Between Friends (80 page)

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 familiar 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.

‘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.

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.