‘I plan to take over next Thursday,’ Patsy replied. ‘In the meantime, tonight you and I are going to dinner.’
‘You and I and Helen, I take it you mean. Or don’t you include your wife on dates?’
‘I did,’ Patsy replied. ‘Before she ran off with Cary Grant’s stand-in.’
It appeared that no sooner had Patsy brought Helen out to Los Angeles than she changed. One sight of the honeypot which was Hollywood and all the former shop girl wanted to be was a show girl, and nothing Patsy said could dissuade her.
‘It was my fault, I guess,’ Patsy told Ellie over dinner. ‘She was always hanging around the set and the canteen, watching it all happen, meeting other girls who only last month had been working behind the counter in Macy’s. You know. And then I was always working late. Well, to cut a long story short – too late –’ he joked. ‘One day I arranged to take her to a movie, and when I called to pick her up, there was a note left on her rooming house door “gone off with Ricky”. Ricky was a dummy she’d met a few weeks before, but he promised her a walk-on in the coronation scene of The Prisoner of Zenda. Oh, you know how it is. Out here. It’s something in the air everyone thinks they’re going to become Garbo.’
‘Poor Patsy.’
‘Poor nothing. Helen was a pill. Is a pill. I still see her around poor girl. She’s back behind a counter, waiting for another walk-on. It’s been a century since her last and Ricky went off with a show girl to help run a bar in New York. That’s the banana skin of life she opted for. Trouble is, if I ever see her I still feel like kissing her, for being so stupid, so much has her bad luck been my good.’
They ate dinner and talked more generally: of how well Patsy was doing with his career, and of how he hoped it would go in the future. But Patsy’s contribution to the conversation was half-hearted, as if his mind were elsewhere.
‘It’s the war,’ he finally explained, when Ellie taxed him. ‘I can’t talk this off-handedly about the future when there’s a war on.’
‘It’s not your war. It may never be.’
‘I have a feeling it will be, Ellie. This is no ordinary backyard scrap, you know. Not with this guy Hitler playing the lead role. And by the by, one of the not-so-good things about this place is that Mr Hitler has a whole lot of very big fans out here.
‘Which is maybe why I don’t see America getting dragged in to it. People here seem to think that Britain doesn’t need help, either because they’re just about to negotiate a peace with Hitler, or because they’ve got this incredible masterplan which is going to trap and defeat the Nazis at one fell swoop. People here,’ Patsy said, ‘say they believe Britain doesn’t want help because they don’t want to give it. Britain’s not exactly popular here. People in America are more worried about Stalin.’
‘That was what Father said, that he’d be glad if America did go into the war.’
‘Sure he would,’ Patsy agreed.
‘I’d have understood it,’ Ellie went on, ‘if he’d said he hoped America would come into the war on Germany’s side, knowing Father.’
‘Pa doesn’t mind whose side anyone is on, just as long as it’s good for business.’
‘That’s the other thing, how come war is suddenly so good for business?’
‘You mean, he didn’t tell you?’ Patsy pushed his plate to one side and pulled his chair round closer to his sister’s. ‘Let’s start from the top,’ Patsy said, dropping his voice slightly. ‘You know about him and Madame, I take it?’
Ellie said their father had told her everything, and while it had come as a terrible shock, when she looked at the whole picture now, rather than just a part of it, it all made sense. But Patsy became suddenly cautious, giving Ellie the impression that if what she knew was the truth, she would not really be talking in such a fashion.
‘One thing at a time,’ he instructed. ‘Madame first.’
Ellie repeated the story as she had heard it, and when she finished, Patsy nodded but said nothing. ‘Did you know about him and Madame, Patsy?’ Ellie wanted to know. ‘I mean when you were small. You can’t have known, surely?’
‘No,’ Patsy agreed. ‘I never knew. None of the boys knew. No-one knew. They made sure of that.’
‘They certainly did,’ Ellie nodded. ‘He said – he said he loved our mother, Patsy, but that our mother never loved him.’
‘Yes,’ Patsy agreed. ‘He told me that as well.’
