Between Friends (64 page)

‘No, but she had a letter postmarked in France. Mind you she’s had a few of them lately but this looked official …’

‘I’ll be on the next train, Edie.’

Meg lay rigid in her bed and she was aware, somewhere in the drifting waves of agony and mad dashing boulders of the grief which hurled themselves at her, that she would die of it quite soon for the heart of her was gone and it was not in her to live any longer in this world without Martin. She did not sleep except for a light fitful doze from which she came again and again on an anguished cry which escaped from between her bitten lips. Her body hurt all over, even the inside of her mouth and the roots of her hair and she wondered how it was possible to bear such pain and still live.

When morning broke for the second time she rose from her bed and sat for hours in a chair by the window, the chink of daylight which crept through the drawn curtains emphasising the ravages of her face, her untidy snarl of hair, her blank, unwashed sourness and the limp clasping of her soiled hands between which the letter still lay. She slumped on the bed or sat in the chair and stared sightlessly at the drawn curtain and that was all – for Meg Hughes was rapidly sinking into the indifferent, heedless, mindless state of the deranged and there was no-one to stop her until Annie Hardcastle ordered the locked door to be broken down. She stood, appalled for the space of five seconds, staring at Meg’s shrunken, wax-like face and plum encircled eyes, gagging on the stale and foetid smell which was captured in the closed and shuttered room, before throwing her not inconsiderable weight across the room to the chair in which Meg sat.

She sent them all away, all those curious and staring strangers who were Megan Hughes’ staff, for it had needed the man and the boy to help to shatter the door, and she and Edie lifted her from her chair and stripped her. They bathed her own filth from her and washed her hair and changed her bed, flinging open the window to let in light and fresh air. Edie was sent running to the kitchen, ignoring the questioning eyes of those about her, and she was so upset she told young Jenny Swales who had the impudence to ask after Miss Hughes to mind her own damned business, and she whipped up eggs and sherry in milk.

They put it in her hand and she drank it obediently as she would have done poison if asked, but she did not speak nor raise her eyes beyond the hand which put the glass in hers. She had reacted only when they had tried to take the letter from her, struggling silently, ferociously until it was returned to her when she fell again into her trance-like state and Annie Hardcastle knew she must be brought from the senseless state she was in before it was too late.

‘Megan,’ she had said quite loudly for several minutes but Megan might have been deaf and mute for all the good it did.

‘
Megan Hughes!
’ Her voice thundered about the room and escaped from the wide open windows into the gardens where Albert and the boy hovered. The servants, and even the guests now knew there was something very wrong with the elegant Miss Hughes, for an hotel, no matter how well organised, will not run, hitch free, without its leader. Edie Marshall was a splendid
housekeeper
, hardworking, conscientious and exceedingly efficient but she needed orders, direction, lacking the inventive creativity which Miss Hughes brought to the fine dishes she cooked. There had been several small mishaps, a touch of – well, one could only call it carelessness, a feeling of something, one could not quite put one’s finger on it, missing, and where was Miss Hughes, the guests asked, for she surely would put it right?

‘
Megan Hughes
.’ The voice of Annie Hardcastle could clearly be heard along quiet hallways and in suites where guests held their breath in amazement. It rolled across gardens and down to the lake and they all distinctly heard the slap which Annie administered with all the force she could muster to Megan Hughes’ face.

There was silence after that and only Edie heard the muffled, anguished weeping of the woman in Annie Hardcastle’s arms, and only she saw the dazed pain of bereavement turn to the awakened agony Megan Hughes suffered in her bitter grieving. When it was done and she was outwardly herself again, only she heard her beg Annie to stay with her.

They were in the pretty sitting-room a few days later. Though she had not as yet been seen by her guests, or even by the staff of the hotel, it had become known that Miss Hughes was herself again, the mysterious illness with which she had been struck down nearly gone and that the high standards on which she insisted, even in these straitened days, would once again be restored.

