Between Friends

by Audrey Howard

  They were alone, the next day she and Tom, the last of the short spring day gone with the skittish April clouds over the hillside and down into the Dovedale gorge. They had walked to the edge of the garden with the little girl, swinging her between them and after tea in the nursery had put her to bed together. Tom had bathed her first, watching her intently as she splashed her hands flat against the water, the spray she caused putting diamond water drops in her short tawny curls. Her skin was flushed, rosy with a child-like, breathless beauty and her huge, deep brown eyes laughed up into his.

  ‘Mind, Daddy, or you’ll get all wet,’ she cried, beating the water more firmly so that Daddy, despite her warning, would get wet. They had played together as Meg watched impassively, still numbed with the pain she had suffered, by her own doing she was quick to acknowledge, the evening before and she barely heard, nor made the effort to capture the words he spoke as he lifted the child gently from the bath and began to rub her with a towel.

  ‘Good girl,’ he was saying. ‘Stand still for Daddy, there’s a good girl. You’re like a little eel.’ He was smiling, his blue eyes looking directly into her brown ones and his voice was soft with wonder. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘you get more like me every day, you little imp.’

  ‘Do I, Daddy?’ The child looked trustingly up at him.

  ‘You do indeed and lovely you are with it.’ He kissed her rounded stomach and made the sound of a raspberry on it and she squealed with delight. ‘Now stand still while I get your toes dry.’

  They had gone, Meg and Tom, hand in hand from the nursery when Beth fell asleep and they sat in the fire-glowed peace of the sitting-room. He was calm, at peace in his love for the child. He lit his pipe and his long drawn out sigh was not of misery but of content.

  ‘I can’t get over it sometimes.’ He smiled and his voice was wondering.

  ‘Can’t get over what, Tom?’

  ‘Our Beth.’

  ‘Our … our Beth?’ It was the first time he had uttered the northcountryman’s possessive use of a relative’s name. In the old days he and Martin had always called her ‘our Meg’ as did Mrs Whitley and she had done the same with them. It was affectionate, unique and infinitely enduring especially in the vocabulary of a man or woman from Liverpool. She felt a pulse begin to beat in her neck and a tiny warning flashed behind her eyes.

  ‘It’s those eyes of hers,’ he continued dreamily.

  ‘Yes?’ Dear God, what was coming her frantic heart had time to plead before he went on.

  ‘Aye, they seem to get a deeper blue every day.’

  ‘Blue …!’

  ‘D’you remember mine, our Meg?’ Our Meg now … ‘… when I was a lad? Mrs Whitley used to say they were as blue as speedwell. They’re not now, of course. I suppose they fade as you get older but our Beth’s certainly inherited them, that’s for sure. They go with her lovely hair. That’s from you, love, there’s nothing more certain than that but those eyes of hers … well, there’s no doubt where she got those from!’

  He gave another small satisfied sigh then put his head on the back of the settee and drew contentedly on his pipe. ‘Aye, she’s a little beauty and no mistake and I reckon it’s time we had us another, our Meg!’

  The immaculately dressed gentleman with the cultured voice smiled at the startled farmer’s wife as she shut the farm gate, bidding her a pleasant ‘Good evening,’ and raising his hat most politely.

  She had turned away, ready to follow the dozen cows she had just brought in from the field, across the muddy, dung-spattered yard, and the dog who helped her lifted a delicate paw, waiting for her command.

  ‘Excuse me, madame.’

  She turned, astonished. Madame!

  ‘I was wondering if you knew of a short cut to the “Hilltop Hotel” from here. I appear to have missed my way.’

  ‘Well …’ She hitched her shawl more warmly about her shoulders, eyeing him warily. ‘I am a friend of Mrs Fraser, he went on. ‘I had heard that Tom … Mr Fraser was returned from the war so I was on my way up to see him. How I got lost I do not know for I have been up here a dozen times.’

