They were guests, Meg explained to him as she held him in her arms one night, and he would have absolutely no need to even see them. They would keep to their part of the hotel and there was no way they could get through to his. To the apartment which he and Beth, Sally Flash and herself were to share. Yes, the dogs would be with him and Will would sleep in the attic room if Tom wanted him to. The gardens at the back of the house and the farm itself where his animals were housed, the cows and the goat, the pigs and the hens, would be out of bounds to anyone but himself and Will. Yes, of course Beth could go with them, until she went to school.
‘To school?’
‘Now you know she must go to school when she is five, Tom.’ Meg was infinitely patient with him but sometimes she worried about the intense wall of protection Tom tried to erect about Beth … his daughter. He still was not happy about the pony she was learning to ride and stood in a sweat of apprehension each time she was astride his back. Meg had bought a couple of sturdy mares, small and steady, believing that if she, and therefore Tom, could also learn to ride, going out on the quiet moor with Beth it might allay his fears but so far he had not been persuaded to get up on the mare’s back. He would stand for hours stroking the soft nose of the animal, looking into the liquid eyes, soothed as he had always been by the contact he had with a creature he knew would not harm him but it seemed it was not in him to actually ride the mare.
‘Why does she have to go to school, Meggie. Can’t she have a governess. That way she needn’t go out of the grounds. You know I don’t like …’
‘Tom, she needs to be with other children. It’s not good for her to be just with you and Will,’ and Tom, the Tom who had onced romped with Meg and Martin, agreed, but the Tom who now lived in his body swore to himself that when the time came he would do everything to prevent his beloved daughter from going out into … well … there were shells … and he had heard a whizz-bang the other day when he was in the meadow!
But as the day rapidly approached, as the constant and sudden appearance of strange men, the alarming banging of a workman’s hammer, of saws cutting sharply through wood rattled his fragile nerves, Will was forced to take Tom to the furthest fields on the farm. Each evening when they returned, Tom would be more apprehensive at the sight of some new adjunct added to his familiar home, or worse still, some part of it taken away! Windows appeared where there had been none and a door which had been there when he left that morning was bricked up and plastered over when he returned and what would happen next, his wounded mind begged to know?
Meg was in Ashbourne, once again attending the solicitors who were still attempting to untangle the legal complexities caused by Martin’s ‘death’, his will and his return to life which had made it null and void. She had spent an hour with them and her head was aching as she returned to her motor car and when the voice called her name her first reaction was annoyance for she had just been promising herself half an hour with Martin and the certainty that his clever and imaginative fingers would ease it away.
‘Meg, Megan, is it you?’ the voice asked.
Meg turned to stare at the woman who had called her name and though there was a certain familiarity about her eyes and the set of her mouth she could not for the life of her remember where she had known her.
The woman smiled and held out her hand.
‘Eveline O’Hara.’
‘Eveline …?’
‘You don’t remember me?’
‘Well, yes, I know your face but …’
‘The Adelphi Hotel. Miss O’Hara!’
Megan began to smile and through ten years of change and more change, of war and suffering, of happiness and grief, the memory of a young girl and this woman emerged – and she was Megan Hughes again, skivvy, kitchen-maid, chambermaid and finally assistant housekeeper.
‘Miss O’Hara … why, of course … really, I don’t know why I didn’t recognise you. You are …’
‘Older, Megan and … not quite so … strong.’
‘No … we have all … the war took its toll.’
‘Aye, it did …’ and a shutter came down on the face of Eveline O’Hara as it did on a hundred thousand female faces all over the country at the mention of the war.
‘Come and have a cup of tea, Miss O’Hara, and tell me all about yourself.’
‘It’s Mrs Coyle now, Megan, but call me Eveline, after all, I’m not that much older than you,’ and Meg could see she was right. She had always seemed to be middle-aged to the young Meg Hughes from her lowly position as kitchen-maid but now she realised she could be no more than thirty-five or six, though her hair was greying and her face was lined.
They sat in the small tea room for over an hour and at the end of it Meg Fraser had herself the ‘experienced girl’ she needed for her dining-room. Eveline Coyle was a widow now, her husband of two years gone with the very same ‘Liverpool Pals’ who had been mown down at Tom’s side. She hadn’t fancied going back to Liverpool where she had been so happy for such a short time with her Donny, she said sadly, so she was working in a local hotel as a glorified housekeeper-cum-receptionist-cum anything-else she was required to do but she wanted to settle somewhere, make a home for herself, put roots down, but there … that was enough about her. What had Megan been up to in the ten years since they had last met?
She drove home with Meg that evening, all her worldly possessions in the back of the Vauxhall, the recriminations of the hotel manager silenced by the month’s wages Meg had stuffed into his greedy hand; and she wept a little when Meg showed her the small, sunny sitting-room and bedroom with which she was to do exactly as she liked for they were to be her ‘home’.
‘You put your roots down here, Eveline,’ she said softly, ‘for I mean to be here for a long while!’
