Between Friends Read online

  Suddenly his mouth curled in a smile. He did not open his eyes as he spoke but the humour was rich in his voice.

  ‘Go away, Meggie. I’m not going to die, only sleep!’ and everything was alright again and she smiled too as she tiptoed from the room.

  She did not ask Ferguson this time for she was no longer under his control. She simply ran down the broad staircase, ignoring the rule that the back stairs were for servants, and knocked at the study door as she had before. It was over two years since that day and she had changed from a green girl to a woman, a woman who was quite determined on her path and she would not deviate from it now. She had been confident then that she could do it alone. She had contained within herself the arrogance of youth, the belief that her own strength was enough. She would need to ask for nothing else from anyone, she had told herself, believing it, but now she was here again, for the past few weeks had shown her there was a kind of strength in admitting to weakness provided one took steps to safeguard it and the only way to do that was to ask for help. She must either give in to the inevitable, submit to the demands of the brute who was blackmailing her – it could be called nothing else – or fight him. And she could not fight him alone!

  She had become even more unapproachable at the hotel in the weeks following her encounter with Benjamin Harris, allowing no-one access to her own private thoughts, indeed it was difficult to get a word out of her unless it concerned the running of her floor. Harris had booked out the next day, she had found out, making discreet enquiries of the receptionist, and when the girl’s back was turned it had been an easy matter to memorise the address he had written in the register. It was a club in London!

  It seemed to those who worked for her that her obsession to be the best, to know and learn, and assimilate what she learned of the detailed minutiae of the hotel trade was driving her at such speed she would surely crash for no-one could continue as she did without coming a cropper. Even Miss O’Hara was heard to tell her to ‘take a breather’ if you please! When she was not working no-one knew where she got to for she simply disappeared and even the housekeeper, still trying to determine what had happened to her on that strange night several weeks back, did not know where she might be found. Secretive was the word they applied to her. She was rarely to be found in her own room and when she was it took her five minutes to open the damn door!

  ‘Who is it?’ she would call and until she had recognised to her own satisfaction the identity of the caller she would open the door to no-one! It was a matter for intense speculation what she did in there but whatever it was she did it alone!

  Meg was aware they discussed her, those who worked for her, but it escaped their notice entirely that whenever Miss Hughes moved about the rooms and hallways on her floor she was never alone. She always had some young maid under instruction, or she accompanied one or other of the experienced chambermaids about their duties, letting them see, they imagined, muttering to one another, that she had her eye on them at all times.

  They did not know of her nightmares! No-one did and she knew that the haunted pallor of her face was put down to overwork by Mrs Whitley and Tom. It did no good to comment, she had heard Mrs Whitley say in an aside to him, for he would only get his head snapped off as she had done!

  She had agonised over it during the long nights, afraid still but no longer paralysed by it as she had been at first. She had not just herself to consider. If she had perhaps she might have chosen a different course, but Tom, and Mrs Whitley must be protected. It was a gamble, a risk she did not like since he had told her he had ‘friends’ but she had lived in this shadow for long enough and the risk must be taken.

  ‘Come in,’ the old gentleman said in answer to her positive knock.

  He looked surprised to see her for they had discussed Martin’s condition and the surgeon’s optimistic prognosis and what more was there to be said? The boy was recovering and would be well cared for and when the time came … well … there were plans to be made and no need for worry.

  ‘Yes Megan?’ he said, noticing for the first time how slender she had become and how pale. She had always been what he would describe as ‘bonny’, robust and bursting with good health and vitality. Now she looked quite … quite drained. And yet there was a certain lift to her head, unbowed it was, and a defiant set to her shoulders. Her mouth was grimly clenched, stern for one so young and her jaw jutted but her eyes were wary, unsettled, and moist with some curious emotion.

  ‘What is it, Megan?’ he said gently for he had become fond of this strong, sweet young woman.

  Her answer rendered him speechless.

  ‘I want Benjamin Harris arrested, Mr Hemingway, on the grounds of threatening behaviour and attempted blackmail.’ She lifted her head even further and glared at him in a way which suggested he might be the one who was being accused but her eyes appealed to him desperately, begging for his help.

  ‘Dear God … Megan!’ he managed to gasp, then fell back in his chair as though she had pushed him.

  ‘And if it’s convenient I would be glad if Mrs Whitley could be moved into the house until he is behind bars!’

  ‘Dear God in Heaven …’

  ‘And there is one other thing I would like to discuss with you!’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IT WAS SEPTEMBER before they were settled but Meg did not worry for the threat which had hung over her for so long had been removed. Or more correctly put where it could no longer harm her, or Tom and Mrs Whitley. The trial had lasted a week and she had given her evidence in a clear decisive voice and though he had been drawn from the dock when he was sentenced, swearing vengeance, it seemed she was no longer afraid of Benjamin Harris. There were witnesses, not as articulate as herself, in the shape of Betsy and May who were quite overawed but willing, nevertheless to speak for her, and Tom and Mrs Whitley, the latter in tears and gaining immediate sympathy. Clever as he had thought himself, the young receptionist at the Adelphi remembered Mr Harris, she said, and without prompting spoke of his interest in the housekeeper on the first floor and even the cellarman could vouch for Miss Hughes’ terror on the night in question, he said. Miss O’Hara enjoyed her spell in the witness box, glad at last to have got to the bottom of it all for she did like things tidy!

