Where Earth Meets Sky (45 page)

As Piers fell more and more deeply in love with her, he seemed prepared to do anything for her.

‘Perhaps we could meet somehow – you and I and Cosmo?’ she suggested. It was Cosmo who talked about Brooklands, about how he loved going there. He haunted the racetrack as often as he could. Lily did not think Piers knew much about cars, but she had heard him say many times that he was interested in widening his life, in finding out about new things.

‘It’s as if I’ve narrowed things down so that I barely do anything except work,’ he said. ‘I feel younger with you, Lily. I don’t know much about the motor car, but maybe we could find a way to go without it being a problem. I know – we could take Hubert. He might be very taken with it all!’

And so, come the Whit holiday, when she had been Piers Larstonbury’s mistress for four months, she found herself at Brooklands with Piers and Cosmo – and Sam Ironside.

Sam returned to Birmingham from Brooklands that evening after the Whitsun meeting, feeling set on fire.

After the long ride back to Northfield in the dark, once he had dropped Loz off, he had a feeling of bottomless energy, as if he had just been reborn. As he pushed his motorcycle round to the back of the house he knew that whatever happened, there was no going back. In those few hours, everything had changed.

Helen was standing in the back room, heating a pan on the range. She looked a little hunched, her long hair tucked in the back of her checked dressing gown. Her hair was still a caramel colour, but thinner and less abundant now. Her face looked thin and sallow. He realized again with a shock that she was younger than Lily Waters. As he stood at the back door he was able to watch her for a second before she saw him, and he had a bewildering sense of her being utterly strange to him. Although she was the mother of his four daughters, it was as if he did not know who she was and never had. He found it disturbing and reassuring at the same time, as if he knew he did not belong to her, and was sure now that he did not want to and had never truly wanted to.

‘You’ve made good time,’ she said, glancing at him, while her attention was still half on the simmering milk. He knew she was resentful of the way he could just take off for the day and she couldn’t, even if in truth she did not want to go anywhere herself.

‘Yes,’ he said, pulling his jacket off. The room felt warm and cosy after the buffeting night air. ‘It was a good run.’ He flung the jacket over a chair. On the table there was a teapot with a crocheted green and yellow cosy which Helen’s mom had given them, and the last of a loaf, lying face down on the board next to the bread knife. There was also a bowl of sugar with a few crumbs in.

‘Want some cocoa? Or tea?’

‘Stick the kettle on, will you? I’ll make the tea.’

She silently did as he asked and brought her own cup of cocoa and spooned sugar into it, tutting.

‘Girls’ve made a mess of the sugar again. I’ve told ’em and told ’em.’

And then she gave him a long, penetrating look.

‘What’s up with you?’ she said.

He did tell her, but not then. He had to get used to the idea, of all that Major Larstonbury had said that afternoon.

‘I am, as I have said, an outsider to the motor trade and motor racing,’ the major said. ‘However, thanks to . . . circumstances’ – once more his eye rested on Lily for a second – ‘I can see myself becoming quite an enthusiast. Today has been an eye-opener: you’ve impressed me, Ironside. So – I’m prepared to make available whatever funds are needed to keep you for, let’s say a year. I’ll rent you the work space to build your motor car and you will have a free hand in all technical aspects, which I know very little about. You will, I know, do the job to the very best of your ability. There is only one condition I would ask of you: that once you are ready to enter your vehicle in track races, your driver will be’ – he gestured – ‘Cosmo Fairford.’

Cosmo sat up straight and looked utterly astonished. Sam could not take in what he had just heard either. He looked at Lily, who was watching him, her eyes aglow. Sam stuttered into questions. What did Captain Larstonbury mean – where was he to work? Who with? Did he seriously mean simply to hand over the project to him, trusting a man whom he had met only this afternoon?

