Between Friends (15 page)

Now he looked as though he wanted nothing more, indeed could hardly restrain himself from striking their Meg with all the force he could muster and if Mrs Whitley didn’t act quickly Emm could see him doing it. But Mrs Whitley was in control of herself and the situation by now! She’d never, in all her years in service, seen such a commotion between two members of her own staff and she’d had one or two volatile maidservants in her charge over the years and though as yet she had not got fully to grips with what was going on between these two it was beginning to infiltrate into her astute mind what the trouble was.

She grasped Meg’s upstretched arm in the strong grip which had stood her in good stead when she herself had been a young skivvy, and thundering in her best, her most authoritative tone to ‘give over, the pair of you or I’ll crack your heads together’ she hauled Meg a foot or two away from the fierce, knife-edged anger of Tom Fraser. She pushed her short, full-bodied superiority – was she not the mistress here? – between them, glaring from one turbulent face to the other, placing a hand firmly on each heaving chest and in the midst of the savage, inexplicable defiance which flared in her kitchen she found herself understanding at last!

It was as though a triangle, a shape which will stand confidently on any of its three sides had suddenly been deprived of one of them and the two remaining are left, unstable, unbalanced and bewildered by the strange and confusing lack of equilibrium. They had been three for so long, a perfect immutable relationship which had nurtured each of them. They were different in temperament, wondrously unique and yet they had made one perfect whole and now, for the moment, until they could accept and re-build themselves the two who were left could not function properly nor deal with the complexity of it. They had been left behind. Martin, who had been the natural leader had gone ahead and in the void his going had left, Tom and Meg were turning on one another. They did not understand why they did it, they only knew that the turmoil inside them was set fiercely free; the unhappiness, the emptiness was filled only when they were quarreling with one another. They glared with narrowed eyes but there
was
an uncertainty about them, a bewilderment which seemed to ask hesitantly how they had come to be in this predicament and were relieved when she set them each to some task.

When they had left the kitchen Emm and Mrs Whitley sat knee to knee before the roaring fire, the second or was it the third up of tea in their hands. Mrs Whitley spoke thoughtfully.

‘We’ll have to watch them two for a while, Emm,’ she said.

Emm nodded understandingly.

‘I’d no idea they’d missed him that much, had you?’

Emm shook her head and sighed.

‘Where shall we go then?’ Meg asked the next week as they wheeled the repaired tandem across the pavement. They were disappointed that Martin, when asked in a hurried note to Silver-dale, was not able to come, but they had begun to accept now that he had a new life, a job in which they had no part and could not always take time off when they did.

‘How about Chester?’ Tom asked airily.

‘Tom! You devil!’ She smiled, her good humour quite restored. ‘You’ll be saying London or Edinburgh next!’

‘Hey, steady on Meg Hughes!’ They smiled into each other’s eyes and on a crisp, sparkling, clear December day, when the earth seemed to lie quiet in that last moment before finally settling to sleep for the winter, when the air was sharp and still, Meg and Tom set off together.

The houses and the factories and the quiet Sunday streets of Liverpool fell away and Meg’s spirits rose, the familiar feeling of joy which cycling, or being on the move, always gave her, filling her veins and flooding her fast beating heart.

They did not speak as they sped along the empty country lanes from Toxteth and on through Garston and Hale to Warrington. It was cold but the exercise put warmth in their limbs and a flush of rose in Meg’s cream cheeks and as Tom turned she grinned with that infectious good humour which was peculiarly hers. Her eyes glowed and Tom winked at her to let her see he was as happy as she was to be out on the road, the mad rush of the machine’s wheels skimming across the ground and the satisfying feeling of blood surging through bodies young and eager and glad to be alive!

At Warrington they turned west and with the estuary on their right hand they cycled on until they reached Frodsham. At the
‘Bears
Paw’, an old sandstone inn with lovely mullioned windows, and a favourite stopping place on their rides, they cycled through the gabled archway and into the courtyard to drink hot coffee and eat home baked bread, hot from the oven, with strong cheese and pickled onions.

