Between Friends

by Audrey Howard

  He put out an unsteady hand ready to lay it on Tom’s shoulder.

  ‘Your daughter and I were just introducing ourselves to one another, my old friend.’ His voice was soft and compassionate and Meg turned away to hide the tears. ‘She’s a … a little beauty, Tom. You’ve a right to be proud of her …’ and with these words Martin Hunter gave back his daughter, the one he had just met, and loved, ten minutes ago. ‘We were talking about her pony. I’m afraid I was encouraging her to ride it, but then you know me, Tom, always a bit of a dare-devil … remember the tricks I used to get up to on that bicycle?’

  Tom’s face opened up and became joyful. He held the child and moved towards his friend, his friend Martin.

  ‘Could I ever forget? A circus performer had nothing on you! And that damned tandem you had me and Meg on, remember? I was the one who did all the work, pedalling for two whilst she sat back and smiled at all the lads. And they smiled back too, I’ll not forget that, either, by God. Pretty! Pretty as a picture was my Meggie and still is, aren’t you my darling, and now I’ve two of them! Two of them.’ His voice was soft and proud. ‘Can you believe my luck, Martin, can you?’

  ‘No …’ Martin turned away, stumbling, almost running from the room. ‘But I must be off … really … I wanted to get down to the factory … and then … there are … I must find somewhere to live … so you see …’

  ‘To live! But Martin, come back you daft beggar, where are you dashing off to? You must stay here with us, mustn’t he, Meg? We’ve loads of room, a suite if you want it … haven’t we, Meg?’

  ‘Daddy, can we go and see McGinty now?’

  ‘Yes sweetheart, in a minute … Martin … where in hell are you dashing off to? Fetch him back, Meg,’ but his wife was looking out of the window and her hand clutched the pretty flowered chintz of the nursery curtains and she did not seem to hear him and … and when he put his hand on her shoulder she flinched away from him. What … why did he … he felt something frightful come at him from just over the top of the trench … but it was alright because Andy … no, not Andy … Beth, his little Beth was here and he was safe. His blue-eyed Beth. His lovely girl.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  IT WAS SIX weeks before she saw him again. She stayed at home with her husband and her child and her tired brain operated at a level which allowed her to make decisions about meals and what they should eat, about walks in the garden and what they should plant there, about visits to the nursery and which games to play with Beth and about the outfit she should wear on any particular day. The rest of the time it engrossed itself in the constant torment of longing for Martin. Quite simply she became again the woman who waited for Martin Hunter. Nothing else!

  And in that dreadful wait which could have no ending, at the back of her tortured mind, struggling for a hearing since surely she could not ignore it, was the equally harrowing need to consider the danger of Benjamin Harris! She did not know where he was, or even if he was aware of Martin Hunter’s survival, but somewhere out there, beyond the walls of ‘Hilltops’, he lived and schemed and waited, she assumed for the time to come round when he felt the need to torture Megan Fraser once more. Perhaps she should find some form of protection, perhaps she should tell Martin, warn him, tell him to be on his guard, for any man who would attempt the murder of a four-year-old child must surely be insane. A police constable had been put on duty patrolling the grounds of ‘Hilltops’ after Beth’s abduction but that could not last forever and though the child was never allowed in the garden alone, Meg still had the wildest dreams of him returning to threaten them all with his evil. Perhaps … perhaps … if only … Martin would be sure to know what to do … dear God!

  Her mind would turn despairingly in a nightmare of chaos and her suffering showed in the fine-boned hollows in her face and the delicate slenderness of her once well-rounded figure. Her eyes were haunted and in the night she would awaken in a sweat of panic, searching desperately for a haven, but there was only Tom! She moved about the empty, stagnant days blindly with nothing to stand protectively between her and her fears. Martin was the only one who could protect her but then if she allowed it, who would be left to protect Tom? She must forget Martin!

