Between Friends Read online

  She tossed her thick plait of hair away from her shoulders. It was heavy and hot as it unwound itself about the pillow and she muttered irritably, swearing she would have it cut off. She turned again, rolling to the edge of the bed, flinging her arms across her closed eyes. She wished she could sleep again. They had been frantically busy since Easter and the inn was now filled with tourists, young people, like the three Americans, mostly men who were cycling from one end of the country to the other, intent it seemed on missing nothing from the craggy cliffs of Cornwall, the soft downs of Devon, the grandeur of the Cotswolds and northwards through the Derbyshire peakland, the Yorkshire Moors and gaily on to ‘do’ Scotland! Anywhere a bit of lovely countryside presented itself or a place of historical interest caught their imagination, they went. They poured in hordes, not only from other countries as far away as America, but from every town and city in Britain where a young man or woman might afford the price of a bicycle! From nearer home, Manchester, Bolton, Wigan, St Helens, Liverpool and Stoke-on-Trent on a day’s outing, moving on to Chester or North Wales.

  ‘The Hawthorne Tree’ was now on the ‘Cyclist Touring Club’s’ list as suitable accommodation for its members and was a favourite stopping off place. The inn was packed out every single night of the week, the farmers, their labourers, cottagers, woodworkers from the forest area, men from the local saw-mill and those who worked in rural jobs in the vicinity, dropped into the ‘Hawthorne’ for a pint or two. Meg’s food had become well known for its tasty goodness and cheapness and many of the men who were single ate their evening meal there regularly. The nearest public house was over in the next village of Little Davenport, only a mile or two as the crow flies and though these men had been prepared to leg it over there a couple of nights a week there was no need now they had their own local. It had not been just luck on Meg’s part that she had picked a village which did not enjoy its own public house, and she gave thanks that it was doing even better than she had hoped for, but though these men were the bread and butter of her business she was after the jam to go on it!

  The cyclists and the hikers came. They sat in the ‘snug’ or the public bar, or if the weather allowed it, on benches in the lovely gardens Tom and Zack had created from the wilderness and drank beer and shandy and cider and ate heaped platesful of her roast meats, steak and kidney pie, veal pasties, cheese, pickles and Whitstable oysters which were inexpensive and tasty, before ‘pushing on’. If they had come far then they would stay the night, lovingly bedding down their machines as though they were thoroughbreds, in the stables at the rear of the inn.

  Meg sat up and sighed tremulously. It was no good. Her mind was as active as a hive of hornets stirred up with a stick! Easing herself from the bed, on edge and restive – that energy which had always been her’s keeping her from sleep even after eighteen hours on her feet – she moved to the window and sitting down on the padded seat Tom had made for her, she looked out into the impenetrable darkness that was the countryside at night. Not a light showed anywhere for those who must be up at dawn did not spend the hours allotted for sleep in any other activity! She could hear the faint echo of Edie’s snores from the far reaches of the attic bedroom she slept in and the creak of a camp bed above her as one of the travellers turned in his sleep.

  She sighed again and rested her head against the leaded panes of glass. She wished she could rest. She had so much to do, so much to plan in her mind but though her body was weary her thoughts would not let it rest. She stirred awkwardly, then stood up, stretching her arms above her head. She would go downstairs and look at the accounts and tomorrow’s menus. That would stop her mind from wandering about in useless circles which led nowhere. It was what she and Tom were doing, and would do in the future which must concern her now. They lived amiably side by side and she knew he was a contented man. He enjoyed what he did at the inn each day. He had no responsibilities for Meg dealt with everything from the ordering of the beer and spirits, the food which she herself prepared to the payment of the bills and the servants’ wages. She told him when to open the bars and when to close them, when another barrel was needed and even, since she had compared his clothes to those of Martin, what he should wear in his position as the owner of a successful hotel!

