‘I’ll see they behave, Porter,’ Ellie had assured him. ‘Don’t you worry.’ She left him, as always, in a hurry.
By the time arrangements had been made to bring Hugo home, the hospital had a full complement of patients, which included, amongst others, soldiers still recovering from wounds received over a year ago at Dunkirk, and pilots who had been injured the previous summer and autumn in the Battle of Britain. Ellie made sure that those well enough were given a free run of the place, and in direct contradiction to Porter’s gloomy prognostication, it seemed to bring out the best in them. They quickly came to love the beautiful house and park, and when they were strong enough, set about doing all they possibly could to help. Some of the tougher men used to laugh about the change in their behaviour, telling Ellie that if anyone was caught swearing, they received a right dressing down from their comrades.
‘Don’t ask me why, miss,’ one sailor said to her one day, ‘but you feel you can’t blaspheme ’ere. And don’t ask me why. Me mates are the same. Sounds daft, but they all say they don’t want to.’
‘I think it’s because you fellows don’t want to let yourselves down in front of the nurses,’ Ellie replied. ‘They’re such a great bunch of girls, and I reckon you’re thinking of them. And of how they feel. And I think that’s very nice.’
‘Maybe you’re right, miss,’ the sailor said. ‘But meself, I think it’s this ’ere place. Straight up, it’s as if you’ve come out of hell and landed in bloomin’ ’eaven, believe me.’
One of the fleet of Red Cross ambulances which were used to ferry blood supplies and patients to Brougham brought Hugo up from Salisbury along with the week’s supply of dressings, drugs and medications.
‘Hullo, Hugo,’ Ellie said as the driver unlocked the rear doors. ‘Here we are.’
‘Hullo,’ Hugo replied, as if to a total stranger. ‘Where are we?’
‘Home, Hugo,’ Ellie said. ‘Brougham.’
‘Broom,’ Hugo pondered. ‘Why is home a broom?’
Ellie offered him her hand, to help him out of the ambulance, but he ignored her, preferring instead to climb out unaided. He stood in front of his home, dressed in his hospital issue dressing gown, striped pyjamas, and worn brown slippers, staring with a deep frown at his new surroundings.
‘What happened to your dressing gown?’ Ellie asked. ‘And the pyjamas I brought you?’
‘They weren’t mine,’ Hugo said vaguely. ‘They were someone else’s. What is this place, another hospital?’
‘This is your home, Hugo.’
‘This is another hospital,’ Hugo replied. ‘Hospitals, hospitals, hospitals. I’ve been in so many hospitals.’
‘Can you remember all the hospitals you’ve been in?’ Ellie asked, as she started to lead him up the stone staircase.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Can you?’
Accompanied by one of the nursing sisters, Ellie took him straight upstairs to their room. There was a notice on the door which read ‘Please do not enter,’ but even so, the door was unlocked. As planned, the sister stayed just outside while Ellie led her husband in and stood with him in the centre of their bedroom. Hugo looked round the room slowly and carefully, but without moving. While he looked Ellie watched him for any sign of recognition. After he had finished his long and silent appraisal, Hugo suddenly yawned and took his spectacles off, to rub his eyes.
‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I really am tired.’
‘Why not have a sleep then?’ Ellie said, going to the bed and turning it down.
‘Not in that bed,’ Hugo replied, stepping back and away from it. ‘I don’t like that bed.’
‘This is your bed, Hugo,’ Ellie told him, coming back to his side and gently taking his arm. ‘Come and sit on it. Come on.’
Hugo pulled his arm away, roughly, and stared at Ellie. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not like that bed!’ He spoke very slowly but emphatically, like a child refusing to eat up its food. ‘I don’t like that bed,’ he repeated, ‘and I’m not going to get in it.’
Ellie walked over to the dressing table and picked up some more family photographs, pictures of Hugo holding Jamie when he was first born. Hugo and Ellie and Jamie at the christening.
Jamie. She missed him even more now that Hugo was here, which was odd. It was as if having Hugo here, but not there, made Jamie’s existence even more precious, and infinitely further away. She telephoned, she wrote, and Nanny was stalwart, but even so she often found herself crying suddenly, alone, in the night. There seemed to be no-one left, only Artemis.
Hugo barely glanced at Jamie’s photograph, before he knocked it flying out of Ellie’s hand and across the room. ‘Stop showing me all these blasted snapshots!’ he shouted. ‘I hate all these stupid, blasted snapshots!’ Before Ellie could stop him he was out of the door, but happily straight into the arms of one of the staff outside.
‘There we are,’ said the nurse crisply. ‘Just in time to get settled in.’
Artemis managed to travel down to Brougham for the weekend, but all the time she was there, Hugo was, if anything, worse.
