Between Friends

by Audrey Howard

  ‘He went down!’ he was able to say at last. ‘We were flying at 500 feet …’

  ‘Were there guns, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Guns, sir?’

  ‘Firing … shelling?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘Perhaps other aircraft?’

  ‘Aircraft, sir?’ The boy was deep in shock.

  ‘Enemy aircraft, boy?’

  ‘No sir, nothing.’

  ‘Then what happened? Why …?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’ The boy began to weep again for it was his first encounter with tragedy. ‘He seemed to … to spin, sir. Round and round and then he went into a steep dive. I was shouting to him, sir …’ The young officer sounded aggrieved as though if only Lieutenant Hunter had listened to him they would not now be in this predicament. ‘But he … he couldn’t hear me. The noise was so dreadful … I’ve never heard …’

  ‘No, boy … not many of us have …’

  ‘Such a dreadful sound, sir … and then … Oh dear God … oh sir … he hit the ground and skidded across the field …’ The boy sobbed uncontrollably and those about him moved restlessly for his anguish was hard to bear. They were all young, inexperienced in the art of the air battles in which they would be asked to take part, and the fine fun of it had suddenly become the grief and shock of their comrade. They had heard of the aircraft which had already been brought down, but they had been from other squadrons and though they had been concerned, of course, it had not touched them personally.

  ‘Go on, my boy, what happened then?’ The commanding officer’s voice was gentle.

  ‘Sir, oh sir …’ He might still have been at school, a boy addressing his headmaster. ‘It simply … exploded, sir.’ His voice rose and the officer gripped him by the arms quite forcefully. He must control himself now, his expression said, or he would be of no use to them, to himself or to the man with whom he would fly in future.

  ‘It burst into flames, sir … flames … Dear God, and the flames were … Oh Jesus.’

  ‘And Lieutenant Hunter, boy, did you see him leave the crash?’ The officer’s voice was urgent.

  ‘No sir … oh no sir … he was still in it, sir, he was still in it, sir … burning.’ The boy clawed at his own face, quite unable to bear the pictures his mind conjured up.

  ‘You did not see him … after the crash.’

  ‘No … I’ve just told you … it was burning.’

  ‘You flew over it … flew low enough to … to see Lieutenant Hunter?’

  ‘I went down, sir …’ The young officer had begun to calm himself, though his tears still flowed unchecked across his smooth, boyish cheeks and his eyes stared at the horror he had seen but he was falling into the level of shock which allowed him to endure it. ‘I went right down sir … to have … a look.’

  ‘Good lad, that was brave.’

  ‘… but … but it was burning … against the hedge. There were men … soldiers, German I think … it was confusing …’

  ‘Of course …’

  ‘… and I could see nothing except … except flames and smoke … but no-one left the aircraft, sir … no-one, no-one.’

  The commanding officer stood up painfully. It was the first casualty of his squadron. The first man and craft to go down and it was hard to bear. There would be others, for like the two who had gone out so joyously this morning, and on other mornings, he was perfectly certain that this war would be fought not only on the ground and on the seas, but in the air.

  He turned to the mechanic who hovered respectfully at his elbow, the very man, arrived only the day before, who had serviced Lieutenant Hunter’s machine before he took off.

  ‘See to him, will you … er …’

  ‘Johnson, sir.’

  ‘Look after him, Johnson and don’t leave him alone until I get back. If he doesn’t come out of it we shall have to get the MO, to have a look at him.’

  ‘Leave it to me, sir. I’ll keep an eye on him.’

  They found the young officer an hour later wandering about the perimeter of the flying field apparently looking for ‘Nanny, who would be cross if she saw his dirty face.’

  Of the mechanic who had been ordered to keep an eye on him there was no sign and when the commanding officer, suspicious, made enquiries at headquarters of him, it was discovered that the man simply did not exist!