  That was different, of course, if he knew the poor demented chap those here about had heard of, and no doubt a visit from a friend would perk him up a bit.

  ‘Well … you go on a ways up here … see that lane, it’ll bring you out at the back of the hotel and then …’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  SHE WAS AT her desk trying to concentrate on the papers which were scattered upon it but the puppies’ excited barking and the voice of her daughter bringing them peremptorily to ‘heel’, a command they both completely ignored, called to her and she stood up, going to the window to watch them. Will was there with Tom beside him, turning over the winter heavy soil ready for the planting of the zinnias, the begonias, marigolds, dahlias and lupins which would fill her garden with a rainbow of colour during the summer. Beth was dressed in scarlet, a bright woollen cap about her ears, a jumper and leggings knitted by Annie and all to match the lovely colour in her cheeks. Her eyes were alive with joy as the puppies carried her from one end of the large garden to the other, a swirling, leaping vortex of movement which brought a smile to Meg’s lips.

  It was Sunday and though she usually caught up with the many small tasks which were overlooked during her hectic week she was tempted to put on her coat and join the group in the garden. Over the sound of her child’s laughter and the yapping of the dogs she could just make out the peaceful voices of Will and Tom as they discussed what should go where in the border which they were digging. The sun shone and when she opened the window she could hear a blackbird in the spinney beyond the garden wall lift his voice to the coming of summer, only weeks away now, and she filled her lungs with the sweet country air and felt her heart move in hopeful anticipation of good things to come, surely?

  The two men turned as she leaned from the window and Tom smiled. His face was in repose, the pipe clenched between his teeth. His eyes, once so blue and vivid, were serene. He was doing what he loved best in the world. He was, in this moment, safe, content, his world peopled with those whom he loved and who loved him and he called out to Meg, his voice confidently strong.

  ‘Come on out into the sunshine, sweetheart. Come and tell us where you want these lupins before me and Will come to blows over it!’

  She laughed, shaking her head, then, on a whim, changed her mind.

  ‘Alright, just for half an hour then. I could do with some fresh air to clear my head. I’ll just go and get a coat.’

  She was surprised when she rounded the corner of the house into the garden, surprised and faintly alarmed to see Will hurrying, his deformed leg swinging awkwardly, towards the far corner of the high-walled garden and the gate which Meg could see stood open. He held his garden fork in one hand but the other flailed the air as though he was trying desperately to cleave his way through some thickness which was doing its best to hold him back. Tom stood rooted to the spot where she had last seen him, watching Will stumble away from him, his face quite blank and staring with that awful expression she had come to dread, his pipe on the ground at his feet where it had fallen from his slack mouth.

  She began to walk slowly towards him and alarm tip-toed stealthily into her mind and her heart-beat quickened. Her eyes darted about the garden, piercing through budding shrubs and bushes, behind massed rhododendrons and hydrangeas not yet in full leaf, searching for the splash of scarlet which would locate her daughter but there was nothing to be seen and as her gaze returned to Will she was just in time to see him vanish through the strong garden gate which he had erected when Beth started to walk. From somewhere distant she could hear the intoxicated yelping of the two puppies.

  She began to run then for though there was nothing wrong – was there? – Will’s urgency had transferred itself to her and she wanted to reassure herself that Beth was just beyond the open garden gate with the dogs. She had no time to stop to comfort the frightened confusion of her husband who h
ad put out his hand to her as she went by him, his eyes begging her to tell him where his child was, to tell him she was safe and not gone with … with Andy, but flung herself down the green slope of the grass after Will, her only concern at the moment the safety of her daughter. She had time only to wonder at the strangeness of Will who was so careful of such things and of the child’s safety, in leaving the garden gate open, and at herself for not noticing it as she looked from the window.

  As she reached the swinging gate Will re-entered the garden, the two dogs dancing about his heels. His face was like paper, every vestige of colour drained away and he almost fell as he stumbled against her.

