Between Friends (3 page)

‘Who the …?’ one said hesitatingly.

‘I dunno …’ the other replied but they both began to move warily towards the entrance of the shaded passage at the side of the house. They stopped for a moment, confused still, turning in bewilderment to look at one another, not yet sure that the sound they had heard might – perhaps – have been the cry of a seagull, or was it some lass larking about with a lad! Young they were and afraid of appearing foolish which was how they would feel if they blundered into a bit of private ‘sparking’!

They were about to turn back for the sound was not repeated when another shrill voice pierced the heavy air, this time from
behind
them. They whirled again to face this new commotion and a plump little woman, her face as red as the geraniums in her own window bottom heaved herself breathily up the basement steps where the young ‘footballer’ had just scored his ‘goal’. At first she could not speak. Her arms waved in the air and her panting bosom rose dramatically with every wheezing breath but at last she managed a strangulated word.

‘Meggie …’ she said but it was enough.

They were into the passage like two terriers down a rabbit hole, each so set on being first in they were in danger of becoming jammed fast before they had gone a bare yard. Their young minds were confused with pictures their vivid imaginations conjured up and their faces were strained into masks of apprehension for they could not endure it if … if … They were not even awfully sure of what it was they were afraid but their breath rasped in their throats, both of them, as though they had run all the way from the Pier Head and the darker of the two kept repeating.

‘Meggie, Meggie, Meggie …’

Fancy O’Neill was just unbuckling the belt which held up his trousers when they fell upon him bearing him backwards, one on each arm until he was plastered against the high, soot-caked wall which divided the yard from its neighbour. He had arranged the half-suffocated, almost senseless young girl on the ground to his own satisfaction, drooling over her half-formed breasts and pure white thighs and though they had done no more than register the indecently exposed innocence of her as they dragged him away, it was a picture which was to remain forever engraved in the minds of the two boys. The woman was no more than a yard or two behind them and she began to moan when she saw the girl for she thought they had come too late. She leaned over her, hastily pulling down her skirt, covering her nakedness with her own plump little body.

‘There, chuck, there … there … I’ve got you …’

She had her on her feet, still reeling and almost insensible and had begun to lead her away, unconcerned with what the lads did to the brute who had … My God, she’d see him hang for this … he wasn’t fit to be let out and what McIvers were thinking of to employ him she couldn’t imagine … Dear Lord … if he’d harmed their Meg … of all the girls round here he had to go and pick on … My God, if she ever got her hands on him … the first thing she’d do when she got their Meggie settled … Dear sweet
Lord
, please don’t let him have … and her only twelve … she’d send Emm for the scuffer who patrolled the area of Upper Pitt Street … By God, she’d have him flogged, she would, aye and stand and watch it, an’ all. But first she must get Meggie away, away from the sight and sounds which were beginning to fill the high-walled yard.

Meg came to slowly from the shock into which Fancy O’Neill’s hands and mouth and breath and teeth and smell had spun her. She was still half fainting. She could feel the inside of her head reel and whirl about and her stomach ached with a longing to empty its contents in a violently nauseous wave. She could feel herself gathered against a comforting breast and strong arms cradled her. Something – Mrs Whitley’s large white apron? – was placed about her and she was conscious of the curtain of her own hair rippling against her face and shoulders. Her back was on fire where the skin had been rubbed off and she could feel a trickle of blood run down it. Her lip was cut and sore where Fancy’s rotting teeth had caught it and all she wanted to do was get away from here and be home safe in the comfortable haven of the kitchen.

She heard it then as she began to stumble away in the shelter of Mrs Whitley’s arms. It was the sound of flesh on flesh, an impression of substance meeting resisting substance, shattering, breaking, of blood flowing. Something cracked viciously against the wall and a voice cried out. It was a hard sound, bone on brick and yet it was pulpy, ugly and bad … and frightening! Somehow more frightening than what had happened to her. There was the gabble of a voice, thick and blurred and terror-stricken, the dreadful sound of Fancy O’Neill sniffling for mercy but what was worse, far worse was the remorselessly silent way in which Martin and Tom were beating him to bleeding insensibility. It seemed they could not get enough of it and the realisation of it brought her to a frantic halt. She turned her head to look over her shoulder, pulling away from Mrs Whitley’s arms and she cried out in horror at what she saw. Both their faces were crazed with blood lust!

