The child’s face lit up and she put her hand trustingly on his where it lay on the white tablecloth. ‘Oh yes, and he’s brave too and when I’m older I’m going to teach him to jump the fence but until then Daddy says I can learn to ride him in the paddock and …’
‘But you are four years old, are you not?’
‘Yes. My birthday is next week … er … Saturday …’ She looked eagerly at her mother for confirmation and when Meg nodded, grinned back at him.
‘Well, in that case I would say you are old enough to learn to ride right now, wouldn’t you? If we put a long rein on him and I lifted you into the saddle I dare say you could ride him, don’t you? Especially if I were to hold you, just until you were used to it. A big girl like you could …’
‘Martin!’ Meg’s voice was sharp with warning but he did not hear, or chose not to, which was more likely and Meg was made aware, if last night had not confirmed it, that four years of imprisonment had not destroyed Martin Hunter’s complete belief in his own judgement.
The child’s face was a picture of enchantment and she jumped down from her chair and put her hand in Martin’s.
‘Oh can we, can we, Martin?’ She looked up imploringly at Meg, ‘Can we, Mummy, can we, please!’
The voice from the doorway was cold and even the little girl became quiet.
‘Can we what, Meg? What is it she wants? You know I do not like her put in … in danger … she is so small.’ Tom’s hand on the doorknob fumbled to hold on to something and his face was clouded, uncertain, for his mind had taken that frightening turn again and he didn’t quite know what to say, or do. Martin was there, talking to Beth and she had her hand in his which Tom
didn’t
like … and he … Andy … no, no, it wasn’t right … it shouldn’t be allowed … she was his … her … oh Lord …
With the mercurial mood of a child Beth flung off the friendly hand of the stranger and ran to her Daddy, putting her arms about him and holding him close to her. The top of her head came to just below his waist and his hands fell to her curls, thankfully, and he smiled in deep gratitude.
‘What is it, my darling?’ His voice still trembled and his head could not quite hold itself steady and the hand which caressed the bright copper curls of the child would not be still but he had control of himself and he would be alright for Beth was with him. She looked up at him now.
‘Martin says I can ride McGinty, Daddy. He says it’s easy so shall we go up to the paddock and …’
‘Oh no sweetheart, not yet. Perhaps when you are a big girl …’ He had not really wanted Meg to buy the animal in the first place for it was so … so tall and his child was only … only small and what if she fell off, he had said over and over again to Meg but she wouldn’t listen and now look what had happened …
‘But Martin says I am a big girl now, Daddy.’
‘Not yet, Beth, no darling, not yet …’ for if she fell those craters were deep and most had water in them and she could drown … dear God … that was close … no … no … Andy …
‘But Daddy, if we put a … what was it, Martin … a rein on McGinty?’ She let go of Tom, a little girl consumed with excitement and the need to do what she had been told she
could
do, and do it
now
. She turned away from him and moved appealingly towards Martin and the dreadful hole was there where she had been standing and without her to hold on to Tom fell right into it. Andy was there, grinning apologetically and … and …
‘Beth, sweetheart …’ His cry raised the fine hairs on the back of Martin Hunter’s neck and the hand he had been about to hold out persuasively to
his
daughter, hesitated, then fell to his side. The little girl turned back, away from him, to Tom. Martin saw the childish love there, the trust, the belief that he was her father, and he had called to her. She went to him at once.
‘Oh Daddy, please …’ she begged but the demanding note had gone from her voice and as Tom fell to his knees before her she ran into his arms and put hers around his neck.
‘Soon, darling, soon,’ he said quite normally, then lifted her up in his arms. His shield, his protector, it seemed suddenly to Martin
and
he saw it then, the damage that had been done to his friend who must hide behind the love of a four-year-old child.
He put out an unsteady hand ready to lay it on Tom’s shoulder.
