‘See?’ Artemis challenged Ellie, as if it was all her doing.
‘Egg!’ said a voice from under the table, accompanied by the hammering of fists on the floor. ‘Egg!’
Hugo’s hysteria only made Cousin Rose cry with laughter all the more, and she now grabbed the edge of the tablecloth to dry her eyes. ‘Ah the man’s mad!’ she howled. ‘Ye’ve brought a loon to the house!’
After dinner, Cousin Rose persuaded Ellie to play the piano, while Hugo and Artemis played Racing Demon. Tutti brought in a tray of fresh coffee, and at his employer’s behest, poured the company all a glass of malt.
‘Have one yerself, man,’ Cousin Rose instructed, ‘for we’ve a party going, and then give us a song.’
The butler poured himself a glass of the whisky, and then loosened his collar and tie.
‘One voice only!’ Cousin Rose instructed. ‘One voice only, now!’
The butler found the sheet of music for which he was searching, and handed it to Ellie. And then he sang.
He sang in Gaelic, and the song he sang was ‘Danny Boy’. But such was the meaning in his voice, that all understood his lament, and tears were openly shed for the poet’s plight.
Later, Artemis sat on the end of Ellie’s bed, leaning against the wall, her knees pulled up under her chin.
‘A kingdom where no-one ever dies,’ she said. ‘Our life now could be like that.’
9
Hugo became a regular visitor at Strand House, as the summer began to slip imperceptibly into autumn.
‘How long exactly is your holiday?’ Artemis asked him one day, as she beat him once again at cards.
‘As long as I choose to make it, Tom,’ Hugo replied, using the name that had stuck since the night of the dinner.
‘Don’t you have to go and make beer or whatever it is you do?’ Artemis enquired, dealing out the next hand.
‘No,’ Hugo said. ‘I have things to do, but making beer isn’t one of them.’
‘I hate beer,’ Artemis said. ‘I think it smells like sick.’
Ellie came in with a tray of tea and scones, which she set down on the table at a window overlooking the bay. It was raining, a fine spray which drifted off the sea and across the beds of slowly fading flowers to run silently down the glass.
‘Everything’s so soft,’ Ellie said as they all three sat buttering their scones at the table. ‘I love this kind of day.’
Hugo took a bite out of his still warm scone, and then got up to fetch his sketchbook. As he sat down again, Artemis asked when he was going to start actually painting. Hugo told her that he had already done so, much to the surprise of both the young women.
‘But I haven’t sat for you yet,’ Ellie said.
‘You won’t have to,’ Hugo said, looking at her and then sketching. ‘I’ve nearly finished you.’
‘These are the paintings you do with a camera, I suppose,’ Artemis said, glancing at Ellie.
‘Then you suppose wrong, Tom,’ Hugo said. ‘You suppose wrong.’
Artemis stared at him for a moment, then quite abruptly pulled herself up from her chair.
‘You are painting Artemis as well,’ Ellie began, but too late, as Artemis was already by the door.
‘Come on, Brutus,’ Artemis called to her dog. ‘Walks.’
Ellie watched her go, miserably.
‘What did you say about painting Artemis?’ Hugo asked, distracted by his sketching.
‘I said you are going to paint her as well.’ Ellie replied.
‘Of course. I’ve sketched her already. Several times. I just haven’t started the actual painting yet.’
Hugo looked up at Ellie to study her further, then continued with his drawing. Ellie watched Artemis crossing the lawn and clicked her tongue. ‘She hasn’t put a coat on,’ she sighed, and then looked at Hugo, who had his head down, sketching. ‘Hugo?’ she asked. ‘Hugo – don’t you think you should take Artemis her coat?’
‘She’s all right,’ Hugo muttered, ‘it’s only a light drizzle.’
‘She needs a coat, Hugo.’
Hugo was too busy drawing. ‘You take it then,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Ellie, ‘I have things to do. I have to cook for tonight, because Aggie’s off. And I haven’t even cleared away lunch. Go on. Go and catch Artemis up. She won’t have got very far.’
‘She doesn’t want me, Ellie,’ Hugo said, in quite a different tone. He put down his notebook, and stared out of the window after the disappearing figure of Artemis. ‘She keeps making that perfectly clear.’
