‘I thought you’d gone home, Tom.’
‘The car decided it wanted a swim.’ Artemis smiled for the first time that night. ‘And I’ve lost my bloody stick.’
Hugo caught her just before she fell.
Ellie was the only one of them who knew precisely what had been said. Artemis remembered getting drunk and the reasons for getting drunk, but that was all. When she woke the next morning and saw the groundsmen pulling her car from the edge of the lake, she realized something unusual must have occurred, but all Ellie would say when pressed was that everyone had drunk too much.
‘Did you drink too much?’ Artemis asked. ‘No, you’re not drinking because of the baby, so you must remember what happened.’
‘Sure,’ Ellie said, smiling only briefly. ‘You and Hugo got sauced.’
‘Then that’s not everyone,’ Artemis argued.
‘From where I was sitting it was everyone,’ Ellie replied, and then went, leaving Artemis to finish her breakfast and to ponder alone.
Hugo was still in bed, lying on his front, occasionally groaning into the mattress. Ellie drew the curtains and then went over to the bed and pulled the covers off the inert form.
‘What happened?’ Hugo moaned.
‘It’s time to get up,’ Ellie replied.
‘What happened last night?’
‘I’d rather not talk about it.’
‘Ellie?’ Hugo turned round but she was gone. ‘What happened?’ he asked himself, turning his face back down to the mattress. ‘What did I do?’
Artemis was still sitting at the table when Hugo came down for breakfast. He came to a standstill when he saw her, and stood speechlessly for a moment behind her back, forgetful suddenly of everything that had happened. At that moment he could not even remember catching her as she had fallen and carrying her along the corridor to a spare room.
‘Artemis?’ he said.
She looked round briefly, knowing perfectly well who it was. Then she turned back again and picked up her black coffee. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t remember anything either?’
‘Not a lot,’ Hugo admitted. ‘No.’ Hugo sat down at the table, opposite Artemis, who was staring into her coffee cup. He put his head in his hands. ‘But whatever,’ he said, ‘I think we’re in trouble.’
The housekeeper told Artemis Mrs Tanner was in the east wing, somewhere up on the nursery floor. Artemis made her way across the great hall, into the wing and up the long twist of stairs, to a land she had not visited for a decade, a place high above the meddlesome world of the grown-ups, where at the end of every day Nanny had waited with relief that at last it was six o’clock and she could start putting her charge to bed.
She paused as she reached the top of the stairs and looked down the nursery corridor. The paint was still the same, brown woodwork and cream walls, and the smell was just the same, lino, and soap, disinfectant and furniture polish. There was no sense of time up here, not like there was in the grown up world, where the chariot was always, it seemed, hurrying nearer and nearer. Up here it seemed to be just one long and eternal childhood.
And a sun-filled one, too. Artemis had all but forgotten how bright and sunny the nurseries were, compared with the shadowy coolness of the formal world below. All the nursery bedrooms faced due east, so when it was fine weather everyone got up with the sun, and since all the playrooms and sitting rooms were on the west side of the wing, tea and story-time were sunlit as well. Artemis felt a sudden sad longing to return to that world, as she stood in the morning sunshine in one of the empty maid’s bedrooms. It had all been so secure up here, so far from real harm’s way.
Ellie was in Artemis’s bedroom, sitting with her back to the door on the edge of the single bed, which was still covered with Artemis’s old yellow eiderdown, the corners of which she used to suck every night as she fell asleep.
‘Hullo,’ Artemis said. Ellie looked round, surprised. ‘Mrs Blythe said I’d find you here.’
‘You know, I haven’t really been up here since I don’t know when,’ Ellie said, turning away again. ‘Since we were married, I guess.’
‘No. Well,’ said Artemis, leaning back on the doorpost, ‘there’d not be a lot of point.’
‘Weren’t you dreadfully lonely up here?’
‘Why? You could hardly be lonely. It was crawling with staff.’
‘Numbers have nothing to do with loneliness.’ Ellie got up and started opening and shutting cupboards and pulling out and pushing in drawers, all of which were empty. ‘It must have been absurd.’