  But it was Mr Hemingway’s interest, and influence, Meg was in no doubt of it, which gave credence to her own charge. He made a grand witness and the counsel for the defence could not pierce his evidence, nor, in fact, find the men Harris claimed could give him an alibi!

  Tom and Martin, white-faced and stiff with repressed and violent rage had been reluctant to bother with a trial when they had been told, begging Mr Hemingway to leave it to them, their intention quite clear.

  ‘And will you murder him, then?’ the old gentleman asked quietly.

  No, they said just give him the hiding of his life, obviously relishing the idea.

  ‘And when he recovers? What of Megan then? No lads, best leave this to the law.’

  She continued to work at the Adelphi during the summer months, afraid she might miss some important facet of the hotel trade, something she had not picked from its already clean carcass. She was perfectly well aware that already she was capable of running the hotel herself now but though Mr Hemingway had pleaded with her to come back to Silverdale during the trial, afraid of the pressure on her already stretched reserve, and, if he were honest, of the ‘friends’ Harris had threatened her with, she resisted. She was at peace at last and it showed in her firm tread and the brightness of her eyes. She knew where she was going now and those who worked with her could not get over the change in her, really they couldn’t. Sorry she was leaving, they said for under all that stiffness and her resolute demand for the best they could give, she had turned out to be a right good laugh!

  It was mid-summer when they found it, her and Tom.

  She had caught no more than a glimpse or two of Martin recently. It seemed almost every time she rode out to Silverdale she was told he was sleeping,
away up to the infirmary for an examination, taking exercise for his leg which was healing nicely, or lately, gone for a ‘spin’ with the old gentleman in the splendour of his latest Rolls Royce motor car!

  ‘I see less of you now that you’re home than I did when you were racing,’ she called lightly as she finally found him one day sitting in the mellow sunshine of the stable yard. The sky was blue and empty but for a few high clouds which looked like tufts of windblown wool and the shadows fell across the cobbles, dark and well defined. It was warm and Martin wore no coat. He had pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and his arms were brown again from the hours he had spent during his convalescence sitting in the summer sun. He could walk quite easily now, only needing one of Mr Hemingway’s walking sticks to steady himself and the slightly limping gait he had suffered at first was entirely gone. He had placed a bucket upside down on the cobbles, resting his outstretched leg on it and his back was against the sun-warmed red brick of the old stable wall along which a bench had been put.

  Two yellow retrievers lolled at his knee, older now but still the ones who had been his companions in the days when he had been occupied with the task the boy he now watched was about. His hand fondled each domed head in turn. The sun glossed the dogs’ coats to golden silk and their plumed tails moved lazily.

  Three motor cars stood in the the centre of the yard. There was Mr Charles Hemingway’s ‘old’ Vauxhall, the lovely daffodil yellow of it as perfect as the day Meg had taken her first motor car ride in it. His new Vauxhall, the ‘Prince Henry’, named after the German trials in which the model took part, stood beside it. It was the palest silvery grey, dazzling in its distinctive beauty and next to it, perhaps the most matchless of the three was the ‘Silver Ghost’, a monument to the brilliance of its designer, Charles Rolls who had died in an air crash only that year.

  In that moment, as she walked across the yard towards Martin, Meg found she could understand his love for these magnificent machines. They were sleek, glossy, pure in line and colour and yet the marvel of them did not end there for not only were they as well favoured as a lovely woman, as majestic and fine as a thoroughbred horse, they worked as hard and were as useful to man as any mechanical thing he had ever invented. Many would not as yet agree with her, saying they were no more than a toy but the day would soon come when they would be indispensable. The sun caught their bright surface, bewitching the senses and Meg found herself as mesmerised as Martin appeared to be.

  The boy with the wash-leather which he was using to buff up the already gleaming bonnet of the Rolls-Royce, hesitated as he saw her approach, glancing anxiously at Martin not certain whether he was to stay or go. His gaze was reverent, worshipping almost as he turned it on this dare-devil of the racing track who had started his illustrious career as he himself was doing, by cleaning the Hemingway collection of superb motor cars. His hero nodded, indicating that he was to take himself off and the lad scuttled away, looking back as he turned the corner to stare in envy at the glorious young lady who was crossing the yard towards the seated man and he heard her laugh ring out in quite the most lovely way, and he wondered who she was as he made his youthful and bedazzled way back to the garage.

  Meg stood with her hands on her hips for a moment, then lifted an arm to push her fingers impatiently through the windblown mass of her hair. Her cream boater was in the basket at the front of her bicycle which she had left propped by the fence and the ribbon which fastened her hair to the nape of her neck had come loose. Her hair fell about her shoulders and down the length of her back, the ends forming ringlets of bright copper. She had undone the top three buttons of her cream blouse and pushed up the long sleeves and she looked like a gypsy girl, careless and vitally alive with the sun brushing her pale cheeks to gold and lighting a flame in her eyes. They snapped joyously for she had enjoyed the vigorous bicycle ride from town, scorning the train on such a beautiful day, and there was a tiny smudge of oil on her chin where she had touched it after inspecting her bicycle chain as instructed to do by the cycling club before each ride.