She returned to London that evening, standing all the way to Paddington in a darkened train. When she got back to the flat in Bayswater, Diana was out, and was still out when Artemis finally went to bed an hour later. At three o’clock the air raid siren suddenly sounded, and rather than take shelter, Artemis simply covered her head with two pillows and waited for the inevitable pounding to begin.
Five minutes later a bomb fell directly on the building opposite, blasting out all the windows of the flat and showering her bed with splinters of glass and timber. There was a brief uncanny silence after the explosion and crash of the collapsing building, and then the sound of people shouting, and then of people screaming, and then of general mayhem. Artemis scrambled carefully out from under the thick covers of her bed, to find the bed itself half tipped back against the wall and the floor of the room deep in debris. She picked her way through the darkness and finding her slippers and overcoat, and finally her walking stick, went down the main stairs and out of the building into the street to see what she could do to help.
The bomb had knocked a giant hole in the row of buildings opposite, as if the terraced houses were teeth, one of which had been punched out by a street fighter. The air was full of choking dust and smoke, and every so often a piece of masonry or timber from the buildings either side would finally fall loose and crash on to the debris below. Bombs were still dropping with dull thuds all around as the enemy planes droned in the skies above them, occasionally caught in a searchlight, or briefly in the flashing explosions of the ack-ack fire. Other doors opened down the street as those who had not sought shelter looked out to see who had been hit. Tin-hatted wardens appeared from nowhere to assess the damage, while people in their dressing gowns or coats pulled hastily on over their nightwear stood staring at the mound of dust and rubble which a moment ago had been the home of a neighbour.
‘Anyone know if they was in?’ a warden called to the small crowd of onlookers. ‘We don’t want to start diggin’ if they was all down the shelter!’
A woman in hair curlers, with a mackintosh over her long nightdress called back from her doorway, two houses down. ‘They never went down the shelter, chum!’ she shouted. ‘They couldn’t stick it! They went under their stairs!’
There were no stairs. The bomb had scored such a direct hit it had simply demolished the house entirely. As the crowd began to realize there was only a faint hope of anyone surviving such a bombing, they began to drift away, leaving what digging out there was to be done to the rescue men.
‘’Ere, love,’ a woman said at Artemis’s side, ‘you’re shakin’ like a bloomin’ leaf. You’d best come in for a cuppa.’
Artemis spent the night on the woman’s sofa. When she left to return to the flat in order to get dressed for work, the rescue party was already digging for survivors on the bomb site. As Artemis passed by, one of the men stopped digging and reached down into the
rubble. From it he plucked a small pink fluffy slipper, shaped like a little rabbit. He stared at it, pushing his hat back on his head, and wiping his brow with the back of his hand at the same time, before placing the little shoe carefully on the ground and continuing to dig down to where he hoped, albeit faintly, its owner might be lying somewhere still alive.
After she had dressed, and swept up as much of the debris as she could, Artemis made herself a strong cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table. She was still shaking badly and had to hold her cup to her mouth with both hands. The telephone rang in the hall, and she went to answer it. It was Diana. Artemis told her what had happened.
‘Dear God,’ Diana said. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Fine,’ Artemis replied, holding the telephone two-handed. ‘A bit jelly-like.’
‘I should think so too,’ Diana agreed. There was a short silence. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t home last night, but you see the point is –’ She lapsed into silence again.
‘Yes?’ Artemis prompted.
‘Perhaps we could have lunch,’ Diana suggested.
‘I have to drive someone up to Malvern,’ Artemis said. ‘Someone from the MOI. Sorry.’
‘Damn.’ Artemis could hear Diana lighting a cigarette up at the other end of the line. ‘Well look, the point is, darling, because you’re going to find out sooner or later. I was with your father last night. And the point is we’re going to get married.’
The reality of the night’s events didn’t really sink in until Artemis arrived for work at Westminster and promptly passed out. She was sent home at once in a taxi with the instructions to see her doctor and not to report again for work until she was one hundred per cent fit. Her doctor, who was a family friend, examined her and pronounced her to be suffering from delayed shock and profound exhaustion.
‘I don’t think you know how hard you’ve been pushing yourself, my dear,’ he said.
‘There’s a war on, Alistair,’ Artemis replied. ‘You’ve seen the faces of the people out there. Everyone’s exhausted. But we’ve all just got to keep going. You look a bit tired yourself.’
‘Maybe, but I’m used to it. As a matter of fact I prefer being this needed. I can’t pretend. I prefer it a sight more than just looking after society poodles.’
Artemis smiled. ‘Is that what you think I am?’ she asked, feigning indignation.
‘You know perfectly well I don’t. I wish all my patients were like you. But you must realize it, you are a bit run down.’
‘Come on, Alistair. I mean we are in the middle of a war.’
‘I know, dear girl,’ the doctor replied. ‘I have noticed. I’m getting so good at getting up now, I can be dressed and in my car before the siren’s finished wailing.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Artemis said. ‘Sorry. It’s just that there’s a lot that needs doing.’
