‘God help us,’ her father said, tapping out a Lucky Strike. ‘Sure God help us all.’
The waiter brought their first course and set it before them. But neither of them ate. Ellie sat staring at the table cloth while her father smoked his way through his cigarette.
‘I wonder why,’ Ellie said, more as a thought than a question.
‘What do you wonder?’ Patrick Milligan ground his cigarette out and looked back at his daughter. ‘What now?’
‘I wonder why couldn’t you love me, Pa. You’re capable enough of love. You love your “broth”. Fergal and Dermot and Michael. So why not us? Patsy and me? I wonder why you couldn’t love us two?’
Her father sighed, as if the question she had asked him was a foolish one, and then poured another shot of brandy which he downed in one. ‘Sure Patsy was meant to be a girl,’ he said, lighting another cigarette. ‘And you weren’t meant to be at all. It’s an impossible thing, loving mistakes. Particularly when they’re not of your making.’
‘If you loved our mother the way you always said you did,’ Ellie retorted, ‘you’d have loved Patsy and I.’
Her father’s face hardened at this, and leaning across the table, he pushed his face close to his daughter’s. ‘Don’t you ever dare!’ he said. ‘Don’t you ever dare say I never loved your mother! I loved her all right! The point is she never loved me!’
Ellie stared at her father, hardly able to believe her ears. All this time she’d believed and still did believe that when her mother died giving birth to her, her father’s happiness had died with her. ‘Of course she loved you,’ she heard herself protesting faintly, as if in the distance. ‘You’re just saying this now, just to make it all worse.’
But her father shook his head, and clenched his two hands into great fists. ‘I have no reason for lying,’ he said. ‘I worshipped your mother. There was nothing – nothing I wouldn’t have done for her. But it made no difference. I wasn’t the man she loved. The man she loved was dead, drowned back in Ireland. And I was second fiddle. She was a good mother to her children. And a good wife to me. But there was no love in her heart. Then – then you were born and God took her. He took her from me. Away to the next world, to be reunited with the man she really loved, leaving you, Eleanor. Leaving you in her place.’ He brushed the cigarette ash off the front of his jacket, before looking back up at his daughter, his dark eyes still full of fury.
Ellie buttoned up her coat and rose from the table. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘Would you mind if we went now?’
They drove back slowly through the ever deepening snow. As he turned the car into the avenue where he now lived, Patrick Milligan glanced at his daughter who was sitting as far away from him as she could, against the passenger door, her coat held tightly around her.
‘Don’t you want to know about Madame?’
‘What else is there to know?’ Ellie replied, watching the snow as it settled on the branches of the trees.
‘Didn’t you ever wonder about me and her?’
‘I used to wonder why you hated her so much.’
They were outside the new house now and her father was swinging the car off the road and into the parking space in front of the garage which someone had already cleared of snow. Patrick Milligan shut the engine off and then ran his gloved hands round the ebony white steering wheel. ‘I didn’t hate her, Eleanor,’ he said. ‘Madame and I were lovers.’
Ellie wanted to laugh. It was the most shocking thing she had ever heard. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, unable to stop the smile spreading. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘Oh I’m sure it seems silly to you, Miss high and mighty,’ her father replied. ‘I’m sure you find the idea ridiculous. But it happens to be the truth.’ He was no longer looking at her. Instead he stared out into the snow, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and nodding slowly to himself, as if recalling how it was.
‘It couldn’t possibly be true,’ Ellie said. ‘I don’t believe one word of it. Goddam it, I’d have known.’
‘Why?’ her father enquired. ‘Why should you? She and I. We only ever saw each other at night. Deliberately. It was the only time we could, when you were all in bed. Sometimes I didn’t get home from her house until four or five in the morning, only to have to get up an hour or so later. Other times I’d just come straight in from her house for breakfast.’
Ellie suddenly and sickeningly remembered those mornings, mornings she would find her father out on the back step doing up his shirt buttons, bleary eyed and still unshaven. But being a child, she had naturally assumed he’d just got out of his own bed, not someone else’s.
‘No,’ said Ellie. ‘I just don’t believe it.’
