Everything to do with Hugo and Ellie was left deliberately vague, in keeping with the spirit of the country they were in. The date was to be sometime in spring. They were most probably going to get married in England, but they still might in Ireland if it could be organized. It was likely that they would live mostly in England, but since they had both fallen in love with Ireland, they were determined to buy somewhere in Cork, or south Kerry, so that they could spend an equal amount of time out west as well.
‘Listen to ye,’ Cousin Rose said. ‘I never heard people so full of possibilities. If all your ifs and ans were new pots and pans, there’d certainly be no call at all for poor old tinkers.’
Cousin Rose, however, had been delighted at the news of her young relative’s engagement, and declared the whole thing to be great sport. Using the change in the weather as a good reason, Hugo was invited to return his borrowed caravan, and come up and stay at Strand House until he had to go back to England, whenever that might be.
‘It could be this year, Rose,’ he warned her, ‘or it could be next year. Or it might be some time, or even never.’
‘While there’s whisky in the jar, young man,’ Cousin Rose replied, ‘and yeast for the dough, there’ll be linen on the bed.’
As a result of the arrangement, there was nothing regular whatsoever about Hugo and Ellie’s courtship. They spent very little time alone together, not because they were shy of each other’s company, in fact the opposite was true, but because of the natural gregariousness of the company. At first Artemis made to hold back, but neither Ellie nor Hugo would hear of excluding her.
‘We’ll have all the time in the world when we’re married,’ Ellie explained to her, a remark which precipitated one of Artemis’s unexplained and abrupt disappearances. But Ellie had long since learned that whenever this happened it was best to leave well alone. And sure enough the next morning when Ellie suggested all three of them should drive into Bantry to shop for the weekend, Artemis, who was sitting by the fire reading, agreed quite readily.
From then on things had been plain sailing. For the next two weeks they all three went everywhere together, whether it was fishing for mackerel from a rowing boat in the bay, sitting in Twomey’s Snug in Castletown sipping porter and John Jameson in a fog of Sweet Afton cigarette smoke, driving into Cork one wet Saturday to see Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer in Smilin’ Through, or just wandering along the headlands, watching the winter seas build up.
In the shortening evenings they played endless games of cards, not adult games like bridge or poker, but raucous and childish games of snap, beggar your neighbour, oh well, and pip-pip, until it was time for Artemis and Cousin Rose tactfully to take themselves off to bed.
Hugo and Ellie knew so little about each other. They used this time to find out more of those things which other couples might have learned of on first meeting.
And so Ellie spoke to him tactfully and honestly about her background, while on his own behalf Hugo was more reticent.
The middle one of three children, the other two both being girls, it seemed his mother had died from pernicious anaemia when he was fifteen, and his father, whom he loved but rarely saw as a boy, was a strong if absent influence. They had a house in London and one in Hampshire, the latter of which his father wanted to sell since his children were all now grown up, in order that he could buy what he called a ‘challenge’, a property which he could restore to its former glory.
‘He’s always been very keen on the fine arts and architecture,’ Hugo explained. ‘And archeology. And now that he’s retired, he’s determined to pursue to the full interests he’s previously only had time to treat as hobbies.’
For themselves, it was decided that they should live in a flat at the top of the family’s London house initially, while they looked around at their leisure for somewhere to live. Hugo assured Ellie the house was sufficiently large for them to lead a private existence and that in any case his father was so rarely in London, since he spent most of his time driving round the country looking at old houses, that privacy would never really be a problem.
‘Do you work for your father?’ Ellie asked.
‘Yes,’ Hugo answered. ‘Yes and no.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean? I mean surely either you do, or you don’t.’
‘Yes I do work for him,’ was all Hugo would tell her, ‘and no I don’t. And in England we say eye-ther, Ellie. Not ee-ther.’
‘I know, Hugo,’ Ellie returned. ‘And in America we say ee-ther, not eye-ther.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning,’ Ellie replied, ‘ee-ther you work for your father or you don’t.’
