‘It’s cold,’ Artemis said, coming back in half-frozen, and pushing the cushioned draught excluder along the bottom of the door, having first listened outside to make sure the telephone call was at an end. ‘What I mean is if anything it’s actually colder.’
Hugo was standing with his arms out resting on the stone chimneypiece, gazing down into the rekindled fire. He said nothing, instead just pushed a log back into place on the fire with his foot.
‘Everything all right?’ Artemis asked overbrightly, coming to the fireside to get warm.
‘We lost the line. We didn’t finish what we had to say.’ Hugo pushed at the log again with his foot, although it was quite safely in place.
‘How’s Jamie?’ Artemis asked, rubbing her still numb hands together, in the gap under one of Hugo’s outstretched arms.
‘He’s fine,’ Hugo stood up to make way for Artemis to warm herself, and as he moved their faces came close. ‘Sorry,’ he said after a second, getting out of her way.
Artemis let the fire warm her through, until her teeth no longer chattered. ‘Did you tell her about lunch?’ she asked, as lightly as possible. ‘You know. That we had lunch in the kitchen?’
‘No, yes. I said we had people.’
‘You didn’t?’ Artemis replied sharply, which made Hugo look up. ‘I hope you didn’t say “we”.’
‘I don’t know what I said, Tom. I said there were others here for lunch. Not that it matters.’
‘Why? Why didn’t you tell her the truth?’
‘I thought it sounded better, that’s why!’ Hugo glared up at her, with a look Artemis had never seen before on his face.
‘I think I’d better go home,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t you?’
‘No!’ Hugo grabbed her arm and held her back. ‘Don’t go. Please.’
‘I seem to have upset you,’ Artemis explained. ‘So I think it’s best.’
‘I’ve upset me,’ Hugo replied. ‘So don’t go. There’s no point.’
She wished he would take his hand off her arm. ‘What’s the point in me staying?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know why, but just now I couldn’t bear it if you went, Tom,’ Hugo said. ‘That’s the point. And you know it.’
‘Of course. Which is why I think it’s better if I go.’ Carefully she removed his hand from her arm. Hugo looked surprised, as if he’d forgotten it was there.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘was I hurting you?’
‘Of course not. Why should you think that?’
Hugo shrugged his shoulders. ‘I just got the impression I was hurting you.’
‘You weren’t.’ Artemis turned to go.
‘Stay for a drink at least,’ Hugo said, walking over to the drinks tray. ‘It’s not very late, so why don’t I pour us a drink?’
‘All right,’ Artemis replied after a pause. ‘Yes. OK.’
‘Better still,’ Hugo said, ‘why don’t I pour us both a drink?’ Hugo laughed, overdoing the laughter, and Artemis smiled, overdoing the smile. She sat back down by the fire and stroked her dog’s head rhythmically, staring rigidly at the burning logs, while Hugo poured out sherry instead of whisky and had to start all over again.
‘“OK”,’ said Hugo, handing Artemis her drink. ‘Well.’ He raised his glass, but could think of nothing to say. Artemis raised her glass back, only to find that she too was speechless.
Over Christmas lunch, Patsy regaled Ellie with stories about the previous night’s party, which according to Patsy had been a humdinger. But Ellie only half-heard, for her mind and her heart were miles away, ten thousand miles away, back at her home in Brougham. While Patsy told her tales of the stars, Ellie’s imagination was taken up with wondering who’d been at Hugo’s lunch party, and what fun it must have been, as everything always was with Hugo. It would have been an elegant lunch, of course, lit as Hugo would insist it should be, by candlelight, even though it was daytime. And where would Artemis have been sitting? And wearing what? Probably one of those two-piece tweed outfits she always looked so good in, Ellie reckoned, a mixed check with a neat little sweater underneath, and a skirt with one of those big kick pleats. And she would have sat – would she have sat herself next to Hugo? Or down the far end, in her seat? Had she taken her place at the table, opposite to Hugo? To smile occasionally up at him through the flicker of bright candlelight. Or had Hugo sat her next to him, so that he could talk to her, and she could listen, the way Artemis always listened to him, her head slightly cocked to one side, while pretending to bite the nail of a finger on one of her hands? And had she made Hugo laugh? Like she always made him laugh? With her poker-faced teases, and her oddly random remarks?
