Between Friends (84 page)

‘Alright then, but not too fast and
not too far
!’

It was cold and though the sun shone with the iced brilliance of winter it gave off no warmth. The summer and autumn, long and lovely, day after day with no intention, it seemed of ever ending had left overnight, turning the weather about so rapidly one day it was summer, the next deep winter and those who knew the ways of it in this high land of the Derbyshire peaks said it would snow soon and that the winter would be long and hard.

A yellow labrador puppy ran at Beth’s heels, leaping and barking his excitement and delight at this escape from the confines of the garden, raising his nose to sniff the windless air, his bright, curious eye following the movement of the child.

‘Sidney,’ she called imperiously, showing him the stick she held in her hand, then, having caught his wandering attention, throwing it haphazardly a few yards along the path. ‘Fetch Sidney,’ she shouted, pointing to where the piece of wood had fallen but the puppy merely leaped to snatch at her hand before darting off again to follow some fascinating scent he had come upon.

Their concerted noise blasted crows from their cover to wheel about the thin blue sky and the man behind the grey pitted boulder smiled.

Shadows of the half naked trees made patterns through which the child and the dog romped and the vivid scarlet of her coat made a moving, rippling charge against the landscape which was already painted in winter colours of black and white. She wore no hat and her hair, cut short, sprang about her head in a flame
of
copper, moving in the still air like the russet coat of a running fox. The exertion had put poppy flags in her cheeks and the spangle of stars in the deep, chocolate brown of her eyes.

‘Sidney, come here Sidney,’ she called again and the puppy raced towards her, his eyes adoring, his expression resigned.

‘Good boy, good old boy,’ the child cried and bent to hug his head in a passion of love. ‘See, fetch the stick. Go on, fetch the stick,’ and the dog ran obligingly though he had scant idea of what they were doing.

Sally Flash walked slowly behind them, her eyes moving serenely from one lovely sight to another. A pussy willow bent towards the river, growing deep in fern and patches of moss. There was a coppice of hazelwood beneath which a dense layer of wood sorrel lay, climbing over fallen logs and the cut stumps of trees where they had been felled. There was a flicker in the roots of a beech tree and the bright eye of a water vole peeked out at her and she hoped the dog had not got its scent. She breathed in deeply, drawing the champagne like air into her lungs, pushing her hands further into the pockets of her coat as she followed her charge along the hard, frozen path beside the tumbling water of the Dove.

‘Mind, sweetheart, those stones are slippery,’ she called.

‘Can Sidney go in, Sally?’

‘He’s already in!’

‘Well of course! He is a gun dog, you know. It is part of his nature to take to the water.’

The old-fashioned phrasing made the nursemaid smile.

‘Who told you that?’ she called after the darting child.

‘Will.’

‘Of course … yes, he would know.’

The water flew about the ecstatic dog and the child shrieked with laughter and the man who crouched behind the boulder knelt and watched for a moment longer, then, as though he could not wait another minute he stood up and began to walk towards her.

‘Good morning,’ he called and the child stopped abruptly and backed away some hazed memory making her cautious, and the nursemaid hurried to catch up to her. Though she had been away up North visiting her own family when Beth was taken away she could still recall the terror with which Mrs Fraser had recounted it to her on her return. She put her arm protectively about Beth’s
shoulders
, holding her to her side and the puppy ran back nervously, his tail ready to tuck itself between his legs. He leaned against the child and the three of them watched the man as he moved in their direction.

‘It’s a lovely day,’ he said and his eyes never left the little girl and Sally Flash held her more firmly.

‘Yes, indeed it is.’

‘… and that’s a fine dog you have there, Beth.’ The small girl stared up at the tall stranger, her face assuming that guarded expression of a child who is not awfully sure she liked her name on the lips of a man she did not know.

‘Thank you,’ she said politely.