‘It sounds to me as if the best place you could possibly work is here, at Brooklands,’ Piers Larstonbury said. ‘If that would be acceptable. And you mentioned that you already have colleagues who are ready to work on developing the vehicle with you? I am offering myself as your patron. My own instincts and those of Miss Waters, who clearly thinks highly of you, point in the direction of a very fruitful partnership. I realize this may mean some personal sacrifices for you and your family. Perhaps you’d like a little time to think about it?’

‘No!’ Sam was mentally rushing ahead. He could not think straight about the details. He only knew he was being made the most astounding, once-in-a-lifetime offer and all his instincts told him to grab it! He could scarcely take it all in and felt like dancing about on the tables.

‘I’d be delighted to accept,’ he said as soberly as he could manage. ‘Thank you, Major Larstonbury.’ All his class niggles were forgotten now. What a great man the major was! ‘We’ll build a marvellous Special. We won’t let you down.’

There were hand shakings and the writing down of addresses in Piers Larstonbury’s artistic hand, and he assured Sam that he would make arrangements for him as soon as possible. He would even write a letter to request leave of absence for him from the Austin works. Sam felt as if his fairy godmother had arrived and he was in a daze as they stood up to go. And then he knew he had to part from Lily.

He was beside her as she walked from the clubhouse, holding the boy’s hand again. Cosmo, full of life now, was talking animatedly to Piers Larstonbury.

‘Lily – this was your doing, wasn’t it?’

She turned and looked at him and he could not read her expression. It was triumphant yet amused, as if she were celebrating her own sense of power.

‘He’d do anything for me,’ she said softly, looking down at the ground.

Sam leaned close to her, with a desperate impulse. ‘I’ve got to see you.’

Lily raised her eyes. ‘I expect we shall meet, through all this.’ And her gaze left him again.

Hope leaped inside him at what he thought he saw in her eyes. She was still his woman – deep down they both knew it. But there was not time to say anything else. He took his leave of the party, and watched them depart towards their car, and it was only then, once he was alone, that the full impact of what had happened had hit him. He was going to work at Brooklands and build a Special!

‘Loz! Where the hell are you? He’s never going to believe this . . . He’s going to think I’ve been on the bottle all afternoon . . .’

Leaping and fizzing with excitement he pulled his hat off and tore across the ground to find his friend.

He told Helen, straight out with it, a few days later, after the wire had arrived from Piers Larstonbury, and after he had sorted things out with the Austin.

That had been like a dream as well, going to the old man and telling him what he wanted to do. Herbert Austin stood looking at him in silence for a few moments, considering the situation. Sam knew he was in a strong position. He had been taken on at the Austin as a promising engineer in the years when things were very lean. During the Depression which hit the industry after the war heaps of men had lost their jobs. Who could afford to buy cars then? Come 1919, Austin had had to lay out to re-equip the works for peacetime production and that had set them back; they were installing automated machines to speed production, but the first model, the 3.6-litre Austin Twenty, trying to do something like Ford, had not really taken off. It was too big and clumsy. By last year some of them were doing stints at the works with no wages – Austin was broke. Sam was one of the ones who stuck it out. It had been a hell of a time – living on air almost, Helen keeping on at him to leave and go back to Coventry, and they were still recovering. He didn’t really know why he’d stayed – bloody-mindedness mostly. And Austin had promised him a job for life if he wanted it after that. He knew Herbert Austin felt a debt of gratitude to the engineers who stuck by him. They were the ones who had saved the company in its darkest hour.

‘I had a cable from this Major Larstonbury,’ Herbert Austin said.

Sam stood while Austin sat behind his desk, its surface littered with drawings from the company draughtsmen. There was great excitement at the moment – the new model, known as the Austin Seven, about to be launched. Some thought it was misguided, but Sam was in favour of a car the ordinary man could afford – he might stand a chance himself! He felt a pang of regret.

Austin slipped the end of his pen in his mouth for a moment, then withdrew it. ‘He’s talking about your being released from us for a year. And he’s going to meet your wages?’

‘So he says,’ Sam said. ‘And Loz . . . Lawrence Marks.’