They sat for fifteen minutes on a drystone wall and let the pale sun warm their faces. Meg leaned comfortably against Tom’s shoulder, inhaling the clean smell of him and the fresh country aroma of the fruit of the dogrose which grew in profusion at their back. Two black and white magpies fluttered arrogantly close to Tom’s lounging legs and bold finches fed on the berries behind them and Meg was reluctant to leave. She felt peaceful here with Tom. His arm was strong and hard beneath her cheek and she liked the way his hair caught the sun and turned to a cap of gold on his well shaped skull.

‘Come on, daydreamer,’ he said and his blue eyes were no less bright than the periwinkle which grew on summer days in the meadow on the far side of the lane.

They rode into the Delamere forest just before one o’clock and the tall conifers planted, Meg had heard, by the Crown in 1818 closed in about them. The sunshine made a torch creating shadows and lighting the pines to splendour. They stood still and quiet in perfect solitude and peace and Meg felt it enter her heart. She took Tom’s hand trustingly, as she had always done, when they alighted from the tandem to walk between the tall, straight trunks and a soft bed of pine needles moved beneath their feet. He turned to smile and gripped her hand more tightly as they climbed the slight incline which came out at last on the upland crest of the New Pale and the view to the south and west took their breath away, as it always did no matter how many times they saw it. There were forest meres and tiny lakes, studded like jewels on a bed of dark green velvet and the pale, pale blue of the winter sky surrounded them, almost close enough for them to touch.

They stood for half an hour, leaning against one another, speaking only now and then to point out something of beauty but Tom said they must get on for the days were short now and they had promised Mrs Whitley they would be home before dark.

They had just pedalled furiously through Lower Hargrave when they came upon it. They still had fifteen miles to go, another three hours Tom reckoned and he was urging her on and they were both laughing. She saw it first and stopped pedalling at once
and
Tom looked back in annoyance bringing the machine to a tumbling halt as his feet hit the ground.

‘Look Tom,’ she said and her hand lifted to point.

‘What?’ he asked, seeing nothing but what appeared to be a farm building about to fall down into a forest of weeds. A tree grew before it, thirty or forty feet high, the top of it level with the roof of the building. It had a dense, rounded crown and its trunk was gnarled, sinister and furrowed, the roots standing in the exact centre of the overgrown garden. It was covered in a glorious mass of bright red berries.

‘What?’ he repeated, his eyes going beyond it to the stand of trees at its back. Was it something there she looked at, his astonished expression asked?

‘The house! It’s … it’s lovely, isn’t it, Tom?’ she whispered reverently.

‘What house?’ Surely she could not mean the laughable monstrosity before them?

‘That one.’

‘What? That one there?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Lovely! But it’s falling down!’

‘No, oh no!’ She stepped away from the tandem. Her face was absorbed and her eyes were looking far away into some shadow world of her own and Tom was curiously reminded of Martin, he could not say why!

She pushed at the old gate and stepped on to the overgrown path, brushing aside the faded sentries of delphinium, phlox, lupin and lavender. Tom followed her, as he had once followed Martin into Mr Hale’s Bicycle Emporium, mesmerised by her stillness and the bemused expression on her face.

‘Look at the lovely bricks, Tom,’ she breathed. ‘They’re hand made. You can tell by the size.’

‘What about it?’ he said but she did not answer. She was at the small, mullioned windows and she rubbed her hand across the filthy glass to peer inside but there was nothing to see as far as Tom was concerned, only darkness and muck and bits of old, broken furniture.

‘Oh Tom!’ she whispered again and Tom was quite spellbound by her for she really looked as though she had stepped into another world! He didn’t know whether to laugh or jeer, for really, she
looked
very peculiar! And you never knew with Meg how she would react.

A climbing plant grew up to the roof, unrecognisable for there was not a leaf on it and for a horrid moment he thought she was about to attempt to scale up it for she seemed intent on looking into even the upstairs windows! There were two massive chimneys, one at each end of the building and a porched doorway in its centre. A sign, half buried under the weight of a creeping convolvulus said it was for sale or rent and as she read it Meg Hughes turned to smile her lovely but quite unreadable smile at Tom.