The man stopped then, aware that he had alarmed the child’s nurse. He wore a pair of knee breeches with knee length socks and a good pair of stout walking boots. Under his serviceable tweed jacket was a warm woollen jumper with a polo neck and he wore a peaked cap. He carried a plain walking stick of cherrywood and had a small knapsack on his back.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he asked softly, almost sadly. His eyes looked directly at the child but the remark was addressed to Sally Flash.

‘Well … I can’t just …’

He turned to look at her then and the luminous softness in his deep, brown eyes fell warmly on her face, the residue of his feelings – for what, she wondered – still there.

‘I’m Martin Hunter. You were with Beth on the morning I came to see her in the nursery, six months ago now. I’ve had a hair cut since then.’ His smile flashed out humourously, then immediately he returned his gaze to the child as though he could not waste precious time on anyone else. He squatted down before her, holding out his hand and at once the puppy, all fears allayed, ran to him, fawning all over him in a delirium of joy.

‘Don’t you remember me, Beth?’ He gave the appearance of being quite devastated if she did not. He held the puppy with a firm hand, looking humbly into the face of the little girl and Sally Flash let go of her, ready to allow her to go to him if she wished it.

‘No.’ The child was still suspicious and not at all sure she liked
her
Sidney, her own puppy and therefore allowed to love no-one but her, obviously delighted with his new friend.

‘Can you ride McGinty yet?’ he asked gently.

‘Yes … well, nearly …’

‘I thought to see you galloping all over the moor by now.’

‘Daddy says I’m not big enough yet but …’

She moved a step nearer to him, her childish caution evaporating. There was something in this man which, now that his eyes were on a level with her own, she recognised, something which rang a bell in her young mind and it was to do with her pony.

‘Of course, if Daddy says so.’ His voice was solemn, then he winked.

‘I know … I know …’ Her face lit up and she hopped from one foot to the other in her excitement. ‘You’re the man who said I could ride McGinty ’cos I was a big girl, if we put a rein on him, and now Will lifts me on and holds the lead and I gallop and gallop round and round the paddock and when I get bigger Daddy says I can ride out …’

She came right up to him then and put her hand on his knee, looking delightedly up into his face, ‘But I’m big enough now, aren’t I … aren’t I?’

‘Well, perhaps if Mummy spoke to your Daddy …’

The child’s face clouded and her mouth pouted rebelliously.

‘No, she says we musn’t make Daddy upset …’, her face brightened, ‘but if you asked him … could you … Mr … er.’

‘My name is Martin.’

‘Yes.’

‘Had you forgotten?’

‘Course not … but if you asked Mummy about McGinty … will you? Will you? I’m not frightened of falling off, like Daddy says.’

Martin Hunter’s mouth tightened ominously and there was a hard gleam in his eyes. ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ he said huskily. Somehow she had stepped between his knees, her small earnest face close to his and Sally Flash began to fidget for though this man had been to ‘Hilltops’ and was a friend of the Frasers, he had only been the once and now, here he was, out of sight of the house, practically embracing her employer’s child.

‘Do you know who it was who sent Sidney to you?’ he was saying now, evidently trying to divert the little girl from the eternal argument which forever raged, Sally herself could vouch for that, over the riding of the pony, and the little girl pressed herself trustingly against his knee.

‘He came in a basket, just for me, with my own name on it,’ she said proudly.

‘But do you know who sent him?’

‘A friend, Mummy said.’

Martin Hunter put his arm about his daughter and Sally was quite frozen, unable to spoil this special moment which seemed suddenly to have been created between the man and the child. Surely … surely he could not really be?

‘Yes, a friend. Can you guess who?’ He grinned and raised his eyebrows comically and the child responded with a shout of delighted laughter.

‘It was you … it was you!’ and put her arms about his neck.

