Between Friends (62 page)

Meg had another worry now as the war got into its stride. As men left for the front there was far more work for women to do and opportunities to demonstrate they could do it well. And the wages!
£
2 a week to work in a munitions factory which was more than double the amount they could hope to earn in service. They flocked to the auxiliary branches of the armed services, they
worked
on the land, as nurses, clerks and typists and Meg’s maidservants, sadly, they told her, for she had been good to them in the short while they had worked for her, felt the need to get in on the bonanza, and, of course, do their bit to aid the war effort!

So there was only Edie, and Jenny Swales, who lived near by and was ‘walking out’ with a coal miner, a restricted occupation and therefore unlikely to go into the army, the little skivvy, only just fourteen who worked in the kitchen, and Meg, for even the handsome young receptionist had been called to enlist in the service of his country.

Meg had been forced, regretfully, to turn away guests for how could the four of them do what a staff of a dozen and more, had done before the war. She did the cooking still, and Edie and Jenny cleaned and served in the dining-room, doing the work of four, whilst in the kitchen the young maid squared her shoulders and ran like a hare from oven to table to sink in an effort to keep up with Miss Hughes’ orders. Half the lovely suites were closed up and the furniture swathed in dust sheets but still Meg sighed through the days for nothing was important now but the safe return of her love. The winter was setting in and Derbyshire was a long way from London, where the young officers on leave from France went and so she waited, and dreamed her dreams contained in her world, indolent and filled with a strange languor.

It was in September that the elderly gentleman appeared, speaking most courteously to Ethel, the young skivvy from the kitchen of ‘Hilltops’. It was her afternoon off and she had gone blackberrying that day with her younger brother. They were up the lane which led to Addlestones Farm, their booted feet deep in lady’s smock and wood-sorrel, their fingers and lips blue with the juice from the dewed, sun-smelling berries, their baskets already half filled. Alfie was propounding on the nuisance of being so young and considering with Ethel whether the war would last long enough for him to get in it. Did he look sixteen, he begged her to tell him anxiously, his thirteen-year-old frame striving for another inch or two, but Ethel took no notice, the voice of her brother just a constant irritant on the perimeter of her thoughts but when it stopped she was surprised and turned to look at him.

He was standing, awkwardly holding his basket, his eyes on the immaculately turned out gentleman who had appeared – from
where
, Ethel thought wildly – in the exact centre of the dusty lane. He wore a tweed jacket and well-cut breeches with brightly polished boots. He carried a stout walking stick and on his head was a soft felt hat in tweed with a wide brim. He was the perfect country gentleman and Ethel stared about her, looking for his horse, or his carriage, or even his motor car but there was nothing, only himself.

He smiled and for some reason Alfie moved nearer to his sister.

‘I’m sorry, did I startle you,’ the gentleman said.

‘We were blackberrying,’ Ethel replied as though in explanation.

‘So I see, and what fine ones they are. Just right for a pie.’ There seemed to be no answer to this so neither youngster spoke up.

‘I am out for a walk.’ The gentleman turned to look about him, studying the rolling hills, the low sheltered valleys, the rippling grasses which stirred in the breeze and the soft, hazed blue of the sky. It had rained in the night and the earth smelled damp and on the bramble bushes, diamond drops glittered where the sun’s rays caught them.

‘It really is a beautiful day,’ he continued affably, ‘and just right for a walk but I appear to have missed my turn.’ He smiled and again young Alfie seemed inclined to huddle closer to Ethel. ‘I am to visit a friend of mine … Miss Hughes of the “Hilltop Hotel”. Perhaps you know her?’

At the mention of her employer’s name Ethel’s suspicious face broke into a smile and she gave Alfie an irritable shove, her expression asking what the devil he thought he was doing, crowding up to her like a baby, and him wanting to be a soldier!

‘Oh aye.’

‘You mean you know her?’

‘I work for her.’

‘Well, imagine that! What a coincidence! In what capacity?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What do you do at the hotel, Miss … er …?’

‘Ethel.’

‘… er Ethel …?’

‘I work in the kitchen.’

‘Indeed. That sounds a very important job.’

Ethel preened. ‘Oh aye. Miss Hughes says I’m her right-hand man … or woman, now that the rest of the servants have gone
to
fight the Germans.’ She became expansive, rounding out her routine, often menial work until it became as important in her fourteen-year-old mind as the cooking done by Miss Hughes. ‘Well, I have to be really ’cause there’s only Mrs Marshall and Jenny now that Mr Tom’s gone …’

‘Aah … Mr Tom!’

‘And all the other girls have left to make bombs so I have to do their jobs an’ all.’

‘My word, you must work hard, particularly with Mr Tom in … where has he gone now … I have forgotten for the moment.’

‘Edinburgh. They’re teaching him to be a soldier, Miss Hughes says and then she has to see to the field …’

‘The … field …?’

‘Oh yes! Where they make airyplanes, Jenny said …’

‘Aeroplanes?’

‘Yes,’ she explained patiently, ‘those things what fly in the air.’

‘Oh, of course, and why does she do that. One would imagine she has enough to do without … seeing to the … er … aeroplanes.’

Ethel became confidential then, carried away by her own importance, by the thrill of having her own voice listened to by a grown-up, and liking the sound of it herself, and with the delight all those who gossip have in passing on information, usually blown up out of all proportion to the the truth.

‘Well, Jenny said that this chap who’s a friend of Mr Tom’s and Miss Hughes builds them and he’s gone …’

‘Gone! Gone where?’

Ethel blinked and hesitated for it suddenly occurred to her that this man, gentleman or not, was asking an awful lot of questions, but then, as she said later to Alfie, he
was
a friend of Miss Hughes so what harm could there be in chatting to him?

