Between Friends Page 35

  Edie was shocked when, as he looked up to where Miss Hughes stood framed in the window he winked, actually winked, and then blew a kiss, bold as you please, but then the sight of Miss Hughes tumbling over herself to get to the bedroom door and the sound of her excited squealing – Edie could think of no other word to describe it – took all thought from her head. Miss Hughes was just like a big kid promised a treat, and here it was, her manner said, and Edie watched breathlessly as she flew out from beneath the porch at the front door and flung herself into the chap’s arms!

  ‘Oh Martin,’ she was crying, her face all aglow in that particular way it had and her eyes like candles in the dark, and then she was laughing and calling for Tom and for several minutes the three of them, Miss Hughes, Mr Tom and the stranger formed an awkward circle, arms about one another in a comical shuffle of joy.

  ‘Why haven’t you been up …?’

  ‘It’s grand to see you, lad …’

  ‘You look so well, what …’

  ‘We hoped you’d be over before this …’

  ‘… might have telephoned …’

  ‘How’s your leg …?’

  ‘Not one word in all this time …’

  ‘I know …’

  ‘How’s Cook? She was …’

  ‘… this place … what a bloody difference!’

  ‘How long can you stay …’

  ‘My God, you both must have worked like demons …’

  ‘Sit down and tell us about …’

  ‘Must be at least nine months …’

  ‘… should have brought Mrs Whitley …’

  ‘Cook! In a motor car …’

  Edie was quite spellbound as the three of them all talked at once, sentences overlapping, the men pounding one another on the shoulder and back in the way men do to show their masculine affection; Miss Hughes clinging to the newcomer’s arm and looking up at him in a way Edie had never thought to see her employer do, and her with half the men in the district in love with her!

  At last they turned and Megan Hughes and Tom Fraser began to walk slowly round the motor car which stood at the front door and on their faces grew a look of awe. Meg put out a wondering hand and stroked the shining bonnet then turned to Martin, her eyes wide with the marvel of it.

  ‘Is it … is it yours, Martin, the one you have always …?’ She could not finish.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered simply.

  She turned back to the machine. ‘Your very own …’

  ‘She’s called the “Huntress”.’

  ‘Of course …’

  Tom shook his head, lost for words since this was the moment, the longed for, fought for, dreamed of moment which had been the irresistible destination of Martin Hunter ever since he had knelt beside Mr Hale at the Modern Bicycle Emporium and put a spanner to a nut for the first time. Then, as a boy of thirteen or fourteen years, he had had no conception of what he was to do, of what he was to become, of how his life was to change, of where that meeting with Albert Hale in the snooker room of the gymnasium was to lead him, but here it was, part of his destiny already fulfilled, it seemed, in the glory of the racing car which stood before them. It had long and lovely lines, sleek and shining and simple, with none of the awkward contours and ugly corners of those to be seen at race meets up and down the country and in it was clearly expressed the brilliance of the mind of the man who had started out in an orphanage. He had done this, brought forth this beautiful creature from his own rough beginning. Taught to read and write and cypher, no more, at the orphanage, he had educated himself until he was able to put on paper the dashing, daring ideas which had teamed in his head and this, this perfect machine was the result.

  ‘If she goes as well as she looks.’ Tom’s words were quietly spoken.

  ‘She does!’

  ‘Oh Martin …’ Tears slipped down Meg’s face and she took Martin’s hand in hers, placing the back of it against her wet cheek.

  ‘Damnation, Martin …’ Tom’s voice was rough and his own eyes were suspiciously bright and he reached for Martin’s other hand and began to pump it vigorously and all three were, in that special moment together, beyond words. They continued to stand, shoulder touching shoulder, smiling first at the racing car, then at each other until at last Martin managed a laugh, choked with emotion but a laugh nevertheless.

  ‘Come on, you two, now you’ve seen what I’ve been up to, show me what the pair of you have been doing this winter.’

  Edie watched as they turned away, walking arm in arm down the length of the garden to the shade of the great hawthorne tree with the bubbling stream flowing beneath it and where Meg had set out garden furniture of white wicker with pretty flowered cushions. It was here that she intended the ladies would be seated, those who would be driven over in their carriages, or even in their motor cars to take tea and idle away their carefree afternoons in one another’s refined company. It was empty for though it was June and the day was as warm and lovely as only an English June day can be, the ladies had not yet come!

  ‘What’ll it be, Martin?’ she heard Mr Tom call out. ‘How about a beer or is it too soon in the day?’

  ‘No, a beer would be fine, lad.’

  Edie had too much to do in the increasingly successful little inn, or hotel, as Miss Hughes like it to be called now, to stand and listen to the conversation between her employers and the stranger – dearly as she would have loved to since it would have been something to tell their Annie when she saw her on her next day off. She visited her cousin whenever she could, and often gave her a hand with her ‘gentleman boarders’. Annie had her hands full at this time of the year as the casual labourers who were her customers crowded her small establishment. There was no conflict between her and Miss Hughes for as Annie liked to say Meg’s clientele – Meg had ‘clientele’, Annie had ‘customers’ – did not interfere with Annie’s!

