Between Friends Read online

  Chapter Twenty

  THE LARGE CROWD held its breath as the great sleek monster roared its snarling anger. It sounded quite amazingly like a wounded beast, hurt beyond endurance but still lethally dangerous as it surged dramatically close to the lip of the banked track. It would go over, they were convinced, leaping up into the air, hurtling beyond its own seeming ability to fly but when the driver of the sleek-nosed motor car pulled it skilfully back on to its true path, the soft sighing from more than a thousand throats could almost be heard over the ferocious sound of the racing cars’ engines.

  It was 1910. Since 1907, when it was built, Brooklands had been the Mecca for all driving and flying enthusiasts. It was created in the private grounds of the home of a gentleman named H. F. Locke-King, built by private enterprise and was the world’s first real motor course.

  Apart from racing it was meant to provide a ground for the testing of motor cars since the speed limit on the public roads was twenty miles an hour and the police were enthusiastic in their enforcing of the law.

  The first ‘meet’ was run like a horse race with the drivers dressed in ‘silks’ in the colours of their choice like jockeys and it was not until later that numbers were used to differentiate between drivers. There was a clubhouse and the ‘Brooklands Automobile Racing Club’ was formed, together with a flying club for those who were daring enough to try it! Those who were members were wealthy and of the upper and middle classes. ‘The right crowd and no crowding’ was their slogan and it was seriously meant for the club was very exclusive. The facilities were outstanding and those who manufactured automobiles were inordinately glad of them to test the speed and durability of their inventions. Anyone might compete in the races and a side-valve ‘Morgan’ had as good a chance to win as a super-charged Bentley for there were many handicap events. There were neat enclosures, white-painted rails and wooden seats from which spectators might cheer on their particular favourite. It was just like a racecourse and the broad sweep of the two and three quarter miles of banked concrete oval gave a marvellous sense of space.

  The cars were a blur as they attempted to accelerate beyond the impossible speeds they ware aiming for but the one the crowd watched, the one it hissed through its clenched teeth over; missed its heartbeat over, drew in its breath over would not be overtaken, surging ahead, doing yet another dauntless circuit of the track. He was fearless, they said to one another, or quite, quite mad, depending on one’s point of view. Just look at the lion-hearted way he ventured his machine, and himself to the very edge of the track, risking time and time again being forced over the top of the banked track by the other machines as he overtook them. It made one’s hair stand on end, really it did, the risks he took and not one of them would change places with him, no, not for a gold clock but by God it was exciting seeing him go!

  It was the Whitsun meet. Whit Monday and the holiday crowds had come for miles, some in their own motor cars, those who had the money and daring to purchase and drive one, many on motor cycles, charabancs, outings from as far away as London for the sport of motor racing was fast becoming a national favourite, not just among those who loved the machines but with those who thought of it in the same category as horse racing, but more exciting! They had moved about the paddock, staring in awe at Lord Lonsdale in his Mercedes, Malcolm Campbell in his now famous ‘Bluebird’ and at men whose names were fast becoming household. Selwyn Edge. Montague Napier. Percy Lambert. They had rubbed shoulders with two of Brookland’s most celebrated sons, Dario Resta and Kenneth Lee Guinness, admiring the dashing way in which they wore their caps with the peaks at the back, their white silk scarves and the goggles each man adjusted carelessly as he climbed into the driving seat of his open, pitifully vulnerable racing car. They were narrow, those dangerously roaring machines, their frames made of pressed steel with a flimsy covering to streamline them into the shape which might gain them a precious second in the records they strived for. They had wire wheels and not a lot in the way of suspension but the crowd loved them, and the men who drove them!