  She had not tried to reach him in the six weeks since he had returned though it nearly drove her mad with pain, and he had kept away for both of them knew they were not strong enough to overcome what haunted them. She had gone to the factory to see Fred and tell him the incredible news that Martin had survived the war and would take over the factories again. Only when there was some emergency with which only she could deal in those first weeks – and this happened less and less frequently as Martin became familiar with the routine of managership – did she go to Camford and when she did, he stayed away. They spoke to each other through Fred, and if Fred had thoughts on the strangeness of it then he kept them to himself.

  She tried to make plans for the re-opening of the hotel. The war was over. The nation was tired and dispirited for it had lost so many of its sons, brothers, husbands, a whole generation of young men who could never be replaced and it grieved badly for them. It had suffered hardship and privation and needed in some way to forget what it had gone through, it needed a break from the boredom of economies and doing without, the grinding routine of doing one’s bit, something to take its mind from the problem of getting itself back into the strangeness of peace. A holiday, that was what they needed, they said, those who could afford it and there were many of them now for they had earned more money than they had ever imagined during the years of war. They went to Brighton and Blackpool and Skegness and those who required somewhat more – class, elegance, luxury and the peace and quiet in which to enjoy it, those who knew of its pre-war reputation – wrote to ‘The Hilltop Hotel’, to enquire of the discriminating Miss Hughes if she could ‘put them up’. The telephone rang a dozen times a day and Annie said she was sick and tired of trudging up from the kitchen to answer it and would Meg be good enough to tell her what she was going to do! You can’t keep putting people off, she told her, or they’d take their business elsewhere, but though her voice was sharp, the look she bestowed on Meg was soft for she, of them all, was the only one to know what Meg was suffering.

  Meg watched Tom stride off each day with Will, a spade in one hand, the other in the hand of his daughter and the healthy colour in his cheeks denied the nightmare in which he had cried the night before, and she agonised on whether it would be possible to run the hotel, have guests, strangers about the place with Tom in his present state of mind. What might it do to him to have people he did not know and who did not know him, or his fits of silent strangeness – which could occur in the middle of a sentence – moving about in his safe world? Would it be safe any longer? He had improved, there was no doubt of it and the doctor, when she consulted him, was hopeful.

  ‘Perhaps it might be possible if he were to be kept apart from the guests, Mrs Fraser.’

  ‘You mean if we were to make part of the hotel into a private apartment for the family?’

  ‘Yes, that might be the answer, and his work on the farm? Is there a path to it which might be kept separate from the rest of the grounds? That is all that is needed. Provided he is not alarmed by anything different, anything which is new and out of his own safe routine, I do not see why it could not be managed. I have said it so many times and I can only repeat it. Assuming he is not disturbed from the secure pattern you have created for him, from the things he does each day with Will and the people who make him feel … unthreatened, then the fine balance he retains will not be weakened. The abduction of your daughter, fortunately, did little damage since he was heavily sedated most of the time and when he awakened she had returned, but any trauma can affect him if it is not correctly dealt with. In your capable hands though and with the care you give him there should be no problem, my dear.’

  He thought he reassured her, the kindly doctor, but what he had done was to effectively close down the last fragile hope that Tom might, one
day, recover enough to allow her to … to … to what? Leave him? Take Beth and all that he loved and simply walk away from him to Martin? Had she really believed it could happen? Had she? She had consulted Dr Carmichael on the subject of the re-opening of the hotel, but in her innermost secret heart she admitted to herself that she had hoped he might tell her that Tom was well enough to live his own life now. She had told herself she did not want to jeopardise Tom’s health but in reality she had conjured up the make-believe nonsense, the dream, the fantasy for that was what it was, that she and Martin would one day be together but now she must put it away, drag herself from dreams and face the real world in which she lived. She must open the hotel. She could no longer work at the factories which had been her life for four years and she must do something! Perhaps if she were to begin again, take up the work which she had loved years ago it would bring her, if not happiness, then a purpose in life, an anchor to hold her steady until she could manage it alone.