  Edie moved reluctantly towards the kitchen, passing Mr Tom on the way back with two foaming tankards of beer and a lemonade for Meg in his hands.

  ‘Tell us about it, Martin,’ she heard him say as he made his way down the garden, then she shut the kitchen door for the girls who worked there were all agog at the arrival of the handsome stranger and his fearsome machine and it was her job, in the absence of Miss Hughes to keep them at it!

  It was at Meg he looked throughout the whole recital of his life since they had last seen him, never taking his eyes from hers, and as his glowed, so did hers and as his flashed, hers did the same and when his softened with some mysterious emotion, she seemed to feel it too for was there anyone, anyone who understood him and his dreams as Meggie did?

  ‘You know I always meant to build my own motor car?’ he said, his beer forgotten. She nodded and somehow her hands slipped across the table between them and into his. ‘I had the use of the tack room. It was converted into a machine shop. There’s electricity and …’

  Tom Fraser was as overjoyed as Meg. Martin had come to see them after nine months without a word, not even by the challenging and complicated telephone system which Meg had insisted on having installed. They had been a time or two to Silverdale to see Mrs Whitley but each time Martin had been off somewhere, doing trials or some such and they had not seen him. Nine months doing some wonderful thing in the world of motor cars, the mysteries of which were now about to be revealed to himself and Meg. Martin and the old gentleman had gone into business together and from the look of it they had met with some success. But there was some strange undercurrent involving the two of them, Martin and Meg, carrying them this way and that and for some reason he found himself drifting to one side, excluded, forgotten and he sat back in his chair, quietly sipping his beer, watching them and a strange and disquieting emotion grew within him. What that emotion was he could not have said for was he not here, sharing the happiness with Meg and Martin, the friends he had loved for all of his life. The two people who had shared with him, their lives. He was content with Meg and the new life they had created together at ‘Hawthornes
’. He worked in the gardens during the day beside Zack, tending the bounteous growth of his vegetables, his apple and plum trees, his strawberries, raspberries, peaches, damsons, grapes and mushrooms and all destined for the delicious dishes which Meg was to put before her ‘clientele’. And all created and worked by himself. He knew his own worth. He was comfortable. He was, though he was not aware of it, possessed of enormous patience; there was an air of serenity about him as he went about the slow and peaceful task of weeding, of hoeing, his attitude one of a man in tune with the earth which supports him. He smoked a pipe and wore a cap and a working man’s jacket with a pullover beneath it. His face was bronzed by the thousands of hours he had spent in the open air and his eyes were clear, untroubled, a bright pansy blue and shining with health. They were surrounded by a fine tracery of lines, put there by the sun as he narrowed them against its glare, and by his own tendency to easy laughter. He moved, seemingly without purpose, through the hours and days of his life, doing, he realised, the very work for which he was best suited. He worked hard, though he did not give the appearance of it with his careless, indolent way of moving. He took a simple, uncomplicated pleasure in the company of the working man he served in his bar at night and should he have been asked about it, he would have replied that his world was just as it should be.

  Tom was an endearing, likeable young man, completely at his ease in the company of the more sophisticated, more worldly Meg and Martin, seeing no difference in either of them from the two spirited youngsters with whom he had grown up. Now, suddenly, as he watched Meg’s hands held so lovingly in Martin’s, he felt a dreadful need to knock them apart, to have Meg sit away from Martin and to have that expression, whatever it was, wiped off Martin’s face!

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he was saying, ‘that I’ve not been up to see you but we’ve been up to our eyes in it, Meg. I’ve just not had a second to spare. I should have telephoned, I knew you’d had one put in, Cook told me, but … you understand, don’t you?’ His eyes begged for forgiveness and Tom watched Meg’s become lustrous with warmth and again that hostile feeling arose in him.

  ‘We’re going to try her out on all the major race tracks in the country,’ Martin was saying, ‘There’s to be a rally, the first Monte Carlo Rally and another in America. The “Indianapolis 500” it’s to be called, and then we’re going for the “Lightning Long” at Brooklands, and the “Long Handicap” if she does well …’

  He lifted his head with the pride of a young prince and squeezed her hands ardently and waited for her to speak, to give thanks for this gift he brought to lay at her feet. She shook her head, quiet now, moving from the excited young girl of a moment ago to the maturity Martin could see was starting her on her own course. She was different, controlled and perfectly capable of ordering this business, this hotel and managing the people who worked for her and looked to her for guidance. She would follow him, in her chosen profession and travel, as he had done, a long way from the world of the three youngsters who had larked about at Great George Square. The subtle change in his own relationship with Mr Robert had deeply satisfied him. They were no longer employer and employee. They were man and man working in partnership, a partnership assumed on the completion of Martin’s design. That was his and Mr Robert accorded him the respect which was due to him as a professional man. He had two young men working under him – young men from the engineering college he himself had attended – and they were to travel with him wherever he and his machine went, together with a third young man who was training to race Martin’s car. They were all under his directorship. He was the master now and he gave orders to them with a positive authority for only he knew what they were about.