  ‘She must have gone into the house.’ His voice was no more than a thread of sound in his throat so desperately did he want to believe what he said and Meg turned again frantically, running past the pleading hand of her husband for the second time.

  ‘Meggie …’ he moaned as she went by but for the first time since he had come back from the war she had no time for him.

  Annie turned peaceably as Meg flung herself into the kitchen, her face calm and relaxed as she fashioned the last of the lemon biscuits which Beth loved.

  ‘You’re in a hurry, lass,’ she said. ‘What’s …’

  ‘Where’s Beth?’

  Annie smiled, unperturbed in that last moment of peace but Meg gripped her arms with such violence Annie winced and tried to pull away as Meg hissed into her face for already her mother’s heart knew and was terror-stricken.

  ‘Where is she … where is she?’

  ‘Nay love …’ Annie’s calm expression slipped away and though she was perfectly certain Beth was as safe as houses with her Will to protect her she could understand Meg’s anxiety about her child in the face of what she herself now knew about the man who had menaced Meg for so long. Had she not seen it, the madness in his eyes when he had come to the house, and felt his evil but really there was no need to be so …

  ‘Where is Beth …?’ Meg was almost screaming, her hunted gaze raking the room as though Annie, and poor Edie who fell back before the force of her strange fury, had her hidden somewhere.

  ‘She’s out in the garden with Will and …’ Annie began bravely, trying to place a comforting hand on Meg but she threw it off and ran from the kitchen, back towards the garden and the gate through which, in a moment her babbling mind begged, her little girl would surely re-appear.

  Will had dropped his fork in the gateway. The puppies ran about unchecked, the heady excitement of being beyond the walls without supervision quite going to their silly heads, and Tom, his face like plaster, his eyes blank so great was his trepidation, had ventured to the brink of the gateway to peer hesitantly into the world which had taken his child from him.

  ‘Beth …’ he was crying, his confused terror driving him back and back into the madness she had thought was almost gone. Her own panic, and Will’s, where Tom had known only calm and infinite comfort, drove him beyond reason and though he was aware that Beth had disappeared he could make no sense of it.

  ‘Get out of my way, Tom.’ Meg pushed him aside roughly, his need no longer mattering in the greater one of her child.

  Will was just coming round the corner of the wall which surrounded the garden, his eyes darting frantically from tree to shrub to rock, to every conceivable bit of cover which might hide the little girl. He called her name again and again and the echoes of his voice leaped merrily across the hilltops and down into the valleys, coming back to him without her. His face was sweated now, and drawn with pain for in his haste he had fallen several times, savaging his crippled leg with more punishment than it could take.

  ‘I can’t find her, Meg … bloody hell … it’s only been ten minutes … I’ve looked in the yard and the workshop … every place she could be hiding but there’s no sign of her … dear Christ …’ He pushed his soil-encrusted hand despairingly through his hair, turning his eyes away from her sudden awful stillness, for both of them had only one thought and neither dare speak of it to the other. ‘I was talking to Tom … you saw us. She was down by the gate … the dogs had found something … I don’t know what. We hardly took our eyes off her … we could hear her laughing and shouting to the dogs, you know how she does … Jesus … when it went quiet I turned round to see what mischief she was up to …’ he was near to tears ‘… and … dear God, Meg … the gate was open. I didn’t even know she could reach the latch … I thought it was locked … I know I locked it. I know I did … even then I thought she was playing … hiding.’ His voice broke in desolate appeal. He turned again to stare out across the Dovedale Valley and the springtime beauty of the hills flowed endlessly away into the distance. A trailing twist of cloud, like a knight’s banner unfurled, drifted slowly in the eggshell blue of the sky and on the hills ewes called to their growing lambs and the peace was made all the more unbearable by the deafening thunder of the terror in Meg’s heart.

  ‘She’s not in the kitchen,’ she said baldly and her eyes clung to his, begging for something he could not give her.