  And he liked being the owner. The men who frequented the inn looked up to him, affording him the respect given a man who works for himself. He got on well with his customers as he had done with the men he had once worked with at Silverdale, since it had always been in his nature to like his fellow men and to have that good fellowship returned.

  She herself helped to bring in the men who drank there since she was not blind to her own attractions, nor the looks which the men gave her when she laughed with them. A hungry look, it was, as though they would like nothing better than to get to know Tom Fraser’s partner more intimately. The field was open to all comers, they knew that, for Tom himself seemed not to be interested, though there were those who were convinced and said so to the others, that he had a certain look about him which said a man should take care in his hearing when he was speaking to Megan Hughes! Her magnificence was like the splendour and warmth of the sun to the men who drank in the low-ceilinged rooms and her superb body was a constant lure to them. But the strange thing was, they said, she appeared to have no conception of her own beauty, which was a kind of beauty in itself, nor the effect she had on them, but they treated her respectfully and brought her their custom again and again and that was all Meg cared about.

  She and Tom made a good team since he knew the men’s admiration and banter meant nothing to her. Indeed he took part in it and the atmosphere was convivial to those who were their customers in the bar. They had been successful in what they did. It was almost eighteen months since they had begun and in the first year they had made a clear profit of over £500 and already this year they had doubled that and the loan from the bank was completely repaid. The inn was theirs and the deeds to prove it lay safely locked away in a tin box in her desk. She had even made one or two investments, under the guidance of Mr Chancellor, the shrewd bank manager Mr Hemingway had recommended, in the world of stocks and shares. Tom had been stunned beyond speech by Meg’s boldness, longing, she was sure to put their profit in a sock and keep it under the mattress, and could not understand that these small enterprises in which Meg invested could bring them further dividends.

  ‘But Mr Fraser,’ Mr Chancellor had protested, when he and Meg had gone to pay the final part of the loan, ‘you cannot allow capital to lie about unemployed!’

  Capital! Unemployed! What in damnation was the man talking about, Tom’s expression said and Mr Chancellor, relieved to have one member of the partnership who knew a sovereign from a farthing, turned again thankfully to Miss Hughes whose bright intelligence and quick grasping mind knew exactly what Mr Chancellor meant. She was eager to take his advice which was most gratifying and learned quickly. She read the newspapers he told her would be of interest to her in business, those dealing with finance and when she turned her deep amber gaze on him as she stood up to shake his hand and thank him for his help, he was quite bowled over by the disparity between the two partners. A nice enough chap with a most personable disposition but Miss Hughes was so attentive where one could only say he fidgeted. She was level-headed and far sighted but he seemed as merry and careless of their money as a ten year old, saying cheerfully that it was for spending, wasn’t it!

  The inn was silent. Meg cocked her head to listen as the faint bark of the dog fox sounded from across the fields towards Three House Farm. It would be after Jack Thwaites’ hens again. Downstairs she heard the yellow dog stir and knew he would be at the back door, nose to the doorstep as he tried to sniff out the scent of his old enemy. He gave a small warning growl and she smiled. He would not bark unless the fox, or indeed any intruder came within the inn’s yard, but he could not resist letting whoever was out there know he was to be reckoned with. An intruder himself, wandering in one day soon after they had moved into the inn,
he had settled down as if he had as much right to be there as they did and he guarded his territory zealously.

  Meg crossed the room and slipped quietly through the open doorway and down the stairs. The dog was there to greet her, his delight showing in his thrusting nose and pluming tail.

  ‘Good boy, good old boy,’ she said quietly and fondled his head as he followed her down the long passage to the small room which she used as an office. She sat down at the desk and reached across to light the lamp. It reflected in the dark square of the window beside her own pale face and she stared at it pensively for a moment or two then, her thoughts beginning to drift again she reached hastily for a ledger which was placed to the right-hand side of the desk. She opened it, flicking through it until she came to the last written page. She ran a practised eye down the long, neat columns of figures, her lips murmuring wordlessly as she added and subtracted. There was not one mistake, not one erasure nor incorrect total and Meg admired the perfection of it, remembering the hours she had spent in the company of the bookkeeper at the ‘Adelphi’. She checked the amounts at the bottom of the page, making a swift calculation in her head and smiled.