And who would be there now? Who would have stayed behind, drinking port and brandies and ginger and playing all those crazy games Hugo loved to organize? Sardines, and Pass the Parcel with forfeits, and Dumb Crambo? And how long would the party continue? And who would be the last to go? And when?
‘You haven’t heard one darned thing I’ve said to you, Ellie,’ Patsy said.
‘Of course I have,’ Ellie replied hotly. ‘I heard everything.’
‘You didn’t hear anything,’ Patsy laughed.
‘Oh really?’ Ellie asked. ‘And how do you know?’
‘Because,’ Patsy grinned, ‘that’s the fourth time I’ve told you that you haven’t heard one darned thing I’ve said.’
They spent all evening in the snug warmth of the ‘sulking’ room, piling the logs on the fire, drinking whisky, listening to Hugo’s favourite records, and playing the most frivolous paper games either of them could contrive. By the time the clock on the desk chimed midnight, they both stopped to stare at it in silent amazement.
‘I thought it was only about ten,’ Artemis said, looking for her stick.
‘So did I,’ Hugo said. ‘Half past at the latest.’ Artemis laughed. ‘What’s so funny?’ Hugo demanded.
‘Half past ten at the latest,’ Artemis sighed, getting to her feet.
‘I had to say something,’ Hugo said, helping her up.
‘And I must go home,’ Artemis said, doing her best to ignore the hand that was in hers, and which had helped haul her up from the floor but now seemed reluctant to let her go. Hugo released her, after what seemed to Artemis an age, to set the guard in front of the fire and turn off the lamps.
‘Know something, Tom?’ Hugo said, opening the door and letting in a blast of icy air.
‘God,’ said Artemis, buttoning the tweed check jacket of her suit over her oatmeal jumper.
‘Something we haven’t thought of,’ Hugo continued, leading the way slowly by torchlight. ‘We haven’t thought exactly how you’re going to get home.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning –’ Hugo stooped by one of the windows in the drawing room and pulled open a shutter. ‘Meaning,’ he said, flashing the torch through the glass at the snow covered landscape, ‘have you brought your snow shoes?’
They opened the front door to get a better look at the blizzard. The wind had dropped a little, but it was still viciously cold, and if anything snowing even more heavily. The steps on the great staircase had quite vanished from view, as had the driveways, as had the parkland, and indeed as had Artemis’s car, which lay buried somewhere beneath a huge drift of snow that had blown up against the front of the basements during the evening.
‘You’re the sand and snow expert,’ Artemis said, shivering immoderately.
Hugo shut the door. ‘The expert says you’re going to have to stay the night.’ He turned round and shone the torch at the stairs. ‘Come on,’ he ordered. ‘Up the little wooden staircase to Bedfordshire.’
‘I should have gone home when I said,’ Artemis said, following him across the hall.
‘That’s my fault,’ Hugo said, ‘you can blame it on me.’
‘Blame what?’ Artemis enquired from behind him on the staircase.
‘For detaining you. I wanted company.’
‘So did I. I didn’t have to stay.’
‘Yes, but we didn’t think – I didn’t think –’ Hugo stopped and looked back at Artemis, who appeared to be looking back at him as if she had never seen him before. Then he continued on upstairs. ‘Take this torch,’ he said, when they reached the landing. ‘I’ve got another one in my bedroom.’
‘Where am I sleeping?’
‘Where you always sleep. Where you always used to sleep.’ Hugo flashed the torch along the landing to a bedroom door. ‘In your room.’ Then he handed her the torch.
‘Thanks,’ Artemis said. ‘Good night then.’
‘Good night, Tom.’
They both went to their separate rooms, without even a formal kissing of cheeks. Hugo undressed quickly and got into the large four-poster bed, where he lay staring at the ceiling above him, the room lit by the faint white gleam of the fallen snow. It was bitterly cold, but Hugo burned, for all he could think of was Artemis, of her mouth, and the shape of her breasts under her sweater, of her pale pink complexion, and the tousle of her blonde hair. ‘God,’ he whispered to himself, biting the knuckles of one clenched fist. ‘Christ I must be mad.’