Artemis remained silent, considering it to be more prudent under the circumstances, despite the fact that Ellie’s quite categorical conclusion had immediately put her on the defensive.
‘I’m certainly not going to stick any baby of mine away up here,’ Ellie continued. ‘As if it was some sort of freak of nature.’
‘Really?’ Artemis asked curiously. ‘What does Hugo think?’
‘You mean to say you haven’t discussed it with him?’ Ellie’s eyes flashed as she looked briefly at Artemis, before walking past her out of the bedroom. Artemis again remained silent, refusing to be drawn. Instead she counted up to ten before following Ellie across the corridor and into the main playroom.
‘Something seems to be bothering you, Eleanor,’ Artemis said casually, having summoned up the courage. ‘I can’t imagine what.’
‘Ask Hugo.’
‘Hugo hasn’t a clue.’
‘So you’ve come up here to find out, yes? Or rather you’ve been sent up here.’
‘No,’ Artemis replied. ‘No-one sent me here.’
Ellie turned on Artemis and stared at her. ‘Do you know how drunk you were last night?’ she asked.
‘I think you mean tight,’ Artemis replied.
‘OK,’ Ellie said. ‘Do you know how tight you were?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘OK. So let me tell you. You were tight. Boy were you tight. You were stinko. And so was Hugo.’
‘So?’ Artemis shrugged.
‘You arrived tight!’
‘So?’
‘You don’t normally arrive tight!’
‘You don’t normally –’ Artemis stopped, changing her mind mid-sentence.
‘I don’t normally what?’ Ellie demanded.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You know how mad that makes me, Artemis! When you don’t answer!’
‘It really doesn’t matter, Eleanor. Really.’
‘My God – who let you get away with this? I mean it! Who in hell allowed you to grow up like this! As if other people didn’t matter! As if you can just walk all over them if and when you damn well feel like it! I really would like to get hold of that nanny of yours. She must have done this to you. Because oh boy, oh boy, I never met anyone in my whole life who just – who just rail-roads people the way you do!’
‘I got tight, Eleanor,’ Artemis replied, ‘because I wanted to.’
‘You got drunk simply because you felt like it?’
‘Tight,’ said Artemis. ‘Yes.’
‘Yes,’ said Ellie, ‘that figures.’
‘Well? So what? Did I do anything?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did. I. Do. Anything.’
‘Like? Such as?’
‘Was I sick? Did I fight you? Did I hit anybody? Did I break any furniture? Did I set fire to the curtains? Stop me when I’m getting warm. Did I throw glasses at the wall?’
‘This isn’t funny, Artemis. This isn’t a game.’ Ellie walked past her again, and Artemis followed, her stick tapping on the polished wooden floor.
‘So what did I do, Eleanor? Besides getting tight!’ Artemis called after Ellie, who was walking far too quickly for her.
Ellie then stopped way ahead of Artemis, down the far end of the corridor, and turned to face her. ‘You made a goddam fool of yourself, Artemis!’ Ellie called back. ‘That’s what you did!’
‘All right. I apologize for that. But if
I made a fool of myself, isn’t that rather my concern?’
‘No it damn well isn’t!’ Ellie yelled. ‘You made Hugo make a fool of himself, too! And in front of the staff!’ Ellie started on her way downstairs, but Artemis called after her, to try and stop her.
‘Ellie?’ she called. ‘Eleanor!’ She walked as fast as she could to the top of the staircase, and as she did, she saw Ellie’s face looking at her from floor level through the bannisters.
‘I really have nothing more to say to you, Artemis,’ she said. ‘Nothing whatsoever.’
‘I want to know why I was responsible for Hugo making a fool of himself,’ Artemis said.
‘Because you were drunk.’ Ellie glared at her up through the bannisters. ‘Hugo only got drunk to keep you company. So as you wouldn’t feel – I don’t know. Disgraced, I guess. Hugo got drunk because he’s a gentleman. Pity you didn’t act a bit more like a lady.’
‘You still haven’t told me what I’m supposed to have done.’