  The one they encouraged, silently at first then with increasing enthusiasm as he catapulted ahead of the other cars, had caught the crowd’s fancy from the start. He was tall, broad-shouldered and very handsome. He had grinned, his white teeth flashing in his brown face and waved his hand carelessly to the crowd as he climbed into his machine. A young lady very blonde and dashing in a hobble skirt, tight and tubular, the very pinnacle of fashion and in a brilliant shade of cerise kissed him full on the mouth for everyone to see, quite shocking really but all part of the day’s excitement! They were not of the ordinary, these men and their women too, one supposed, who dared their lives and their young, unmarked bodies in the pursuit of speed. They, like those who entertained the public in other ways, in the theatre, the music hall and in the new, strangely flickering, moving pictures which were thrown on to a screen, as in the drama The Great Train Robbery, and which were now fascinating a growing audience, were of another world, came from another world where such things were commonplace, where they were allowed because of their difference to the rest of humanity, a tolerant license to display whatever emotion they cared to in public.

  The crowd had become still again now, silent and deliciously afraid for surely no man was supposed to go so fast, nor so dangerously. His machine was merely a streak of yellow and chrome and the head of the handsome young man was seen to shake quite madly on his shoulders with the force of the movement and speed. His cap was long gone!

  It was all over really before any of the crowd could grasp it. One moment their eyes were struggling to keep the bright yellow flash in view, waiting impatiently for it to circle the two and three quarter miles of track, and in the next women were screaming, their hands to their mouths, men were shouting hoarsely, all clutching at one another in a curiously thrilled state of horror as the machine appeared to leap into the air, all four wheels completely leaving the track, slammed onto its side where it landed, slithered along the concrete track and finally, slowly it seemed to those who watched, turned over and over and over, at each turn loosing some part of itself, a wheel, a piece of jagged metal hurtling into the cars which followed it, some careening into the members’ enclosure which stood close to the banking.

  It came to rest at last, its three remaining wheels spinning madly in the air and beneath it the handsome young driver lay still and in the distance could be heard the wail of the ambulance.

  He was alive, Mr Hemingway told them, and a miracle it was too, but he was badly injured and would have to remain in the hospital at Weybridge for several weeks. They would bring him home to Silverdale to recuperate, naturally but it would be a long while – he did not voice the awful words, ‘if ever’ – before he would race again. Martin’s left leg was fractured, four of his ribs were cracked, his pelvis and hip bone were ‘suspect’, whatever that might mean and his face was cut somewhat but he was strong, a young and healthy man and would heal quickly, the doctor assured him. There was nothing anyone could do. Mr Hemingway would be going back by train to ‘have a look at the boy’ in the next few days, he said and really, they were not to worry themselves. It was an excellent hospital, the surgeon was a splendid chap and Martin was having the best possible care.

  But they did worry. She and Tom and Mrs Whitley spent the whole of the following Sunday afternoon telling each other that their Martin had a constitution as strong as a horse – look at the way he had fought in the boxing ring. He had always been ‘bobbish’, Mrs Whitley said, never ailing a day, begging for reassurance from the other two, secretly picturing her lad with his strong, straight leg all smashed up and his lovely looks gone forever! He would be as right as rain, hale and hearty and as good as new before the month of May was out, they hastened to tell one another as they gathered about the table. They smiled and pretended to tuck in to beef and dumplings and Mrs Whitley’s baked almond pudding into which she had poured a whole glass of sherry in the hope it would lift their anxious spirit, but they could
not avoid catching one another’s worried glance nor keep up the pretence there was nothing wrong and that this was their normal Sunday visit.

  It was three weeks before the doctor at the hospital in Weybridge would allow Martin to come home and then it was only because Robert Hemingway had reassured him that ‘the boy’ would have a trained nurse in charge of him at all times, his own personal physician would look him over every day and that the facilities at the Liverpool Infirmary were excellent and should an emergency crop up, God forbid, they would be freely available to a man such as himself. An ambulance was to take Martin to the railway station at Weybridge. A private carriage was to be put at his disposal on the train. He would travel with the nurse who was to be in charge of him and in short, nothing, nothing was too good for the young man who had brought such joy, such reward, such acclaim to bless an old man’s declining years! Though he might never race the Hemingway flyer again, or even her successor which would no doubt be built from her ashes, Martin Hunter was not to be discarded like some worn out tool which has lost its use but would be looked after until he, or Robert Hemingway, or perhaps both of them had decided where his future lay.