‘She doesn’t want people feeling sorry for her,’ Ellie corrected him. ‘That’s all. I know. She’s like that with me. Or rather she was. It’s easy to mistake how Artemis is, and half the time what she says –’
‘If I go after her,’ Hugo interrupted her, ‘it’ll only be to give her her coat.’
Ellie frowned at Hugo, then turned away. ‘I’d better go and clear the table,’ she said, and hurried out.
Artemis heard the footfalls behind her, but much as she wanted to, resisted turning round to see who it was. She just walked on, throwing Brutus the large stick he kept fetching back to her.
Hugo caught her up as she was crossing the road to the beach. ‘Here,’ he said. He was carrying Artemis’s raincoat, which he held out to her. ‘Ellie said I should bring you this.’
‘Really? I don’t see why.’
Brutus dropped the stick once more at her feet, Artemis picked it up and threw it for him, and then continued walking towards the sea.
Hugo hesitated, then caught her up. ‘Would you like to see the painting?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to hear what you think.’
‘No you wouldn’t,’ Artemis replied, walking on.
‘OK!’ Hugo called after her. ‘I’ve a better idea! Why don’t you go and have a look for yourself?’
Ellie was in the kitchen washing up when Hugo returned. He sat down at the table, putting his sketchbook in front of him.
‘You weren’t gone long,’ she said in surprise.
‘She doesn’t want me with her,’ Hugo said, brushing the rain from his hair. ‘She doesn’t want anyone.’
‘So where’s she gone?’
‘I don’t know. I told her to go and look at the painting.’ Hugo shrugged as he picked up the carving knife to sharpen his pencils.
The canvas was at the front of a stack of paintings, some of which were finished, some only half realized, all carefully stacked against one wall of the caravan. Artemis picked it up and put it upright on the bed, so that she could see it better in the light from one of the half-curtained windows. It looked almost finished and was so perfect it seemed as though it had been painted at one stroke, in one sitting, in one moment of inspiration. There were no other portraits among the other canvases, just one of Ellie.
The technique was impressive, and in this instance seemed to show the influence of John Singer Sargent, elegant, fluid, assured. The portrait was alive and glowed with Ellie’s life force, her oddly contained vibrancy. The warmth of Ellie’s nature, and the softness that shaped both her body and her loving personality had all been captured.
Artemis stood back from the canvas and stared at it, for a moment unable to understand how the artist had been able to paint such a true likeness without his subject there, just from his sketches. And then it came to her, when she remembered how artists did their best work. Artists did their best work when they were inspired. She picked the canvas up and replaced it against the wall, without giving it another glance.
Outside the caravan she crossed the road to the beach where she walked by the thundering waves of the incoming tide with her face turned into the wind. Hugo could paint Ellie with his eyes shut. She walked on, into the rain and the sharp tangy seaspray. He knew her face and her essence so well he could probably paint Ellie in his sleep. She walked on and on until the damp of the rain forced her to turn back.
On returning to his caravan, Hugo half-hoped Artemis might still be there, sitting
in the rug-covered chair, perhaps ready for argument. Even though he teased her about the peremptory judgements she passed on his work, he valued her criticism because he’d sensed early on that her asperity was a valued part of her defences. But when he opened the half doors of the gypsy caravan, he found it empty. In fact, had it not been for a few tell-tale long wiry brown hairs from the ever faithful Brutus which had strayed on to the wool rug on his bed, he wouldn’t have known he’d had a visitor.
He poured himself a drink and sat down on the caravan steps, looking over to the beach, hoping to catch sight of a young woman and a dog returning from a walk, but the tide was too high for walking now, and the road back to Strand House was deserted. Reaching behind him, Hugo pulled his sketchbooks out from under the bed. He selected one in particular and then started to leaf through it. It was full of nothing but sketches of Artemis, a set of drawings he had begun the first day he’d seen her, not the day Artemis had taken her swim, but the day before, when she’d no idea he even existed.