  For six weeks she held on to it, living again in the deep and slashing anguish she had known when they had told her Martin was dead, and agonised at the irony of realising that this time she grieved because he had come back. He had taken over his companies again, though a strained and painful note had been delivered to her telling her that she must still consider herself a partner and therefore entitled to a half share of any profit. Tom couldn’t understand it, he said fretfully and wouldn’t you have thought their Martin would have been over to tell them himself instead of sending notes. Four weeks, five, six and not a sign of him and why didn’t Meg telephone him and ask him to come and visit them? After all, he was their oldest friend and really …

  Meg, stung to despairing violence by his insistent voice, spoke harshly.

  ‘You telephone him if you want him to come,’ but Tom stepped back from that for the strange disembodied voice which came from the earpiece of the telephone reminded him too vividly of other voices he sometimes heard.

  She did not know how it happened. There was some misunderstanding, a garbled message taken by Edie who was still none to happy with the telephone, passed on to Meg by Annie that there was some mishap at the factory, an order she had taken weeks ago, a mix-up, no-one could make head nor tail of it and Mr Hunter had asked … if she could spare an hour … he was to be away in … she couldn’t remember where, but would Meg …?

  Civil flying in Britain, halted by the war, was to be restarted on the 1st May and in the six weeks he had been back Martin had begun the design, completely new, for a commercial aircraft to carry passengers. Fred had told her he had constructed it in his head during the long, empty hours of his imprisonment and now it was on paper and the prototype ready for construction. Already companies were preparing for a regular civil air service in England and one, A. V. Roe and Company were to fly from Alexander Park in Manchester, to Southport and Blackpool, the cost of a one-way ticket to be four guineas, they had announced. ‘Hunter Aviation’ did not mean to be left behind in the race for domination of the new industry and as Meg entered the hangar that day she was amazed at the progress already made on the three seat aircraft. She knew that Martin intended visiting the first post-war aviation event which was to be held at Hendon in June to see what other men were doing but the speed with which his industry was growing astounded her.

  She looked about her with avid interest for this had been hers only a short time ago. Though it had never consumed her as the hotel business had, she had found the work stimulating, a challenge to her and she had missed it.

  And there he was! She looked across the busy hangar and in that moment the fragile strength she had gathered about herself fell away leaving her exposed and defenceless as her eyes clung to the arrow straight back of the man she loved. She saw his glossy, well brushed hair catch the light from the overhead lamps and the grey in it was burnished to silver. She watched his hand lift as he made some remark to Fred and his teeth gleamed in his face as he smiled and glanced away, and in doing so – as she stood frozen by her longing in the doorway – he saw her.

  It was too late then. It had always been too late, she said to herself in that last moment of sanity. This was inevitable for how could love such as theirs be buried. It was alive and should it be put beneath six feet of earth would it not claw its way to the surface and shout its message of hope and need and exultation to the very heavens!

  He began to walk across the tumult of emerging aircraft, all in different stages of production, avoiding hurrying men and trolleys on which were the materials for their building. His step was springing and alert, his tread was sure, his confidence in himself here, in his own world, as substantial as the ground on which he walked. And yet there was a hesitancy in his deep brown eyes, as though, in his arrogance he was about to take a bold leap in the dark and was not absolutely sure where he would land.

  She had removed the close fitting beret she wore for driving since some tiny, wilful, feminine part of her demanded she must be as beautiful for him as she could manage. She wore a military style leather greatcoat, made fashionable by the war, long and serviceable and extremely plain. It had an almost masculine style to it and, if she had tried she could not have contrived a more imaginative outfit to compell his attention. Its utter simplicity, meant for function rather than adornment served only to enhance her soft loveliness. Her hair, released from the confines of her beret, stood out defiantly about her head, and the vivid green of the scarf at her throat which Fred had given her years ago contrasted to light up her flawless skin and turned her incredible eyes to gold.

  They looked at one another and their faces were identical in their expression of complete joy and the strong, deathless quality of their love.