  ‘Can I sit down then,’ she asked laughingly, ‘or is this a private wake? You look as though you’d lost a quid and found a tanner. What’s the matter? Won’t Mr Hemingway let you play with his motor car today?’ Her eyes gleamed wickedly as she teased him, then, becoming concerned suddenly, she leaned towards him, casting a shadow over his dark, sun bronzed face, ‘… or is your leg hurting you? You really shouldn’t come so far from the house, you know, not until it is stronger. Mrs Whitley told me that you had walked over to see her this morning and that must be nearly a mile there and back. Why don’t you take more care, Martin, and use the sense God gave you, for heaven’s sake!’ Her anxiety made her sharp. ‘You try to do too much and it’s …’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Meg, leave me be. You’re like an old hen fussing over it’s one bloody chick! Nag, nag, nag …’

  ‘Nag! I never damn well see you to nag, Martin Hunter. Ever since the trial you’ve been like that character in the book, what’s he called … The Elusive Pimpernel, always off somewhere doing some damn fool thing that can’t be any help to that leg of yours.’ She stepped away from him, the laughter of a minute ago swept away by outrage. ‘Each time I come over you’re either away in the motor car with the old gentleman or having something done to you. I seem to spend my every afternoon off cycling over here to see you and when I arrive they tell me you’re not here!’

  ‘Well Tom is, and Mrs Whitley.’

  ‘I know that but it’s you I come to see.’

  ‘Why?’

  The question surprised them both and Martin could have bitten his tongue. The look of anger in Meg’s face changed to one of amazement and she took another step away from him. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes began to flash their warning of danger, and he saw her hands clench into fists just as though she would like nothing better than to land him one. He wished he could take the word back for it sounded so ungracious and he knew he had hurt her deeply. He swallowed hastily, then managed a grin, impudent and careless, putting his hand to his brow to shade his eyes from the sunlight.

  ‘Why? Why, you daft happorth? Because you should be out enjoying yourself not hanging about here with me and Tom and Mrs Whitley on your day off, that’s why!’

  ‘But … but you’re my family.’

  ‘I know, but you must have … friends, surely, at the hotel?’

  ‘You know I haven’t. When did I have time to be gadding about?’ but he saw her relax and a wide smile lifted the corners of her mouth and with a great relieved sigh she sat down on the bench beside him, her shoulder touching his in the companionable way it had always done.

  ‘You’re quiet all of a sudden.’ Her voice fell into the sun-drenched torpor of the warm afternoon.

  ‘Sorry, our kid, I was miles away.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  He laughed. ‘Guess.’ He leaned forward to stroke the retriever’s long back.

  ‘Thinking about the future, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Her face took on contemplative expression. ‘It’s strange how it’s changing for all of us. All at the same time, I mean. Your accident, the trial and now we’re all off on a different road. Tom and I know what ours is to be but you, Martin? I know you’ve been waiting to see what Mr Hemingway was going to do, now that you can’t race for him …’ She stopped and put her hand to her mouth guiltily but he turned and smiled at her.

  ‘Meg, it’s alright. Don’t think you can’t say it. I know I can’t race but the reason isn’t my leg. I told you three years ago I’d been sidetracked from what I really wanted to do. I meant to start designing then but somehow …’ He gazed over the fields which lay to the north of Silverdale and his eyes narrowed as though he stared at some bright memory. His hand still fondled the dogs’ heads and Meg found herself watching them intently, her mind quite distracted from what he was saying but he turned again to her and she looked up from them.

  ‘I don’t want to race any more, Meggie. I’ve go
t a bit of money, saved it all these years. Mr Robert was generous, and now I’m going to do what I always planned I would do. I’m only twenty-two. I’ve years ahead of me and Mr Hemingway has accepted it at last. We’re going to find a new lad to train up to race. I’ll help him for if I’m honest I still love the thrill of the race-track but this time it will be my machine that will race on it. It’s all up here …’ He tapped his forehead and his eyes glowed warmly, his strangeness gone now. ‘All those ideas I had years ago. I’ve still got the plans and designs, most of them hare-brained, I realise that now, that I used to put on paper at Great George Square, remember, but since then I’ve seen the real thing and how they perform and I know I can better them. We’ve got to replace the Hemingway flyer and while I’ve been hanging about with this damned leg I’ve had time to think and do some new designs – just outlines really – and with Mr Robert’s backing and some of my own cash … well … we’ll be partners, Meggie! I’m going to build it in this stable block. We’re going to turn it into a machine shop … get the equipment …’

  He looked about him and his breath had quickened in his throat and chest, and Meg saw the old Martin and rejoiced. She took his hand quite naturally between hers and held it lovingly, feeling it warm and strong, the brown flesh hard against hers.

  ‘Martin!’ Her voice was a whisper of velvet and her lips curved softly on his name and her happiness for him shone in her eyes but he almost snatched his hand away. He stood up and stamped the foot of his injured leg.