‘But Madame. I mean all that time, Patsy!’ Patsy took one of Ellie’s hands in his and stared down at it. Then he clicked his tongue and took a deep breath, like Ellie imagined a doctor might do when about to announce a fatal diagnosis. ‘Tell me,’ she begged. ‘Please tell me it’s all a lie, Patsy. About Madame.’
Patsy looked across at her, eye to eye, their intimacy unbroken. ‘Madame was like a mother to you, and nothing can ever change that. Why should it? She was kind to you and she loved you, and nothing’ll ever change that either, Ellie. It doesn’t matter about her and Pa. That’s something different. You and she, you’re intact. I mean it.’
‘He said she really loved him, Patsy.’
‘I’m certain of it, Ellie,’ Patsy replied. ‘I’m sure she loved Pa. But I don’t think for a moment he ever loved her.’
‘Don’t you?’ Ellie paused, staring at her glass of iced water, running a finger down the condensation on the side of the glass. ‘He married her, Patsy,’ she said finally. ‘Why should he marry her if he didn’t love her? He never married her before. I mean if he loved her –’
‘I know what you mean, Ellie, but let me tell you. He married her for her money.’
Ellie laughed. ‘Madame didn’t have any money, Patsy! Not to speak of!’
‘She came into some. After you left America, Pa found out. I don’t know about finding out – I guess that’s when it became official. That old man you were to marry, Mr O’Hara. As you probably know, that old guy he really had loved Madame, way back when. You tell me. But Pa – he just made love to her. And she let him, because she really did love him. Don’t ask me why. But she did. She didn’t love poor old Buck O’Hara, who loved her. But then that’s the way it goes. Even so, when he died, O’Hara left her a small fortune. Which was when Pa suddenly decided it was up to him to marry her.’
‘I see,’ Ellie said.
‘Didn’t you wonder about the new house and furniture, Ellie?’ Patsy smiled, putting his hand on his sister’s arm. ‘And the new car, and those tailor-made suits?’
‘Of course I did,’ Ellie replied. ‘He just said business was flourishing.’
‘You bet,’ said Patsy. ‘The business he set himself up in with Madame’s money. Himself and the “broth”.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought this was the best time for building,’ Ellie ventured.
‘It all depends what you’re building,’ Patsy said sarcastically, for a moment sounding just like his father. ‘There’s building and there’s building. He calls it “building for the future”.’
‘So what is it he’s doing?’ Ellie asked, dreading the reply. ‘If he’s not building houses. What exactly is his business?’
Patsy held his breath for a moment then exhaled, leaning back in his chair and staring upwards as if he himself could still not believe it. ‘Munitions.’
That evening when Artemis finally got home, tired out and aching all over, all she wanted was a large drink and a hot bath. Diana was already home, drink in hand, sunk deep in an armchair by the electric fire, a book opened but turned face down on the arm of the chair.
‘What a day,’ Artemis said, unstopping the decanter of whisky. ‘I had to drive someone to Bath and back. To the admiralty.’
‘Should one know the admiralty is in Bath?’ Diana enquired.
‘Only if one’s a Jerry one shouldn’t,’ Artemis replied. ‘Prosit.’ She raised her glass in a mocking salute, drank, and then dropped into the chair opposite her godmother, draping her legs over one arm. ‘“Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory”,’ sh
e said.
‘What on earth’s that?’ Diana enquired.
‘The latest rot from the Ministry of MisInformation,’ Artemis replied.
‘Oh yes,’ said Diana idly, ‘of course.’
‘Don’t you just love “Your courage, your cheerfulness, etc? Will bring us victory?” If that’s the line they’re taking, they won’t just have a war on their hands. They’ll have a revolution.’ Artemis took another drink of whisky and then leaned backwards and put the glass down on the table behind her. ‘You’ve forgotten the black-out curtains, Diana,’ she said, struggling to get up.
‘It’s all right,’ Diana was on her feet first. ‘I’ll do them.’ Diana got up and pulled the black-out blinds and curtains tightly down and across the drawing room windows.
‘Not that it makes much difference,’ Artemis said. ‘Jerry doesn’t seem that bothered.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ Diana replied as she sat back down. ‘I’m told that apparently it was only the weather that stopped Adolf dropping in on France last month.’