And now they were here. The Marringtons first, as seemed only right and proper for they had been her first guests when she had opened ‘Hilltops’ before the war, and tomorrow their dear friends, Sir Joseph Hartley and his wife – ‘made his brass in munitions, lass, and got a knighthood an’ all, though my Albert said he bought it an’ I say what’s to stop Albert havin’ one then? Lady Nelly, that’d be me,’ and her good-natured laugh could be heard in every part of the hotel that week!
They came in their droves that lovely autumn, the private suites and bedrooms never empty. The newly rich who could now afford this luxury which the elegant Mrs Fraser offered, and the thoroughbred wealth which had not been earned but handed down. The war had to some extent drawn the classes together, or at least given the well-bred the tolerance to accept the well-feathered, for they were so exceedingly rich! The local gentry came to dine when a table could be found for them, careless and haughty but adding that touch of privileged class to Mrs Fraser’s dining-room. They drank the excellent wines she served and ate the superb food she personally prepared – five years had not diminished her skills in the culinary arts, it seemed – and moved about her lovely, newly decorated, exquisitely furnished drawing-room and salon and the intimate and quite daring bar and grill room she had installed. They came in their motors, Rolls-Royces and Bentleys and Lanchesters, which gleamed in the soft lights falling across them from the windows, and no-one was ill-mannered enough to mention the shell of the man who was her husband and who, one heard, was locked up in a distant wing of the hotel with a man to guard him!
‘When will you ever have time for me?’ Martin asked her ominously, his pride in her not apparently foreseeing the cutting back of the hours they had spent together, little enough to start with, his expression saying. August had passed into September and then October and still the travellers came, their appetite for a long weekend, or a mid-week break or a few days away from it all scarcely abating. ‘Does the bloody season never end?’
‘It appears not, my love. The war seems to have introduced into everyone the desire to get away and have a holiday.’
‘But it’s been nearly a year since the war ended. Are they never going to forget it?’
‘
How can they? How can anyone?’ and the silence would fall about them and Meg would feel the sharp-edged tension come between them and neither could remove it, nor even speak about it for both were afraid it might wound them so mortally they might never recover.
Beth Fraser, four-and-a-half years old and full of energy and charm and the bright beauty of her mother, raced across the springy turf of the slope which ran above the gorge of the Dovedale Valley. Though it was October, guests from the hotel still wandered lazily about the gardens and their well-bred voices begged one another to look at the darling child and was she not a replica of her mother, the superb Mrs Fraser, they said, and do come here, little girl so that they might pat her riotous curls. The child stopped, politely waiting but in her eyes was the rebellious look which, if they had known him they might have recognised in those of her father. She stood and submitted to having her rose-petalled cheeks admired and the length of her curling lashes, and when her mother’s guests moved on, their interest turning to some other topic of curiosity which they were certain Mrs Fraser arranged just for their entertainment, Beth sighed in childish exasperation for really it was very hard to have a good game without one or other of them interrupting it!
‘Let’s go down the path, Sally,’ she begged her nursemaid. ‘We could throw sticks in the river for Sidney.’
‘Now you know Mummy doesn’t like you to go out of the garden, Beth …’
‘Oh just this once, Sally … please … we won’t go far …’
‘Well …’ Sally Flash turned as though to search out Mrs Fraser and beg her permission but the only people about were hotel visitors, and all, she assumed about to bear down on her charge, and could you blame them for she was an extremely engaging little girl, but still, it was a nuisance!
‘Alright then, but not too fast and not too far!’
It was cold and though the sun shone with the iced brilliance of winter it gave off no warmth. The summer and autumn, long and lovely, day after day with no intention, it seemed of ever ending had left overnight, turning the weather about so rapidly one day it was summer, the next deep winter and those who knew the ways of it in this high land of the Derbyshire peaks said it would snow soon and that the winter would be long and hard.
A yellow labrador puppy ran at Beth’s heels, leaping and barking his excitement and delight at this escape from the confines of the garden, raising his nose to sniff the windless air, his bright, curious eye following the movement of the child.
‘Sidney,’ she called imperiously, showing him the stick she held in her hand, then, having caught his wandering attention, throwing it haphazardly a few yards along the path. ‘Fetch Sidney,’ she shouted, pointing to where the piece of wood had fallen but the puppy merely leaped to snatch at her hand before darting off again to follow some fascinating scent he had come upon.
Their concerted noise blasted crows from their cover to wheel about the thin blue sky and the man behind the grey pitted boulder smiled.
Shadows of the half naked trees made patterns through which the child and the dog romped and the vivid scarlet of her coat made a moving, rippling charge against the landscape which was already painted in winter colours of black and white. She wore no hat and her hair, cut short, sprang about her head in a flame of copper, moving in the still air like the russet coat of a running fox. The exertion had put poppy flags in her cheeks and the spangle of stars in the deep, chocolate brown of her eyes.
