‘Not everybody wants them, Lady Artemis,’ Mr Henry Grafton replied. ‘Not any more.’
‘Not once they’ve bled them dry, you mean, Mr Grafton.’
Artemis rose, picked up her gloves, handbag and walking stick, and limped over to the door. Before she finally departed, she turned round and looked at them all, from under the turned up brim of her hat.
‘Please inform me of the valuation,’ she said, ‘and when Brougham is sold. But I have absolutely no interest in to whom.’
It was now only a month until they were to be married. And Patsy still couldn’t understand.
‘You don’t have to, Patsy,’ Ellie retorted. ‘Because as I keep telling you, it’s none of your business.’
‘You’re my sister, dammit!’ Patsy replied.
‘So what! That doesn’t give you the right to tell me who I should or shouldn’t marry!’ Ellie exclaimed angrily, and hurried out of her bedroom and downstairs. Patsy followed her, arguing all the while. Ever since Ellie’s engagement had been made official, Ellie and he had hardly exchanged one civil word.
‘I think it’s disgusting!’ her brother shouted at her down the stairs.
‘I know you do!’ Ellie shouted back. ‘And I couldn’t care!’
Patsy ran down the stairs, taking the last four in one leap, and throwing himself between his sister and the front door. ‘Ellie for the last time think what you’re doing!’ he implored his sister. ‘A girl like you – c’mon! You could marry anybody!’
‘You said it, Patsy,’ Ellie answered. ‘I could marry anybody. And that’s just who I would marry if I stayed round here, Anybody. Not somebody – a nobody! And have to spend the rest of my life like I spent the first part! On my hands and knees scrubbing floors and up to my elbows washing up! Thanks Patsy, but no. This way I get out of here. I get out of this no-hope part of town. This way I get some sort of a life.’
‘What sort of a life?’ her brother challenged. ‘As a rich man’s floozie? That’s a life? ‘What sort of life are you looking at? Everyone else thinks O’Hara’s a dirty old man! And that you’re just an adventuress! That you’re marrying him for his money!’
‘Well they’re right,’ Ellie said coolly, looking up at her brother now she’d finished buttoning her gloves. ‘I am marrying for money. And so would you, Patsy, if you got the chance.’
‘I’d rather shoot myself!’
‘Of course you would,’ Ellie agreed. ‘Rather than be given the chance to chuck up your rotten underpaid job with that two bit insurance company, and move out of this miserable dump –’
‘This is not a miserable dump!’ Patsy yelled at her. ‘This is our goddam home!’
‘You mean this is your goddam home!’ Ellie replied hotly. ‘A home I made for you! Well I’m not going to spend the rest of my life doing it! Making a home for you lot, OK? Somewhere for all of you men to come back and collapse all over the place with your feet up, and moan about how hard life is! While I’ve spent the day clearing up the mess you’ve all made! And shopping for your food! And changing your bedding! And cooking for you! And washing your filthy clothes! I’m not going to be the one to turn away the chance of a lifetime!’ Ellie checked her hat in the mirror and then prepared to leave.
‘You’ll regret this, Ellie,’ Patsy warned her, ‘believe me, but you will.’
‘Why?’ Ellie asked. ‘What’s there to regret? Nothing. Not a thing.’ But then she smiled and put a hand to her brother’s cheek. ‘I’ll miss you though. That I will do,’ she said. ‘I’ll miss you like crazy. Now I must hurry – or I’ll be late for my wedding fitting.’
Ellie kissed her youngest brother on the cheek and gave him one last look, before hurrying out to the waiting Cadillac.
Artemis liked Boston. She had liked New York, liked its urgency, its energy, its informality. It was all such a different world from the one in which she had been living, from the polite sobriety of Brougham and its environs, and she found it heady and intoxicating. Diana Lanchester whose idea it had been to invite Artemis to cross the Atlantic with her once she had heard the news about Brougham, affected a boredom with the city, pretending to find it brash and vulgar, which Artemis didn’t believe for a minute, particularly once she had watched Diana at work in business and at play socially.
