Between Friends Read online

  Tom, the one who had begun it all, though he still gazed admiringly into the bright, upturned face of his partner, began to sense the changing mood of the crowd at his back and when the penny whistler suddenly stopped his whistling, he glanced about him uncertainly. He was just in time to see Martin duck beneath a smart, left-handed swing from some burly chap with bright red hair and he groaned despairingly. Nevertheless he placed his disappointed partner carefully amongst her friends and elbowed his way towards Martin and Meg, smiling politely and murmuring his thanks to all who moved out of his way. He shrugged his shoulders at the horrified Meg then threw himself into the fray, having not the slightest idea of what it was about. He did not care for fighting and was not, like Martin, handy with his fists but he was willing if needs be to stand beside his friend; to defend what was theirs, whatever that might turn out to be! In a few seconds both he and Martin had disappeared beneath a melée of bobbing cloth-capped heads and flailing fists for the young man who had so offended Martin had not come alone!

  The uproar became more turbulent and noisy as those on its perimeter were persuaded to become involved and women danced about its edge, encouraging a sweetheart, a husband, to ‘gerron wi’ it’, all interest abandoned in the cock-chasing boys and the porridge-consuming competitors. The fiddler and the penny whistler looked at one another resignedly and shrugged for they knew it was hopeless to try to tempt to their entertainment those who were enjoying themselves in the vastly more amusing pastime of fisticuffs. The ‘Liverpool kiss’ dropped a few, noses erupted with blood and it was only a question of time before the ‘scuffers’ arrived.

  Meg was pushed further and further back from the centre of the crowd as excited women elbowed her aside to get a better view. Her temper showed in her heightened colour and the blaze of the golden light in her eyes. She was furious! She’d never forgive Martin, never! What on earth had got into him picking a fight with that chap and him only asking for an innocent bit of a dance with hundreds watching! It didn’t take much to ignite Martin’s temper, true, but the chap had done nothing and would you look at Tom, usually so mild and inoffensive, happy-go-lucky even and the last man on earth to pick a fight, throwing punches like he was ‘Gentleman’ Jim Corbett himself!

  She turned away and stamped her foot in frustration, almost in tears. This had promised to be such a lovely day, unexpected and therefore the more exciting and now those two great daft lumps had spoiled it for her! Martin had hinted at a surprise at Mr Hale’s though what it could be in the smelly old bicycle shop she could not imagine. This small diversion, before it had erupted into the rumpus it had become, had been lovely, dancing in the sunshine amidst the good fellowship of the holiday crowd and now it was ruined. They’d probably end up in gaol, the pair of them and she’d have to go home and report to Mrs Whitley that two of her servants had been arrested for brawling in the streets!

  A hand clutched her arm and she spun about, ready to give what for to whoever it was had the temerity to interfere with her, so short was her temper but a lively voice told her to ‘Look sharp, Meggie, before they miss us.’ and Martin’s laughing brown eyes and glowing face were there and she was pulled along at such speed she was in danger of falling.

  ‘Tom,’ she gasped.

  ‘I’m here,’ a voice cried from her other side and Tom’s hand gripped her left arm and as she began to laugh, her feet scarce touching the ground as they bore her along, they laughed with her.

  From behind the noise of the fighting multitude died away, pierced by the sharp shrillness of police whistles. The culprits continued to run, Meg clinging to her boater and the length of her skirt which threatened to trip her up until they turned into St John’s Lane.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake stop!’ she beseeched. ‘I’ve a stitch in my side that’s cutting through me and I’ll lose my hat in a minute. Let me go, the pair of you!’

  They all three slowed down and shrugging her arms from their grasp Meg adjusted her straw boater and pushed back the crop of curls which had become loosened in the mad flight, tucking them carelessly under her hat. Her face had become stern though her eyes could not rid themselves of the laughter. She felt she should be cross with them both for hadn’t they spoiled her lovely dance but they leaned against the wall, blowing on their grazed knuckles and grinned at her and she could not stop her mouth from forming into a wide smile. Martin had a cut lip and as his grin deepened he winced, putting his hand to it ruefully. Tom’s eye looked suspiciously swollen and there was no doubt he would have a ‘shiner’ which he would have to explain to Mrs Whitley in the morning but who cared, his expression said. He had acquitted himself well beside the more skilful fists of his friend and he was pleased with himself. He was enjoying this day, this moment and with Tom’s outlook on life that was all that mattered!