Hugo, who at that moment had one arm round Ellie’s waist as they sat on the floor in front of the fire, feigned sudden seriousness, before squeezing Ellie’s waist, an underhand move which instantly reduced Ellie, for whom even the thought that someone might tickle her was enough, to a gasping heap of helpless laughter. A minute later he gathered her in his arms and kissed her passionately.
‘I can’t wait to be married,’ he told her.
But wait they must, despite the increasing fervour of their passion. Now, whenever they were in company, Ellie would hardly dare even look at Hugo, because just the meeting of their eyes was quite enough to make her forget mid-sentence what she was saying. And if Hugo ever twined one of his feet around one of Ellie’s under the table at dinner, Ellie would drop her fork with a clatter on the plate, or spill her wine, or just simply start to go crimson slowly and very visibly from her neck up.
‘Do you know what happens?’ Artemis asked her, when Ellie was doing Artemis’s hair one evening.
‘If you mean what’s going to happen on our wedding night,’ Ellie replied, ‘I guess I don’t, you know I don’t.’
‘I remember asking Rosie once, on one of our walks,’ Artemis said. ‘I suppose I was about twelve. I remember asking Rosie because she was talking about babies as usual –’
‘You mean you were, I’ll bet,’ Ellie interrupted.
‘Probably. Anyway I asked her how, no I didn’t – I asked her where they came from,’ Artemis continued.
‘Once someone had been to the graveyard and mysteriously gotten pregnant,’ Ellie grinned.
‘Yes. And Rosie said it was just the same as animals. I remember laughing so much I thought I’d be sick. Have you ever seen horses doing “it”?’
‘No,’ Ellie said with a sinking heart. ‘Is it awful?’
‘Let’s just hope,’ Artemis sighed, ‘that there’s a little bit more to “it” than that.’
As Ellie and Hugo were getting to know each other even better, Artemis and Knocklomena were doing the same. Artemis rode him daily, generally before breakfast as it was now both too cold and too late in the year for any more early morning swims. They formed an attachment as passionate in its own, but very different, way as that of Hugo and Ellie. Artemis lived to ride the big bay horse, who in turn appeared to have formed a particular affection for his disabled rider.
‘Before ye took to him,’ Dan Sleator told her, ‘I’d any amount of trouble gettin’ him in off the field. Now he stands there waiting for ye.’
One day Artemis arrived with a side-saddle she’d persuaded Cousin Rose to borrow from one of her hunting cronies. ‘I want to jump Boot today,’ Artemis told Dan Sleator as she helped him saddle the horse up. ‘And I think this is more practical.’
‘Do ye want me to send the boy out with ye?’ Sleator asked, as Artemis climbed the mounting block.
‘No,’ said Artemis. ‘But if I don’t come back, you can send him out after me.’
She and Boot tackled a three-foot hedge first, which the big horse flew with ease, standing well off and not needing to be asked. Artemis sensed at once he was a horse who liked to jump and who would jump as he liked, so she simply read the stride with him and gave him his head. In return, he jumped straight and true and sensibly, rounding his back and getting his forelegs well under him and out of the way. Fi
nally Artemis put the horse at a line of stone walls at more than a good hunting clip, and he jumped them superbly. But more importantly, which was what Artemis most needed to know, he got away from the obstacles quickly, and in no time at all was back at the gallop.
‘Good,’ Artemis said, as she handed the horse back to Dan Sleator. ‘How much do you want for him?’
They were just all getting over the excitement of Artemis’s purchase, and finalizing the arrangements with Cousin Rose to have the horse stabled at Strand House with Cousin Rose’s hunters, when a telegram arrived.
At first Hugo didn’t realize it was for him, he was so busy arguing with Ellie and Artemis about her plans to ride Boot in point-to-points that he didn’t hear Cousin Rose calling for his attention.
‘I don’t understand what these “point-to-points” are,’ Ellie protested. ‘So I don’t know why you’re getting so heated.’
‘Point-to-pointing,’ Hugo sighed, ‘and particularly in Ireland, is the nearest thing you’ll find to organized suicide. It’s the sport of amateur steeple-chasing. They used to ride from point A to far point B over natural fences trying their utmost to kill each other or themselves for a purse or a wager. Now the difference is they do it in a circle in full view of everyone and call it a sport.’
