He had bathed and shaved and changed into a pair of Tom’s flannels and a warm sweater before he would tell them what had happened and the whole time he was from her sight Meg fidgeted about, longing to throw off Tom’s trusting hand, longing to run after Martin, help him bathe, help him shave, help him … Oh dear God … she wanted to be with him, alone, in a room, any room, to peel away the jumble of old clothes he wore, to soothe his weary body, to cleanse it, caress it … to rest with him, hold him, alone … to lock the door and shut them all out, to listen to his voice as he explained what miracle had brought him back to her … what horror had kept him from her … to tell him about Beth … and Tom. To be alone with him!
They could not eat, any of them, though Annie put her best before them and they did their best. As she cleared away the table of their almost untouched plates she knew that Megan Fraser was as tight as a cork in a bottle and if she was not released soon, the bottle would shatter. She could hardly keep her hands off him, nor her eyes and they shone out from her face in two incredulous beams of love, lingering over his gaunt face, agonising over the slenderness of him, glowing and sighing and dreaming. Annie was afraid, for Tom, though as yet he had noticed nothing strange for he was himself in a delirium of joy over the return of his beloved friend, was not blind!
‘I’ve been in a prisoner of war camp, Meg.’ Martin’s eyes were just for her as they sat before the fire when Annie had gone. The curtains were drawn and Meg had switched on one lamp and the room was soft and lovely and so was she, his expression said.
‘How …?’
‘We went up that day … a lad … I can’t remember his name … on a patrol. It was at the beginning of November and I hadn’t been there long but I thought I would be home for Christmas, remember Meggie?’ He stretched out his hand for hers and she took it and it was then he noticed she held Tom’s with the other, but he thought nothing strange in it for were they not the three musketeers together again, drawn in that unbreakable circle.
‘We’d only been up for half an hour or so when, for no reason, my engine stalled.’
‘Oh Martin!’ She knew the fear of that at first hand, did she not, her expression said, but she would tell him about that later. ‘Could you not …’
‘I couldn’t get it started. There was no reason, none, why it should have happened. My speed and height were correct. My forward speed had not eased which is what often causes it. I was not pointed up beyond the maximum lifting angle but, there I was, in a stall and beginning to spin. I put all the controls at neutral and held them there. I pushed the stick forward until the wind began to whistle a bit, then pulled it back gently which should have enabled me to carry on but, nothing happened! I just … kept going down …’
‘Dear God …’ Meg let go of Tom’s hand and both hers gripped Martin’s and as she held them she felt the scar tissue which ridged across the back of each one and in the palms. She looked down and saw them then, for the first time. She had been so absorbed in his face, his eyes, the tall leanness of him, the grey in his hair, the paleness of his usually amber skin that she had not looked at his hands. Now she turned them over, running her finger tips tenderly across them and in a moment would have put her lips to them and his eyes said, ‘Yes, go on,’ but Tom’s voice slipped through their total concentration in one another, like a child who cannot wait for the parent to continue the story.
‘What happened then, Martin? You must have got out of it, but how … in hell’s name?’
‘I managed to glide in, don’t ask me how, Tom but I did and as I hit the ground the bloody engine went …’
‘On fire?’ Meg’s voice was no more than a thread of sound in the silence.
‘Yes!’ He put his hand to his eyes for a moment as he re-lived that appalling moment. ‘But, as they say, the devil looks after his own,’ he smiled, ‘and I was thrown into a hedge. God only knows how. My suit was on fire, about the arms … and … and the front apparently, but I couldn’t tell you what happened next, or for weeks after. I got a clout on the head. I was pretty badly burned about the hands and arms but when I came to I was in a hospital bed and the stupid thing was … I couldn’t speak! I didn’t know French, or German, but it wouldn’t have made any difference because I couldn’t even speak my own bloody language. Shock, the doctor told me later, but of course, they had no idea who I was. The airplane was burnt out, along with its identification markings. They had stripped me naked when they put out the flames, the ones who brought me from the hedge and my papers, identity papers were all destroyed. And so I sat there, or lay there, week after bloody week trying desperately to tell them my name and my rank and all the other paraphernalia we are allowed to give them, and I couldn’t even ask for the bloody bed-pan. My hands and arms were heavily bandaged so I was unable to write …’
‘Martin …’ He was visibly distressed and Meg put her hand to his face, cupping his cheek and it was then that the first gap in the drift of joy which enfolded Tom Fraser, allowed in a chink of understanding, of memory, of something which frightened him. It came and went so quickly he did not get a good look at it but he began to recognise the warning prickle at the back of his neck. It was very familiar, oh so very familiar and it had been fired on the battlefields of France, shaped and honed and sharpened and become so efficient it had saved his life, and that of those about him on a dozen occasions.