  ‘Will you look at the two of you! Cook’ll skin you when she sees the state of your good jackets!’

  ‘No she won’t, Meggie. I shall tell her she’s lovely and give her a kiss and she’ll forgive us like she always does.’ Tom’s engaging smile was perfectly confident for he knew what he said was true.

  ‘Don’t you be too sure me old cock sparrer.’ Martin fingered the tear in the sleeve of his jacket. ‘This cost Mr Lloyd good money and you know how she says we’ve to look smart and she can’t keep up with us growing so fast.’

  ‘Oh stop worrying! You’re like an old woman going on about your damn coat. Meg’ll sew it up for you, won’t you chuck? You’ll sew poor old Martin’s coat up for him, won’t you …?’

  Tom began to dance round Martin, sparring and jabbing playfully with his big-jointed fists, evidently still enjoying his new found prowess and Meg could see that Martin, not yet steady after the fight in which they had just been involved would not take much to inflame again. Hastily she intervened.

  ‘Oh come on you two, don’t spoil a perfectly good day any further. It’s bad enough when you fight other people. If you’re going to start on each other I’m off!’

  She began to walk away, her tall figure swaying slightly in the graceful, girlish manner she was developing as she matured and the two youths were suddenly, strangely, quite diverted. Her hips swung from side to side below her slender waist and her head was held proudly, the plain straw boater clinging desperately to the tumbled mass of her effervescent hair. For a moment they might have been watching a stranger, a pretty girl who had caught their eye, then she turned and grinned and she was only their Meg again!

  They followed her, falling into step, one on either side as they had always done! Tall houses built a century ago leaned on each side of the road. A tram ran alongside of them, the driver clucking affectionately to the horse which pulled it and a hansom cab reined in behind, the cabbie cursing as he attempted to overtake the tram. The tram driver looked over his shoulder and grinned amiably and mouthed a word or two of ‘Liverpoolese’ and the cabbie shook his fist.

  The air smelled good – a mixture of sea freshness pungent with the sharpness of tar from the rigging of the sailing vessels which were still to be seen tied up beside those of steam. A strange miscellany of aromas in which could be recognised coffee beans, Indian tea, citrus fruits, nutmeg, camphor and the sharp new tang of timber. All the perfumes which assail the nostrils – for the most part unnoticed – of those who live beside the great highway of water which brought them there. There would be life down there at the dockside, just as there had been in the vital enthusiasm of the crowd they had just left behind and Meg loved it, and this city in which she had been born.

  They turned into Victoria Street and half way down came to Mr Hale’s shop, the ‘Modern Bicycle Emporium’ which was Martin’s Mecca and the start of his dream, and at the door, smiling in welcoming anticipation was Albert Hale.

  Like all men who love something with a passion beyond all others he was always eager also to discuss his obsession with a fellow devotee, and also the finer points of the advancing technology, and Meg and Tom would have to wait patiently until Martin ha
d inspected each nut and bolt of every last one of the latest models in the shop, and the wonder of the ‘Vauxhall’ motor car belonging to one of Liverpool’s wealthy, it’s engine stripped down for a minor repair in Mr Hale’s back yard!

  In the dim light which struggled from the street they could make out the silent, skeletal frames of the bicycles which were Mr Hale’s main livelihood. Some were on racks above their heads, ranged along the walls in strange, threadlike shapes, their narrow structures resembling the delicate vertebrae of dozens of spiders. They were everywhere, propped against walls, leaning against one another, heaped and piled, some of them upside down and others still in the crates in which they had travelled. On shelves were saddle bags and saddles, bells and lamps and along the wall, ranged in orderly rows hung knapsacks, capes, maps and every conceivable aid which the cyclist might require.

