Between Friends (22 page)

His first ‘outing’, of course, had been at Ormond-Daytona Beach in Florida where he had met and raced against the great Fred H. Marriott, Louis Ross, Vincenzo Lancia and Victor Hemery. He had seen Marriott become the first man to go faster than two miles a minute that day, he told Meg in a letter. The annual speed tournament in January had produced clear skies, bright sunshine and a large crowd on the dunes, to watch the petrol motor cars break the flying mile record. The surf washing the Atlantic coast at Ormond-Daytona Beach left hard ripples in the sand when the wind was blowing from the east as it was that day, and though Fred Marriott was determined to beat his own record of the year before, it was young Martin Hunter in the ‘Hemingway flyer’ who was first over the winning line and the grand photograph of himself and Mr Robert Hemingway holding the cup between them proved it! He raced in France; in the Isle of Man ‘Tourist Trophy’; at the Ardennes Circuit and behind the Hon. C. S. Rolls as he made his record run from Monte Carlo to London. Now he was to take part in the first ever meet at the newly opened track at a place called Brooklands, he wrote to Meg and would tell her and Tom all about it when he was home.

The summer dragged on and only Mrs Whitley’s improved health made it bearable. Though she was far from capable of doing the work she had once done she was at least able to direct Meg and Emm to the gigantic task of catering for the hundreds who passed through the house as the emigrant trade reached its peak. She was experienced in preparing and cooking food in the enormous amounts needed, and with the help of the extra girls and by the sheer back breaking, teeth-gritting feat of working eighteen hours a day, they managed to get through, longing only for September and the slow easing of trade.

When they could find the time Meg and Tom had gone to one emigrant house after another, knocking on back kitchen doors, enquiring if servants were needed, and even to boarding houses which catered for the itinerant workers who passed through the city.

‘What can you do?’ they were asked, their strong young bodies and healthy appearance finding approval.

‘I can cook and clean and Tom can do anything he is asked,’
Meg
answered confidently, speaking for them both as usual. ‘… and Mrs Whitley can cook as well and Emm is willing …’

‘Mrs Whitley … Emm …’

‘Well, there are four of us looking for work …’

‘
Four
of you!’

‘Yes, but we’re all good workers …’

‘Now look here young lady, I might be able to fit you and the lad in. You look as if you could do a day’s scrubbing, and the lad could be …’

‘Scrubbing?’

‘Only casual, of course …’

‘But what about Mrs Whitley, and Emm?’

‘I know nowt about Mrs Whats-er-name and I’m only willing to take you two on because of the rush. Now do you want it or not ’cause there’s others do if you don’t!’

‘But …’

It was the same wherever they went and as the long, hot days eased into the cooler days of autumn they were faced with the dreadful spectre of spending another winter under the authority of Benjamin Harris. Meg renewed her efforts, even trying to find separate employment for them all but no employer was willing to take on an elderly cook, sight unseen and a skivvy whose age and mental ability seemed uncertain, though she and Tom could have been placed a dozen times.

It was November when the first invidious, clammy fogs began to drift along the Mersey wall, aiming, Mrs Whitley declared painfully, straight for her old chest. By the end of the month she could scarcely breathe and only the relief of ‘Friars’ Balsam’, melted in a bowl of hot water and inhaled beneath the folds of a towel which she placed over her head, relieved her a fraction.

Meg was frantic. It was to be a repetition of last winter, she said worriedly to Tom and how the dickens were they to manage the coal for Mrs Whitley’s bedroom if she had to take to her bed again. She shivered now before the meagre fire in the kitchen, begging Meg not to ‘let on to him’ that she was badly, praying that he would not catch her, sweating and white-faced, sitting about ‘wasting his and the company’s good time’ when she should be about the task of preparing his dinner.

‘He’ll put me off for sure this time, our Meg,’ she wept, her thin face haggard. There would be no doctor, she realised that for how were they to manage his fee from the small wage they were paid
by
Hemingway’s and from which they could save nothing now. There had been new winter boots and a second-hand overcoat from Paddy’s Market for Tom who had grown six inches in as many months, though God only knew how, she said tiredly on the ‘bloody awful’ food they now ate, making no apologies for her own swearing!

On the first of January she collapsed at Mr Harris’ feet when he summoned her to his study to make an accounting for the month of December. As Tom and Meg almost carried her from the room, his nostrils were dilated in distaste as he told them he could no longer pay the wages of a woman who could not even keep her feet before her employer, let alone do her work as she should!

