Between Friends Read online

  Meg turned haughtily in her seat.

  ‘I don’t know why you did that, Martin Hunter, since I was going to stop anyway. Look.’ She lifted her hand to point and Tom smiled for she had always had a strong sense of the dramatic.

  They both looked obediently and Tom waited, smiling.

  ‘What is it?’ Martin asked the very same question he himself had asked all those years ago.

  ‘Its our place.’

  ‘Your …?’

  Martin was bewildered, his anger forgotten as he looked at the tumbledown building surrounded by what seemed acres of overgrown wilderness. ‘You don’t mean to tell me that this is the place you and Tom have …’

  ‘Yes! Isn’t it absolutely beautiful?’

  Martin watched as Meg climbed down from the vehicle and with the air of one who has come home, began to walk towards the old farmhouse.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘IF YOU WILL sign here, Mr Fraser and you too, Miss Hughes, and also here, if you please, the property is yours.’

  Tom stared, quite mesmerised, at the solicitor and though Meg acknowledged that the man was a pompous ass and enough to make you squirm, he knew what he was about in the world of the law. He had been recommended by Mr Hemingway as the man she needed to negotiate the details of the purchase of the farmhouse on Merrydown Hill and though it was only three months since the day they had rediscovered it, it would, in a moment legally belong to herself and Tom. The property was to be in their joint names, of course. She had insisted upon it. The old gentleman, Mr Hemingway, unimpressed by Tom’s easy-going, and in his eyes, quite careless manner on the subject of business, which after all, this was to be, had been hesitant, saying might it not be more realistic if the property was put completely in Megan’s competent hands, and name! He was thinking of the loan the bank had made her, on his surety, naturally, and having absolute faith in her ability to repay it had had no hesitation in backing her – particularly when he had been made aware of the sum she had saved in her three years at the Adelphi which was to be added to it! Not that the one hundred guineas she had asked the bank for had constituted a risk but he did not want the girl brought down by an unreliable partner and if the business was in her name only she was safe. Fraser was a hard-working young man. He had proved his worth in the years he had been at Silverdale but was he the kind of chap who could ‘make a go’ in the world of commerce? Robert Hemingway had his doubts.

  Still, she would not be moved and grudgingly, admiring her loyalty, he had agreed to Fraser’s name on the documents.

  Surreptitiously Meg put her toe against Tom’s foot and gave it a gentle nudge and when he turned to look at her she nodded to let him know it was alright and that he should go ahead with the signing. They were together in this, her shining eyes said, as they had always been and what was there to fear? He grinned, then winked as though to say the whole thing was really a great joke anyway and picking up the pen signed his name to the document which made he and Meg the new owners of the farmhouse.

  It had taken all of Meg’s formidable will and the desperation of her belief in what she did to persuade him to it! What did he want with an inn, he said bewilderment written all over his boyish face, when he had a perfectly good job, one which he thoroughly enjoyed and, more to the point, he was good at. He liked the outdoor life and the satisfaction of watching what he had planted, grow and mature and be enjoyed by those for whom he worked. He loved the animals he worked with. He liked the feel of a bit of wood in his hands and the way he had learned, under the guidance of Bob, the carpenter employed on the estate, how to use a hammer, a saw and all the other tools he was allowed to tinker with. He was no good with figures, he pleaded with Meg, and had no head for business and besides, he and Jess …

  Like all those with an uncomplicated and facile nature he could be stubborn but he was no match for Megan Hughes in the end! She had all the answers to his every argument. They were to be the perfect team, she told him. In fact, she could not do it alone for without him she would be working, as it were, with only one hand. He was to be the other, the hand which would be employed with all the manual jobs her hand could not manage.