‘I knew by the calendar that they would have told you by now that I was presumed killed … it was May and still I was unable to say anything … I realised that you would … think me dead so I decided I must try to escape. By now I could talk again but they didn’t know it. I thought it might help. If they thought I couldn’t speak perhaps they wouldn’t watch me so closely.’ He paused and rubbed his lips across the back of Meg’s hands and Tom Fraser sat up slowly. ‘I tried four times, and managed it … but, they brought me back. And still I didn’t speak, except to you, Meg, and you Tom, in the dark when I was alone … in solitary … The three of us … by God we had some good times, didn’t we?’ He turned and put his arm about Tom’s shoulders. ‘… and that’s what I used to talk about to the pair of you … those days … in Great George Square … the bicycles,’ he turned back to Meg, ‘but of course I kept the most intimate part of my life to my …’
‘Martin!’
His eyes had begun to glow about her, to run warmly across her face, lingering at her mouth. His face had become flushed and in it was the undeniable conviction that every dream he had had of her over the past five years was to be fulfilled this night. He seemed to have completely forgotten that then, five years ago, Tom Fraser had put his claim to her, had been engaged to her. All that was in the past, long ago and nothing to do with himself and Meg. He had a clear and treasured picture in his mind of what had happened the last time they had been together and surely it must create a stronger entitlement than Tom Fraser, or indeed any man, might make on Meggie Hughes. She had been his then and she was his now. Her eyes and her hands, her smile and the flush of her cheeks told him so and very soon, his eyes said with passionate certainty, they would leave this room and go somewhere … to hers … and shut the door on the rest and by God, if he had his way and he usually did, they would not come out until a week on Thursday. He had suffered privation and hunger, and in five years it had taken its toll of his strong and virile body, but he still had the vigour to love this woman, his hot eyes told her and Meg felt the ice cold dash of reality fling itself cruelly into her face.
‘Martin …’ Her voice cracked on his name and she drew back from him.
‘Yes, my …?’ His hands followed her and for some reason Tom stood up.
‘Martin …’ Her voice became quite desperate and he looked surprised at her interruption. ‘Martin … tell us about … why do you think the airplane crashed? Can it have been …’ What … dear Christ, what could she say? She had, in her ecstacy and unheeding gladness, allowed her love for Martin Hunter to shine from her, to explode from her for how was she to contain the
happiness, the most completely joyous moment of her life. She had thought him dead and he had risen from the grave quite miraculously and come back to her. She had mourned him grievously, a widow in her bereavement and not for one moment had her love diminished. She had suffered and thought never to get over the loss of him, not just as a lover and her child’s father but as the friend she had treasured for most of her life. But he had gone and she must go forward and leave him behind to live on only in her memory. She had built her life round her husband and her child, Martin’s child who as yet he had not even noticed … and around the companies Martin had left in her care. She had made it enough! She had given love and security and a small degree of hope to Tom, she had created a life for him and now, was she to take it from him? She must make a choice and the choice was simple. She must destroy Tom Fraser … or she must fling back in his face the love Martin Hunter was so ardently, so trustingly offering to her.
‘What?’ he said, bewildered by the sudden change in direction.
‘The “Wren”? She was a reliable craft. You built her yourself and would keep her well maintained, surely?’
‘No!’ He sounded mystified since he had no time to talk of these things, which, in any case could be gone over in the future. He could not concern himself with the past when he was aching to have Meg in his arms, in a bed, in the soft, lamp-lit, fire glow with no-one to interrupt what he meant for her.
‘You did not maintain it then?’ She knew she was babbling but how was she to ease that wary look from Tom’s face, to get him to sit down again, to get him safely, safely from the room so that she might tell Martin … Oh dear God!
‘No, each aircraft had a mechanic.’
‘A mechanic …?’
‘Yes, but you cannot be interested in that, surely. I don’t know myself what caused the craft to go down though there was a moment when …’
‘Yes Martin …’
‘… when I heard a … or thought I heard, just before the engine stalled, a crack …’
His face had become thoughtful and though he still held her hand he had drawn back a little from the ardour which was frightening Tom Fraser. Tom could not say why really, he had this feeling of dread, for was he not here with the two people he loved best in all the world, with the exception of his little Beth, of course and he was completely aware that he had strange thoughts and feelings and fears, brought back with him from France, and for the most part, controlled now, but for some reason there was something, he could not remember what, which troubled him, something from the far away past, which was often hazy. He was not awfully sure he cared for the way Martin held Meg’s hand for so long, though of course that was silly for Meg and Martin were as close as he and Martin … still.
‘A crack?’ he heard Meg say and he sat down again just as suddenly as he had stood up.
‘Yes … but the mechanic had checked everything so …’
His voice and his face and even the hand which held hers faded away into some swirling mist, black and grey and eddying, like the pictures she had seen once of a hurricane. The ‘eye’ of the hurricane she had heard it called, where there was absolute peace whilst all about was devastation and she floated in that peaceful eye whilst the hurricane of rage and bitterness swept about her, and she heard a voice, a thin, vicious voice and over and over it repeated the word Martin had just spoken.
Mechanic! Mechanic! Mechanic! ‘Men of substance in the world of commerce, right down the social scale to one who was no more than a mechanic!’ A mechanic! There it was in all its clear and horrendous exposure to her mind. The deed, the words, the intent and the completion of it!
