Between Friends

by Audrey Howard

  ‘Where?’ Her lips formed the word silently.

  ‘I have rooms in Camford.’

  It had been five years but they did not fall upon one another in that first rapturous moment. They lingered tenderly, wordlessly, over cheek and mouth and throat, marvelling, dreaming, sighing in sweet content.

  ‘I thought we would never know this again,’ he breathed as he took her garments from her one by one. His lips and hands and eyes browsed about the soft curves and hollows, the secret crevices of her body and when he had fulfilled his need to etch the sight of her into his brain, the feel of her flesh against his own, the taste of her, the sound of her need in his ears and the musky woman’s smell which was uniquely hers, and therefore, his, when they were both ready their bodies flowed, one into the other with the sweet fluid movement of honey and when it was finished they were still wrapped about in a reverie, dreaming, engrossed and lost to everything but each other. Mindlessly content, their separate worlds did not converge on this one.

  ‘What is this magic?’ he whispered, his cheek against the roundness of her breast, his mouth reaching once more for her nipple, and it began again. She lay naked beneath him, ready to receive him and her face looked directly up into his. The vigorous and lovely hours they had spent together … how long? It did not matter … what did? Hours of alternate gentle and fierce love-making had tossed her hair into a turbulent mass of curls about her head. She had the look of a wanton spirit and yet she still retained that innocence which told him she was not familiar with the erotic arts of sensuality. Her eyes were soft with a glow which comes with love and the dreamy tingling of its aftermath and he was triumphant for he knew then that this was his, this joy he had given her, that she had known it with no-one but himself. She was his, his woman. His!

  ‘Meg.’ His voice was husky and she recognised the anguished need he had of her, the love, the adoration, admiration, even respect she compelled in him and her heart broke a little for that expression shone on another man’s face and he was her husband.

  He turned her to look at him and his face, so arrogant, stubborn, showing all the unyielding intractability which had made him what he was, had softened, become almost humbled. He was about to beg!

  ‘My darling, will you … will you allow me to see you? I promise … I will make a vow that I will not interfere in … in your marriage. How can I when I know what it would do to Tom.’ His voice was drained of all emotion but it was there burning in his eyes. ‘Could we not meet? I could take a house … our own house. We could be alone … do whatever you want or feel you should do … be whatever you say. An hour or two … I will ask no more …’ and he believed it.

  Meg looked into his eyes and knew she could not resist. She had known from the moment their hands touched in the garden. Her heart had gentled and her mind, as strong and shining as new steel had given way to the enchantment of her re-awakened love. She had loved him, she would love him … forever. There was no escape.

  Taking his hand, his slender brown hand in hers she brought it to her lips and though her tears for Tom fell on it, they fell from eyes which were starred with happiness.

  ‘Yes!’

  They came from the house in which Martin Hunter had a suite of rooms. They were discreet, a man and a woman bidding one another farewell with a polite handclasp as each climbed into a separate automobile and drove away, and the well-dressed gentleman on the other side of the tree-lined avenue pressed back behind the trunk of a budding sycamore. He leaned against it for several minutes as though he was in acute distress and his face was grey and sweating. His mouth worked savagely and a line of white appeared at the edges of his lips and in his eyes was an expression so violent two ladies who were passing crossed hastily to the other side of the road.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  THEY MET WHENEVER they could. He took a small furnished house on the outskirts of Camford employing a woman to come in and clean for an hour each morning and in it he and Meg lived the half life of lovers, forced to hide their love, forced to fit their lives into the shape of other people’s lives, forced to live by the hours of the clock, and the minutes of each hour as though every one was as precious and rare as the finest of gems. They must learn to fit into those hours every word, every tender look and gesture, every small and intimate expression of love which those who are together every day take for granted knowing they will be there the next day and the next and the next as long as life exists. Death can part, and does, but the young and those in love do not think of such things. Meg and Martin died a small death each time they parted, not knowing when they would see one another again. It was easier in some ways for Martin. Besides his renewed passion for the creating of what was to be the finest civil airplane in the country, he had no other life but Meg. He had no life but that in his factory where he was fast developing the form of ‘mass production’ designed by the American Henry Ford, and which would enable him to turn out by the dozen the small family car he had dreamed of years ago. He went to the factory in the morning and left it to come back to the house each evening and in between he was completely absorbed, completely happy. If Meg was there, waiting for him when he came home, which she was quite often in those first weeks, his day was made whole and he took her thankfully into his arms, holding her, leading her to the bedroom where the summer sunshine streamed across their naked bodies as they loved one another.

  Afterwards they would sigh about the kitchen as she prepared a simple meal, more for the pleasure of eating together than because they were hungry, hands touching, lips touching, whispering in love and laughter, their bodies well content, their eyes speaking of love and the delight that had been, and would be again.