‘Sidney, come here Sidney,’ she called again and the puppy raced towards her, his eyes adoring, his expression resigned.
‘Good boy, good old boy,’ the child cried and bent to hug his head in a passion of love. ‘See, fetch the stick. Go on, fetch the stick,’ and the dog ran obligingly though he had scant idea of what they were doing.
Sally Flash walked slowly behind them, her eyes moving serenely from one lovely sight to another. A pussy willow bent towards the river, growing deep in fern and patches of moss. There was a coppice of hazelwood beneath which a dense layer of wood sorrel lay, climbing over fallen logs and the cut stumps of trees where they had been felled. There was a flicker in the roots of a beech tree and the bright eye of a water vole peeked out at her and she hoped the dog had not got its scent. She breathed in deeply, drawing the champagne like air into her lungs, pushing her hands further into the pockets of her coat as she followed her charge along the hard, frozen path beside the tumbling water of the Dove.
‘Mind, sweetheart, those stones are slippery,’ she called.
‘Can Sidney go in, Sally?’
‘He’s already in!’
‘Well of course! He is a gun dog, you know. It is part of his nature to take to the water.’
The old-fashioned phrasing made the nursemaid smile.
‘Who told you that?’ she called after the darting child.
‘Will.’
‘Of course … yes, he would know.’
The water flew about the ecstatic dog and the child shrieked with laughter and the man who crouched behind the boulder knelt and watched for a moment longer, then, as though he could not wait another minute he stood up and began to walk towards her.
‘Good morning,’ he called and the child stopped abruptly and backed away some hazed memory making her cautious, and the nursemaid hurried to catch up to her. Though she had been away up North visiting her own family when Beth was taken away she could still recall the terror with which Mrs Fraser had recounted it to her on her return. She put her arm protectively about Beth’s shoulders, holding her to her side and the puppy ran back nervously, his tail ready to tuck itself between his legs. He leaned against the child and the three of them watched the man as he moved in their direction.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ he said and his eyes never left the little girl and Sally Flash held her more firmly.
‘Yes, indeed it is.’
‘… and that’s a fine dog you have there, Beth.’ The small girl stared up at the tall stranger, her face assuming that guarded expression of a child who is not awfully sure she liked her name on the lips of a man she did not know.
‘Thank you,’ she said politely.
The man stopped then, aware that he had alarmed the child’s nurse. He wore a pair of knee breeches with knee length socks and a good pair of stout walking boots. Under his serviceable tweed jacket was a warm woollen jumper with a polo neck and he wore a peaked cap. He carried a plain walking stick of cherrywood and had a small knapsack on his back.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he asked softly, almost sadly. His eyes looked directly at the child but the remark was addressed to Sally Flash.
‘Well … I can’t just …’
He turned to look at her then and the luminous softness in his deep, brown eyes fell warmly on her face, the residue of his feelings – for what, she wondered – still there.
‘I’m Martin Hunter. You were with Beth on the morning I came to see her in the nursery, six months ago now. I’ve had a hair cut since then.’ His smile flashed out humourously, then immediately he returned his gaze to the child as though he could not waste precious time on anyone else. He squatted down before her, holding out his hand and at once the puppy, all fears allayed, ran to him, fawning all over him in a delirium of joy.
‘Don’t you remember me, Beth?’ He gave the appearance of being quite devastated if she did not. He held the puppy with a firm hand, looking humbly into the face of the little girl and Sally Flash let go of her, ready to allow her to go to him if she wished it.
‘No.’ The child was still suspicious and not at all sure she liked her Sidney, her own puppy and therefore allowed to love no-one but her, obviously delighted with his new friend.
‘Can you ride McGinty yet?’ he asked gently.
‘Yes … well, nearly …’
‘I thought to see you galloping all over the moor by now.’
‘Daddy says I’m not big enough yet but …’
She moved a step nearer to him, her childish caution evaporating. There was something
in this man which, now that his eyes were on a level with her own, she recognised, something which rang a bell in her young mind and it was to do with her pony.
‘Of course, if Daddy says so.’ His voice was solemn, then he winked.
‘I know … I know …’ Her face lit up and she hopped from one foot to the other in her excitement. ‘You’re the man who said I could ride McGinty ’cos I was a big girl, if we put a rein on him, and now Will lifts me on and holds the lead and I gallop and gallop round and round the paddock and when I get bigger Daddy says I can ride out …’
She came right up to him then and put her hand on his knee, looking delightedly up into his face, ‘But I’m big enough now, aren’t I … aren’t I?’
‘Well, perhaps if Mummy spoke to your Daddy …’
The child’s face clouded and her mouth pouted rebelliously.
‘No, she says we musn’t make Daddy upset …’, her face brightened, ‘but if you asked him … could you … Mr … er.’
‘My name is Martin.’
‘Yes.’
‘Had you forgotten?’
‘Course not … but if you asked Mummy about McGinty … will you? Will you? I’m not frightened of falling off, like Daddy says.’
Between Friends Page 63