‘Hugo?’ Cousin Rose tried again, flapping the small brown envelope at him.
‘You’re mad even to think of it, Tom,’ Hugo declared, rounding on Artemis. ‘Totally and utterly mad!’
‘Cousin Rose wants you,’ Artemis replied, pouring herself another sherry.
‘You need that pretty little head of yours dismantled,’ Hugo said, ‘to see if there’s any sign of a brain in it at all.’
‘Hugo,’ Cousin Rose repeated, having finally got his attention, ‘there is a telegram for ye, I keep saying a telegram.’
Hugo opened it, and then after a moment looked up with a frown on his face, his eyes suddenly searching for Ellie’s. She took the piece of paper from him as he hurried from the room.
Ellie frowned at the words. ‘Hugo’s father has died,’ she told Artemis and Cousin Rose.
Cousin Rose sighed. ‘Don’t I hate those things, they’re worse than magpies,’ she said to no-one in particular, then she too left the room.
Hugo decided to return to England himself, since it didn’t seem to be the best time to introduce Ellie to his family. He promised to be back well before Christmas.
He failed to return, or communicate in any way. Finally, Ellie, unable to bear or understand the silence, gave in and telephoned him herself.
It seemed that he had also been ill and he didn’t wish to be a burden to anyone. Ellie tried to plead with him to let her come over and look after him, but Hugo refused.
‘As a matter of fact, I’m going to Florence. On my own. To get things in perspective,’ he told her.
‘Would “things” include me?’ asked Ellie.
‘Of course. But I have to try and make sense of everything. I know I met you long before my father died, but when we marry, I must be myself.’
‘I don’t understand, Hugo. I don’t understand one thing you’re saying. We loved each other long before this happened. Your father’s death can’t change how we feel, surely? I mean why should it?’
There was a silence on the other end of the line, broken finally by the sound of Hugo clearing his throat. ‘You’re right, Ellie,’ he said eventually. ‘Of course you are. I know you’re right. It’s just that I’m a bit confused. It was all so completely unexpected. What I’m trying to say is although I never saw much of my father when I was very small, as I grew we became very close. I went everywhere with him: on his explorations, on his digs, to Africa, the Middle East. We became more like brothers. We’d sometimes know in advance of seeing each other, we’d know things about each other. What had happened since our last meeting. Things like that. Even once, once he knew what I’d be wearing when I came through the door. And I knew when he’d fallen in love again, long after my mother had died. I even knew the colour of the woman’s hair.’
There was another silence.
‘What are you trying to tell me, Hugo?’ Ellie asked. ‘Are you trying to say part of you knew your father was going to die suddenly? And that because part of you knew it – this is why you fell in love?’
‘I don’t know, Ellie,’ Hugo replied after a long pause. ‘Perhaps, yes. But I really don’t know. I’ll be myself, Ellie, I know I will,’ he finally continued. ‘When I’ve had a time to think, to sort everything out. It’s just so difficult, with all the family here.’ There was another deep and heartfelt sigh. ‘Particularly now I’m the head of it,’ he said.
‘Why don’t you at least try coming over here?’ Ellie pleaded with him. ‘Here where you’ve been so happy. We’d look after you. All of us. We’d look after you so well.’
‘I know you would,’ Hugo replied. ‘That’s one of the things of which I’m most afraid.’
To Artemis he didn’t speak, he wrote to her instead. Up as always before the rest of the household, and just back from a ride on Boot, that morning Artemis got to the post first. She took the letter straight upstairs and read it sitting on her bed, still in her riding coat and bowler hat. And then once she had read it and re-read it, she made her way as quietly as she could back downstairs and rang Hugo in London.
Ellie found it when she was tidying the bedrooms. It was the day for fresh linen and when she was making the bed she found the letter tucked under the pillow. She recognized the handwriting instantly, and felt quite giddy and faint. It wasn’t the fact that Hugo had written to Artemis, that wouldn’t have bothered her one bit. It was the fact the letter had been hidden.