  The letter came at the end of November. It was a private letter addressed to Miss M. Hughes, from the commanding officer of the squadron in which Lieutenant Martin Hunter had so briefly, so tragically served. It stated simply that as no record could be found of a relative of Lieutenant Hunter they were forwarding this letter, addressed to her, with this notification. Her name had been on the enclosed envelope which, unfortunately the censor had to open. The officer sympathised with Miss Hughes, regretting his sad duty in reporting Lieutenant Hunter missing, believed killed. She appeared to be the sole beneficiary of the officer’s estate in his will, a copy of which was enclosed and she was advised to consult a solicitor as soon as she was able.

  Martin’s letter was short.

  My darling,

  I love you. There is really nothing more to be said but those words. If it had been allowed we would have been lovers, friends, dear and close, trusting, giving to one another the joy of sharing life’s pleasures and sorrows, however large, or small. You know me as no other person does and you have the whole of me now, and always. Be happy, my beautiful girl. I cannot believe we shall not meet again for surely it cannot end here. Meg, I love you so.

  Martin.

  She went into her room and locked the door and drew the curtains in that first moment after reading the letter and sat down on the floor and put her hands over her ears as if the action would prevent her from hearing her world break to pieces around her. She sat like that for a long time and when they came and knocked on her door, asking what they should do about the menus – for Miss Hughes saw to those personally – she did not answer since she did not hear them.

  She sat like a marble statue for twelve unmoving hours, her eyes fixed on the emptiness of her life and whispered madly to herself for she was quite out of her mind.

  ‘He was my whole life. What shall I do now?’ she asked herself, and her body rocked back and forth in torment.

  ‘Where has he gone?’ she moaned. ‘The world is so cold without him in it,’ but there was no-one there and no-one answered for it was the first time in her life Meg Hughes had been completely alone.

  She would have stayed there, dying of it, Annie Hardcastle supposed – had their Edie been made of the stuff which obeys orders and speaks when spoken to and takes no interest in what her employer did as long as she was given her wages at the end of the week – but Edie Marshall remembered Meg Hughes’ treatment of her at ‘The Hawthorne Tree’ and her appreciation, quite openly and delightfully displayed when Edie had worked for her. She remembered Meg Hughes’ undeniable pleasure when Edie had promised to come with her to ‘Hilltops’.

  ‘Oh thank you, Edie,’ she had said, ‘it will be reassuring to have someone I can trust in the kitchens,’ and she had given her the splendid job of housekeeper which meant Edie did not have the hard, manual work she had done all her life and which she was getting too old to perform and she did not forget those kindnesses. Miss Hughes had been off-colour for a while, out of sorts and peaky, then, just as suddenly, for the space of a month or two she had gone about singing even though Mr Tom had left for the training camp and her face had been rosy and her eyes filled with the loveliest light though Edie could not begin to guess why.

  But as she confessed to Annie on the telephone two days after Miss Hughes took to her bed, she didn’t like it one bit. Not a sound out of her, she said, though Jenny swore she heard someone moaning in the vicinity of Miss Hughes’ bedroom but how much credence one could give to that was anyone’s guess for Jenny Swales was known to be of a highly imaginative nature.

  ‘Did anything happen, Edie?’ The tinny voice of Annie Hardcastle aske
d and Edie held the receiver away from her ear since she was not awfully sure of the damage it might do to her. She wouldn’t have used the contraption at all but really she was that worried about Miss Hughes. Two days and no-one had seen her, nor heard her voice even, and the post office two doors up from Annie’s was very obliging in the matter of telephone calls, bringing anyone from the village to the store in cases of emergency.

  ‘What d’you mean, Annie?’

  ‘Did anything happen to upset her?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Eeh, Annie, I don’t know what to do. I’ve knocked a dozen times a day but there’s no answer. If she’s not well …’

  ‘Has she heard from Mr Tom?’

  ‘No, but she had a letter postmarked in France. Mind you she’s had a few of them lately but this looked official …’

  ‘I’ll be on the next train, Edie.’