‘Won’t, you mean. Because you don’t want to.’
‘You said you hated her! You called her a whore! You wouldn’t have her in the house!’
‘Of course I wouldn’t!’ her father laughed. ‘If I’d had her in the house, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands off her!’
‘It’s a lie! It’s a lie!’
‘It’s the truth, Eleanor. I was Madame’s great love.’
Ellie turned her face away as the tears came. Blindly she groped for the door handle and in her confusion all but fell out into the snow. The pain was unbearable, now she realized that it wasn’t only her father who had deceived her, but Madame as well. Her father was out of the car now, and walking round her side took her by the arm.
‘Love is blind, Eleanor,’ he said. ‘Love is the asses head. Madame hated the way I treated you, you can rest assured of that. But that didn’t stop her from loving me. Because she loved me as a man. Not as a father. If you’d been her child, our child, well – who knows? But you weren’t. And there’s an end of it.’
‘Why didn’t you marry her?’ Ellie asked, wiping her tears away with a gloved hand. ‘If you wanted a wife who loved you, why didn’t you marry Madame?’
Her father let go of her arm and smiled the smile he always smiled when he had triumphed. ‘But I did marry her, Eleanor,’ he said, ‘I married her the moment you were out of my hair.’
Ellie watched him walk to the door and open it. ‘Goodbye,’ she called.
He turned back and frowned at her. ‘You’re coming in, surely?’
‘No.’ Ellie turned up the collar of her coat and looked down the snow covered avenue. ‘I’m going back to my hotel.’
‘You’ll have to walk,’ her father warned her. ‘You’ll not find a cab in this weather.’
‘That’s too bad.’
She had nearly reached the junction of the avenue and the road which led to the city before he fell in step beside her. ‘You can’t walk all the way,’ he said, catching her by the elbow. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you.’
‘I’d rather walk.’ Ellie shook her arm free and turned out of the avenue. The snow was beginning to freeze and the few cars which were still about were slowing right down.
‘I’ll drive you,’ he said again. ‘Come on.’ He tried to turn her round with him, but Ellie resisted, planting herself firmly into the snow and staring at him defiantly. ‘Jesus God,’ her father sighed. ‘You really are the spit of your mother.’
A cab slewed slowly round the corner and spun in a half circle across the road. ‘Cab!’ Ellie called, making it to the edge of the sidewalk and holding on to a tree. ‘Cab!’
The driver saw her and once he had regained control of his vehicle, stopped on the far side of the road. ‘I’m headed for town, lady!’ he shouted. ‘Nowhere else!’
‘Thank you!’ Ellie called back. ‘That’s just where I’m headed too!’
Again her father caught her arm. ‘I want to see my grandson,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ellie replied. ‘You should have thought of that twenty years ago.’
‘You’re not going to let me see him?’
‘No.’
‘Eleanor,’ he said, tightening his grip on her arm. ‘What I’ve told you is history. Do you understand? I
t’s history.’
‘No, Pa,’ Ellie replied, as evenly as she could. ‘What’s history is you and I.’
For most of the first day in Cairo, the party sat around under the enormous fans in the lounge of their hotel drinking gin slings. It was insufferably hot in the town itself, and Hugo felt quite extraordinarily homesick. No-one seemed in the slightest bit interested in their presence there. No-one had met them at the airport and to date no-one had even visited them where they now sat drinking.
Finally, late in the afternoon as they sat sipping tea and eating fruit cake, a thin, tall and idle looking junior officer from garrison HQ wandered into the lounge, tapping a swagger stick against his leg. Spotting the new arrivals in the corner of the room, he straightened his cap and at once changed his casual meander into a purposeful walk.
‘Colonel Parker?’ he asked, identifying and saluting the superior officer. ‘Lieutenant Hamlyn-Jones, sir. Jolly good. Just arrived, sir?’
‘No,’ Colonel Parker sighed, getting wearily to his feet. ‘We’ve been here since before midday, man.’
‘Sir!’ said the lieutenant. ‘Jolly good. Well my orders are to see you settled in. And – ah.’ He paused to clear his throat, tapping his stick nervously against his leg. ‘And, ah, to make sure you’ve got everything. Sir.’