  How well they had done! Eighteen months and their success had exceeded far beyond what she had hoped for. It seemed everything she did, every innovation she carried out – bar one – had brought them good fortune. Her goal had been an efficient, profit making concern in which she and Tom might find a niche and she had succeeded. Her own skill in the hotel trade had not surprised her. She was good at it. She had always known it. She had a felicitous knack of being able to judge where and when she should take a gamble but they were not gambles, she came to realise as her achievements grew. It was an instinct which told her what would serve favourably and what would not and except for one instance she found she could rely on it and trust it!

  There was the scheme she had thought up of turning the loft of the disused stables into small, spartan but clean rooms in which the overflow of young cyclists and hikers might be accommodated. It had cost money to renovate, good money chucked down the drain in some people’s opinion, but it had proved otherwise for the young people were quick to take advantage of the cheaper lodgings and the freedom to be more high-spirited in the rooms away from the main building; and the better rooms in the inn were left for those who desired more comforts and had no wish to cross the stable yard to reach them!

  But no matter what she did, no matter how hard she worked at it, despite the word that got round of the elegance of her dining-room which might be hired privately and was furnished in exactly the way the dining-room at Silverdale was furnished, of her bedrooms and drawing-room, of the simple beauty of her secluded garden where one might take tea on a sunny afternoon, they did not come. The trade she was aiming at, the class of person for whom she had created it, the clientele for whom she had trained for so long at the Adelphi, to serve, they did not come!

  She had spent hours, days, in the company of Annie Hardcastle, scouring second-hand shops, going to sales and auctions in which household furniture of only the very best quality was to be found, purchasing a dining table with pillar and claw ends in the loveliest burnished mahogany with a dozen chairs to match upholstered in pale cream velvet, rosewood side tables to place next to a rosewood sofa where the ladies might take their coffee. Pedestal and slab sideboards and a silver salver to place on it. A Victoria bath for a bedroom, plated candlesticks and sets of ivory-handled knives and forks. Handsome cut crystal and a fine bone china dinner service. A lady’s wardrobe and posted bedsteads with velvet curtains, mirrors and dressing glasses and Brussels carpets, all of the finest quality and hand-picked by herself and Annie Hardcastle who knew good stuff when she saw it. They all sat in quite elegant splendour where she and Annie had arranged them in the empty quiet of the rooms she had set apart from the rest of the hotel waiting for the quality guests she had envisaged and who never came!

  She let it be known that there was a private dining-room with its own entrance where a gentleman might take his family for Sunday luncheon, or where a small reception might be held in the evening, since her cuisine was of the highest order, without becoming involved with a person who was not of his own class! Dishes such as asparagus soup, crimped salmon, trout à la Genévése, lobster sauce, Charlotte à la Parisienne, compôte of gooseberries, soufflé of rice, vol-au-vent of strawberries and cream, all home produced, naturally, and dozens of other gourmet dishes which she had studied under the greatest chefs in the country, at the Adelphi Hotel to perfect, and which she would prepare with her own hand, were whispered discreetly in ears which might be persuaded to pass them on to those who dined on such dishes, but they did not come!

  What had begun as an ordinary inn where a man might have a pint and chat to his cronies had now been transformed into an hotel where the traveller might have a drink in one of its cosy bars, tea in the garden or the delightful tea room, a more substantial meal in the elegant dining-room, or stay the night in one of its comfortable bedrooms.

  But they did not come! Oh yes, she was full each night and day from May until October with the young and the enthusiastic cyclists, and motorists now, who wanted an inexpensive holiday and were happy to eat good, plain fare and sleep in a clean, plain bedroom. She made money and worked hard for it but it was not what she wanted and she knew the reason why!