Ellie eyed her long and hard and then walked back up to the top of the stairs. ‘First you tell me something I want to know,’ she said. ‘Do you love Hugo?’ she asked.
The words echoed round and round in her head, as if she was down a well and Ellie was calling to her. Did she love Hugo. Did she love Hugo. And then she was falling deeper into the well, spiralling headlong into darkness, but slowly as if in a dream. Except now she could feel Ellie’s hands take both her shoulders, holding her upright as her legs buckled beneath her.
‘What is it? Are you OK? Artemis?’
She mustn’t faint, she knew she mustn’t. It would look so foolish if she fainted, as though Ellie had thrown open a door and found her with Hugo. So she closed her eyes tight, breathed in and breathed out, and clung on to the silver top of her cane, to try and take her weight off Ellie. ‘I suppose I must still be a bit tight,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I suddenly went rather giddy.’
Ellie led her back along the corridor, away from the stairs, and into a room where she sat her on a bed. Then she stood back and watched her, while Artemis, averting her eyes, waited for her head to stop swimming. Her hands and feet were ice cold, and yet she could feel the dampness of her brow and a trickle of perspiration running between her breasts and on down her stomach.
‘Sorry,’ she said suddenly. ‘I really think I must still be a bit tight.’
‘You reckon that’s what it is?’
‘I can’t remember what you said,’ Artemis stalled, wiping her brow dry with her fingertips. ‘Or what you asked.’
‘I asked you if you loved Hugo,’ Ellie said evenly.
This time Artemis was quite prepared for it. She tossed her hair back from her eyes and looked steadily back at Ellie. ‘Of course I do.’
Ellie was as unprepared for Artemis’s answer as Artemis had been initially for Ellie’s question. She had expected a flat denial, or a flash of temper, or even a mocking laugh in return. Instead she’d got the answer she’d least expected, and it left her speechless.
‘Look,’ Artemis said, carefully monitoring Ellie’s reaction. ‘If you insist on asking this sort of question, you have to be ready to hear the truth.’
Ellie, still silent, sat down in an old green wicker chair and leaning forward, half-hid her face in one hand. ‘I should never have asked you.’
‘I don’t suppose you should,’ Artemis agreed. ‘At least not if you didn’t want to hear the truth. But then perhaps you asked because you already knew the truth.’
Ellie sighed, leaning backwards and now putting both her hands to her face. ‘Does Hugo love you?’
‘Of course not,’ Artemis retorted, clicking her tongue. ‘Don’t be such an idiot.’
Ellie took her hands away from her eyes and looked across at Artemis, whom she saw had taken a gold compact of loose powder from her bag and was now carefully dusting her face with a small feathered puff.
‘If Hugo loved me,’ Artemis said, stopping briefly to glance up at Ellie, ‘I’d hardly have told you what I’ve just told you.’ She returned her compact to her handbag. ‘My feelings, Ellie, are neither here nor there. You love Hugo and Hugo loves you. As you must know. So that’s that. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine any woman meeting Hugo and not falling in love with him. He’s what every woman wants. And you’ve got him. So there.’ Artemis looked at Ellie, defying her not to laugh. Ellie couldn’t laugh, but she managed a smile, as Artemis deliberately widened the look in her eyes.
‘How can you bear it?’ Ellie wondered after a moment. ‘Being here. Being around. If that’s how you feel.’
‘Simply because it would be a great deal worse not being here,’ Artemis replied. ‘Anyway, I’m used to it now. When I found out in Ireland, I mean how I felt, as it were, I just thought this is ridiculous, and that was that. And then I thought –’
‘Hold on. Whoa,’ said Ellie. ‘What was so ridiculous?’
‘I thought I don’t see any real reason why we can’t still be friends,’ Artemis concluded.
‘What was so ridiculous?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Artemis –’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You thought it was ridiculous to expect Hugo to fall in love with you?’
‘Why should I think that? Don’t be an idiot.’
‘You’re the one who’s an idiot,’ Ellie said, and fell to silence.
‘If you’d rather I didn’t stay around,’ Artemis added, ‘I’ll understand. I mean I don’t mind.’