  She wore a diaphanous drifting wrapper of misty blue, enchanting and daring, which he had bought her and he would untie the satin ribbons and pull it from her shoulders, holding her to him in the urgency, the sometimes frightened longing of a man who is desperate to claim what is really his but which eludes him. His body would shake and he would bury his face in her hair and only when she took him inside her, enfolding his strong yet vulnerable masculine body in the softness of her own, did he know peace. She gave him the certainty and hope, how he did not know, nor care, as he surged with her to the joyous fulfilment of their love, that one day this would be his, and only his, until eternity. He knew he did not share her body, that he could not have borne, with Tom Fraser. With quiet dignity and in no way detracting from Tom as a human being, a man who was lovable, she told him of Tom’s inability to be a husband to her and did not blame him he knew it, for his own rejoicing. She understood for she loved him and knew the feeling of dread, sharing it with him when they were apart, of agonising on how he spent the time he was not at the factory and not with her!

  Those were the bad times for him, she was aware of it. To come back to the house in which were a dozen reminders of her presence. Clothes, underwear, wisps of lingerie, a hairbrush, stockings, the perfume he had bought her, the scent plaguing his nostrils where only yesterday it had delighted them. The remains of a cake they had made together, helpless with laughter, two children again, the game of ‘patience’ she had begun then discarded when he teased her from it, kissing and sighing and slipping her blouse from her, and the dainty straps of her camisole off her shoulders until her breasts were in his hands and the rapture began again, there, on the rug before the fireplace.

  She knew he brooded when he was alone, top heavy with menace since he was not a man to live by himself, nor to be denied what he wanted, needed and believed to be rightfully his. She was restless herself on such nights, more than she cared to count for Tom did not like to be left alone at the end of the day and there were only so many times when she could make the excuse that she had run out of petrol after shopping in Buxton, that the motor had broken down, that the solicitor who was disentangling the web of legalities brought about by Martin’s return had held her longer than expected, or that the preparations she was making for the re-opening of the hotel and
which necessitated quite frequent trips here and there to consult decorators, furnishers and upholsterers, had taken longer than she had anticipated.

  Annie knew, of course and probably Edie as well. They were not simpletons and the re-appearance of the man with Beth’s brown eyes and Meg Fraser’s sudden need to be elsewhere at strange times of the day and evening were soon calculated and the answer they arrived at was as plain as the nose on your face! Annie said nothing, and neither did Fred Knowsley when his employer simply vanished with no excuse given, for an hour sometimes two, with no concern apparently for the urgency of building ‘Wren IV’ which was to be shown at the next Olympia Show.

  ‘Come with me to Hendon,’ he demanded. ‘Two days, thats all, three at the most and, my darling … nights! Think of of it! Imagine it! To spend a whole night together without your having to scramble into your clothes and dash back to Tom! In a bed! To wake up in the morning and still be together … Come with me, Meggie.’ His voice was rough with urgency, needing to compell her to come, to order her for he found it hard to fit into the role of beggar. They had made love that afternoon, frightening themselves with their own desperation, hurting one another with nails and teeth, then, harrowed with sorrowing love, aching with tenderness for the pain they inflicted upon one another, and the need to declare the bottomless, endless enormity of it, holding one another voicelessly until it was time for her to leave.

  She was the first to get out of the bed, her skin glowing with the heat which had coursed through her body but her eyes were flat, almost empty of expression. It became harder and harder as the weeks passed to force herself to leave, to desert this man who was her life. She felt guilt, a shameful resentment that it was for the sake of a man she did not love and a fear that if this was to continue she might let that resentment show, damaging further the fragile spirit of Tom Fraser. So many times in the past weeks she had felt herself wishing … dear God … she did not know what it was she wished, she only knew that the half thoughts and drifting hopes were contemptible. Her movements were listless as she shrugged into the pretty bed-gown – another present, another garment she could wear only for him – and moved to the darkening window.

  ‘Come with me, my love,’ he said again, striding challengingly from the bed towards her, holding her for a brief moment, then moving away across the room, excited by the idea, vigorous and confident that it could be done, that it must be done. He stood, completely naked, his body hard, brown again now, for very often if the small yard at the back of his house was sunny he would remove his shirt to tinker beneath the bonnet of his beloved motor. The ‘Huntress’ which had been moved from the factory to the outbuildings at the far side of the yard, and he was determined to return her to her former glory and the sun had coloured his chest and back and arms to a splendid nut brown. His long legs were the colour of amber, fluffed with dark hair which ran up his thighs to lie finely on his flat stomach and muscled chest. Though he was not a thick-set man, his shoulders were broad and the weight which he had lost in the prison camp was almost returned, and he was in almost as fine a physical shape as he had ever been. He was a man at the peak of his vigour, tireless in his energies, needing something to fill the lonely life he led, liking nothing better, when he was not behind the wheel of his motor car, or flying, to walk for miles on the Derbyshire fells.

  Meg leaned against the window frame and watched him as he moved towards the bathroom and her eyes had taken on that look he remembered from a long time ago. A look which asked, ‘dare she?’ ‘could she?’ telling him she would not need a great deal of persuasion and his own gleamed though he was careful not to let her see it.

  ‘Martin, you know I cannot …’

  ‘I know of no such thing.’

  ‘How can I leave? You know I cannot leave!’

  ‘Why not?’ He turned away from her intrigued face and going into the bathroom turned on the bath taps, still talking above the sound of the running water.