He’d been strolling through the dunes following a bright blue butterfly, and had all but stumbled upon her as she lay sleeping in the sands. She hadn’t awoken, she hadn’t even stirred, and he was so taken with the sweetness of her face, and the slenderness of her young body as she lay at ease in her slumber, that he’d sat hidden in the grass of the dune opposite her and drawn her where she lay, one arm up and resting on her straw hat which tilted over her forehead, the other stretched out by her side, her long white skirt falling over her half tucked up legs, and the neck of her pink blouse undone just enough to let the hot sunshine warm the white of her lovely breasts.
Hugo stared at the drawing for a long time, and then turned to the next page and the next. Some of the drawings were done from memory, some done quickly and swiftly when his subject wasn’t looking, profiles drawn with one continuous pencil line. Or head and shoulders, again in one line, jotted down in a trice, or less, images stolen, charcoal memories pegged to a page of cartridge paper.
He looked at them all, right through the book, from the first page to the last, before closing the book and fetching the portrait of Ellie from the pile of canvases. He propped that up against the wall of the caravan, on the bed, just as Artemis had done, standing back to study it. And then after some time he put it back with the rest of his work, and pulling on his coat, went out to walk among the sand dunes.
‘Have you anything to ride?’ Artemis asked Cousin Rose the next day.
‘No,’ Cousin Rose replied. ‘We’ve nothing that’s up. I don’t bring the hunters in for another two weeks yet, and why I do I wouldn’t know.’
Ellie was upstairs helping to make the beds, but the windows were open and the voices drifted up from below. Deeply puzzled by Artemis’s out-of-the-blue request, Ellie stopped shaking out the eiderdown, and moved out of sight to the side of one window the better to hear.
‘Dan Sleator has a few hirelings,’ Cousin Rose was continuing. ‘You could try him.’
‘Has he anything with a bit of dash?’ Artemis asked from the bench, where she sat briskly brushing Brutus who stood by with a martyred air. ‘I don’t want some tired old cob.’
‘Why don’t you drive over and see?’ Cousin Rose suggested, giving her the directions.
Ellie caught Artemis when she came up to her room. ‘Are you crazy?’ she demanded. ‘You haven’t been on a horse since your accident!’
‘You shouldn’t eavesdrop,’ Artemis replied, pulling on an old crew-necked sweater. ‘You only ever hear things you shouldn’t.’
‘You don’t even have any riding clothes!’ Ellie continued.
Artemis sat on the edge of her bed and started unbuttoning her skirt. ‘That would make a difference, would it?’ she asked.
‘I don’t see why all of a sudden you want to go riding,’ Ellie replied, digging in her toes.
‘You don’t have to,’ Artemis retorted. ‘And your cousin has lent me some old jods.’ She pulled off her skirt and started to struggle into the borrowed riding trousers which had been lying beside her. Artemis sighed and pointed to a pair of old brown jodphur boots on the floor. ‘Pass me those up, would you?’
Ellie did so, and then watched in silence as Artemis, whistling tunelessly to herself, pulled on the leather jodphur boots and then stood up to fetch her well-worn check tweed jacket off the back of a chair. Hooking a finger through the loop inside the back collar, she threw it over one shoulder, and walked towards the door.
‘Have I done something, Artemis?’ Ellie asked. ‘Something to annoy you?’
‘Why do you think you’re meant to have done something, Eleanor?’ Artemis asked. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’
Ellie ran after Artemis down the stairs. ‘Then why are you behaving this way? If I haven’t done anything?’
‘Behaving in what way?’
‘Can’t we talk?’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know! Look,’ she said as Artemis reached the front door. ‘If you wait, I’ll come with you.’
‘You can’t ride,’ Artemis said. ‘So there’s no point.’
Dan Sleator’s farm took some finding more because of, rather than in spite of, Cousin Rose’s directions. When Artemis finally reached it, up a long pot-holed path, Dan Sleator was leaning on the gate, smoking an old clay pipe. He showed Artemis the horses which were standing loose in his barn, and discussed their various merits and demerits. Never once did he refer to or even glance at Artemis’s stick, nor ask her even whether she was up to his animals.
‘The bay with the star,’ Artemis pointed at a tall dark horse which was busy trying to eat the mane of his neighbour. ‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Knocklomena,’ Sleator answered, without removing the pipe from his mouth. ‘But sure everyone calls him Boot.’