  ‘Meg.’ Her name was a thread of sound on his lips and his eyes begged for compassion. She could not speak. There was a pain so great in her breast she could not breathe for it and yet there grew a lightness which threatened to pick her up and carry her on the wind, to wherever the wind would blow her.

  He reached her at last and though three-quarters of the men who hammered and banged and whistled in the strange silence which came to envelop Martin and Meg, turned to stare she opened the door behind her and moving backwards, drew him inside the office.

  ‘Meg,’ he said again but made no move to touch her and in her fast fading reason she was glad, for if he had done so she would have fallen against him in an ecstacy of joy for all to see.

  At last she could speak.

  ‘I had no idea … I was told you were to be away … there was something …’

  ‘It is tomorrow … There is a matter I must attend to in Birmingham. The order you took … Ashworths in Croydon … God, does it matter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How is …?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The child … my …’

  ‘She is well … beautiful.’

  ‘And Tom?’

  ‘The same …’

  ‘You are looking …’

  He stopped then and the words, the polite, meaningless words dried up in his mouth to make way for the ones which were in his heart.

  ‘I’m not awfully sure I can stay away from you for much longer, Meg.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Jesus, it’s been five years. Five whole bloody years. To see you standing there with that … that ridiculous hair of yours all over the damn place. Meggie … I have …’ He gave a short, agonised laugh. ‘I have … played the game! Kept away from you these weeks so that you could look after Tom but do you think it’s been easy? I’ll be honest, Megan. I’m beginning to feel I don’t give a damn about Tom any more, or indeed any man who keeps you from me and if you will come with me now I will take you from him without a qualm. I have tried to stay away from you … and our child. Sweet Jesus, I have tried but … Meg, Meg, help me!’

  ‘Martin …’

  ‘Let me …’

  ‘What, my love?’

  ‘Christ … I don’t know!’ He ran his hand through his hair and its shining smoothness fell into the familia
r tumbled disarray she remembered from his boyhood. Her hand lifted of its own volition to brush it back from his forehead but he took it and beneath the interested, startled gaze of his own mechanics brought it reverently to his lips.

  ‘Martin … please … I …’ Her breath famed his cheek for somehow, dragged by invisible cords of unbreakable strength they were face to face, almost touching and in a moment might have been in one another’s arms. An apprentice, goggle-eyed and grinning dropped a wrench, the sound echoing about the high-ceilinged hangar. Instantly Meg stepped back and in the fumbling fashion of a blind man marooned in an unfamiliar room, felt her way round the desk and sat down in the chair behind it. Her voice was cracked and desperate.

  ‘For God’s sake, Martin, sit. Sit in a chair and look as though …’

  ‘What?’ but his face was jubilant for she had just given him hope, a chance, it seemed to him and he was not a man to turn away from it.

  ‘Pretend to … these are your men watching us. They were mine only a few weeks ago …’

  ‘I don’t give a damn. You came …’

  ‘Stop it, stop it! We must act as though … can you not see what this could do? I am Mrs Tom Fraser and this is your business …’

  ‘Come with me somewhere then …’

  ‘For what, Martin?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ but of course he did and his voice was filled with all the pent up longing of years and his eyes looked deep into hers and saw the same there.

  ‘No … please … don’t ask me. How can I? Tom is …’

  Tom Fraser came into the office in that last frantic moment of his wife’s conflict, his gentle, damaged presence putting its hand on her shoulder and with him was another, just as sweet and trusting, but Martin’s eyes … no, Beth’s eyes … no, no … Martin’s … how could she say no? She had wanted him for so long … so long … dear God … help me … but it was no use and she knew now there was no other way for her. Right from the moment she had looked up in the garden and seen him standing there, the way had led to this. It was inevitable. Why had she imagined, she had time to wonder, dazedly, that she could fight it when all along she had known she had no wish to fight it! She was Meg Hughes who loved Martin Hunter. That’s who she was! That’s all she was! A feather in the wind, a leaf floating on the water, and with as much control of her own direction as they.