  They were all there at the front door of Silverdale to meet the ambulance as it drew carefully up the long, gravelled drive, even Mrs Whitley, tearful and hardly daring to look for if her lad should be horribly scarred how on earth would she be able to endure it? He and the other two were the closest she had ever known to children of her own. He had helped to save her life at great risk to his own on the day of the fire. She had guided him through his boyhood, taken pride in his achievements, even clouted him a time or two and been driven to distraction by his passion for motor cars but when it came to ‘aye lads aye’, he, perhaps more than Meg and Tom, was the darling of her heart.

  His face grinned up at her from the whiteness of his pillow as he lay on the stretcher but for an anguished moment all she could see was the neat bandage which shrouded one side of it, fastened securely beneath his chin and across the top of his head. It was only a degree or so paler than the colour of his skin and where, her old heart pleaded, beneath the pallor of his weakness, was the Martin she remembered? Then he called her name and held out his hand to her, and to Meg, and his grin became wider and they all crowded round him for was he not a hero? With a hand in each of theirs he was carried indoors and the pleas of the nurse to ‘stand away from her patient, if you would be so kind, and be careful of the doors, and to mind the cast on his leg’ ignored by one and all. Mr Ferguson was quite put out for it seemed the servants cared not a jot or tittle for him at that moment and as Tom remarked later, he looked as though he was about to have a bloody fit he was in such a tantrum. Tom should not have been there really for his place was in the garden. At least the indoor staff had some excuse to mill about in the wide hallway but Mr Hemingway was like an old hen with a chick and didn’t seem to mind what anyone was doing as he supervised the stowing away of it in a comfortable nest! Martin was placed in a small, sunny room on the ground floor at the back of the house, a smaller one adjoining it, once a footman’s pantry, made over for the nurse. A coal fire crackled in welcome in the grate and Mrs Hemingway had instructed flowers and books to be placed on the window sill for his pleasure and at last, one by one, after speaking a word to him or merely patting the shoulder of the returning hero, the servants had dribbled away, called to their duties by a peevish Mr Ferguson. Even Tom was reluctantly drawn back to the hoeing he had been about when the ambulance had arrived. Mrs Whitley had clung to Martin’s hand for as long as the nurse would let her, exclaiming woefully at the heavy cast on his leg and the thinness of his ‘poor face’, but cheering up immensely at the thought of the egg custards she could now get into him, the kidney omelettes, light enough but nutritious for an invalid, the dumplings as he grew stronger and the good vegetable soups she would carry over to the house and which could be guaranteed to get him on his feet again and his manly strength returned.

  Only Meg, with two whole hours before she need return to the hotel, remained, the nurse giving reluctant permission for it, glad herself to have someone sensible to watch over her patient whilst she recovered from the long train journey with a cup of tea and the bite to eat offered beside Mrs Glynn’s kitchen fire.

  ‘Well, our Meg.’ Martin looked tired now, somewhat drawn about the eyes, his mouth formed, after all its smiling into a thin line of pain.

  ‘Well, our Martin.’ She leaned her elbows on the neatly folded bedspread which lay across his chest and smiled affectionately into his eyes. She could see he was ready, after all the excitement, to be left alone to sleep for a while but the weeks of worry, of wondering how he really was plus her own private anxiety had been long and hard on them all and she needed a moment or two to reassure herself that he was not irreparably damaged. Though they had been told he would mend with time and might not even have the limp which had at first been envisaged, she was not completely certain, not just yet awhile that what the doctor had said was true. She needed to see for herself; look at him for a few minutes longer; study his face and listen to his voice. She would know then. She was not quite certain what she would know or how she could be sure her instincts would not lie but something curious inside her, something she had carried with her since those first days at the orphanage and which had fused her and Tom and Martin into one unit, would tell her. She would know!

  ‘How is it, then?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Alright now, Meggie, now I’m home,’ but when he said ‘home’ she knew he meant with her, with her and Tom.

  ‘You’ll mend now, Martin.’ Though it was spoken as a question, it was really a statement of fact.