  She had wanted both. She had thought in her innocence that they could be kept apart. They did not mix. They could not mix and she should have known it. The good folk, plain and outspoken who came to her inn because it was value for money, who liked a laugh and a tart remark, a joke and a wink, would not care to be on their best behaviour in the company of the gentry and the gentry did not wish to be in their company at all. The working man occupied her snug and her tap-room, chaps who wanted nothing more than their dominoes and dartboard, their tankards resting comfortably on the plain wooden bar, the air they breathed thick with pipe smoke and they were not to be tampered with. They did not wish to see the ‘carriage’ trade drifting round to the ‘smart side’ as they called it good humouredly and Meg knew that once it happened, she would lose them.

  And the ‘smart side’ set itself? What of them? Should she persuade them to it, would they wish the well-bred peace of their French cuisine to be interrupted by shouts of ribald laughter as Jack Thwaites told one of his questionable jokes? Would they care to find themselves face to face with George Anderson, smelling of the farm yard through which his cows had just passed, and where his boots had picked up most of what they left behind? And how would they react to the sight of Bert Taylor, legless and cross-eyed, staggering down the drive held up by the solicitous, good-natured arms of his fellow drinkers, only fractionally less drunk than himself? The young people, many of them working class themselves who ‘put up’ in her ‘plain’ bedrooms and who rollicked merrily in the loft above the disused stables, thought of it as a ‘lark’, part of their holiday, their freedom from the routine of their daily life. They ate her good food and cycled off with great vigour, promising to return next year and to recommend her to their peers.

  Her own face looked back at her from the black depths of the window. Her hand fell to the dog’s head and he sighed as though in sympathy and she became aware, as her thoughts marched dolefully round and round inside her head, that she must face up to the fact that unless she was prepared to change it, it would not change for her. She had a splendid little business here, successful and growing, as word of her hospitality spread, taken by young cyclists and hikers to all parts of the country. Tom was jubilant, proud of her, he said, for it was all her doing and in a way she had pride in herself for it had gone well. Her shrewd brain and quick, far-seeing mind, her sharp business sense had made it what it was – but Tom must not be left out for he did the work of two men, cheerfully, willingly and was clever at what he did. He had left only an hour ago to walk down to Annie Hardcastle’s after being on the go for eighteen hours, first in the gardens which were a full time job in themselves, the pa
sture, the care of the pigs and hens and then, when the bars opened, standing genially pulling pints until closing time. He loved it! These were his kind of people and what she had in mind would have to be hard fought for. She would have to struggle, not only for his agreement but for his support since she could not do it alone. He would see no sense in it, she knew that for Tom had not the restless need to fly higher and higher as she had. Martin would understand since he was the same as she was, striving for that dream they both had, of different worlds certainly, but a compulsion which made them fight tooth and nail in the free for all that was life.

  His face swam to rest beside hers on the darkened window pane and she sighed again, more deeply than ever. They had not seen him since last Christmas when she and Tom had gone over to visit Mrs Whitley. He had been busy he said, for the racing car, the ‘Huntress’ had been enormously successful on the racing circuits of America and Europe and now he was to manufacture a smaller version from the prototype and, eventually, a motor car for the ‘family’ man for that was where the future lay, as he had always said. He and Mr Robert had taken on new premises for the stables at Silverdale had become too small for their growing concern. He was to design a glider, he said, an idea which had been developing in his head since he himself had learned to fly, perhaps he had told her? and he and the old gentleman were to branch out again and all in all was, as Tom said somewhat sourly, far too busy for the likes of them!

  Meg had been quite amazed for it was not like Tom to speak in that way, particularly about their Martin, but both men had been somewhat strained with one another and had looked away when she questioned them, saying they were both working hard and not to mind them for after all it was Christmas!

  ‘Anyway,’ Martin said, ‘you’re never in when I telephone.’

  Meg’s mouth fell open since it was the first time she had heard of a telephone call.