So this was what he had done! And not content with the father he had tried also to kill his child. Though it had never been corroborated for what could a three-year-old tell of the scarcely remembered journey with a man who had given her a ‘sweetie’ and left her alone in the wastes of Derbyshire to die. The police had stepped up their search for Benjamin Harris to no avail. Now, a trick of memory brought back his words and what he had meant by them. She knew it just as surely as if he had walked into her sitting room, his presence thick with the black slime of evil and whispered it in her ear. He had gloated over it, triumphed over it, had laughed and sneered and wondered in his madness whether he should tell her, he said, and there was no doubt that when he was ready, or when he thought the time was right to administer another blow to Megan Hughes, the skivvy who had dared to challenge him, he would be back to tell her what he had done. What he thought he had done!
‘Meg … are you alright, sweetheart?’ Martin’s hands were about hers and Tom hovered somewhere on the fringe of her returning consciousness. The room which had chilled was warm and familiar with her lovely things in it and Martin Hunter was here, here, safe and whole, alive warm, vital, smiling a little, thinking her to be in a faint of enchantment perhaps because of his return and so she was. But in her rapture was fear, terror, hideous and almost more than she could stand for when he discovered that Martin was alive, that the man he had thought to be dead, the man Megan Hughes loved, Benjamin Harris’ rage would be so savage it would be invincible. None of them would be safe … oh God … none of them! He would come back again and again until he had destroyed all those she loved, this man, Tom, her baby, Beth … aah, Beth.
As though her anguished thoughts had conjured up the spirit of the little girl there was a firm knock on the door and without waiting for an answer Annie entered the room. Her manner was anxious for what had gone on in this room during the past hour, her expression asked and what would she find here in the dreadful tangle that must surely be revealed, but whatever it was the child was not to suffer for it, that was certain. Not while Annie Hardcastle had breath in her body. Innocent and vulnerable, Beth Fraser, a fragile thread between these three whose exact relationship Annie was not awfully sure of, but whatever happened here this night, that thread must not be damaged!
Meg turned to the opened door and so did the two men, both smiling, one of them unaware that his hopes and dreams which had upheld him for five years were to be bludgeoned to death by this woman.
‘I’m sorry, Meg, but … she won’t go to sleep until you come, you or her … Tom.’
‘Of course …’ Meg stood up automatically and Tom did the same and his smile had become wider and as they both moved towards Annie, Martin leaned back in the settee and raised his eyebrows quizzically.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Where are you two off to? Who won’t go to sleep?’ and Meg stood quite still, frozen and dying a little, her back to him, her eyes looking, anguished into Annie’s.
Tom turned back, his whole manner one of simple joy, of achievement, of pride.
‘Of course, you don’t know, do you? God love us, in all the excitement we forgot to mention the most important thing in all the world. The most precious …’ His face was wondering in his deep love for his daughter. ‘Oh Martin, wait ’till you see her!’
‘See who, for God’s sake?’ He was still smiling as Tom delivered the blow.
‘Why, our little Beth! Our little girl! We have a daughter, me and Meg and though I say it myself, you’ve never seen a lovelier child, Martin. Just you wait! He’ll love her, won’t he, Meggie?’
And with a sweet and proudly rejoicing gesture Tom Fraser put his arm about his wife’s shoulder and turned her to look into Martin Hunter’s devastated face.
Chapter Forty-One
‘I CAN’T STAY!’
‘Martin, please Martin …’
‘I can’t stay here now … with you and Tom …’
‘But I can’t let you go … Not when I’ve just found you again.’
‘Found me! Found me! Jesus Christ, woman, did you ever look … did you even care that I was lost?’ His pain was appalling. ‘I’ve lived … lived for this … it kept me sane … I am not always strong, Meg, though you seem to think I am made of steel. I wept for you …’
‘Oh Martin … don’t … don’t … let me tell you …’
In his despair he had begun to shrug himself into the army greatcoat he had removed so joyously only hours before. His face worked pitifully for Martin Hunter was within a fraction of going, like Tom, into the totally dark world of the grievously wounded, the broken, the damaged, the world which the bloody war had created and in which so many existed. He turned away from her, evidently looking for his cap, his eyes quite wild but she stood up in front of him and gripped his flailing forearms and then, when he became still, took his face tenderly between her hands. She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips lingering on his, as soft and as sweet as warm honey and as her eyes looked steadfastly into his she felt him become less rigid under her hands.
Tom had gone to bed. Meg had postponed Martin’s meeting with Tom’s daughter, telling him she would be too tired for it tonight and reluctantly Tom had agreed though he promised Martin that first thing tomorrow, he would be introduced to his ‘niece’. He had sat for an hour with Beth, watching over her as she slept, his hand hovering anxiously over her rosy cheek, his eyes never leaving her face, and Meg knew that this ritual that he went through each night, the gentle communion his damaged spirit formed with that of the innocence of the child, made him whole again for a small, peaceful space in time and he often went straight from the nursery to their bed, knowing he would sleep dreamlessly because of it. She had pulled the covers up round his neck and kissed him, in the same maternal way she did with Beth, switching out the light and creeping from the room as he fell asleep.
Between Friends Page 58