‘I shall need someone, Annie. You know why!’

‘Aye lass, I reckon I do, but there’s Will. I cannot leave him.’

‘Can you not persuade him to come with you? There is more than enough work for both of you. I … there is so much to be done … I do not think I can do it alone.’ It was said simply and the older woman felt her heart move in compassion. ‘I have been in touch … a solicitor … he called this morning at my request and he tells me … the … the will must be … we must obtain probate but … when we do, I must either sell … or run his business … Martin’s …’ Her voice was ragged and her pale, sad face worked in an effort not to weep again. ‘I … these last months since he went away and I believed we … would be married. When I knew …’ Her hand trembled and she pressed it firmly against her lips as though to contain the cry of agony which begged to come out. She drew in her breath, fighting to continue. ‘I let it … slip away, Annie. I seemed not to care much anymore … about the hotel. The war had come and the … and … I was …
I
slipped into a state of … merely waiting for him. That’s who I became. The woman who waited for Martin Hunter. What did it matter if the servants left to go into factories, or that I had to close so many rooms. I was to be … married. I suppose it was because … of the way I was … but nothing else was important to me. Not the hotel, nor the hard work, nor the sacrifices Tom and I had made to get where we did. I … drifted … waiting … for him and now he is not to come home to me … and there is only this left for me to do. The hotel … and …’

‘What will you do, love?’ Annie’s face was inordinately sad.

‘Oh Annie, I cannot sell … what he has created. I know nothing of aeroplanes, or indeed motor cars except how to drive one. I might founder, knowing little of how such a business is run but I must try. I … I promised him. He has good men, an engineer he trusts. I know nothing of the technical side but if a knowledge of business and finance is any help then I must do the best I can with it. Surely it can be no different from running any other concern. Such as this hotel, for instance? I make and sell a product here and I will try to do the same with Martin’s company. I have seen the books and it seems in good heart …’ Her voice faltered, then became stronger. ‘I can only try, Annie, but … if you could see your way … my God … I need your help, Annie, I really do.’

Annie sighed. ‘Megan, oh Megan, it’s a hard row you are to work and I don’t know how you are to do it, lass, but if anyone can do it, it’s you. You will have to … well, my lass, you can’t go on forever and this place takes some looking after, let alone dashing off to Camford all the time …’

‘That’s why I want you to come, Annie. Edie is a superb worker but you … you could help me with the cooking and run the hotel …’

‘You may have no hotel to run, my girl, when they get to know about …’ She nodded her head in the direction of Meg.

‘I understand that, Annie.’ It was said with quiet dignity.

‘It’ll take some swallowing, you know that. I’m … well, I’ve grown fond of you, Megan, but if you weren’t as dear to me as my own daughter I’m bound to say I’d feel the same as they will.’

‘I know, Annie.’

‘I can’t approve, lass.’

For the first time in days Meg Hughes smiled. It had not the brilliance nor the humour which had once lit her face, but in it
was
a strength now, and a quiet joy which said she would manage somehow. There was not acceptance, for Martin Hunter’s death could never be accepted, but there was a trust there that she would survive it, and a certainty that, now she had the reason to do so, she would fight to keep it.

‘You will come, Annie?’

‘Aye, if Will agrees.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Shall you tell Mr Tom soon?’

‘I must.’

‘He knows that Mr Hunter is …?’

‘Yes. I rang his commanding office in Edinburgh. They brought him to the telephone. He is to have compassionate leave. I told them they were brothers.’

‘Brothers!’

‘Well, they were, Annie. They were brought up as brothers.’

‘When will he be home?’

‘Tomorrow.’

HE HELD HER
in his arms and wept and because she could not bear it she wept again with him and for a long time they simply stood with their arms about one another, grieving for the man, the boy, the friend and protector who had been the cornerstone of the triangle which had formed their lives.

