported to Liverpool, turned into soup at the Adelphi and then returned to the New World! The reptiles often became tame enough to take the heart of a lettuce from an attendant’s hand whilst waiting for that same hand to decapitate it. Meg hated it. It was the one aspect of the hotel trade she abhorred, swearing that as she had no intention of serving turtle soup on any menu in her establishment she had no need of experience in the preparing of it, but a message had been left in the kitchens that she was to go there immediately.