‘Saddle him up, please,’ Artemis said. ‘I’ll ride him.’
While Dan Sleator went about slowly getting the horse ready with the help of a gangly lad who appeared from the whitewashed cottage, Artemis leaned with her back on the gate and began to whistle tunelessly.
‘Here you are, ma’am,’ Sleator announced once the horse was saddled. ‘If ye’ll just remember now, this horse is a racer.’
‘Is a racer?’ Artemis enquired, as Sleator cupped his hands together to leg her up. ‘You mean he still races?’
‘On the sands, ma’am,’ Sleator replied. ‘Just on the sands.’
And then in answer to Artemis’s request as to where she should ride, Dan Sleator spelled out the best ride, before opening the gate and flapping the horse on its quarters with his folded cap.
Five minutes later the telephone rang in Strand House.
‘Hulloooo!’ Cousin Rose called into the mouthpiece. ‘Ballinacree twenty five!’
‘I steered her into old Knocklomena, Miss Lannigan,’ Dan Sleator told her down the line. ‘The one they all calls Boot. So may that be an end to your worries. He’s that sort of horse you could put an unborn baby on.’
Ellie brought in a tray of coffee and biscuits, and set them down by the fire. As they sat and took their mid-morning refreshment, Cousin Rose told her that Artemis was quite safely horsed.
‘I still don’t understand why she suddenly got it into her head to go and do such a crazy thing,’ Ellie said. ‘On the journey over she more or less admitted she was too frightened ever to ride again.’
‘So perhaps that’s why she did it,’ Cousin Rose replied.
‘She might kill herself.’
‘Mightn’t we all?’ Cousin Rose sighed. ‘Isn’t life without the courage for death like a gin and tonic without the gin?’
‘I think there’s more to it than that.’ This time it was Ellie who sighed.
‘Hmmm,’ said Cousin Rose. ‘’Tis one of life’s pickles, I’ve always said. ‘Whatever the space, there’s never room for the three.’
They had reached the top of the track, where there was an open gate and then nothing but a long gentle roll of green to the top of the
hill. For the first mile, they had not broken out of a walk, the big horse happy just to stride out and warm himself through in the autumn sun. Artemis had found at once, both to her surprise and relief, that the animal was properly schooled, and she was quite able to ride him through her hands and her seat.
But now she was faced with the test, in the shape of the long open space which stretched out in front of her from the open gateway, and leading to Artemis knew not where. If she had been riding side-saddle, she knew the difficulty would have been greatly lessened, since her damaged right leg would have been out of the way, held in place by the upper pommel of the saddle, and her good strong leg would have been the only one stirruped. Astride, without the help of any devices, and with her right leg in a stirrup hitched three holes shorter than the left one, it would be all too easy to unbalance the horse if she dared canter him, or even, more importantly, she could well become unbalanced herself.
There was no need for her to canter. The horse, although fidgeting slightly under her with excitement at the thought of stretching out, was such a good natured and tractable sort that Artemis knew she could either easily turn him away from the tempting stretch of grassland and just hack on up the hill at a walk, or face him away altogether and walk back home. After all, had she not proved enough for one day? Hadn’t she actually bitten the bullet and climbed up on to the back of a horse, something she had thought would never again be even the remotest possibility?
And yet the gallop beckoned. It beckoned because Artemis not only wished to recover her nerve, she also wanted her pride back. She wanted to be able to respect herself again.
So she shortened her reins, sat down into the horse and squeezed him to go on. She sat his trot and squeezed again, urging him on straight into a canter. The horse responded easily and smoothly, changing his pace from the trot to a perfectly collected canter. Artemis sat down and through the stride and softened her rein once she knew the horse had accepted the bit. A feeling of intense exultancy ran threw her, as she and the horse became as one, two creatures in absolute harmony, enjoying total trust. The breeze ran unseen fingers through her hair and called her name, as together she and the big bay horse bounded across the springy turf, he with his proud head held into his chest and his great neck half-arched, and she with confidence restored, holding the reins in just her right hand, her left one resting on her thigh.
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