‘Hmph,’ Herbert Austin said. There was a pause, which seemed to imply that the man must have more money than sense, but then he said, ‘You wanted to be in the company’s racing team, I seem to remember.’

‘Oh yes,’ Sam said. ‘I’d’ve liked to. There hasn’t been an opening.’

‘I should have found you one, shouldn’t I?’ A little smile played on Herbert Austin’s rather austere features. ‘Then I shouldn’t have had to let one of my finest engineers go taking off. You’ll come back?’

It was a more of a statement than a question.

‘Oh yes. I’ve a wife and four children.’

‘This Piers Larstonbury – is he an engineer?’

‘An architect, I believe. He doesn’t know much about motors at all.’

‘Hmph,’ Herbert Austin said again. ‘Well, well. I suppose you’ll have to do it. Don’t you go beating us, though.’

And a moment later Sam was leaving Austin’s office, feeling as if he had grown wings. Later, he and Loz sat in the pub and grinned at each other for a long moment before they erupted into yells of delighted laughter. They were going to Brooklands! They had been given the chance of a lifetime, to build their own Special and race it – and the old man had more or less given his blessing!

They downed a pint each at high speed. Loz’s round, boyish face was pink and alight with glee.

‘By crikey, Sam – we’re going to do it! We’re going to build the best bloody Special that’s ever gone round Brooklands!’ Then he put his glass down slowly on the table and his face sobered rapidly. ‘Christ – what’s Mary going to say?’

Mary Marks evidently had quite a bit to say at the idea of her husband taking off to go down and ‘play racing cars’ at Brooklands. But Mary and Loz were good pals and Mary had only two children, and two sisters near. In the end she was also proud and grudgingly pleased for Loz even though she desperately didn’t want him to be away so much.

Helen was a different matter. As he came out with it, blunt and direct because he couldn’t think of another way of doing it, Sam saw her face close up, as if he had frozen something deep in her. But he could do no other, he knew that. The opportunity was irresistible to him. And under and within it also, running like a deep, subterranean river of new life, was the thought of Lily. He tried not to think of Lily, keeping his mind on the practical things, the cars and engineering, his head swarming with ideas and plans. But in quiet moments, in bed at night beside Helen’s resentful sleeping form, or at odd moments of the day, the memory of her came to him overwhelmingly. However much she had hurt him, he knew she felt something for him. Her eyes had given it away just in those seconds when they met, and the pull of her now was far too strong. He was going south, could only go south to do the things he burned to do – and to be near her.

‘You’re leaving me,’ Helen stated.

He told her the day he saw Herbert Austin, that teatime. He was astonished by the way she just plunged in like that, as if she could see it all so clearly.

‘Don’t talk daft!’ he said. ‘It’s for a year – overall. But I’ll be back up to see you!’

This was said with a kind of guilty optimism. He knew he probably wouldn’t come often. He had been careful to tell her straight away that there would be money – the equivalent of his wages. She wouldn’t go short, so she needn’t worry on that score. When the wire of confirmation had come through to him so promptly and to Herbert Austin, he knew the man was not fooling him. And he also knew that Lily was behind it. Of course, Lily wanted to get that Fairford boy on to the track. That was part of the deal. But was it not more than that? Was it not seeing him again that had spurred her to use her influence over Piers Larstonbury? He did not think she was in love with the man, though it was hard to tell. A pang of jealous suspicion filled him at the thought. But she had said she would see him . . . She wanted to see him.

Over those days Helen rocked between resentment, anger and a pathetic sadness. She had lost him and she knew it. And she was full of rage and grief and at times begged and begged him not to go.

‘But I’ll be back – very soon,’ he assured her. ‘It’s a great chance – old man Austin even thinks so. I’m doing this for all of us – for the girls and you . . .’

‘You don’t love me – you never have,’ she said one evening, perched in utter misery by the range.

And he knew with terrible clarity in that moment that what she said was true. But he said, ‘Don’t talk daft. You’re my wife, aren’t you?’