  ‘She must be somewhere in the house,’ he proclaimed roughly, knowing it was not possible, praying it could be.

  ‘I would have met her coming in as I was coming out.’

  ‘Then where has she got to? The dogs were here, not far from the gate so it stands to reason she must be near. She’s too small to have gone any distance …’ His voice trailed away uncertainly and he put up a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. ‘Beth … Beth …’ he called again and Meg stood mutely and watched him, paralysed by fear and the appalling conviction that … dear God, she dare not even think it!

  Will’s pale face had taken on a tinge of grey, like the colour of old cement. He began to move towards the plateau which overlooked the valley. The new grass was coming through, smooth and green, humped here and there with tussocky growth and scattered with grey pitted rock. It led gradually towards the stony path which was the only way down to the valley bottom and the fast flowing – at this time of year – river which ran there. A place so peaceful, so lovely and yet filled with peril for a small girl alone. She had been there a hundred times or more with himself and Tom, with Meg and the growing pups, but if she had gone out alone … dear God, let her be on her own … please … would not those same dogs have automatically followed her? They loved the water and the rough and tumble of climbing and jumping and racing with the child as she threw sticks for them.

  He began to run, like a child with one leg in the gutter, his crippled limb slowing him, down the slope towards the path which led to the valley and when Meg would have followed him, mindless now and unable to think for herself he turned on her savagely.

  ‘Not with me, you fool. Split our forces and we can cover more ground. I’ll look down here and you go and circle the grounds. Look in the spinney and the fields and … for God’s sake, woman, don’t just stand there … go … go.’

  They ran about frantically. Megan and Will, passing and re-passing Tom as he crouched at the garden gate calling for his baby in a plaintive voice. Annie and Edie, two elderly ladies, at first red in the face from their exertions and determination to find the child, then grey and terrified when they did not. Their old hearts pounded and their legs trembled with exhaustion as they climbed the stairs and searched attics and ran along hallways and into dust-sheeted bedrooms. They came outside when they had covered every nook and cranny in the house which could possibly hide a little girl and climbed over rocks and across pitilessly jagged paths and when the spring afternoon gradually faded into evening, whilst Meg put her face to the wall and wept, Will reached for the telephone.

  The police constable could make neither top nor tail of the story Mrs Fraser babbled of a man who had intimidated her for years, and sent hastily for his sargeant, aware now that they were dealing with more than a child gone missing for an hour or two, and the sargeant, equally out of his depth telephoned headquarters for someone in higher authority to be summoned. The police Inspector was disbelieving though h
e did not show it, naturally. The poor woman was distraught, but surely, he thought privately, no one would put up with such things, if it were true, and if it was why had she not reported it to the proper authority? Certainly he would look up old police records, he told her but first would it not be more sensible to concentrate on the area about the house and grounds for surely that was a more likely place to find the little girl. Benjamin Harris, yes he had made a note of the name and he would certainly make enquiries as to his whereabouts but in the meanwhile … No, they could not search the moor at night, he explained patiently for his men would not even find their own way, let alone a small child, in the dark. The vast, unchanging stretches of moorland and high hillside in which, though they were cut in a dozen places by stony tracks, a man could be lost within hours, perhaps never to be found, were not to be treated lightly but with respect and in an orderly manner, he said kindly and as soon as day break came they would begin. Not only his own men but all the scores of farmers and labourers who lived in the area and who knew it as well as anyone, and who had volunteered. Dogs were to be used he explained, those which searched for sheep when the winter snows fell. They were being assembled now and would beat a circle outwards from ‘Hilltops’ starting at dawn. It was, luckily, a mild night, he said comfortingly and the little lass would take no harm from cold. Dressed in scarlet wool, Mrs Fraser said, so she would be warm and easy to spot and she must try and get some sleep and see to her husband who was in a terrible state, poor chap.