  He turned then to smile at Tom. His friend had been silent for the past half hour and Martin was quite bewildered by the awkward expression which had fixed itself on Tom’s face. He was looking at Martin for all the world as though he cared nought for Martin’s success and yet only a while ago he had been as genuinely enthusiastic as Meg. His tankard was gripped fiercely in his hand and though it was empty he placed it to his lips and pretended to drink.

  Martin’s smile deepened. ‘What’s up, me old scouser?’

  ‘Nowt.’ Tom’s voice was sharp. It was now, when he was put beside Martin that the gulf which had grown between them was most apparent. Tom’s casual flannels and open-necked, collarless shirt were haphazard, appearing as though they had been thrown on that morning, the first thing that came to his hand. He liked what were called ‘peg-top’ trousers, comfortable, with a loose waistband and braces, wide thighs and knees and tapering at the bottom of the leg. He could tuck them into the tops of his boots he said and they were practical for the job he did. His cap was pushed to the back of his head to reveal the short crop of his golden curls.

  But it was not just in the way they dressed that the two young men differed. Tom had not changed from the easy going good-natured lad he had always been. The new position he had acquired as the proprietor of a country inn, as he still thought of it, had in no way brought him a sense of his own importance. He had not gained the urbanity Martin had, nor his discriminating taste for the good things in life. In their different ways they had become men, and in their different ways they were going about the business of being men, and as Meg looked at Martin she quite failed to see the expression which clouded Tom’s boyish face, and was quite amazed when he put his arm tightly about her to walk up the slope of the lawn to Martin’s beautiful motor car, but Martin did and a truth was born between them that day. It was something which both momentarily recognised but neither would admit to, since after all, they were brothers but Megan Hughes stood between them, not as she had always done, to be protected and watched over, to be kept safe from other men, but amazingly, from one another! It was over in that brief fraction of a second and, startled, they smiled warily, then nodded, two young animals not awfully sure what the other was up to.

  When Martin drove away he did so with the insolent swagger of a man who knows exactly his own worth, borne up by the absolute certainty that he and his automobile were, without doubt, the finest on the road. Edie viewed their combined magnificence from the safety of the porch and sniffed. Racing car, indeed! All flash and glitter in her eyes and so was he and not to be put in the same class as Mr Tom who was a grand lad. She had heard Miss Hughes plead with the handsome strutting chap to stop for a taste of her steak and kidney pie, telling him that it had only this moment come from the oven and that there were fresh strawberries grown by Tom and cream from their own cow but he only laughed and kissed her cheek.

  ‘Martin has things to do, Meg,’ Edie heard Mr Tom say quietly and knew quite positively that he was glad when Martin said he really must go but he would be back as soon as he was able, perhaps after the racing at Brooklands, whatever that was!

  The sunshine wrapped about the couple who stood in front of the porch, falling in a warm curtain of gold and as the monster roared away Edie thought what a lovely couple they made. It filtered through the open doorway and into the wide passage, softly touching the polished red of the quarry tiled floor and lapped gently in a receding wave at the white-washed walls. Copper glow was picked out from the warming pans which hung there, buffed to brightness each day by herself, and a magnificent profusion of Mr Tom’s early roses, flaming in crimson and scarlet, burned in an enormous copper jug on a low table at the foot of the stairs.

  She watched them come in and as Mr Tom sauntered off, whistling cheerfully now – to the back of the house to have a last look at his lettuces before it began to rain as he was certain it would – she hoped that the chap would stay away for really Miss Hughes and Mr Tom were better off without him and certainly did not need the disturbing influence he seemed to bring!

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  IT WAS AFTER midnight and Meg stared sightlessly towards the half drawn curtains which fluttered at the open bedroom window and beyond to the summer darkness and wondered what it was that had awakened her. She turned her head on the p
illow and listened but the sound did not repeat itself. Perhaps the dog had moved against something in his restless wandering in the dark, disturbing an ornament on a table or the brush which hung beside the fireplace in the kitchen, or was it the echo of the barking of the dog fox in the spinney which had awakened her?

  She shifted fretfully, pushing aside the sheets which snarled about her, lifting and straightening them, then settled herself to sleep again but her body was disturbed now, alive with the vividness of the half forgotten dream from which she had awakened. She could scarcely remember it, but Martin had been in it and his warm presence was still with her in a strange and distracting way and it left her … well, she could only call it … tingling and subject to rhythmic spasms of some half remembered feeling she had no name for, but which was unnerving and decidedly uncomfortable.

  She punched her pillow violently, turning to lie flat on her stomach, tossing her mind feverishly back and forth between tomorrow’s menus and yesterday’s takings, to the problems of where she would accommodate the three young American cyclists – they had descended upon her that afternoon with the wild enthusiasm of their nationality declaring they must have a room, even to share, for three nights and were at this moment on camp beds in the attic directly above her!

  Perhaps it was this which had rendered her so restive. The American accent was quite distinctive and Martin had picked it up slightly when he was in their country, and she had learned to recognise it from the many young people who toured the country, some, as they artlessly confided, searching for their roots!