The newly arrived officers all stared at each other disbelievingly and then looked back at Lieutenant Hamlyn-Jones. ‘We’re not here on holiday, man!’ Colonel Parker suddenly shouted, the reprimand bringing the young officer to immediate attention. ‘We haven’t come all this way to take a look at the blasted Pyramids!’
‘Sir!’ the lieutenant replied.
‘Right!’ Colonel Parker continued. ‘So in that case you’d better wheel us over straightaway to HQ, hadn’t you!’
‘Sir,’ the lieutenant replied nervously. ‘My orders were –’
‘Damn your orders, man!’ Colonel Parker yelled, his face purpling. ‘Our orders were to meet with your CO. ASAP!’
‘Sir!’ the lieutenant now was at full attention, as stiff as a ramrod. ‘A meeting has been arranged, sir, for tomorrow morning, sir!’
‘Tomorrow morning? What in hell’s wrong with now, man! Don’t you chaps know there’s a blasted war on! Now pull your finger out, man, and take us over to HQ. PDQ!’
‘Sir! With respect, sir! The CO’s away, sir! And will not be available until tomorrow morning, sir!’
The Colonel took a deep breath, looked round at his colleagues, and then over-patiently back at the junior officer who was now sweating up badly. ‘One good reason, man,’ he said, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. ‘One good reason why the CO will not be available till then.’
‘Sir,’ the lieutenant replied, clearing his throat and staring at the huge fan above them. ‘Because he’s away playing polo, sir.’
The following morning, a staff car arrived to transport Hugo and the four officers from the hotel to garrison HQ. When they arrived there was another delay, until finally the officers were invited in to meet the commanding officer. Hugo was not included. In fact no-one at HQ seemed to know why he had been included in the party. He had not been expected, and now that he was there, no-one knew what to do with him. Hugo, mindful of his brief from General Hunter, suggested he might be given the use of a driver and a car used for desert driving known as a ‘flea’, so that he could go into the desert on the west side of Cairo and conduct some investigations. The request was readily granted since it solved the problem of finding something for Hugo to do, and within an hour he was heading out of Cairo on the Alexandria road, with the vast open space of the desert unfurling westwards in a shimmer of heat.
Ten miles out along the long dusty road, in answer to Hugo’s request, the driver pulled over and stopped to allow Hugo out.
‘Take a sight more than seven maids with seven mops, eh sir? To clear this little lot,’ his driver said cheerily, starting to roll himself a smoke, as Hugo stood staring at the burning sandscape.
It was midday and the heat was intense, already in the high eighties and rising, Hugo surmised, with no wind whatsoever to bring relief. He remembered his father telling him of temperatures of over a hundred and twenty degrees being recorded five or six hundred miles further west in Libya, and of sand dunes in the Algerian Sahara with a wave-length of three miles and a height of nearly a mile, and most graphically of all, exactly what it was like to die of thirst. ‘How much petrol have you got, driver?’ Hugo asked, climbing back into the flea.
‘Three quarters of a tank, sir,’ the driver replied, tapping his fuel gauge. ‘And two full jerry-cans.’
‘Good,’ said Hugo. ‘Then I think we’ll go for a little drive, please.’
The driver started the little car up. ‘Which way do you want to go, sir?’ he asked. ‘North or south?’
‘Neither, thanks,’ said Hugo. ‘I want to go west. Due west.’
After half an hour, the driver braked and stopped. ‘I don’t know how well you know the desert, sir.’
‘Why?’ Hugo asked, without apparent concern.
The driver wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and then nodded ahead of them. ‘That’s a sandstorm, sir.’
Hugo smiled at the driver and undid his water bottle. ‘That’s why we’re out here,’ he said.
‘To enjoy the pleasures of a sandstorm, sir?’
‘I must admit,’ Hugo smiled, before taking a drink. ‘I must admit I was hoping we’d catch one.’
‘Have you ever been in a sandstorm, sir?’ Hugo could tell from his companion’s tone that the man quite obviously thought him mad.