‘Come away, chuck, come away in now,’ a soothing voice said in her ear. ‘The lads’ll deal with him. You’re safe now. He’ll not harm you again or anyone else if I have my way, the sod! I’ve got you safe, come on, queen.’ But still Meg held back from the arms which tried to draw her away up the passage. They were familiar, strong and smelling of all the good and safe things she
knew
in her life, fresh baked bread, lye soap, freshly ironed cotton, lavender and yet she knew, for some reason she could not yet get quite clear in her mind she must not listen to it.

She almost went. She wanted nothing more than to be petted and shushed and told what a brave girl she was and that Fancy O’Neill was a brute and would be punished for what he had tried to do. She wanted to weep her fear and her outrage. She wanted to be comforted and see the indignation on Mrs Whitley’s face and have her back bathed and a cup of hot, sweet tea pressed into her hand and sit by the fire with Emm and Betsy and May and let their sympathy heal her but there was something going on behind her, something bad and violent and destructive. It had to do with Tom and Martin and if she left them and went to the consolation she craved something disastrous would happen, she knew it. Suddenly, she knew it!

They were out of control now, both of them and Martin’s hard relentless fists, used only in the disciplined atmosphere of the boys’ boxing bouts in which he was successful could kill the youth he was beating and Tom was no better. Though he was a mild-mannered boy, good-natured and easy-going, at this moment he was out of his mind with rage.

‘Martin … Tom!’ she cried, struggling to escape the encompassing arms which held her. Her own teeth snagged on the cut made by Fancy’s and the names she spoke were barely intelligible.

‘It’s alright, lovey, they’re seeing to …’ but it was not alright and Meg knew it. She tore herself from Mrs Whitley’s grasp, the apron she had put about her falling from her. Mrs Whitley stared for a horrified moment at her naked breasts, then reached out hurriedly to cover her again but Meg was away. She tried to stop her for she thought she was deranged with fear but Meg Hughes had recovered from her weakness and was concerned with but one thought. Martin and Tom! She did not reason why. Indeed her brain sent messages to her limbs which were acknowledged instinctively, acted upon instinctively and leaving Mrs Whitley with the amazed look of one who thinks she holds in her arms an injured lamb but finds it is the wolf, she ran back up the passage and without further thought leaped on the first back which presented itself to her.

Even then they would not stop but continued to methodically beat Fancy O’Neill to semi-consciousness. They would not be satisfied, it seemed, until he lay dead and bloody at their feet.
Gasping
, her strong young arms about Tom’s neck, Megan screamed his name, and Martin’s, again and again.

‘Tom … Stop it … Stop it. Martin … it’s alright … listen to me … I’m alright. He hasn’t hurt me … stop it … you’ll kill him … stop it, stop it!’

She had hold of Tom’s short curly hair, gripping it fiercely, pulling so hard she began to force his head back. His chin jutted to the sky and his throat formed an arc and his fists fell away from Fancy O’Neill and became claws to reach behind him and detach the assailant who was on his back.

‘Tom!’ she screamed, her wide open mouth close to his ear, ‘Tom … stop it … it’s me … Meggie … please!’

It was as if she had known even before she had leaped upon him that this was the one she must first bring to his senses, that this was the one she
could
bring to his senses. Martin would have flicked her away without a thought, beyond reason in his wild and violent fury, unreachable in his need to punish the youth who had attacked her, but Tom, who was not really a fighter, preferring words to blows, had more self-control. Her hands were on his throat now, bearing him back, choking him and slowly, reluctantly he allowed himself to be drawn away.

‘Stop him, Tom … for God’s sake, stop him or he’ll kill him!’

Through the red mist of hot blood, Tom Fraser, shaking uncontrollably, was eased back to sanity and the consciousness of what he was doing and in that moment, as he watched, appalled now, the fists of his erstwhile football companion smash once more into the pulp which was Fancy O’Neill’s nose, he became aware of what they were about and in his turn he began to wrestle Martin away, holding his arms, shouting his name in a hoarse voice.