‘I can’t imagine why you don’t live here all the time,’ Artemis told her. ‘You’re right. It makes England seem so stuffy.’
Diana had laughed and said if she lived in New York all the time, she’d be dead in a year, so fast was the pace.
‘I don’t believe that for a moment, Diana. Everybody here seems so much more alive, you couldn’t die, they wouldn’t let you.’
‘Well if you like it that much, darling, one day when you’ve got oodles of boodle again you can come back and live here.’
‘Actually I don’t think I’d mind that much,’ said Artemis after giving it some thought. ‘In fact I think I’d rather enjoy it.’
‘Wait till you’ve been to Boston, darling,’ Diana warned her. ‘Boston will soon change your mind.’
But the very opposite was true. The more Artemis saw of America, the more she fell in love with it. She ignored the countryside as they rail-roaded through it, preferring to read, because, as she explained to her godmother, all she’d ever seen as she was growing up was countryside. When they reached their destinations, which so far besides New York had included trips to Cleveland, Pittsburg, Baltimore, Washington, New Haven and finally now Boston, Artemis came alive.
‘You know you’re behaving just like a tourist, darling,’ her godmother teased her. ‘It’s as if you’ve never seen a city.’
‘I haven’t really, if you think about it. Not besides London.’
In Boston, Diana’s day was one long business appointment, which left Artemis even more time than usual to explore the museums and art galleries, the shops and the places of interest. She found it a beautiful city, formal and spacious, old fashioned yet energized.
‘I’m going to shop for some clothes tomorrow,’ she told her godmother one evening over dinner. ‘I suddenly realized if we’re to dine with your cousins, I haven’t anything really very formal to wear.’
‘You’ll certainly need something formal, darling,’ Diana drawled. ‘Because the Rossdale-Douglasses are nothing if not very formal. There’s a very good department store you could try, on Main Street. O’Hagan’s, I think it’s called. No – O’Hara’s, that’s it. They have some quite nice things.’
‘You mean they have things I can afford,’ Artemis corrected her.
‘We have to walk before we can run, darling,’ Diana replied. ‘And you have a lot to learn about money. Such as not spending that which you don’t have.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be good with money,’ Artemis said. ‘I find it so confusing.’
‘You’re going to have to get good at it, darling,’ Diana warned her. ‘Things are changing P.D.Q., especially for them such as us. So you’re going to have to learn all about the filthy stuff, or else you’ll go to the wall, like a lot of one’s forebears.’
‘It would be so much easier, don’t you think?’ Artemis asked, ‘if the bank could just hand it out to one. Like Nanny did with the biscuits. Then one wouldn’t have to worry about it.’
‘That’s something we can learn from the Yanks, darling,’ Diana said. ‘They don’t mind talking about money, and they’re very good at making it work.’
But deep down inside, Artemis didn’t really believe she could ever be like that. It wasn’t a snobbish thing, she didn’t find discussing money a vulgarity, it just deeply embarrassed her. And never more so than when she heard how little her beloved Brougham had fetched at a private sale.
‘Any idea who bought it?’ Diana had asked her on the voyage over.
‘None whatsoever,’ Artemis replied. ‘I’m not interested.’
‘But you know what it fetched.’
‘Not much.’
‘And you’re not really interested
in that either.’
‘Not really. What’s the point?’
‘None, really.’
Diana had smiled and poured them both another gin.
‘I can’t say I much enjoyed saying goodbye to Jenks,’ Artemis said after she had taken a sip of her drink. ‘And I wouldn’t have missed not walking round the stables for the last time. But there you are. No-one made me do it.’
‘You’re beginning to sound more and more like your mother,’ said Diana, adding, ‘God bless her.’
‘Can you manage all right, lady?’ the cab driver asked as he leaned back and opened Artemis’s door without moving from his driving seat.
‘Yes, thank you, driver,’ Artemis replied, pulling herself to the edge of the seat.
‘Listen,’ the driver said, ‘there’s no need for that! Hey – Mac!’ The driver gave a shrill whistle to one of the store doormen, who at once came hurrying across.
‘No really –’ Artemis began to protest.