Artemis thought she too was mad, but no longer worried about it, as she lay waiting in bed, knowing that he would come, facing the door she knew he would open. She put a finger to her mouth and ran her teeth along the top of a nail, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, no longer trying to make sense of the madness which gripped her, happy just to sense the excitement, the intense excitement she imagined all women must feel as they lay waiting for a man to come and make love to them.
She bit at the fingernail harder, pressing her lips round the top of her finger, as dry mouthed and with the sound of her heart pounding in her ears she heard his footfall in the corridor, and rolled involuntarily away from the door, across to the far side of her bed.
‘Tom?’ she heard him whisper against the door. ‘Tom?’
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘It’s me, Tom,’ Hugo whispered. ‘Can I come in?’
Artemis didn’t reply.
‘Tom?’ Hugo asked once more. And then turned the door handle. And then again, and finally once more. ‘The door’s locked, Tom,’ he said.
Artemis put a hand to her mouth, biting the ends of her fingers as hard as she could.
‘Tom?’ Hugo said. ‘Please open the door.’
‘I can’t,’ Artemis called back. ‘Sorry.’
‘Why not, Tom?’ Hugo asked. ‘Why can’t you open the door?’
Artemis said nothing.
‘Tom?’ Hugo repeated. ‘Why can’t you open the door?’
‘I can’t open the door, Hugo,’ she said, ‘because I’ve thrown the key out into the snow.’
Hugo let her out of her bedroom the next morning with a spare key. ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.
‘Brilliantly,’ she replied. ‘Did you?’
‘Not a wink.’ Hugo smiled and walked over to a window.
‘Seen the snow?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Artemis said, joining him and looking out on the whitened landscape. ‘How am I going to get back to London?’
‘You’re not going to be able to get out of the front drive,’ Hugo said. ‘Let alone London. Let alone back to your house.’
‘No?’ Artemis was standing by the fire, warming her hands.
‘Not today anyway,’ Hugo said. ‘Which means you’re shut in here, I’m afraid.’
‘Yes,’ Artemis agreed. ‘I suppose it does. But then that’s not going to pose any problems, wouldn’t you say?’
Hugo said nothing. He just smiled at her and Artemis smiled back, one of her all too rare smiles, but which when granted allowed the recipient to be able briefly to imagine the look of angels.
At the end of the first week of the new year of 1940, Jamie suffered another sudden and unaccountable attack of enteritis. It was every bit as serious as the previous attacks and left the baby weaker and even more dehydrated than before, taking everyone by surprise. Jamie’d seemed to be making such a good recovery that Ellie had even gone ahead and started making plans for their return to England, plans which given the circumstances she had to cancel immediately.
Hugo was back in London when he received the news. Frantic with worry he called Artemis and asked if they could meet as soon as possible. Artemis, who’d just returned from work, said she would come round at once.
‘I can’t get over to America, Tom,’ Hugo explained, as he poured Artemis a drink. ‘I have to fly out again to Norway on Friday and then there’s a rumour I might have to go to France.’
‘I don’t know what it is you do exactly,’ Artemis said. ‘But I’d have thought if you’re a civilian –’
‘I’m not a civilian, I have to do what I’m told, and I can’t say what it is I do,’ Hugo replied rather shortly.
‘Sorry.’
Hugo came and sat down opposite her. ‘Supposing the worst happens, Tom?’
Artemis shook her blonde head and said nothing. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Hugo. She thought she’d locked everything out when she’d thrown the key out in the snow that Christmas night, but seeing Hugo now she realized the key might have been thrown out but it wasn’t buried. ‘I could go over. I mean my work’s only voluntary, and there’s not exactly a lot happening.’
‘Why?’ Hugo asked, the hope in his eyes betraying his real feelings. ‘I don’t see why you should.’