  Meg lay rigid in her bed and she was aware, somewhere in the drifting waves of agony and mad dashing boulders of the grief which hurled themselves at her, that she would die of it quite soon for the heart of her was gone and it was not in her to live any longer in this world without Martin. She did not sleep except for a light fitful doze from which she came again and again on an anguished cry which escaped from between her bitten lips. Her body hurt all over, even the inside of her mouth and the roots of her hair and she wondered how it was possible to bear such pain and still live.

  When morning broke for the second time she rose from her bed and sat for hours in a chair by the window, the chink of daylight which crept through the drawn curtains emphasising the ravages of her face, her untidy snarl of hair, her blank, unwashed sourness and the limp clasping of her soiled hands between which the letter still lay. She slumped on the bed or sat in the chair and stared sightlessly at the drawn curtain and that was all – for Meg Hughes was rapidly sinking into the indifferent, heedless, mindless state of the deranged and there was no-one to stop her until Annie Hardcastle ordered the locked door to be broken down. She stood, appalled for the space of five seconds, staring at Meg’s shrunken, wax-like face and plum encircled eyes, gagging on the stale and foetid smell which was captured in the closed and shuttered room, before throwing her not inconsiderable weight across the room to the chair in which Meg sat.

  She sent them all away, all those curious and staring strangers who were Megan Hughes’ staff, for it had needed the man and the boy to help to shatter the door, and she and Edie lifted her from her chair and stripped her. They bathed her own filth from her and washed her hair and changed her bed, flinging open the window to let in light and fresh air. Edie was sent running to the kitchen, ignoring the questioning eyes of those about her, and she was so upset she told young Jenny Swales who had the impudence to ask after Miss Hughes to mind her own damned business, and she whipped up eggs and sherry in milk.

  They put it in her hand and she drank it obediently as she would have done poison if asked, but she did not speak nor raise her eyes beyond the hand which put the glass in hers. She had reacted only when they had tried to take the letter from her, struggling silently, ferociously until it was returned to her when she fell again into her trance-like state and Annie Hardcastle knew she must be brought from the senseless state she was in before it was too late.

  ‘Megan,’ she had said quite loudly for several minutes but Megan might have been deaf and mute for all the good it did.

  ‘Megan Hughes!’ Her voice thundered about the room and escaped from the wide open windows into the gardens where Albert and the boy hovered. The servants, and even the guests now knew there was something very wrong with the elegant Miss Hughes, for an hotel, no matter how well organised, will not run, hitch free, without its leader. Edie Marshall was a splendid housekeeper, hardworking, conscientious and exceedingly efficient but she needed orders, direction, lacking the inventive creativity which Miss Hughes brought to the fine dishes she cooked. There had been several small mishaps, a touch of – well, one could only call it carelessness, a feeling of something, one could not quite put one’s finger on it, missing, and where was Miss Hughes, the guests asked, for she surely would put it right?

  ‘Megan Hughes.’ The voice of Annie Hardcastle could clearly be heard along quiet hallways and in suites where guests held their breath in amazement. It rolled across gardens and down to the lake and they all distinctly heard the slap which Annie administered with all the force she could muster to Megan Hughes’ face.

  There was silence after that and only Edie heard the muffled, anguished weeping of the woman in Annie Hardcastle’s arms, and only she saw the dazed pain of bereavement turn to the awakened agony Megan Hughes suffered in her bitter grieving. When it was done and she was outwardly herself again, only she heard her beg Annie to stay with her.

  They were in the pretty sitting-room a few days later. Though she had not as yet been seen by her guests, or even by the staff of the hotel, it had become known that Miss Hughes was herself again, the mysterious illness with which she had been struck down nearly gone and that the high standards on which she insisted, even in these straitened days, would once again be restored.

  ‘I shall need someone, Annie. You know why!’

  ‘Aye lass, I reckon I do, but there’s Will. I cannot leave him.’