THOUGH IT WAS
cold Martin had removed his old jacket and the woollen pullover he wore for what he called ‘mucky’ jobs and had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. It was March and a stiff breeze blew across the river and up the sloping lawns which led to the terraces surrounding the house but in the yard at the back where the motor cars stood it was sheltered and the sun had some warmth in it.

He worked in perfect harmony with the machine he had just driven from the garage and though he was doing no more than the routine work of cleaning it, a job usually performed by one of the grooms, leaving himself to the more important task of maintaining it’s engine, he did so with all the loving tenderness a mother might lavish on a new born infant. He even crooned what could be described as a lullaby as the wash leather moved steadily across the shining surface of the bonnet. Back and forth his arm swept. Where the sun had caught it the skin was already brown, the fine dark hairs upon it, soft as swansdown curling to the knuckles of his hand. He was long-boned, hard muscled and his back had broadened in the months he had been at Silverdale. As he bent over the machine the flesh beneath his thin shirt rippled, hard and lean. His narrow waist lengthened with the movement and the tight breeches he wore clung to his hips and strong thighs and clearly revealed the small hollow which was carved out of each slim buttock. His legs were long and shapely in their leather knee boots and were in perfect proportion to his tall frame. His deep brown eyes glowed with health, with the content of a man well pleased with his world and his strong, uncompromising young mouth turned up at each corner in the most appealing manner. The sun caught his hair, turning the darkness to polished chestnut.

He was a beautiful young man! And yet his beauty was completely and absolutely male with an earthiness about it which was instantly appealing to women. There was no softness in the
smooth
, almost delicate amber of the skin about his face and neck. It was taut and hard and where the buttons of his shirt had been undone to reveal his chest, a fine layer of dark hair curled crisply reaching almost to the hollow at the base of his throat. Though his body was pliable with youth and bounteous health it had a challenging toughness and durability, a set to the way he stood and moved which matched the tenacity of his facial expression. He walked with a tensile spring to his step, light and buoyant, his movements as graceful and fluid as a young roebuck. He was put together with the precision and symmetry, the balance and proportions of a thoroughbred and if his charm had given rise to the belief amongst the young menservants of the household that he was ‘soft’ and fair game for the tomfoolery and pranks to which newcomers are subjected, his hard fists had soon shown them they were sadly mistaken. He allowed no-one to take liberties with Martin Hunter and he smiled agreeably as he told them so!

He was bare-headed and his thick hair fell upon his forehead and over his ears and he pushed it roughly back with a strong, capable hand. It was the hand of an artist, slender and fine and yet it had a strong, workmanlike appearance, well used to manual employment.

‘Goodbye Dolly, I must leave you,

Though it breaks my heart to go …’ he sang more loudly, his voice forced into a ragged tempo as it moved in rhythm with his arm. He scowled, then breathed heavily on a small blemish which spoiled the perfection of the elegant radiator, rubbing it energetically with the cloth. His breath wreathed about his head, wisping away to nothing in the clear, almost springlike air. He moved round the vehicle, touching it gently here and there. The bright brass of the horn and twin headlights, the gleaming, polished glass of the windscreen, and the shining bonnet, the smooth, supple leather of the seat where
he
sat, running a possessive lingering hand up and over the curved perfection of the mudguard.

‘Do you know how beautiful you are?’ he said out loud, then looked round hurriedly to see if there was anyone about to hear Mr Hemingway’s racing driver, chauffeur and mechanic talking to a motor car! There was no-one there, only a couple of yellow retrievers lolling in the sunshine at his back, their tongues hanging from their panting mouths in the warmth. A kitten, intent on capturing some invisible quarry it stalked by the garage door leaped frivolously into the air and two hens which had apparently
lost
their way from the stable yard pecked viciously at the cobblestones in their vexation.