Tom could not speak at first. He sat on her settee in his ill-fitting khaki uniform and held the brandy she pressed into his hand, staring at it with a face in which the expression of loss was etched in deep, painful grooves. He sipped it at regular intervals, not really tasting it, but the warmth of it put some colour into his drawn cheeks and at last he was calm.

He had come down by train from Edinburgh to Stoke-on-Trent and then by a series of frequent changes to Ashbourne, taking a taxi-cab from there to the hotel. He wore a rough pair of service trousers with puttees and enormous heavy boots. His jacket was slightly short for he was a tall man though the buttons were as bright and gleaming as new golden sovereigns. He had removed his peaked cap, and the webbing and ammunition pouches which had been strapped across his chest, and on the floor where he had dropped them was the paraphernalia of war which he must now carry about with him wherever he went. His rifle and tin hat, his haversack and water bottle and the iron rations he must always have about him in case of emergency.

He was exhausted after the long and cumbersome journey he had made, for troops were being hurried here and there as the war gathered impetus and the train schedules were organised solely for the purpose, or so it seemed, of serving Kitchener’s ‘Call to Arms’. The General had asked at first for 100,000 men, and then, before the end of August, for another 100,000 more and by mid September half a million had been enlisted. The recruitment of another half a million was still going on and they had all to be moved to a place of training before being shipped to France. Tom himself would be off soon, bound by his King’s shilling and by
his
oath. He had been longing for it, for the glory of defending his country alongside his ‘pals’, and Martin, and now, just as he was about to embark on it, this wonderful adventure, the splendour of it had been torn from him by the death of the man he had loved more than any other, the man he had admired above any other, the man he had called PAL longer than any other.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said at last. He raised his haggard face, running a trembling hand through the shorn crop of his curls. ‘I just can’t believe it. Dammit, the bloody war’s only been going five minutes and …’

‘He’s not the first to … there are already thousands of casualties, Tom, you know that. Edie’s cousin’s son at a place called Mons, killed on the day after his regiment got there and Jenny’s brother was wounded in the same battle …’

She stopped, her voice petering out raggedly for though it was sad, the death and wounding of strangers, what was it to do with her? How could she feel the pain as she felt the pain, the agony of knowing she would never see Martin again. Her heart hurt her sorely and constantly and never seemed to ease. ‘Remembered most clearly are those who are loved and lost, for the heartache remains.’ Where had she read those words, she thought tiredly? She could not recall but they were true. Even now Martin’s face was clearly printed before her eyes, on her eyelids when she closed them and though it hurt her desperately to look into his loving brown eyes how could she attempt to push them away, despite the despairing pain they caused? And yet …

She sighed heavily, her breath tremulous in her throat but in her eyes there was a softness, a tender candle-flame of hope and it must be heeded. Be recognised and acknowledged and given life.

But before she could speak Tom spoke. He put down the glass he held and took her hand in his. It was gentle, all the love he had for her trembling through his fingers into hers and though his face was strained and filled with sorrow there was resignation there, acceptance and something else which held him steady.

‘How … how did it happen, Meg? D’you know?’

‘Not really. His aircraft crashed …’ She put her hand to her mouth, ‘… they didn’t say how, only that he wouldn’t have … have known anything about it. Quick, the commanding officer said … and merciful …’

‘Was he … was he in the “Wren”?’ Tom’s face crumpled for
they
both knew that Martin had loved his little aeroplane more than anything he had ever created and if he had to die, surely that was how he would have wished it?

‘Yes … in the “Wren”.’

Tom cleared his throat which threatened to clog up again. His hand carressed her’s and his shoulder leaned companionably, as it had always done, touching and warming and comforting her own.

‘You know, Meggie,’ his voice was sad but stronger now and filled with resolve, ‘we can’t go on waiting any more, can we, sweetheart? This … has brought it home to me more than anything that … that life is … uncertain now and we mustn’t waste what we have. I was going to ask you if we could do it before I go to France. A lot of the men are, but this … Martin going like he has … well …’