‘Don’t be such an idiot. Of course you do. Besides, if anything did happen, and Ellie was by herself,’ she paused to pick up her whisky glass, staring into it before continuing. ‘And just suppose the war really did begin in earnest, and we were all really stuck here. And Ellie was stuck over there.’
Hugo took his glasses off and rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘I didn’t ask you here to make you volunteer this, you know.’
‘Don’t be such an idiot,’ Artemis told him again.
‘I just wanted to talk to you about it.’
‘Of course.’
‘It never even occurred to me, Tom. As an idea.’
‘It was my idea. Now I have to get back to work.’ Artemis finished her drink and got up.
‘Are you quite sure, Tom?’ Hugo asked her.
‘Of course,’ Artemis replied. ‘You know I’d do anything for Ellie.’
‘Yes,’ said Hugo, seeing in his mind’s eye the key buried deep in the snow.
Artemis turned to go but Hugo stopped her. ‘I’m going to be late,’ she said.
‘Thanks, Tom.’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she replied as always.
After a considerable amount of string pulling Diana managed to procure a seat for Artemis on a transatlantic flight with a party of British diplomats bound for Washington. Hugo left for Norway on the same day and while they were both in the air, Ellie was summoned to the clinic where a worried Doctor Vincent told her that Jamie’s condition appeared once more to be worsening.
‘I think we may have to operate, Mrs Tanner,’ Doctor Vincent said. The thought of such a small person undergoing surgery was terrifying. ‘It would just be exploratory,’ Doctor Vincent continued, ‘but there could be some internal cause which we’ve failed to diagnose, and which is at present concealed.’
‘What’s the alternative, Doctor Vincent?’
He got up and came round to sit on the front of the desk. ‘I guess we could try to smoke it out. Gamble on it being a viral infection, hope that it’s some micro-organism which is trying to put down roots but which Jamie will reject once his body’s rebuilt its defences. I reckon it has to be that, or something physically wrong. Because I don’t read this as being an allergic reaction. Like to milk. Because during these last two attacks and then after, Jamie can’t even contain his water and glucose.’
‘Which is more likely? Or to put it another way, which is the greater risk? Smoking it out, as you put it? Or – or operating?’
Doctor Vincent shook his head, nonplussed. ‘Fifty-fifty, Mrs Tanner. Evens.’
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It wasn’t as if Ellie hadn’t sought second opinions. On Doctor Vincent’s advice, she had agreed for four other paediatricians to examine her child, none of whom could shed any more light on the disease. Two of them rather tamely suggested that it might be teething problems, something Doctor Vincent dismissed out of hand.
‘To my mind, gentlemen,’ he’d told them, ‘babies may be teething or ill, or teething and ill. The two things are co-incidental, not interrelated.’
‘Let’s go for smoking it out, shall we?’ Ellie said, after much deliberation. ‘I just have this feeling, a mother’s feeling maybe, but anyway whatever it is. I just don’t think surgery is the answer.’
Patsy was out of town filming when Artemis arrived in Los Angeles, so Ellie took the Chrysler rag-top and drove to the station to meet her friend. It was a cloudless morning, warm and clear, and the bougainvillaea was in full bloom outside the picturesque railway terminus, itself a building which Ellie thought looked as though it were part of a Hollywood film set. The train arrived in perfect time, and Ellie stood on tiptoe as the passengers disembarked around her, searching for the slender figure of her friend.
She saw her finally, climbing carefully down the steps from a first class carriage, helped by a uniformed steward and started to run towards her.
‘Artemis!’ she called, and on reaching her, threw her arms around her. ‘Oh heavens, this is so wonderful!’ Ellie let her go, only to take hold of her by both hands and look at her. ‘You look wonderful.’
‘I don’t feel it,’ Artemis grumbled. ‘I feel I’ve been travelling for a year. God, America is big.’
They talked all the way back in the car, Artemis recounting in her droll way her various adventures, but all Ellie wanted to know about was Hugo.
‘Is Hugo really all right?’ was the one question she kept asking. ‘He hasn’t been too worried, has he?’
‘Oh no. He goes out dancing every night.’
‘What’s he doing in Norway?’
In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 44