It took a while but the violence was spent now, drained away in the satisfying feel of their young fists on Fancy’s flesh and Martin allowed himself to be held, then pulled away until the floundering, disjointed, blubbering heap that was Fancy O’Neill, was free. Face bloody, eyes almost closed, his jaw slightly askew, the youth was up on his feet, sprinting away down the passage with the speed of a greyhound after the hare, blundering past Mrs Whitley as she stood, her hand to her mouth, still in an agonised state of shock. The sound of his boots died away across the square until it was silent but for the harsh breathing of the two boys.

They did not know where to look then nor what to do with their bloody, grazed fists. They trembled, still in the aftermath of the savage emotions neither had before encountered, nor understood! They were young, untried, carelessly ignorant of the ways of the flesh. They had whispered and laughed and nudged one another as they became aware of the opposite sex but they had not the slightest knowledge of how to deal with their own growing sexuality. They were awkward with it, ashamed of the feelings in their own maturing bodies and the sight of their Meg, the girl they had always thought of as their little ‘sister’, shivering in the heat, her sweet, pink tipped breasts on display for all to see was too much for either of them.

And for Mrs Whitley!

‘Dear God in Heaven!’ she screeched, her small, gooseberry green eyes agonising over the inordinate amount of white flesh which was immodestly exposed to the young men’s carefully averted eyes. ‘What are we hanging about here for when that poor girl is in need of attention. You two, get away to the kitchen and see the kettle is on. I shall need some hot water and tell Emm to get my medicine bag out and to look for the salve and those hands of yours will need looking at. Now don’t stand about gawping!’

They were away before she had finished speaking, as fiercely glad as Fancy had been to leave the scene of such devastation but more than anything they needed to get away from the sight of their Meg whose sweet, girlish beauty neither had before noticed.

They were missing for several hours that night, and on others. They made no excuse and Mrs Whitley asked for none as though she was quietly understanding of their vulnerably growing manhood and its need of satisfaction. She was quite well aware of what they were about and though she knew they were on a wasted errand she said nothing. The whole Square knew by now that Fancy O’Neill had gone too far in his search for a ‘bit of fun’, and in the way of a small, close knit community in which each member is vitally, often vicariously concerned in the life of every other, the episode had been discussed in detail. The speculation had raced from kitchen to kitchen and when it reached the one from which Fancy had received his orders, his disappearance had not caused a great deal of surprise. Well, he wouldn’t hang about to be abused by the Hemingway lads, would he, they said to one another, not if he had the sense he was born with. Elevenpence
halfpenny
in the shilling he might be, but he wasn’t daft enough to take another beating like the one they had already given him and no doubt he was half way to London by now, or even America, if he knew what was good for him. Ships needed deck hands and would take on anyone with a strong back and a willingness to take orders and he’d be wise to put a stretch of ocean between himself and the hot need of revenge of Martin Hunter and Tom Fraser, they said knowingly.

By the end of the week the incident, and Fancy O’Neill, who was never seen again, was entirely forgotten by everyone bar those who lived in the Hemingway house in Great George Square.

MRS WHITLEY COULD REMEMBER
the time she first saw them as if it was yesterday. Well, she was not likely to forget, was she? It was but a fortnight since the old Queen had gone to her Maker and the ‘three of ’em’ were dressed in the dyed black the City of Liverpool considered suitable for mourning, even in its orphans. She herself and all her staff were similarly dressed for Her Majesty had been much loved and respected in the sixty-three years she had ruled them. That was two years ago but the picture the three of ’em had presented would remain with her to the end of her days. They had stood on her clean kitchen step, not exactly clinging to one another for the boys were twelve, and tall, but giving the impression that they did and as she remarked later to Emm, you’d have thought she was about to land the little girl a ‘fourpenny one’ the way the lads settled themselves protectively about her. She had stood between them, Cook recalled, the top of her comical black bonnet not quite reaching the angle of their thin shoulders and as the door was opened to them they both edged a fraction closer to one another in a manoeuvre to which they seemed well-accustomed so that the girl was almost hidden behind them. They were all dressed in the usual orphanage attire of cast-off clothing but the girl bobbed a curtsey and the boys snatched their cloth caps from their heads and Cook had liked that!