  ‘You could tell … Tom and Annie you were … I don’t know … what would be a legitimate excuse? Something to do with the hotel. You’ve told me Tom is quite happy as long as he has Beth and Will and he’s become used to you being away during the day so what’s to stop you?’

  ‘Well, there’s the night … He would not like to … You don’t know what he is like sometimes, Martin … nightmares.’

  ‘Could not that fellow Will share your … his room?’ The subject was delicate and there was stilted coolness in Martin’s voice. She heard him step into the bath with a long drawn out, hopeless sigh and she moved across the bedroom to the door which led into the bathroom. There was a contemplative expression on her face and her teeth worried her bottom lip. She watched him lie back in the water, admiring the shining golden brown of his wet body, then, taking the soap from the shelf beside the bath began to lather his chest and, back, smiling as he hunched his shoulders appreciatively. Her face was soft and beginning to glow again with that female appraisal which would lead to languor and the desire which Martin Hunter knew so well. Her hands smoothed and caressed, lingering over the strong arch of his neck, the silky curve of his shoulder, each small bone of his spine and his own desire took flame.

  Her mouth fell to brush the pulse which beat at the base of his throat and her voice was soft and ragged.

  ‘What could it be, d’you think … some exhibition …’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘London, perhaps?’

  ‘I would have to leave a telephone number where I could be reached …’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I could say I was …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s think … of something.’

  Her mouth had reached the hard strength of his stomach, just where the soapy bath water lapped but Martin Hunter’s attention and interest in Meg’s wonderings were slipping rapidly away on the sensuous tide created by her fingers and mouth. The sheer negligeé she wore was a pale, frosted grey, like silver in moonlight. It was of soft organdy, tied carelessly just below her breasts with a coral satin ribbon. It was simple and loose, falling from her shoulders in a graceful line to the floor where it cascaded into a score of narrow, coral-ribboned frills. The satin mules which exactly matched the ribbon had been kicked off. As she leaned over him he could see the twin, pearly crests of breasts and the amber tips of her nipples.

  ‘You think …’ he mumbled, ‘… for how you expect me to concentrate when you kneel there as beautiful as an angel and as wanton as a courtesan …’

  ‘Wanton! Me! How can you say such things, Martin Hunter?’ but she was laughing now.

  ‘Because it’s true and if by the time I count to five you have not removed that delectable bit of nonsense you call a bed-gown it will get rather damp for I mean to have you in this tub with me.’

  ‘Martin … stop it … I want to discuss …’ but it was half-hearted and her eyes glowed into his and her lips parted moistly against her white teeth.

  ‘One … two … three …’

  ‘Martin … just one more thing. Shall we …?’

  ‘Four … five …’

  The coral ribbon was twitched lazily aside and in a whisper of silvered mist the diaphanous gown fell about Meg’s hips. The strong arms of her lover gripped her fiercely in a passion of love and as the water plunged wildly over the rim of the bathtub, Meg Fraser’s white body was taken rapturously to lie against Martin Hunter’s brown chest, the silken wet curves and valleys and peaks of her given the minute and assiduous scrutiny he vowed such beauty deserved. The explanation which Meg was to give her husband and those at the hotel as to why she must absent herself for several days at the end of June, was totally forgotten.

  They travelled to Hendon in Martin’s ‘Huntress’, leaving Meg’s automobile discreetly parked at the rear of the house in Camford, and for three days and two nights they lived in a world which held just the two of them, the days filled with the excitement and wonder of the machines they both
loved and the nights with the excitement and wonder of sharing, for the first time, the whole of the night together.

  In the four years Meg had run ‘Hunter Aviation’, though she had not been involved with the design and building of the aircraft, leaving that to the experienced men she employed, she had come to love the aircraft which were manufactured under her guidance. She had flown whenever she could, going up at least once a month, trying out a new concept in design, she said, but if she were truthful, just for the sheer joy of flying.

  Since the end of the war many aircraft of those belonging to the Royal Air Force had been sent to its salvage store at Croydon for everyone knew the peace of the world was assured and they were now no longer needed. Any man with £800 in his pocket might purchase a ‘Bristol’ two-seater fighter aircraft, a ‘Sopwith Snipe’ or even a ‘Wren’ for £100 less! There were even better bargains advertised in the Aeroplane including the one which offered an aircraft in exchange for a motorcycle! What use were these fighting machines now, they asked.

  But at Hendon that first year after the war the men gathered who had the vision and shrewd intelligence to know that the aircraft industry was not finished. The war had given birth to an infant which had flourished and though it had not yet come to more than early childhood, it was certainly not to stop until it had achieved its full growth and these men were there to see what they might do to bring it to maturity. There were cross-country handicap races, putting man and machine through their partnered paces, in which Martin took part in a ‘Wren III’, winning a couple, much to his delight for he had four years to catch up on, he said. There were stunt men who looped and dived and flew so low their wheels almost brushed the ground, so recklessly, many of those who watched were of the opinion they cared neither whether they lived or died. They were fliers who had survived death in the skies above France and, having done so could not now adapt to civilian life. They were erratic, living for speed and adventure in their fast motor cars and any dare-devil job they could get in the air-circuses which were again becoming a crowd puller.