It was the next day when he called Meg into his study. Tom had repainted it during the summer and new, floor length curtains had been put to the windows, a rich, plum velvet. A fire crackled pleasingly in the well-shined black-leaded grate – no economy here Meg thought bitterly – and before it was a round table upon which Harris did his accounts. There were a pair of comfortable leather chairs, brought by him from the house he had once shared with Matilda, a desk against the dark, heavily papered wall, a sofa of haircloth and rosewood and all warmly set on a patterned Brussels carpet. There were ornaments of silver and cut crystal and bronze, a sepia photograph of Harris and his Matilda on their wedding day in a silver frame and on the wall above the fireplace, Landseer’s ‘Monarch of the Glen’ looked down loftily on the scene beneath his fine nose.

In the corner of the large room, standing next to a massive mahogany cupboard in which Mr Harris’ entire splendid wardrobe hung, was a double bed partially hidden behind a Chinese screen, installed there for the night when he was disinclined for the charms of the barmaid. All very warm and comfortable … and threatening!

Meg stood just inside the door. She did not often come to this room for it was the job of Betsy and May to do the cleaning here, he had told them, whilst Meg saw to the kitchen and the cooking, and Tom, of course, was set about any lowly task Mr Harris could devise for him. The other girls, taken on for a few weeks when the ‘rush’ was on, had, naturally, been turned off when it was over.

‘What’s it about?’ she asked Betsy when the maid told her
breathlessly
the master wanted to see her immediately in his study. ‘An’ yer to put on yer best dress,’ Betsy added.

‘What for?’ she asked, instantly on the alert.

‘How do I know?’ Betsy retorted. ‘He don’t tell me what goes on in his head,’ but there was a strange gleam in her eye.

‘What can it be, d’you think, Tom?’ Meg asked anxiously.

‘God knows, lovey! Probably wants us to
pay
him for the privilege of working at Hemingway’s!’

Tom Fraser was badly disturbed by his own inability to find a decent job, a safe refuge for his ‘womenfolk’. He felt it strongly, his young manhood strained to the limits and his bitterness showed in his inclination to be sharp where once he had been ruffled by nothing more serious than Everton’s failure to score a goal on a Saturday afternoon. He did his best to relieve Meg’s burden of extra work which was put on her by Mrs Whitley’s illness but the constant undermining of his own carefree belief that life was good, filled with hard work but good nevertheless, had been severely tested. He detested Benjamin Harris, a feeling he did not relish for it was not in his nature to be vindictive. He watched Meg leave the kitchen, clearly nervous, and his mouth clenched into a straight, tight line for he would have given his right arm to take the worry from her and he knew he could not do so. The feeling of frustration did not sit sweetly in his young breast!

‘Come in,’ Harris called when she knocked on his door. She did so.

‘Close the door behind you.’ He was standing before the fire in much the same pose he had affected when he had first entered Cook’s bedroom on the night he had arrived. His coat-tails were lifted to warm his buttocks and he stood with his legs apart, his hands behind his back. His cool gaze rested on her face as she closed the door obediently behind her. Her heart banged in her chest and her mouth had mysteriously dried up!

How did she know? She asked herself the question later and she could not answer it but every female instinct in her, every sense and pulse told her why she was here and she was deathly afraid.

His brutal gaze fell to her breast and he smiled, running his tongue round his lips. His hands beneath his coat seemed to move in some strange way and he rocked back and forth in a manner which implied all manner of dreadful things.

‘Come here, Megan.’ His voice was no more than a thread of sound in the soft comfort of the room.

‘Betsy said you wanted to see me.’ Her’s was loud, a barrage of noise to form a defence of sorts. ‘What is it, sir?’

‘Come here by the fire,’ he repeated.

‘I’m alright here, thank you sir but if you please I must be getting back to the kitchen in a minute. I’ve left some pies in the oven and Betsy won’t …’

‘Never mind the pies, Megan. I want you to come here. I have something to discuss with you and we can hardly carry on a conversation shouting across a room, can we?’

Suddenly Meg’s spine stiffened and she lifted her chin. What the hell was she so scared of? Trembling here by the door as though Harris was about to leap on her and throw her to the floor. Tom was only a few yards away, and Betsy and May and if he so much as laid a finger on her she’d scream so bloody loud half the Square would be bashing at the door in a minute. Even Constable O’Shea who patrolled Upper Pitt Street regularly as clockwork would hear her once she got going.

