Between Friends by Audrey Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

can’t stand being left out of anything, can you?’
    She put her arm through each of theirs and they strode out together and their laughter was high and pleased. The lights from the overhead railway shone on their youthful faces, picking out the glowing satisfaction in their eyes and they began to run, too full of well-being and spirited energy to merely walk and the strong bond of their shared affection and loyalty to one another bound them as it had always done.

Chapter Three
     
    ‘ I’M OFF NOW , Mrs Whitley.’
    ‘Right lad and don’t you be late home or you’ll feel the back of me hand! When I say ten o’clock I mean it, d’you hear me, Martin Hunter, so don’t you come sneaking in at half past. Big as you are I can still give you a clout, so think on!’
    ‘I will, Mrs Whitley.’
    ‘And don’t let none of those hooligans be giving you no black eyes or a broken nose, neither. You know I don’t like you to get hurt.’
    ‘Aah, Mrs Whitley …’
    ‘Don’t you pull your lip at me, lad. It’s not good for the house to have one of the servants going about with the countenance of a pugilist and I won’t have it. Why you took up with it I’ll never know, but there, I suppose boys will be boys and at least you do your fighting in the boxing ring and not on the streets …’
    Martin Hunter, aware of the grinning face of Tom Fraser at his back, stood impatiently first on one foot, then the other, waiting for the moment when he could reasonably hope to escape Mrs Whitley’s regular homily on the nastiness of ‘fisticuffs’, as she called it, and of those who indulged in it. Though Mr Lloyd had given his permission for the lad to spend his evening off at the young men’s sporting club in Renshaw Street, and the gymnasium which was part of it, and of course Mrs Whitley must bow to the agent’s higher position in the Hemingway Company, she made no bones about the fact that she would have preferred their Martin to have taken up a less belligerent interest! He and Tom went as often as they could manage to watch their football team, Everton, the ‘toffee men’, whenever they played at home and that was a good, working man’s preoccupation with sport in her opinion, but this ‘bashing’ another poor chap’s face to pulp that Martin appeared to relish was beyond her.
    ‘I don’t bash anyone’s face to pulp, Mrs Whitley,’ he explained patiently . ‘The lads I spar with are as big as me, bigger sometimes and there’s a trainer to see we do it according to the rules.’
    ‘I don’t care! It’s brutal and undignified.’ Nevertheless she had to admit to herself it certainly had helped to build up the lad’s shoulders and back. She’d not missed the looks the maidservants in the square gave him as he effortlessly heaved the sacks of coal potatoes down the back cellar steps and his springing step and swift and graceful stride brought an appreciative gleam to many a pert young eye. He had had his fifteenth birthday at Christmas and his voice had deepened even more. He had put on another two inches in height and two pounds in weight, the last he was ever to gain as he became the full grown man he was to be. Broad, tall, straight, with a narrow waist, flat belly, slender hips and long, well-muscled legs which carried him round the boxing ring with the grace and speed of a young leopard. He had drawn ahead of Tom in the past few months, she recognised, and the fair-haired lad appeared to be still a young boy beside the maturing Martin.
    ‘I’ll be off then, Mrs Whitley,’ he said now, reaching hopefully for his cap and muffler and she shook herself from her reverie, nodding her head irritably and waving him away with an impatient hand. The room was warm, the temperature outside a little below freezing but if he must go, daft as she thought it, her attitude said, he might as well be off. It was the quiet season from November to March in the migration of those who moved from the old world to the new