‘He’s gone to France in his airyplane.’

‘Has he now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that is most interesting and I don’t suppose you know where in France?’

‘I just told you, France!’

‘Of course … well, I must be off since I fear it is to rain.’

‘Will I show you the way to “Hilltops”, sir?’ Ethel said, reluctant to part with this gentleman who found her own conversation so fascinating.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll find it …’

‘But sir …’

‘Thank you. Good afternoon to you.’

The war was going well, they said, those who knew and the Germans had discovered they could not get through the British Army as easily as they had marched through Belgium. At the first battle of the Marne the German advance was checked by the British Expeditionary Force, and by the French under Marshal Joffre. Not only were they stopped they were forced to retreat across the River Aisne. The Germans’ attempt to reach the Channel was similarly thwarted by the first battle of Ypres and the people were jubilant, trying to get their tongues round the strange name with no idea of how familiar it was to become to a nation in which most households were to lose a husband, a father or a son there over the years.

The final attack on Ypres began on 20th October and with the arrival of reinforcements in November, the Germans ceased their attempts to break the line. Both armies dug into their trenches and waited, surely, for the end of the hostilities to be declared.

Letters came from Martin. There was not much doing, he said for there were not many of them to do it! There were in Great Britain at the start of the war only 862 men who held the Royal Aero Club’s flying certificate and of those only 55, himself included, were sufficiently advanced to be considered for active service. Despite this they had gone to war with 197 pilots. They earned seven and sixpence a day as officers and got an additional four shillings daily as flying pay.

‘We shall be millionaires by the war’s end at this rate, sweetheart,’ he wrote, ‘and well able to afford that diamond ring I promised you by Christmas. I am almost sure of leave then for I will have done three and a half months service and if I am able I shall fly home, so tell old Knowsley to have the runway ready at the airfield. About the investments you mentioned. Do just whatever you think fit, my love. It will be your business as well as mine when we are married and you have become as sharp as any businessman I know, and better!’

She kept his letters beneath her pillow and, smiling at her own foolishness, tied them together with a white satin ribbon as was traditional with love missives, putting them to her face and smelling what she was certain was the fragrance of his cigars on them. She worked hard, as hard as she had ever done, in keeping
open
a part of her hotel and her health was superb. She seemed to bloom that autumn, her love giving her a gloss and polish, a dancing, sparkling vitality which had the quality of a firework, a shooting star, and yet the delicate wonder of a simple, pink-tipped daisy. The war would be over soon, she believed, for was that not what everyone was saying and perhaps Tom would not even get to France. Martin would be home and together they would face the task of telling Tom how it was between them. It was the only sadness she bore and it was heavy but they would overcome it, the three of them, as they had always done.

The dog began to vomit about midnight. Awakened by the sound of his pitiful howling Meg stumbled down the stairs to the small back room used for storing all the paraphernalia which had not yet had a home found for it and where he slept, afraid he would waken the guests. Perhaps he had scented some intruder, a fox or one of the nocturnal creatures which lived in the woods beyond the boundary of the hotel, on the forage at the dustbins in the yard.

He died with his head in her lap, his eyes, even in his agony, begging her forgiveness for the mess he had made on her carpet. Edie sat with her and when he had gone she helped to lift his heavy body into the cold dawn of the back yard, and beyond to the garden. She would bury him under the branches of the tree where he had liked to lie in the summer, sheltered from the sun’s heat, Megan declared, the tears streaming desolately across her drawn cheeks for she had developed a great fondness for him in the four years he had been with them.

‘Nay love, Albert will do it. ’Tis too hard for you. The soil is heavy at this time of the year,’ Edie protested and drew her away and when Meg went later that morning the dug ground had a sprig of fading heather laid on it and she felt comforted.

It did not occur to her to wonder why he had died and in such obvious pain until mid-afternoon. He had been an elderly dog with grey hairs in his muzzle and she had supposed his time had come, but why had he suffered such agony, she thought? She was preparing the ‘Fillet of Veal au Bechamel’ which was on the menu for the evening meal. Edie had roasted the fillet the day before and had cut out the middle when it had gone cold. The meat taken out had been minced, mixed with forcemeat and Meg was adding the bechamel preparatory to returning the mixture to the
meat
, sprinkling the whole with breadcrumbs and clarified butter before browning the dish in the oven to be served hot. Edie was grating breadcrumbs beside her.

‘It’s strange he died so quickly and without warning,’ Meg said and with the words it was as though she had opened a door and allowed in a chink of light. Not enough to see by but sufficient to place an outline around her still quiescent thoughts.

‘He were an old dog, lass.’

‘I know, but he was fine last night when I let him in, begging as usual for a titbit and lively as a puppy.’

‘’Appen he ate something he shouldn’t. A rotten apple or rubbish he picked up in the wood. Them toadstools are reckoned to be poisonous you know.’

‘Yes, I know, but he’s never eaten them before. Why should he do it now?’

‘Nay, I don’t know, lass. ’Tweren’t as though he was hungry. Not after what he had last night.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I gave him the left-overs from what we cut out of this veal for his supper and by heck, did he enjoy it!’

The door in her mind creaked open further and though she could not as yet make out the clear shape of the horror she knew awaited her, it was there, smirking and obscene and in a moment the full force of it would be upon her. She stepped back from the meat she was stuffing as though it had burnt her fingers.

Edie turned towards her, amazed.

‘What’s up, lass? What is it? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Oh Edie … Dear God …’ she could do no more than whisper.

‘What … for God’s sake what is it?’ Edie was badly frightened by now.

‘The veal!’

‘The veal! What’s up with the veal?’

‘Did it come from Mr Talbot?’

‘Of course!’