‘What is it, Mr Harris?’ she said tartly. ‘If I leave those pies for more than ten minutes they’ll be burned to a crisp.’

‘How is Mrs Whitley today, Megan?’ Benjamin Harris’ voice was like velvet and the sudden reversal, the abrupt departure from the ‘discussion’ which Meg had supposed to concern the usual economies threw her off balance.

‘Mrs Whitley …?’ she faltered.

‘Mmm. She is still … unwell, is she not?’

What to say! Dear God what was she to say? Confirm to him that Mrs Whitley was still ‘lingering’ as he put it, in her bed or pretend that the cook was up and about, doing her duty, busy in the kitchen? But then she had just admitted, inadvertently, she realised now that she herself was making pies and that there was no-one but Betsy to supervise them. They had all, somehow … Dear Lord … managed to keep up the pretence that Mrs Whitley was about somewhere whenever he had come into the kitchen. The poor woman was terrified that he would send her packing if he discovered she was unable to fulfill her duties, as he most certainly would and yet here he was asking after her as though there was nothing but concern for her in his heart. She felt her’s begin to thump erratically in her chest and she swallowed the lump which had formed at the back of her throat.

‘Well …’ the word she spoke was no more than a despairing breath on her lips.

His voice was silky with menace. ‘I have heard her cough in the night, even from down here. I wonder does she perhaps disturb the other servants, as she does myself? Keep them from their sleep? If they do not rest, if I do not rest, we cannot do our work properly, would you not agree, Megan?’

He smiled and his hands moved more quickly beneath his coat. ‘Would she not perhaps be better served with her own relatives, d’you think?’

‘She has no family, sir.’ Meg’s voice had become lifeless, hopeless.

‘Oh dear, then I can see no alternative but the poor house …?’ The statement which was not really a statement but a query, was spoken sadly.

‘Mr Harris … sir!’ Desperation overcame Meg and her eyes blazed, ‘… she is sixty-two! She has been here for twenty years.’

‘It is her home, you are saying?’

‘Oh yes sir, it is.’

‘Quite so, quite so, but then … dead wood, you know the saying, Megan?’

‘Dead wood, sir?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so and then there is the question of the … other one …’

‘Emm …?’ Meg’s voice faltered and the glow of outrage drained away and despair took its place.

‘Yes. She really is quite … useless, as is Mrs Whitley. I need strong, willing persons …’

‘Emm is strong and very willing. She works all hours God sends, sir, really. I know she is not … she is … nervous, perhaps and a bit slow too … but she is the best worker we have and will work until she drops, sir!’

Harris seemed to consider this though his expression made games of it.

‘So! You are saying she and Mrs Whitley would not want to leave.’

‘Of course not!’ The words were said bravely, defiantly, hopelessly!

‘You would not want them to leave?’

Meg drew a shuddering breath and the pulse in the hollow of her throat beat a frantic tattoo. Though he had not said a word which could, if it had been overheard by another be construed as
threatening
, there was no doubt now of what he had in his mind. She was an innocent girl but she was not simple. It was all there in his manner, in the way his eyes glowed hotly about her trembling figure and she was in such mortal terror she could no longer speak. She knew finally there was no comfort to be had in calming herself with vigorous thoughts of fighting and screaming if this man should touch her. He did not mean to force her. He had no need, had he? She was to go to him willingly. He had only to speak softly of Cook, of Emm, to consider out loud the possibility of getting rid of ‘dead wood’ and the struggle was over before she had a chance to fight. What a fool she had been. A naive fool who had come to the butcher’s block with all the ignorance of a sheep which is to have its throat cut. She had believed in her own strength and courage and had despised this man, thinking she could treat him with disdain, with contempt until the time came when she and Tom would find – miraculously now she realised – a new place for them all away from this man. He could level a pistol at her head, raise a sword or an axe and she would spit in his face but he was telling her that if she did not submit to … to whatever his foul mind had prepared for her, he would fling not only Emm from the house, but the frail old woman who was ill upstairs with as much compunction he would a basket of unwanted kittens. She and Tom would survive. They would find other employment for they were young and strong but Mrs Whitley and Emm? Would they?