  It had become familiar to Tom and Meg during the past few months for they had been here several times with Martin as he ‘mucked about’ as they tolerantly called it, in the element he loved. They had spent hours watching and idly listening as Martin discussed with Mr Hale the merits of the ‘Napier’ versus the ‘Vauxhall’ and the chances of the former in the ‘Gordon Bennett Cup’ in July. It was an enigma to them both still for they had not yet got over their bewilderment at Martin’s passion for these weird contraptions but they were willing to be part of it, as they had always been part of Martin’s life.

  Threading their way through the muddle, led by Mr Hale they passed beyond the curtained alcove which led from the shop and into another room which looked as though some playfully destructive hand had taken a score of bicycles and torn them apart, flinging the pieces in joyous abandon to every corner of the room. There were wheels and frames, pedals and handlebars, saddles and mudguards and all lying about like the pieces of a giant jig-saw puzzle waiting to be put together. Here again Tom and Meg were on familiar ground for it was in this workshop that Mr Hale kept his ‘spares’, the pieces he used to construct or repair a machine. On more than one occasion Tom had been ordered to shuffle them about in search of a decent spoke or brake as Martin helped Mr Hale to fit up some contrivance he was re-building.

  ‘How’s it going then, Mr Hale?’ Martin asked politely, though his eyes shone with excitement.

  ‘Fine lad, just fine. All ready then, are yer?’

  ‘Aye … if you are!’

  ‘Oh aye. I said a week or two and … well, come and see fer yerself!’

  Meg and Tom looked at one another and pulled a face, mystified by this cryptic exchange, then followed the retreating backs of Mr Hale and Martin, stepping over the explosion of bicycle parts which barred their way.

  ‘Come through then, you two,’ Martin called over his shoulder.

  Another door was opened in what seemed the endless depths of the shop and what was evidently Mr Hale’s living quarters until they came at last into a back yard. In one corner, draped lovingly with a tarpaulin was the shape of what Meg and Tom understood to be the wonder of the ‘Vauxhall’ motor car, not apparently to be revealed to their amateur and therefore heretic gaze and they were directed to the furthest corner. Here again were a myriad pieces of what had once been bicycles, from the old ‘ordinary’, the ‘pennyfarthing’ and the ‘boneshaker’, all discarded now for they were rusted and rotting away, but standing in their midst, shining and proud and leaning against one another in companionable equanimity was a tandem, it’s two leather seats polished to the shine of a horse chestnut, and a bicycle!

  ‘Now then!’ said Mr Hale, ‘will these do yer?’ His face was fondly indulgent as though he showed off two beloved children. ‘I ’ad to put a couple of extra coats of paint on them mudguards after you left, Martin. Well, they’d bin rusting out ’ere for months, but they turned out right well. What d’yer think to ’em?’

  Martin appeared to have lost his voice and Meg and Tom were beyond speaking anyway so Mr Hale went on comfortably.

  ‘Not bad, eh, considerin’ not one piece belongs to another. I reckon there must be at least fifty machines in them two, if yer don’t count the spokes! Now get on ’em, the three of you and let me see what you make of ’em!’

  Chapter Five

  THEY WERE NEVER off them dratted machines Mrs Whitley grumbled and what about the scullery steps and them windows hadn’t been polished for two days and would you look at the state of the kitchen floor, she said, but secretly she was as proud of her three as if they had been of her own conceiving and was heard to boast quite openly to neighbouring servants of the vast distances they covered on their ‘machines’! Still, it did no harm to let them know where their place was and so she did, quite volubly, endlessly pointing out the slow deterioration of her ‘standards’ and her disapproval of it! It was as if the very house was falling in ruins about their ears as Meg and Tom and Martin spent every spare minute, very often as late as nine o’clock in the evening as the spring days drew out, ‘messing about’ on their bicycles. On most days they got no further than the end of the street which led into the Square, or even just once round the Square itself but they took to it like a duckling will take to its element, the water and for the first few weeks whenever they were free might be seen speeding about the surrounding streets of Great George Square.