‘
SHE TOLD HIM
she’d seen you. She never stopped talking about you and the bloody pony and the puppy, and how you said she was big enough to ride out on the moors and she had only to ask Mummy to speak to Daddy, and with no trouble at all she’d be off and away, up in the hills, the dog at her heels and you, I’ve no doubt, at her side. D’you know what it did to him, do you? Have you any conception of how he
really
is, Martin, have you, because if you have you are the cruellest man I know. God, I thought he was going to go right off his head,
right
off, not just partially as he is now. Do you know what it did to him,
and
to Beth? He terrified her,
terrified
her. Down in the corner of the nursery he was, his arms over his head, but worse still, he had
her
with him. Mind the shells, he was screaming, mind the bloody shells and calling her Andy. I had to get the doctor to
both
of them, Martin, and it was all I could do to stop him taking Tom away in a straight jacket. When I think of all the work, the care which I’ve put in, and Will and the others. Week after week, month after month, repairing his confidence, sheltering him, giving him a purpose, something … anything to hold his life together and then you …’ her face was a mask of snarling venom, ‘you have to ruin it, send him back into that hell, frighten my daughter just for your own bloody selfish needs. I’ll not forgive you Martin … never … never …’

He stood like a rock, bleak, ashen-faced, appalled and at first could make no sense of what she was saying. He had tried to draw her eagerly into his arms as she came into the warm welcome of the room for it had been a week or more since he had seen her. It was a hostile day with the first early snow of the winter falling on the peaks, turning to sleet in the town and beads of it sparkled in the soft frame of her hair which spilled from beneath her beret and trailed icily across her cheeks in tiny, melting drops. Her face was blanched, strained to breaking point but her eyes were like
newly
fired copper and she was as steady as a rock as she put up warning hands to his chest.

‘Don’t touch me, Martin.’

‘Sweetheart, what is it?’ he had smiled at first, for though his brain told him instantly of her dangerous mood, even before she spoke, warned by the rigidity of her body and the way in which she held back from him, the muscles of his face had not yet had time to take her measure and had instinctively formed into an expression of glad welcome.

They were standing face to face in the comfortable sitting-room of the house in Camford, the flames of the fire in the grate turning the cream of the walls to rose and apricot. He had drawn the curtains when he heard her motor car in the drive, ready to turn the ordinary Sunday afternoon atmosphere in which he had been idly studying the newspapers into an enchanted, multi-coloured bower of warmth for his love. Surprised and delighted, since she was not often able to get away at the weekend, he had drawn her in, ready to take her beret, her long leather coat, her boots, indeed anything and everything which kept her lovely body from his.

‘I shall not come here any more, Martin,’ she whispered, ‘and if you attempt to see me or Beth, I shall take her away, and Tom as well, as soon as he is able to be moved.’ She was distraught, hardly aware of what she was saying, it seemed, incoherent almost, in her devastation. ‘You must stay here,’ she went on, ‘because of your work but I can move to anywhere in the world a decent hotel is needed, and begin again, and I will if you come near me, or mine again. It will be hard for we have made a life for ourselves, a good life now … the hotel is … but by God, I’ll give it all up to protect him. D’you hear? He is wounded, Martin Hunter – wounded, can’t you see it? – and I cannot bear to watch him bleed again. The wound will heal if it is given a chance but you … you bastard … you’ve opened it up again … and I helped you …’

She began to weep. It had been seven days. A week of weary desolation in which Meg Fraser had fought the relentless certainty that she must remove Martin Hunter from her life at once, for if she did not she would kill Tom Fraser as surely as though she held a pistol to his head and fired it – and not only that, in the process she would destroy Beth’s chance for the secure childhood which was her right

There was the other alternative, of course, which the doctor
had
pointed out to her of having Tom committed to one of the many institutions which had been created for the men who had returned with the same dreadful fears Tom carried about with him, but most of those, he said, had not the chance Tom had. The doctor had been astounded by his regression and had Mrs Fraser any idea what had caused it. Had he had a shock, or been frightened of something? He had been so sure that given time and the peace of the life he led, Tom could live a relatively normal existence but really, if this happened again he would seriously advise her to have him put away.