‘OK, Mac –’ the driver continued, ignoring Artemis’s protest. ‘Give this lady a hand, would ya? And see her into the store. You just take care of her, right? She’s from England.’
The doorman helped Artemis carefully out of the cab and held her elbow while the driver handed him her stick.
‘My aunt has a stick,’ he grinned. ‘And she’s just like you. Stubborn as a mule. You take care of yourself now. You hear me?’
Artemis turned to smile her thanks to him, but he was gone, away back into the busy traffic. The doorman was intending to take her elbow all the way to the swing doors, but Artemis removed her elbow from his hand and made her own way into the store.
It was bright and busy, and smart. That was another thing which so impressed Artemis wherever she shopped. The girls were smart, and so were the shops.
‘Can I help you, madam?’ a floorwalker asked. ‘Is there something you’re looking for in particular?’
‘I want to see something for the evening,’ Artemis replied. ‘Something for this evening.’
‘Of course, madam,’ the floorwalker said, leading the way, but at Artemis’s pace. ‘I’ll have someone take you up to model gowns. Helen?’
A tall redheaded girl, with an hour-glass figure and perfect teeth escorted Artemis up to the required department and didn’t leave her until she had found the right assistant.
‘There,’ she said before she departed. ‘Jodie here will look after you really well, madam. I hope you find something nice.’
The salesgirl showed Artemis to a comfortable armchair, and Artemis sank gratefully into its soft upholstery.
‘I’ll bring over a selection, and if you tell me which ones you like, madam, I can have a girl show them on for you.’
‘If I buy something,’ Artemis warned her, ‘I should need to have it altered.’
‘That would be no problem, madam,’ the girl replied.
‘I’d need it by this evening.’
‘That would be no problem at all.’
She brought Artemis such a clever selection of gowns, that Artemis found it almost impossible to choose just one.
‘Perhaps when you see them on, madam,’ the girl said, signalling for a model. ‘Though I feel this one, in the very fashionable shade of rose-opaline, I think this will look quite wonderful on you.’
While she waited for the model, Artemis pretended to flick through a magazine, while all the time watching the comings and the goings in the busy department. Everyone, she noticed, was accorded the same personal treatment, and Artemis could only suppose whoever owned and ran the store had to be someone of the highest sensibility.
And then she saw the girl in the wedding dress, and abandoned all pretence at reading her magazine. She had never seen a vision like it, nor a girl so beautiful. She had come out of a room down the end of the department, in a luminescent white silk wedding gown, with two girls behind carrying the train. She looked so young and so pure that everyone nearby stopped what they were doing and turned to see her. Some gasped, others looked as though they were going to applaud. Artemis just stared.
The girl was willowy and perfectly shaped, and her dark brown hair was caught back in a beautifully sculpted pearl and silk headdress. The dress itself seemed alive, so luculent was the silk, and when the young girl moved, she seemed to shimmer. But above all, and what Artemis noticed most even above the beauty of the dress and whole effect of serenity, were the girl’s large dark eyes, set in a beautiful milk-white face.
‘That is the future Mrs O’Hara,’ the salesgirl said, who was staring, too. ‘Isn’t she quite beautiful?’
‘Yes,’ Artemis replied. ‘Very.’
‘She is going to make a very beautiful bride,’ the salesgirl continued.
‘Yes, she is,’ Artemis agreed, without a trace of envy. ‘Extremely.’
‘She has the most wonderful trousseau,’ the salesgirl confided. ‘As far as Mr O’Hara is concerned, nothing is too good for Miss Milligan. Everything is hand embroidered with her initials, and everything is of the finest materials, silks, satins, crêpe de Chine, cashmeres. We all think it’s just like a fairy-tale. Because Miss Milligan is so beautiful. And Mr O’Hara – well, we all just love him. He is such a sweet gentleman.’
‘Mr O’Hara,’ Artemis said. ‘Isn’t this store called O’Hara’s?’
‘Yes, madam,’ the salesgirl replied. ‘Miss Milligan is marrying Mr O’Hara, our proprietor. Look, that’s him there.’
