Between Friends (86 page)

‘I’ll tell Annie to put the kettle on while I’m there. We’ll be needing something hot inside us by the time we’ve got this lot shifted.’

Will Hardcastle was openly weeping, saying he shouldn’t have let him go, the tears running unchecked through the lines of his suddenly old face, and the young lad who helped in the garden, his own a white mask of shock kept repeating again and again. ‘I was only fetching them a drink … I was only fetching them a drink … I was only fetching them a drink …’ as though some blame might be laid at his door.

Meg looked at the obscene shape which lay beneath the huge oak tree, her mind empty, her eyes sightlessly staring, her face white and quite expressionless and waited with all the patience in the world since what else was there left for her to do, for the police constable to reveal its horror. It was like a tent, she thought, the kind with which children play, a pole sticking up in the middle of it but beneath it lay something so dreadful she knew she would need every ounce of her fragile strength to bear it. She knew who it was, of course. She had known from the moment she had been told of it for who else could it be? It was the inevitable ending to ten years of torment but as the thought came to her she knew that the torment was not yet done with. Beneath that sheet in all its terror and dread lay the last chance Tom Fraser would ever have of a decent life and how was she to live with it, she asked herself in desperation.

The constable put out an unsteady hand to what lay on the ground for like them all, he was unused to violent death. The cover, one begged hastily from a white-faced Annie was stained with drying blood and dirt from the ground and was wet with the steadily falling snow, still sleet-like and not yet sticking, but getting thicker and more vicious with every hour.

‘Are you ready now, Mrs Fraser?’ the constable said and she nodded. She could feel Martin straining beside her, his face dark with anger, his shoulders hunched with the need to strike out at someone,
anyone
, in his fear for her, since he was convinced there was no need for Meg to see what was beneath the cover. Surely someone else could view what lay there and say if they knew who it was. There was absolutely no need, in his opinion, for her to
be
put through this damned charade but she herself had insisted upon it and there was nothing he could say to stop her, though he had tried.

‘I have to see, Martin … what lies there.’

‘Why? for God’s sake!’

‘I must know who …’

‘Is it likely you would know … him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because … of Tom?’

‘Yes,’ and he had taken her arm and turned her to him, quite dangerous in his bewilderment, and looked into her white face and strange clouded eyes, and his own, torn between his love and anxiety for her, and his need to protect her from something over which he had no control, had been wild.

‘What the hell’s been going on here, Meg? What has happened in the years I’ve been away? Who is this … person? Tell me …’

‘I will, Martin … after …’

The constable drew back the sheet and those about pressed forward to see what he had revealed. Will was there, still weeping and there was another constable, as well as the police sargeant from the village anxiously awaiting the arrival of his superior officer from headquaters, for really he was not experienced in this sort of crime. Beyond them were the two men who, with Will and the lad, had covered up the body. The boy had gone, calling wildly for his mother, taken away by the doctor who had examined the body and pronounced it quite dead.

The face looked up at her from the pillow of rotting leaves. It was drawn into the familiar snarling expression of hatred with which he had greeted her on each of the occasions they had met. His eyes were open and staring at her and she had time to think before the grey mists of slipping consciousness tried to take her, that at last he had done what he had set out to do! She clung to Martin’s arm, feeling its rock-like strength beneath her fingers and somehow held on to her anguished mind.

‘Do you know him, Mrs Fraser?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you give me his name?’ The constable twitched the sheet and for a moment the gardening fork was revealed, its four prongs deeply embedded in the chest of the corpse and Meg felt the heaving murmur of her stomach become a roar as she began the long slide into unconsciousness.

‘
Where is my husband?
’ she screamed. ‘Why is nobody looking for him?’ Then the blackness came and Martin caught her as she fell into it.

He found the hiding place just as dark overtook him. It was no more than an overhang of rock surrounded on three sides by others, but it faced out into the bitter wind. The snow was thickening and he could barely see but he didn’t mind. They wouldn’t find him here, not in this. The space was fairly dry, lined with moss and dead fern and he settled his back to the rock and began to unwind the muffler from about his neck. He smiled peacefully. Annie had knitted it for him and one for Will, his to be blue to match his eyes, she said and Will’s to be red to go with his nose! She was like that, was Annie, making a joke about her son’s high colour but filled with love, she was, not just for Will but for him as well. She had wrapped that protective love around him, like they all had, trying to shelter him from what haunted him and though they tried, and had to some extent, succeeded, it was no good. That man today had proved it. He remembered him and his name, though he wasn’t going to speak it now, and what he had done to their Meg, just as he remembered everything from the past and
all
their names. That was the trouble! They had jostled at his shoulder for years now, trying to attract his attention and he had run away, hidden behind Meg and Beth, sweet Beth who was Martin Hunter’s child, but he could not hide any more behind those who tried so hard to protect him, even at the expense of their own happiness. Meg had loved him. Meg had loved Martin Hunter and now he would give them their rightful place in one another’s lives, just as he was to take
his
rightful place beside his pals. He had tried to hang back, to let them go on, but it did no good. They waited for him and always would, patient and sad-eyed, telling him what he had always recognised but would not admit to until now, that he should have gone with them when they left.

He folded the muffler carefully, placing it on the ground beside him, then, shivering, though he did not feel the biting cold, one by one he removed every garment he wore until he was completely naked. He spread out his clothes, then lay down on his side, pillowing his head on his folded arm, his knees drawn up to his chest, looking out into the whirling, dancing joy of the snowflakes. His mind was very peaceful as he thought of them.

Meg and Martin. He had always known, of course he had, and had not needed what the man had said to remind him. It was true. He’d hidden it, just like he had tried to hide Andy and Johnny and Titch and Captain Holgate, under the debris of his broken mind, but now his mind was whole again and he could see into it and they were there waiting. Andy had his fags out and Titch had brewed up and across the devastation of the mud and blood and shattered waste of war he could see the poppies, and three children walked hand in hand through them towards him, laughing, he could hear them, and he smiled as he closed his eyes.

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Published in the United Kingdom in 1997 by Arrow Books

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Copyright © Audrey Howard 1988

The right of Audrey Howard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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First published in the United Kingdom in 1988
by Century Hutchinson Ltd

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