Between Friends by Audrey Howard Page A

Lloyd good money and you know how she says we’ve to look smart and she can’t keep up with us growing so fast.’
    ‘Oh stop worrying! You’re like an old woman going on about your damn coat. Meg’ll sew it up for you, won’t you chuck? You’ll sew poor old Martin’s coat up for him, won’t you …?’
    Tom began to dance round Martin, sparring and jabbing playfully with his big-jointed fists, evidently still enjoying his new found prowess and Meg could see that Martin, not yet steady after the fight in which they had just been involved would not take much to inflame again. Hastily she intervened.
    ‘Oh come on you two, don’t spoil a perfectly good day any further. It’s bad enough when you fight other people. If you’re going to start on each other I’m off!’
    She began to walk away, her tall figure swaying slightly in the graceful, girlish manner she was developing as she matured and the two youths were suddenly, strangely, quite diverted. Her hips swung from side to side below her slender waist and her head was held proudly, the plain straw boater clinging desperately to the tumbled mass of her effervescent hair. For a moment they might have been watching a stranger, a pretty girl who had caught their eye, then she turned and grinned and she was only their Meg again!
    They followed her, falling into step, one on either side as they had always done! Tall houses built a century ago leaned on each side of the road. A tram ran alongside of them, the driver clucking affectionately to the horse which pulled it and a hansom cab reined in behind, the cabbie cursing as he attempted to overtake the tram. The tram driver looked over his shoulder and grinned amiably and mouthed a word or two of ‘Liverpoolese’ and the cabbie shook his fist.
    The air smelled good – a mixture of sea freshness pungent with the sharpness of tar from the rigging of the sailing vessels which were still to be seen tied up beside those of steam. A strange miscellany of aromas in which could be recognised coffee beans, Indian tea, citrus fruits, nutmeg, camphor and the sharp new tang of timber. All the perfumes which assail the nostrils – for the most part unnoticed – of those who live beside the great highway of water which brought them there. There would be life down there at the dockside, just as there had been in the vital enthusiasm of the crowd they had just left behind and Meg loved it, and this city in which she had been born.
    They turned into Victoria Street and half way down came to Mr Hale’s shop, the ‘Modern Bicycle Emporium’ which was Martin’s Mecca and the start of his dream, and at the door, smiling in welcoming anticipation was Albert Hale.
    Like all men who love something with a passion beyond all others he was always eager also to discuss his obsession with a fellow devotee, and also the finer points of the advancing technology, and Meg and Tom would have to wait patiently until Martin had inspected each nut and bolt of every last one of the latest models in the shop, and the wonder of the ‘Vauxhall’ motor car belonging to one of Liverpool’s wealthy, it’s engine stripped down for a minor repair in Mr Hale’s back yard!
    In the dim light which struggled from the street they could make out the silent, skeletal frames of the bicycles which were Mr Hale’s main livelihood. Some were on racks above their heads, ranged along the walls in strange, threadlike shapes, their narrow structures resembling the delicate vertebrae of dozens of spiders. They were everywhere, propped against walls, leaning against one another, heaped and piled, some of them upside down and others still in the crates in which they had travelled. On shelves were saddle bags and saddles, bells and lamps and along the wall, ranged in orderly rows hung knapsacks, capes, maps and every conceivable aid which the cyclist might require.
    It had become familiar to Tom and Meg during the past few months for they had been here several times