‘Your daughter and I were just introducing ourselves to one another, my old friend.’ His voice was soft and compassionate and Meg turned away to hide the tears. ‘She’s a … a little beauty, Tom. You’ve a right to be proud of her …’ and with these words Martin Hunter gave back his daughter, the one he had just met, and loved, ten minutes ago. ‘We were talking about her pony. I’m afraid I was encouraging her to ride it, but then you know me, Tom, always a bit of a dare-devil … remember the tricks I used to get up to on that bicycle?’
Tom’s face opened up and became joyful. He held the child and moved towards his friend, his friend Martin.
‘Could I ever forget? A circus performer had nothing on you! And that damned tandem you had me and Meg on, remember? I was the one who did all the work, pedalling for two whilst she sat back and smiled at all the lads. And they smiled back too, I’ll not forget that, either, by God. Pretty! Pretty as a picture was my Meggie and still is, aren’t you my darling, and now I’ve two of them! Two of them.’ His voice was soft and proud. ‘Can you believe my luck, Martin, can you?’
‘No …’ Martin turned away, stumbling, almost running from the room. ‘But I must be off … really … I wanted to get down to the factory … and then … there are … I must find somewhere to live … so you see …’
‘To live! But Martin, come back you daft beggar, where are you dashing off to? You must stay here with us, mustn’t he, Meg? We’ve loads of room, a suite if you want it … haven’t we, Meg?’
‘Daddy, can we go and see McGinty now?’
‘Yes sweetheart, in a minute … Martin … where in hell are you dashing off to? Fetch him back, Meg,’ but his wife was looking out of the window and her hand clutched the pretty flowered chintz of the nursery curtains and she did not seem to hear him and … and when he put his hand on her shoulder she flinched away from him. What … why did he … he felt something frightful come at him from just over the top of the trench … but it was alright because Andy … no, not Andy … Beth, his little Beth was here and he was safe. His blue-eyed Beth. His lovely girl.
IT WAS SIX
weeks before she saw him again. She stayed at home with her husband and her child and her tired brain operated at a level which allowed her to make decisions about meals and what they should eat, about walks in the garden and what they should plant there, about visits to the nursery and which games to play with Beth and about the outfit she should wear on any particular day. The rest of the time it engrossed itself in the constant torment of longing for Martin. Quite simply she became again the woman who waited for Martin Hunter. Nothing else!
And in that dreadful wait which could have no ending, at the back of her tortured mind, struggling for a hearing since surely she could not ignore it, was the equally harrowing need to consider the danger of Benjamin Harris! She did not know where he was, or even if he was aware of Martin Hunter’s survival, but somewhere out there, beyond the walls of ‘Hilltops’, he lived and schemed and waited, she assumed for the time to come round when he felt the need to torture Megan Fraser once more. Perhaps she should find some form of protection, perhaps she should tell Martin, warn him, tell him to be on his guard, for any man who would attempt the murder of a four-year-old child must surely be insane. A police constable had been put on duty patrolling the grounds of ‘Hilltops’ after Beth’s abduction but that could not last forever and though the child was never allowed in the garden alone, Meg still had the wildest dreams of him returning to threaten them all with his evil. Perhaps … perhaps … if only … Martin would be sure to know what to do … dear God!
Her mind would turn despairingly in a nightmare of chaos and her suffering showed in the fine-boned hollows in her face and the delicate slenderness of her once well-rounded figure. Her eyes were haunted and in the night she would awaken in a sweat of panic, searching desperately for a haven, but there was only Tom! She moved about the empty, stagnant days blindly with nothing to stand protectively between her and her fears. Martin was the
only
one who could protect her but then if she allowed it, who would be left to protect Tom? She must forget Martin!
She had not tried to reach him in the six weeks since he had returned though it nearly drove her mad with pain, and he had kept away for both of them knew they were not strong enough to overcome what haunted them. She had gone to the factory to see Fred and tell him the incredible news that Martin had survived the war and would take over the factories again. Only when there was some emergency with which only she could deal in those first weeks – and this happened less and less frequently as Martin became familiar with the routine of managership – did she go to Camford and when she did, he stayed away. They spoke to each other through Fred, and if Fred had thoughts on the strangeness of it then he kept them to himself.