  But as the season for travellers began to reach it’s peak they had no time during the day to even think of their new passion. It was only at night when Meg was tucked up beside Emm that she could read the books she took from the lending library, searching for anything which would give her information on what was, now that she had the means to be about it, her consuming interest. Travel! It had seized her, hypnotised her like the flashing wheels of the bicycles and her young mind yearned endlessly towards it. Travel! That was it!

  Of course those with money and time enough already moved about the country and across the channel to see what was on the other side but now, with the advent of the breath-taking machines Martin had devised for them with the sweat of his own endeavours in helping out Mr Hale in his workshop and yard, they were to be part of it! The idea overwhelmed her with it’s spellbinding possibilities and she fell asleep to dream about it.

  She would never forget that first day they set out on a real ride!

  It was almost the end of May and the last boatload of emigrants had been disposed of for the next week as Meg and Tom and Martin pedalled away, turning to wave as though they were royalty, Mrs Whitley observed proudly when they had swung round the corner. Of course by then they had cycled several times to Sefton Park in the lengthening evenings to travel sedately round and round the cricket pitch and review ground on the paths which formed a figure eight and though it had given them practice in handling their machines they had not really seen anything, Meg complained.

  Stanley Park was better because it was further away and there were lots of intriguing paths to cycle along when they got there but then those who were out for an evening stroll often took exception to Martin and Tom who, in the manner of high spirited youth would race against one another, Martin’s legs forcing Meg’s to go faster and faster as she clung to the handlebars behind him, and the walkers objected to being forced from the path on to the grass verge and when the park-keeper told them angrily ‘Tweren’t made fer the likes of them great nasty machines,’ they gave up!

  But before Mrs Whitley would let them go for a whole day there were bedrooms to be cleaned in readiness for the next batch of travellers, tables and floors to be scrubbed, furniture to be polished and mats to be taken up and beaten. The ‘masters machine’, the one used for sharpening knives must be taken apart and oiled – Martin’s job, the lamps cleaned and trimmed – Tom’s, and the brassware on them polished with a mixture of oil and rottenstone made into a paste.

  And the laundry! Fires in the boiler to be lit, sheets to be soaked in water and soda, rinsed, rubbed and rinsed again and that was before they even began the starching! Not until the bed linen was alabaster white was it hung, snapping in the breeze, on the lines which stret
ched between the walls of the rear yard. Next, when it was dry it was the turn of the flat iron. It was back breaking work but Meg was used to it after three years and her routine, worked out and practised upon until it was second nature to her, cut out hours of unnecessary labour.

  When the great day arrived the whole Square came out to watch as they rode round and round the railinged gardens, ringing their bicycle bells smartly. They were masters of balance by now and were swooping and diving like sea-birds, tearing along to the enthusiastic encouragement of every emigrant who was temporarily housed by the many shipping lines in the area. Everywhere there were men and women, many of them dressed in rough homespun, sturdy and made to last, dark-coloured shawls about the fair plaits and coronets of hair of the women, the men in furry caps, top boots and leathern waistcoats and the excitement and noise as support was shouted in half a dozen different languages was as joyful as anything Meg had ever known. Those who were here for merely a moment formed an alliance with their hosts in the delight of the lovely young girl and her two stalwart escorts, plunging in a mad dance of youth on their startlingly modern machines.

  Meg was a joy to behold. Her straw boater was whipped away in the stiff breeze, retrieved and held by a shy Swedish lad who did not know what to do with it, nor the smile she bestowed upon him as she took it from his hand. Her copper hair flew out behind her as the pins which held it scattered and were lost. Men cheered and whistled for her breasts were clearly defined beneath the fine cotton of her shirt as she strained at the handlebars in an effort to keep up with Martin’s flying legs and Mrs Whitley, as she told Emm in the privacy of the kitchen later, quite literally did not know where to look and swore to have a word with her when she got home!

  It was barely seven-thirty in the morning. Maidservants clustered on the small bow-fronted wrought iron balconies on the first floor of each house and at each area entrance, waving dust rags and admiring Martin’s broad shoulders, laughing as Tom bowed to them as he pedalled by. The park was green, freshly mowed and the last of the late daffodils were a brilliant dash of gold lining the pathway which surrounded it.