‘Yes, driver, I have as a matter of fact.’
‘It’s not exactly a party, sir. With all due respect.’
‘I know,’ Hugo agreed. ‘But then that one ahead, that should miss us north, by a mile. Possibly two.’
The driver lit another cigarette and stared at the dark swirling clouds which were gathering on the horizon. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, restarting the flea, ‘but that little number’s coming right for us.’
Hugo turned off the ignition.
‘With all due respect, sir,’ the driver said, restarting the vehicle, ‘I’ve been out here a little longer than you have. And when it starts to blow and get up like that little lot, it’s time to bugger off home.’
Once again Hugo switched the ignition off, but this time removing the key.
‘You’d better be right, sir,’ the driver sighed, with a shake of his head.
‘Yes I had better be right, driver,’ Hugo replied. ‘I’d better be right and not just for us.’
‘I don’t see anyone else, sir,’ said the driver.
‘Not now you don’t,’ said Hugo. ‘But you could before too long.’
They sat there watching as the cloud of sand grew bigger and darker with every minute, picked up by the fast growing wind which seemed to be blowing directly head-on at the stationary jeep.
‘God Almighty!’ the driver swore, ducking down and crouching under the steering wheel. ‘This is not my idea of a picnic!’
But Hugo just sat where he was, transfixed by the rising storm of sand which had all but blotted out the sun. He had sat just like this with his father, except not in a motor car. They’d been in an old ruined fort and his father had calmly unwrapped them each Fuller’s mint lumps as the sky had grown blacker and their guides had started screaming in panic. Hugo had to admit he’d felt panic too, as there seemed no chance that the storm would do anything other than asphyxiate them. But he knew better than to show his emotions for a second, sitting instead beside his father sucking his sweets, watching in fascination as the sandstorm swirled a mile by them, exactly as predicted.
And now, just when it seemed that he must have read it wrong, as in the growing darkness the first flying grains of sand stung Hugo’s face, so too did this mighty storm change course, its epicentre passing way to the north of the jeep, perhaps even more than the two miles Hugo had guessed. It was impossible to tell,
because although they were sitting it out on the fringe of the simoon, the air to the north of them was impenetrable, and Hugo could only estimate approximately by how much it had missed them.
‘All right, sir,’ the driver said, after he’d started the jeep up and turned for home. ‘So how’s it done, eh?’
‘It’s a knack,’ Hugo replied. ‘Rather like being able to read a googly.’
Ellie, Jamie and his nanny arrived in Los Angeles on the morning of 4 December, to be met by a car sent from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on the orders of Mr Patsy Milligan, who was now working as a first assistant. The party had travelled overland by train from New York, from deep snow to warm sunshine, Ellie’s plan being to stay for six days in Hollywood, fly back to New York, and then sail home from there on the thirteenth to arrive back home in plenty of time for Christmas.
Ellie was driven straight to her hotel in Beverly Hills, where she bathed and changed and settled the baby in with Nanny before leaving to meet her brother for lunch at the studios.
‘When your eyes stop popping out of your head, sis,’ Patsy grinned, ‘maybe you’ll catch me up on all your news.’
Ellie apologized for star-gazing, but it seemed every time they were about to start a conversation yet another household name passed by their table, several of them even stopping auspiciously to ruffle Patsy’s curly hair, or crack a joke, and occasionally, but to Ellie’s intense embarrassment, to insist on being introduced to her.
James Stewart ambled by and stopped when he saw Ellie. ‘Hi,’ he grinned when Patsy had introduced him to Ellie. ‘Listen, if I’d known the kid had such a great sister, I’d have made sure he was directing my next picture, not just assisting.’
‘Look at you!’ Patsy laughed, after the actor had left. ‘You’re the colour of a tomato!’
‘Hugo and I saw him in You Can’t Take It With You when was it? Last year. And Artemis and I saw Seventh Heaven,’ Ellie said by way of a somewhat hopeless explanation.
‘He’s the nicest guy in town.’
‘You seem to be doing OK, Mr Milligan. I mean how long before you’re running this place?’
In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 41