It lay staring up at her, torn open jaggedly at the top, as if the recipient had been anxious to get at the contents. The actual letter protruded from the envelope, stuffed back apparently as hastily as it had been extracted. Ellie could read the greeting. ‘Dearest Artemis’, it said. Dearest Artemis.
After what seemed like an age, Ellie put the letter on Artemis’s bedside table, made the bed up with fresh linen, and then tucked the letter back under the pillow.
Artemis said nothing to her before lunch, nor during it. Cousin Rose was on terrific form but even so the meal seemed to drag. Afterwards, when she had taken herself off for a rest, Artemis sank down in a big deep armchair by the fire.
‘Well?’ she said eventually.
‘Well what?’ Ellie enquired.
‘I suppose you read it,’ Artemis said, without looking round.
‘You suppose wrong,’ Ellie said.
‘You must have seen it, Eleanor,’ Artemis said, in the clipped tone she used when she was put out. ‘You couldn’t have made the bed up without seeing it.’
‘If you mean Hugo’s letter.’
Artemis bent round the side of the chair and stared at Ellie with her eyes deliberately over-widened. Then she sat back and started throwing balls of rolled up newspaper into the wood fire.
‘I didn’t read it, Artemis,’ Ellie said, pouring herself another coffee. ‘Of course I saw it. But I didn’t read it.’
‘Because?’
‘Because.’
‘Because I thought you’d get the wrong impression, you idiot,’ said Artemis factually.
‘For God’s sake will you stop calling me an idiot and will you stop treating me like one all the goddam time!’ Ellie suddenly banged her fist on the table to the side of her.
‘There’s no need to shout, Eleanor,’ Artemis said. ‘And bang the table.’
‘Do you know how infuriating you can be.’
Artemis nodded sagely in agreement, which proved even more infuriating, somehow. ‘Don’t you want to know what the letter said?’
‘I get the feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.’
‘When I was nineteen,’ Artemis began again, sitting back in her armchair, ‘I had to see a doctor. Except he wasn’t a doctor really. He was a psychologist. My stepmother had made me come out. You know,
do The Season.’
‘No, I don’t know.’
‘You know what a debutante is, don’t you?’
‘I reckon so.’
‘So I was a debutante,’ Arternis continued, lighting a match and watching it burn. ‘Not for very long, but I was. I can’t say I enjoyed it. For a start, I couldn’t dance.’
‘It must have been tough.’
Artemis stared at Ellie’s reflection in the mirror above the fireplace, and then threw the twisted dead match into the fire. ‘Yes it was “tough” actually,’ she agreed. ‘Anyway, what with one thing and another, it all got a bit too much, hours spent sitting it out on gilt chairs, etcetera. And Diana Lanchester, my godmother, she knew this chap. This doctor. This psychologist. And sent me to see him.’
‘And did he help?’
‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’ Artemis replied. ‘Yes, actually he was rather good. Hugo wrote to me to find out his name.’ Artemis’s face suddenly appeared round the side of her chair to stare at Ellie. ‘Hugo’s in trouble, you know. Quite a lot of trouble.’
‘Yes,’ Ellie finally agreed after a long silence. ‘I know.’
‘He’s not going to Florence,’ Artemis continued. ‘That was just so as you wouldn’t worry. He’s hoping this man will take him into his clinic for a couple of weeks. Do you see?’ Artemis looked at Ellie, giving her one of her sudden attentive stares, and stroking her small chin at the same time.
‘No, Artemis,’ Ellie said after a while. ‘I guess I don’t see. Why should he tell me one thing, and you something else?’
‘He doesn’t want you to worry, or for you to think he’s going cuckoo.’
‘Is he?’ Ellie enquired. ‘I mean what exactly is wrong with him?’
‘This chap will do the trick,’ Artemis assured her, sitting back again in her chair. ‘He’s not going dotty. He’s just at a loss. People sometimes are.’
There was another long silence as they both stared at the fire, while it crackled and hissed.
In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 24