  ‘Dear God, Tom, have you any idea what it would cost me to buy fresh vegetables if we don’t grow our own? Fruit? Eggs? Milk? Cheese? Butter? With our own kitchen garden, fruit trees, greenhouse and with a cow, a couple of pigs, hens, we could be completely self-supporting and within a year be showing a healthy profit. I need a man I can trust in the bar, when it opens and someone to supervise the men who will do the repairs. I can’t be everywhere, Tom. I shall have the financial arrangements to see to, staff to organise, the renovation of the inside of the inn for I mean to take in guests as well as do meals and …’

  ‘Confound it, Meggie, don’t go so bloody fast. I have to have time to think …’

  ‘What is there to think about? Either you want to do this with me or you don’t!’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. There are other things to consider besides you.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Tom, and I realise how much you enjoy doing what you do at Silverdale but you can still work at exactly the same thing at the inn, only you will be working for yourself!’

  ‘I don’t see how …’

  ‘Because we’ll be partners! It will belong to us. You and me, and every penny we make will be ours.’

  ‘But I can’t just up and leave the Hemingways after all …’

  ‘Why not? He has a dozen men to do what you’ve been doing. Not as well, I give you that …’ She grinned but he was not to be distracted.

  ‘And what about …’

  ‘What, for God’s sake? What? Give me one good reason why you should stay at Silverdale. Go on!’

  ‘It’s a steady job, Meg. One I like and which I can stay in for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Good God, Tom Fraser! You’re twenty-two years old and all you want is safety!’

  ‘Now look here, Megan, there’s nothing wrong with liking a bit of security. I might want to get married …’

  ‘Married! Who to?’

  ‘Well, me an’ Jess have …’

  ‘Bring her with you. She can work in the kitchens, or the bar …’

  ‘Here, hold on! I didn’t say I was going to …’

  ‘Well, stop making excuses then. Listen Tom, listen to me.’ Her voice became soft and she took his hand between hers. She looked up into his face with all the earnest entreaty of a child who longs to be allowed this special, special favour. From his chair in the corner of Mrs Whitley’s kitchen where he sat, his mending leg resting on a stool, Martin Hunter felt his heart go out to his life-long friend for how, how was he to withstand the enchantment of Meggie Hughes when she had set her heart on something? She was absolutely glorious, irresistible and he could see Tom’s determination begin to falter. Tom really did not want to leave Silverdale. He was completely happy here. It was his place and he was entirely suited to it but then, knowing his nature as he did, would he not be just as satisfied doing exactly what he did here, in the place Meg had marked out for him? She was the driving force. She would guide the business, and Tom with it, along the path of success, for she would be successful. There was no doubt about that but Tom was afraid to gamble what he already had on an uncertain future.

  ‘Tom,’ Meg was saying and both Martin and Mrs Whitley held their breath. ‘Tom, please come with me. Come and help me in this. I can’t do it alone, Tom. I need you, please Tom, please.’ Her eyes swam with unshed tears and Martin watched as Tom’s open face, so expressive that every emotion showed there, became uncertain, soft with his fondness for her. As Martin turned away his eyes met Mrs Whitley’s.

  He stood up abruptly, his gaze fleeing from the understanding he saw in her face and the stool crashed to the floor and the tabby cat which had curled itself in its own tail on the hearthrug before the fire sprang to its feet, spitting in fright.

  ‘I must be off,’ he said harshly. ‘I can’t stop here listening to you t
wo bickering about your bloody future. I’ve my own to see to!’ He reached for the stick which he still leaned on when he was tired and for a dreadful moment he felt as though he was about to fall.

  ‘Martin?’ Mrs Whitley’s voice was anxious and the other two looked at her curiously for she sounded so odd but Martin Hunter turned back to her, smiling now, then leaned to kiss her soft wrinkled cheek.

  ‘Cheerio Cook,’ he said, his voice and manner quite normal, his eyes smiling imperturbably and she wondered why she had been so suddenly wary for there was nothing there but his affection for herself.

  The farmhouse, as Meg had always thought of it, had, it turned out, once been a coaching inn, it’s custom destroyed in the early years by the coming of the railway, and she had been delighted to find when she and Tom had been shown round by the agent who was acting on behalf of the owner, that the front room into which they stepped directly from the overgrown garden, was actually a snug bar-room with an enormous fireplace at one end and a counter at the other. The floor was flagged, covered by a layer of filth inches deep for the place had been empty for six years, and cobwebs were laid like lace from one end of the room to the other, drifting in a haze about her head and touching her face with soft insistence.