‘Too bad,’ said Artemis. ‘I was rather hoping things might have got so bad over there that AH might have had to go back to painting houses.’
When the telephone rang, Artemis failed to hear it because she had fallen fast asleep. It was right beside Diana so she picked it up at once.
‘Hullo?’ she said quietly. ‘Yes?’
While she listened to what her caller had to say, she looked over at the sleeping Artemis. Then she quietly replaced the receiver and lit a cigarette.
She sat watching Artemis while she smoked and when she was halfway through the cigarette, she stubbed it out and leaned over to shake Artemis gently awake. ‘Artemis?’ she said. ‘Artemis wake up, darling.’
Artemis woke up and stared in surprise at Diana. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I fell asleep.’
‘Rather bad news I’m afraid,’ Diana told her. ‘Your – your stepmother’s dead.’
‘Really?’ Artemis enquired, after a silence. ‘How? I mean what happened?’
‘It seems she shot herself.’
‘God.’ Artemis picked up her whisky glass and swilled the drink round. ‘Shot herself? Any idea why?’
‘It appears, like many of her persuasion, she was afraid of being imprisoned for her Nazi sympathies.’
‘I see.’ Artemis stared into the bottom of her glass, then drank the remains of her drink. ‘How’s Papa taken it?’ she asked eventually.
‘He’s all right. You know they haven’t been together now for quite some time now, don’t you?’
‘I didn’t know that, no.’ Artemis looked surprised and reaching for her handbag, took out her compact and studied her face in its mirror.
‘Your father always regretted marrying her,’ Diana said. ‘You probably didn’t know that either.’
‘No I didn’t, Diana,’ Artemis replied. ‘But I’m not surprised. Didn’t you wonder why he married her in the first place?’
‘Everyone did,’ Diana shrugged. ‘He told me once he’d done it so you could have a mother.’
Artemis put her compact down and stared at Diana.
‘Men like your father aren’t very good round children,’ Diana explained.
‘I am very sure the very last thing Katherine wanted to be,’ Artemis replied, ‘was a mother to me. Or to anyone.’
Diana took out another cigarette, and then quite suddenly laughed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, although Artemis didn’t look the least disturbed, ‘but as a matter of fact Katherine did have plans for parenthood. It seems that the poor woman has been off her head for years and her one desire in life was to have a baby by Adolf H. himself.’
‘No, that’s not true, is it?’
‘Darling,’ Diana leaned forward and put a hand on Artemis’s sleeve, ‘do laugh if you want to. It’s awful to bottle it up.’
‘It’s so funny it has to be true,’ said Artemis soberly. ‘But I can’t laugh about Katherine I’m afraid, Diana, any more than I can laugh about Hitler.’
‘No, I know what you mean. She was quite, quite ghastly, wasn’t she?’
Diana poured them both another whisky, which they drank in thoughtful silence.
If you don’t mind,’ said Artemis, pulling herself to her feet. ‘I think I’ll have a bath.’
Once she was sure Artemis was in the bath, Diana picked up the telephone and called Artemis’s father.
They flew back from Cairo in a bomber. Before take-off they’d sat in the fuselage of the plane, beside the bomb bays, sweating in a temperature which in the evening was still in the mid-seventies. Now, ten minutes later as the unpressurized plane had reached its optimum cruising altitude, they sat with chattering teeth, swaddled in thick sheepskin-lined flying jackets and trousers. It made Hugo long all the more for the warmth of his fireside at Brougham and so, for the rest of the noisy, turbulent and freezing journey, he turned his mind solely to the thought of Christmas with Ellie. He could see them all gathered on Christmas Day round the big tree in the hall, laughing and exchanging presents, together once again, Ellie, and Jamie, and himself, and one more person in the corner of the picture in his mind’s eye, someone whom Hugo could not quite identify at that moment. So he squeezed his eyes shut and looked again, and saw all too clearly who that last person was.
17
Ellie had just finished packing her bags in preparation for the first leg of the journey home when Nanny appeared at her bedroom door.
‘It’s Jamie, Mrs Tanner,’ she said. ‘He’s having convulsions.’