The girl picked up the newspaper which was lying beside Artemis on the sofa and indicated a photograph. It was of the beautiful doe-eyed girl dancing with a kindly faced gentleman who was, it appeared, old enough to be her grandfather. Artemis stared at it and nodded. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Well.’ Her eyes widened slightly, but that was all Artemis said.
When she was small, Nanny had been in the habit of reading out details of such marriages and liaisons from her Sunday paper, and expressing her disgust for any great difference in age with a snort of disapproval. ‘Disgusting,’ she would say. ‘Some girls will do anything for money.’
Artemis turned away from the vision in front of her and concentrated instead on the first of the models who had appeared wearing one of the earmarked gowns.
‘Thank you,’ Artemis said, once the girl had shown the gown off. ‘I like that one very much.’
She liked all of them, but finally selected a figure-hugging pastel blue silk with a deeply scooped out back.
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Artemis said, holding out one hand to the salesgirl so that she might be helped to her feet. ‘I should like to go and try this one on now.’
‘Of course, madam,’ the girl replied. ‘This way, please.’
Artemis followed the girl across the floor to where the fitting rooms were to be found, keeping her gaze to the front of her. It was always better, she had found, not to look at other people too closely, that way they were spared any embarrassment they might feel looking at her, and so she passed the future Mrs O’Hara.
‘I have something for you, Ellie,’ Buck said when they had finished dinner. ‘Or rather I thought I had,’ he added, after searching his pockets. ‘It’s my age. I guess I must have left it behind in the apartment. Would you mind stopping by so as I can give it to you on your way home?’
Ellie hesitated for a moment before accepting Buck O’Hara’s invitation to accompany him to his apartment. It had always been an unspoken agreement between them that after their evenings out, Ellie would be driven straight back to Westfield after Buck had been dropped off home by his chauffeur.
‘I’m sure it could wait until tomorrow,’ Ellie said, finishing her coffee. ‘Until we have lunch.’
‘Of course it could,’ Buck agreed, ‘but I don’t want it to. I feel I have to give this to you tonight. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why. I guess it’s something in the stars.’
‘Of course,’ said Ellie. ‘I understand. I often get those sort of compulsive feelings myself.’
‘Yes,’ Buck said
thoughtfully as they rose from the table. ‘Yes, I guess that’s exactly what I feel this is. I guess this is something compulsive.’
When the Cadillac pulled up by the private entrance to the store and Buck got out to open the door, as she followed him Ellie noticed yet again the plain brown sedan that was now parking about ten yards down the street.
‘They really are necessary, are they?’ Ellie asked once more as they entered the building. ‘I mean are they going to follow us around everywhere when we’re married?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Buck smiled as they got in the elevator, ‘we won’t take ’em with us to Europe.’
‘Who are they, anyway?’ Ellie asked. ‘I’ve never seen them get out of their car.’
‘And hopefully you won’t have to,’ Buck reassured her, but even so he still did not reveal his bodyguards’ identity. Patrick Milligan had not considered that to be a good idea.
‘There’s a lot to be said, as they say, for anonymity,’ Patrick Milligan had laughed. ‘Particularly by those who don’t know you.’
‘It’s not such a bad idea, Eleanor,’ Buck told her as they got out of the elevator. ‘We don’t want you ever to be in a position where you might be required to pay out a lot of good money for this old hasbeen.’
Ellie smiled, and while Buck was searching for the gift he had left behind him, sat down at the boudoir grand and started to play.
Buck came out of his bedroom carrying a small box in his hand. He placed it on the piano in front of Ellie. ‘I left it on the dresser,’ he said. ‘No – don’t stop playing. You play so well. Open that when you’ve finished.’
He stood by the piano and watched with an aching heart as Ellie played. She was so beautiful, with her dark eyes and pale skin, her pretty little mouth and just perfect figure. He died to tell her how wonderful he thought she was, how sweet, and funny, loving and concerned, and most of all he died to tell her quite how much he loved her. But he didn’t, because he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell her he loved her, because if he did she would run away and he would lose her.
So he just watched her instead. He watched her play the piano, while his heart seemed to break in his chest, and he said nothing, except to congratulate her.
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