She tried to make plans for the re-opening of the hotel. The war was over. The nation was tired and dispirited for it had lost so many of its sons, brothers, husbands, a whole generation of young men who could never be replaced and it grieved badly for them. It had suffered hardship and privation and needed in some way to forget what it had gone through, it needed a break from the boredom of economies and doing without, the grinding routine of doing one’s bit, something to take its mind from the problem of getting itself back into the strangeness of peace. A holiday, that was what they needed, they said, those who could afford it and there were many of them now for they had earned more money than they had ever imagined during the years of war. They went to Brighton and Blackpool and Skegness and those who required somewhat more – class, elegance, luxury and the peace and quiet in which to enjoy it, those who knew of its pre-war reputation – wrote to ‘The Hilltop Hotel’, to enquire of the discriminating Miss Hughes if she could ‘put them up’. The telephone rang a dozen times a day and Annie said she was sick and tired of trudging up from the kitchen to answer it and would Meg be good enough to tell her what she was going to do! You can’t keep putting people off, she told her, or they’d take their business elsewhere, but though her voice was sharp, the look she bestowed on Meg was soft for she, of them all, was the only one to know what Meg was suffering.
Meg watched Tom stride off each day with Will, a spade in one hand, the other in the hand of his daughter and the healthy colour in his cheeks denied the nightmare in which he had cried the night before, and she agonised on whether it would be possible
to
run the hotel, have guests, strangers about the place with Tom in his present state of mind. What might it do to him to have people he did not know and who did not know him, or his fits of silent strangeness – which could occur in the middle of a sentence – moving about in his safe world? Would it be safe any longer? He had improved, there was no doubt of it and the doctor, when she consulted him, was hopeful.
‘Perhaps it might be possible if he were to be kept apart from the guests, Mrs Fraser.’
‘You mean if we were to make part of the hotel into a private apartment for the family?’
‘Yes, that might be the answer, and his work on the farm? Is there a path to it which might be kept separate from the rest of the grounds? That is all that is needed. Provided he is not alarmed by anything different, anything which is new and out of his own safe routine, I do not see why it could not be managed. I have said it so many times and I can only repeat it. Assuming he is not disturbed from the secure pattern you have created for him, from the things he does each day with Will and the people who make him feel … unthreatened, then the fine balance he retains will not be weakened. The abduction of your daughter, fortunately, did little damage since he was heavily sedated most of the time and when he awakened she had returned, but any trauma can affect him if it is not correctly dealt with. In your capable hands though and with the care you give him there should be no problem, my dear.’
He thought he reassured her, the kindly doctor, but what he had done was to effectively close down the last fragile hope that Tom might, one day, recover enough to allow her to … to … to what? Leave him? Take Beth and all that he loved and simply walk away from him to Martin? Had she really believed it could happen? Had she? She had consulted Dr Carmichael on the subject of the re-opening of the hotel, but in her innermost secret heart she admitted to herself that she had hoped he might tell her that Tom was well enough to live his own life now. She had told herself she did not want to jeopardise Tom’s health but in reality she had conjured up the make-believe nonsense, the dream, the fantasy for that was what it was, that she and Martin would one day be together but now she must put it away, drag herself from dreams and face the
real
world in which she lived. She must open the hotel. She could no longer work at the factories which had
been
her life for four years and she must
do something!
Perhaps if she were to begin again, take up the work which she had loved years ago it would bring her, if not happiness, then a purpose in life, an anchor to hold her steady until she could manage it alone.
For six weeks she held on to it, living again in the deep and slashing anguish she had known when they had told her Martin was dead, and agonised at the irony of realising that this time she grieved because he had come back. He had taken over his companies again, though a strained and painful note had been delivered to her telling her that she must still consider herself a partner and therefore entitled to a half share of any profit. Tom couldn’t understand it, he said fretfully and wouldn’t you have thought their Martin would have been over to tell them himself instead of sending notes. Four weeks, five, six and not a sign of him and why didn’t Meg telephone him and ask him to come and visit them? After all, he was their oldest friend and really …