Dropping everything, Ellie ran through to find James lying in his cot, with his eyes rolled upwards and almost invisible under his eyelids while his whole body twitched convulsively.
‘Take his temperature while I call for a doctor.’
‘We’ll take his temperature,’ Nanny said, finding the thermometer and shaking it down, ‘then we’ll pop him in a warm bath.’
Ellie was on the telephone, trying to raise reception. ‘Are you sure that’s wise, Nanny?’
‘Oh yes, Mrs Tanner,’ Nanny replied. ‘Call the doctor, give baby a warm bath, and then let him rest in a warm and dark room. That’s what we’re taught to do at times like this.’ The nurse placed the thermometer under the baby’s arm and then held him tightly to her, wrapped in a blanket, to try and control the convulsions.
‘His tummy was upset this morning,’ she said. ‘He’s probably got some nasty wee American bug.’
As it turned out the doctor was of the same opinion, but even so ordered the baby to be sent to hospital immediately.
‘What is it?’ Ellie asked him anxiously, as they waited for an ambulance. ‘Is it serious?’
‘Your child has a high fever, Mrs Tanner,’ the doctor replied. ‘And an extremely upset stomach. We have to regard anything enteric in a baby this age as serious, I’m afraid. Are you still feeding him yourself?’
‘No. I did for the first three months, but now he’s on the bottle. It became painful, you see. And really I wasn’t producing enough milk.’
‘Perfectly understandable. It just makes baby that little bit more vulnerable to infections, that’s all.’
‘But why is he convulsing? Is that a sign of something else? I mean is he having a fit or what?’
The doctor explained that it was quite usual at the onset of a fever for babies to suffer convulsions. ‘If it’s simply a case of enteritis,’ he assured Ellie, ‘then taking him off milk and feeding him just glucose and a little salt in boiled water will have him back to normal in no time. I just think with a temperature as high as this, we’ll be much better off keeping an eye on things in hospital.’
Ellie and Nanny stayed with Jamie all day, but things got no better. By evening the baby’s temperature had risen from a hundred and one degrees to a hundred and three. As well as suffering from constant diarrhoea he was vomiting up even his glucose and water. By midnight he had begun to convulse once more, except this time even more violently.
The doctor tried to a
dvise Ellie to go home. ‘You’re only a ten-minute cab ride from the hospital,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you if there’s any change.’ But Ellie refused, she and Nanny sat, graven images, either side of the cot. Eventually as dawn approached and the night staff started to drift off home, Ellie went in search of the doctor on duty.
‘I have to know what the chances are.’
‘Not good, Mrs Tanner, I’m afraid.’ The doctor took her by the elbow and led her down the corridor. ‘It all depends on the next few hours. But if you want chances, I’m afraid your baby may have only a five per cent chance of survival.’
‘You mean he has a ninety-five per cent chance of dying,’ Ellie said desperately.
‘As you probably appreciate babies also have only limited reserves of water and they pretty soon become very dehydrated. If they lose an abnormal amount of body fluids.’
‘Five per cent,’ she muttered. ‘Five per cent.’
‘If we’re looking at it honestly,’ the doctor replied. ‘Yes round about five per cent.’
Someone brought them coffee some time later, but Ellie left it, and Nanny seemed not even to notice the intrusion. They didn’t talk to each other, or even really look at each other. They just waited.
Later in the morning, as Ellie stood leaning with her back against the corridor wall, her eyes half shut, a nurse came and quietly told her that Doctor Vincent had returned and wished to see her.
‘Yes?’ Ellie asked as soon as she entered the doctor’s office. ‘Well?’
‘There’s no improvement, I’m afraid, Mrs Tanner.’
‘Is there any deterioration?’
‘No. The baby’s condition at the moment is at least stable.’
‘Then there’s hope. More than five per cent?’
Doctor Vincent looked up at her. Ellie’s face was a blank. ‘While there’s life, Mrs Tanner. You know what they say. We’re injecting fluids into him, to make up for the losses. And provided we can keep ahead in that field –’ He tried to make his smile as encouraging as possible. ‘And now I really think you should go back to your hotel and rest, don’t you?’
‘Don’t be insane,’ Ellie turned away.
In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 42