  ‘That I will, our Meggie.’

  ‘What will you do then?’ She held his hand lovingly between hers and he watched the firelight play warmly in the curly tendrils of her hair which she had pulled carelessly back with a bright green velvet ribbon, her usual trim and proper ‘housekeeper’ self left behind at the hotel. Her eyes were as soft and golden as the sunlight which struck the yellow daisies in the bowl on the dresser and an excited flush of colour stained her cheek. Her hands were warm and softly soothing as they folded about his own. Her lips curved in a smile and the light enhanced her shoulders so that they gleamed beneath the sheer clinging material of her white muslin blouse. Like most of her clothes she had made it herself, knowing instinctively what suited her and it was soft, feminine, quite simple with an embroidered panel down the front. The sleeves were long and close fitting and it had what was known as a ‘Medici’ frill about the neck. It fastened down the back and was tucked neatly inside a straight, tubular skirt made of a pale grey face cloth. She looked lovely. She was looking at him questioningly and speaking his name, smiling, her lips parted a little to reveal her white teeth and the tip of her tongue. She shook the hand she was holding, leaning closer towards him.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked softly. ‘You are miles away. Where have you gone? Off into the future I’ll be bound, deciding which motor car you will design first and how you will spend the enormous amount of money you are going to make. Will it be a grand house in Aigburth or perhaps one of those lovely villas you talk about in the South of France? Will you invite us to stay with you when you get there or will you be too grand for the likes of us by then? Mixing with dukes and princes, and princesses too, I shouldn’t wonder. Eating caviar and drinking champagne from ladies’ slippers and getting up to all the tricks we read about in the newspapers. Won’t it be wonderful, Martin, when you are rich and famous and I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I once boxed the ears of one of the most important gentlemen in the world!’

  She spoke laughingly in the soft, well modulated voice she had acquired quite without realising it from the wealthy and privileged persons she served. It was smooth, rich, quiet, the nasal sing-song of her native Liverpool virtually eliminated. It still had the slight inclination to rise at the end of each sentence but it was by this alone that her background could be detected
. His was the same. Though neither spoke of it they both recognised that they had changed beyond imagining. They were both of them a different person, a world away from the gauche young girl and boy who had worked in the immigrant house in Great George Square.

  He managed a full and impudent grin. ‘Listen Mrs Woman,’ using an old Liverpool expression, ‘I’m tired and I’ll get little rest if you don’t stop your gabble. I’m tired, Meggie. I’m not the man I was, our kid but give me a few days and you and I and Tom will be off on those old bicycles again. What d’you say?’

  She leaned towards him eagerly, pleased to see the smile, aware of the effort it had taken him as she had always been aware since they were children of his every strength and weakness. His eyelids were drooping and though he did not complain she knew his leg ached naggingly for the pain was etched in the lines of his face and his pallor beneath the bandage had worsened. She wanted to talk with him softly, to return them both to the happy moments they had shared with Tom in the days at Great George Square. The bicycles, he had said! They were a symbol of those lovely days, the sunshine gleaming on chrome and the flash of pedals, the smell of leather saddles, and oil on the chain and the sound of three young people laughing. She wanted to tell him that though they were older now, two grown men and a woman, they would always be a part of one another as the twirling wheels took to the road again. He was wounded now, like a magnificent eagle which has been brought out of the skies but he would soar again one day when his injuries were healed. They had not the keen excitement he knew as a racing driver, but the days they had spent in companionship, and would again on their machines had a magic which was unique to the three of them, a special mixture of peace, content and intense pleasure which, when they were returned to would help to mend him, to make him fly as an eagle again for that was what he was truly meant to do. She longed to lay her head on the pillow beside his, to comfort him with these bright and lovely thoughts but already he was slipping away into the deep, pain-free sleep he needed. She tucked his hands gently beneath the sheet and smoothed it across his chest. For a moment longer she continued to watch his face, her own drawn into a worried frown. He looked so pale, his dark eyebrows and thick curling lashes stood out against the whiteness of his skin and she felt her heart move in anguish for if anything happened to him …