‘I would. I’d mind like hell.’
Artemis clasped her hands together in her lap and bent her head over them thoughtfully, putting her two thumbs together side by side. After a moment, Ellie put a cool hand over them and they both sat in silence, with nothing more to say to each other, while the morning sun slipped from the room and cast them slowly into shade.
1939
16
Except within the confines of the great estate of Brougham, where relationships were calm, elsewhere peace reigned uneasily. At the beginning of the year the view of the majority of people concerning the possibility of a war had been hypothetical. War as an if. If there is a war, people said, not when. But by April, after the German invasion of the Sudetenland and Italy’s occupation of Albania it then became a matter of when war broke out, and this was reflected by the government finally bowing to the pressure brought to bear on it by its more realistic members, stepping up preparations for the now surely inevitable conflict. It passed a new Civil Defence Act and finally introduced conscription, against the opposition of both the Appeasers and the Labour party.
Nevertheless, there was still more than a faint air of unreality about the impending crisis. Even the issue of thirty eight million gas masks the previous year, a greatly increased army recruiting drive and the publication of a series of ominous pamphlets advising on the protection of the nation’s homesteads failed to bring home the reality. Town and Parish Hall demonstrations of how to cope with the aftermath of gas attacks, air raids and even with invasion itself were inclined to be treated light-heartedly, while classes attending instructional lectures for first aid reportedly collapsed in laughter as legs dropped off ancient dummies and volunteers were gagged into total silence by the bandaging of over enthusiastic volunteers. At the fire-fighting classes the pupils’ fight was more to control their mirth rather than possible conflagrations, as they were shown how to douse small domestic fires with bedpans, and as enthusiastic girl fire-fighters kept falling down before they could reach the extinguishers due to having forgotten to cut the strings which tied their new wellington boots together. Even graphically illustrated lectures on how to treat broken bones and severed arteries were greeted with good-natured barracking and wisecracks, as if there was simply no likelihood at all of anyone inflicting such appalling injuries on a civilian population.
For a while Artemis, Ellie and Hugo were all to a greater or lesser degree infected with similar such optimism and unaccountable light-heartedn
ess. Artemis birthed her mare in April, and temporarily forgot the outside world, watching in wonder as the beautiful bay filly, barely a week old, cantered and bucked and squealed around the carefully prepared nursery paddocks. Hugo continued with the painting of his mural, depicting life at Brougham, while Ellie grew larger with her child and calmer as its birth date in July approached. In the lengthening summer evenings, Hugo and Ellie would sit out on the lawns behind the house where Artemis herself had once played as a child, and Hugo would lie Ellie down on her back, and in time honoured way, put his hands on her stomach to feel the life inside her. At the same time of day Artemis and Jenkins would lead the mare and foal into their stable and stand together watching as the filly settled into the straw for the night with her mother standing guard over her.
And then one day Hugo put away his paints and went to London, without Ellie, and without telling her why. When she awoke to find him already gone, with just a note on his pillow to say he should be back for dinner, and if not, he would telephone her, she knew he had gone to enlist.
Ellie knew it to have been the subject of Hugo’s conversations with Charles Hunter, for whenever Charles came down to visit Artemis, he would call in to see Hugo and Ellie before returning to his regiment. They would have tea or a cocktail, and then Hugo, on the invention of some pretext or other, would take Charles off to the library where they would remain cloistered until Charles finally had to leave. Hugo and Ellie would then dine together, but nothing would be said.
She had once asked to know the particular nature of these conversations, but Hugo had answered with deliberate vagueness and immediately switched subjects. And Ellie had never pursued the matter further, simply because she was trying to delay a moment which she knew must come, the moment when Hugo decided he must join up.
‘How?’ Artemis had asked her, as Ellie sat out in Artemis’s garden, watching her deadhead the borders and prune the sweet scented old rose bushes. ‘And as what? Hugo’s hardly front line material, not with those weak eyes of his. So he certainly won’t be flying any aircraft. Or captaining any ships.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You know Hugo. He’ll find something.’
In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 36