  Behind the counter a door led to a cold room and then into a huge kitchen with an alcove at one end in which was placed a fire-grate and on either side of the grate were huge ovens. There were wooden seats built in beside them underneath which were cupboards. The beams overhead in each room were black and at least a foot thick and in the centre of the kitchen was a deal table so large it had evidently been abandoned as it could not be heaved through the doorway.

  There were long, stone-flagged passages with tiny rooms off them and several larger ones, the biggest of which would serve admirably as a dining-room. A narrow stone spiral staircase, the steps of which were worn in the centre led to the upstairs landing. Again there were meandering passages off which led bedrooms, large and small, all dark and gloomy for the windows were mullioned and incredibly dirty.

  Tom wandered behind her, opening cupboards and looking inside for signs of damp and rotten wood, well able to recognise it now with his new expertise learned from the carpenter at Silverdale. He ran his hands appraisingly across crumbling floorboards and flaking plaster, window sills and door frames, whistling to himself, absorbed, now he had made up his mind to it, in the consideration of how much it would take, in time and money, to get this old place fit for human habitation. It had been occupied by nothing but field mice and roosting birds in the chimney, and it was for that reason they had got it for such a low sum but would the restoring of it, in the long run, make it an expensive purchase? Meg had said not and that they could make a go of it and if hard work and determination were the factors needed to do it, then by God Tom Fraser agreed with her.

  They stayed with a certain Mrs Annie Hardcastle in the village of Great Merrydown during those last weeks before the inn opened, supervising the work which was being done. She was glad to have them, she said, for she was a widow with one child, a son with a crippled leg four inches shorter than the sound one. Born like it, just after her Bert went in the South African wars, Annie Hardcastle said, wanting no sympathy, and no-one could tell her why, but she loved her Will for he was all she had and he loved her. He did odd jobs about the village, and they managed but she was always glad of a bit extra. She had a small house two doors down from the village store, convenient to the inn. She had taken in lodgers for thirty-six years now, ever since she had become a widow. Casual farm workers, migrants who came and went with the seasons, sleeping in her clean rooms and eating her plain nourishing food. She was pleased, though slightly mystified, to be paid the good money she received from the young couple who had been spilled, with their boxes, on to her doorstep from the shining motor car which, it turned out, though not driven by him, belonged to no less a personage than Mr Robert Hemingway. It was a name known even out here in Great Merrydown and though she was uncertain of their relationship to the great man she was not unduly concerned. Live and let live, was Annie Hardcastle’s motto, and besides, she took a great liking to Miss Hughes and Mr Fraser and wished them the best of luck in their undertaking. They had a lot of pluck, the two of them restoring that old tumbledown place on Merrydown Hill and by God they would need it.

  They employed two men to help Mr Fraser with the repairing of the crumbling woodwork, replacing the tiles on the roof, replastering the walls and putting in new window frames. He was a real handyman and Zack Entwistle – one of the two men taken on and a distant relative of Annie’s, as were most of the folk hereabout – was fulsome in his praise and his awe at the amount of work the young ‘maister’ could get through.

  ‘We can’t keep up wi’ ’im, me an’ Albert,’ he remarked repeatedly to anyone who would listen and it was true, but Meg and Tom were determined that by the spring of next year they would be ready for their first ‘guests’ and before that exciting day there was much to be done. The walls were whitewashed until they gleamed and the floors scrubbed a dozen times until the beautiful red of the flags glowed softly in the sunlight which streamed through the sparkling windows.

  ‘Eeh, Miss Hughes, it looks a fair treat,’ Annie breathed for really who could have believed that such a transformation could take place. Megan Hughes was a girl after Annie’s own heart and if there was anything else she could do to help her, she said, she had only to say the word.

  ‘Just call me Meg, please,’ she was told, and she did and with Edie Marshall, another relative of hers from over Lower Hargrave way and always glad to earn a bob or two, the three of them had made a right good job of it and if she said it herself you could eat your dinner off them floors!