  ‘Can you not persuade him to come with you? There is more than enough work for both of you. I … there is so much to be done … I do not think I can do it alone.’ It was said simply and the older woman felt her heart move in compassion. ‘I have been in touch … a solicitor … he called this morning at my request and he tells me … the … the will must be … we must obtain probate but … when we do, I must either sell … or run his business … Martin’s …’ Her voice was ragged and her pale, sad face worked in an effort not to weep again. ‘I … these last months since he went away and I believed we … would be married. When I knew …’ Her hand trembled and she pressed it firmly against her lips as though to contain the cry of agony which begged to come out. She drew in her breath, fighting to continue. ‘I let it … slip away, Annie. I seemed not to care much anymore … about the hotel. The war had come and the … and … I was … I slipped into a state of … merely waiting for him. That’s who I became. The woman who waited for Martin Hunter. What did it matter if the servants left to go into factories, or that I had to close so many rooms. I was to be … married. I suppose it was because … of the way I was … but nothing else was important to me. Not the hotel, nor the hard work, nor the sacrifices Tom and I had made to get where we did. I … drifted … waiting … for him and now he is not to come home to me … and there is only this left for me to do. The hotel … and …’

  ‘What will you do, love?’ Annie’s face was inordinately sad.

  ‘Oh Annie, I cannot sell … what he has created. I know nothing of aeroplanes, or indeed motor cars except how to drive one. I might founder, knowing little of how such a business is run but I must try. I … I promised him. He has good men, an engineer he trusts. I know nothing of the technical side but if a knowledge of business and finance is any help then I must do the best I can with it. Surely it can be no different from running any other concern. Such as this hotel, for instance? I make and sell a product here and I will try to do the same with Martin’s company. I have seen the books and it seems in good heart …’ Her voice faltered, then became stronger. ‘I can only try, Annie, but … if you could see your way … my God … I need your help, Annie, I really do.’

  Annie sighed. ‘Megan, oh Megan, it’s a hard row you are to work and I don’t know how you are to do it, lass, but if anyone can do it, it’s you. You will have to … well, my lass, you can’t go on forever and this place takes some looking after, let alone dashing off to Camford all the time …’

  ‘That’s why I want you to come, Annie. Edie is a superb worker but you … you could help me with the cooking and run the hotel …’

  ‘You may have no hotel to run, my girl, when they get to know about …’ She nodded her head in the direction of Meg.
/>   ‘I understand that, Annie.’ It was said with quiet dignity.

  ‘It’ll take some swallowing, you know that. I’m … well, I’ve grown fond of you, Megan, but if you weren’t as dear to me as my own daughter I’m bound to say I’d feel the same as they will.’

  ‘I know, Annie.’

  ‘I can’t approve, lass.’

  For the first time in days Meg Hughes smiled. It had not the brilliance nor the humour which had once lit her face, but in it was a strength now, and a quiet joy which said she would manage somehow. There was not acceptance, for Martin Hunter’s death could never be accepted, but there was a trust there that she would survive it, and a certainty that, now she had the reason to do so, she would fight to keep it.

  ‘You will come, Annie?’

  ‘Aye, if Will agrees.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Shall you tell Mr Tom soon?’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘He knows that Mr Hunter is …?’

  ‘Yes. I rang his commanding office in Edinburgh. They brought him to the telephone. He is to have compassionate leave. I told them they were brothers.’

  ‘Brothers!’

  ‘Well, they were, Annie. They were brought up as brothers.’

  ‘When will he be home?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  HE HELD HER in his arms and wept and because she could not bear it she wept again with him and for a long time they simply stood with their arms about one another, grieving for the man, the boy, the friend and protector who had been the cornerstone of the triangle which had formed their lives.

  Tom could not speak at first. He sat on her settee in his ill-fitting khaki uniform and held the brandy she pressed into his hand, staring at it with a face in which the expression of loss was etched in deep, painful grooves. He sipped it at regular intervals, not really tasting it, but the warmth of it put some colour into his drawn cheeks and at last he was calm.