  Meg had been down to Northwich, and on a cold but sunny day at the beginning of November, a dray the size of a small house drew up the steep hill between the double row of sturdy, stone built cottages, past the staring women and children and dogs, to the top of Great Merrydown village street. Annie Hardcastle was there with Edie on that day, putting the finishing touches to the tiny bedroom which Mr Fraser – call me Tom, for God’s sake – had finished painting only that morning. He had papered the walls with the loveliest wallpaper, all pink rosebuds and tender green leaves on white. The curtains were a thick white muslin, lined in pink cotton and Annie Hardcastle would have been happy to settle in it herself, it was so pretty. It was to be Meg’s room, Tom had said fondly, for she had never had anything really nice of her own in her life and it was time she did!

  The horses which pulled the dray were breathing heavily when they arrived at the top of Merrydown Hill. They stopped outside the inn gladly, ‘whoa-ed’ to a lumbering halt by the carter who enquired cheerfully if they wanted a hand with this lot? ‘This lot’ proved to be strong oak furniture, settles, beds, tables, chairs, a dresser and all in need of a good dusting and waxing with Annie’s special polish, but built to last and as good stuff as Annie had ever seen. There were boxes filled to overflowing with copper pots and pans and crockery, bedding rugs and even a picture or two, and she heard Edie whisper to Zack who seemed to have become more or less a permanent fixture about the place even though the work was all done, that there must be a bit of ‘brass’ to pay for all this lot!

  ‘Will you stay and help, Mrs Hardcastle? I would be so relieved if you could. I am hoping to have my first visitors by Easter and there is still so much to be done, and Zack …’ Meg Hughes turned her brilliant tawny smile on the old man who blinked like a dazzled schoolboy and snatched his cap from his head, ‘… perhaps if you have no other commitments in the future you could make a start on the garden with Tom. It is somewhat overgrown …’ She smiled at the understatement for indeed the garden was like a wilderness and would need a great deal of work to bring it to the situation Megan Hughes envisaged. ‘I intend to do cream teas when the weather permits and of course a gentleman may bring his beer outside from the bar if he has a mind to. Perhaps a bench or two, what d’you think, so
that those who wish may sit in the sunshine. The garden has a pleasant outlook.’

  The old man hardly gave her time to finish speaking before he had picked up his spade and had begun to attack the weeds as though the first customer was to arrive that very afternoon.

  Edie moved restlessly. What about her, her manner seemed to say but Meg had not forgotten her. She was a good worker and would be useful when they were busy, as Meg fully expected to be. She could get on without supervision which was a great asset when the director of this tiny empire needed to be in two dozen places at the same time! There were ten bedrooms to be cleaned each day when the first guests arrived, and a kitchen the size of a football pitch besides the other downstairs rooms, and she herself would be busy with the cooking, the baking, the managing and accounting of every penny made and spent, the planning and running of the venture and would have little time for anything else.

  ‘I was wondering, Edie … I was wondering if you would consider working full time? This is a big place and I will need someone who can be trusted to keep it as I like it.’

  Edie preened and her face was rosy with pleasure and Annie Hardcastle, shrewd with the native wit of the Northcountry woman and a good judge of character was aware that this girl – for she was really no more – would go far. She knew how to treat people, to give them a feeling of self-worth. She had a way with them which brought out their best. She was a hard taskmaster but she was fair and when a job was well done she told you so! But she had a control which was strange in one so young as though something in her past had given her the need for self-discipline. She was often sharp-tongued and her eyes were keen in the search for any infringement of her rules, and if she was quick to praise she was also quick to remonstrate for her standards were high.

  And look what she had done with this place! A couple of months ago it had been no more than a ramshackle dilapidated old building, almost a shell really, ready to fall in on itself with age and disuse, but she had seen its potential, found a ‘backer’, as she put it to Annie Hardcastle, though Annie was not entirely certain what that meant, got on her knees with a bucket and scrubbing brush, an occupation she was well used to, she cheerfully said and turned the place into a little palace. The paintwork was white and shining against the rosy bricks, the windows winking in the sunshine, pretty chintz curtains, clean and fresh fluttering at each one and the spotless rooms waiting only for the furniture to be moved in.