‘It’s a bit more difficult for you, young lady, than it is for some others.’ The doctor leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. ‘Think about a change. Just for a short while. There are other things you can do to help, you know. You don’t have to stay in London.’
Artemis promised to think about it, and she did. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she was needed elsewhere, at Brougham. Not that she was afraid to stay in London, although the bombing had left her a bit shaken. Normally such a thing would only strengthen her resolve. Even so, she found herself deciding to leave London, but when she did she knew that it was nothing to do with her doctor’s advice, nor to do with the near miss. It was all to do with her godmother’s sudden decision to marry Artemis’s father.
As far as Ellie was concerned Hugo’s recovery was all that she could think of. She found him one morning out of his ward, wandering round the great hall, which was too large and cold to be used as part of the hospital. She waited, unseen, while Hugo ambled round, staring at the niches where the statues had stood, looking up above him at the three round skylights.
Finally she could bear it no longer. ‘Does it ring any bells?’ she found herself asking, foolishly.
Hugo whipped round and stared at her, taking a moment before he answered. ‘Does what?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows. ‘This isn’t a church you know.’
‘I meant,’ Ellie began, finding herself beginning to falter under his gaze. ‘I thought – what I meant was I wondered if you recognized anything in here.’
‘Such as?’
‘You don’t recognize this room? The great hall?’
‘Any reason why I should?’
‘Of course,’ Ellie persisted, finding her tongue again. ‘This is your home.’
‘This is a hospital,’ he corrected her.
‘It’s also your home,’ Ellie replied. ‘But even so, I think we’d better take you back to the ward.’
She took his arm, but he shook her off. ‘I don’t like you,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this place, and I don’t like you.’ He started to walk past her.
Ellie called to him. ‘Hugo?’
‘My name is not Hugo!’ he shouted. ‘When will you get it into your blasted heads, my name is not Hugo!’
‘OK,’ Ellie said, as calmly as she could. ‘But you must have a name.’
‘Of course I have a name! Everyone has a name!’ He was still furious, his eyes narrowed and dark behind his glasses.
‘So if it’s not Hugo,’ Ellie asked, ‘what is your name?’
‘Tom!’ he yelled. ‘That is my name! I am somebody called Tom!’
The train was packed and the journey was interminable, but at least it gave Artemis time to think.
‘Nothing will change,’ Diana had assured her over dinner the night before. ‘Everything will be just as it was, only better.’
Everything will be just as it was, only better. Everything will be just as it was only better. She repeated the words to herself over and over in time with the rhythm of the wheels on the line below her feet, but still they made no sense. How could things by not changing get better? If things changed and got better, then quite obviously they weren’t going to remain the same. Everything will be just as it was only better, went the train.
Artemis did her best to try and avoid the thought of Diana and her father together, but she could not keep the idea out of her head altogether as she sat crushed up in one corner of the dark and smoke-filled carriage. Diana had done her best to explain what her reasons were for wanting to marry her father, but when they were talking about him it was as if they were discussing two entirely different people. To Diana John Deverill was a shy and much misunderstood man, while to his daughter he was a cold and remote and unloving father. Diana supposed then that she had probably always loved Artemis’s father, a thought which appalled Artemis, so much so that she at once had got up from the table, and excusing herself, gone straight to bed. The idea of her godmother having always loved her father was tantamount to infidelity. All the time she had been growing up she had counted on Diana as her true friend and her ally, and now it appeared that all that time Diana had had a foot firmly in both camps. It was the final act of familial betrayal. Everything-will-be-just-as-it-was-only-better.
At least there was Patsy. If she hadn’t had Patsy, Artemis thought, as the train swayed and lurched through the darkness, there was no saying how she would have felt. He’d written to her once a week, sometimes twice since her return to England, cheering her with his news from Hollywood, and touching her deeply with his professions of love. She’d written back to him just as regularly, but could not match his honesty when it came to expressing her feelings, discovering that as a writer she was just as reticent as she was as a person. Happily it didn’t seem to bother Patsy at all, and in his replies he joked about her inhibition, giving it Californian names. Patsy and his letters were carrying Artemis through the war.
Sometimes, in the wait between letters, she would remember the night by the ocean and wonder whether she had been right to turn her back on the happiness that had be
en so patently on offer to return to the strife of war-torn England, particularly to find that Diana and her father had taken up with each other. Artemis had run away from the chance of happiness with Patsy because she felt guilty, she felt it was undeserved, that the time was not right. Now she could see little sense in making such a sacrifice just because there was a war on, because her fellow countrymen were dying every day. In fact because there was a war on and men and women were dying every day in their hundreds there seemed all the more reason in the world to get married and take the chance of being happy, if only for a matter of a few weeks, or days or even hours.
Everything will be just as it was only better.
She had the latest letter from Patsy in her purse, unopened, as yet unread, as in her rush to leave London she hadn’t found the time to read it. She thought about it, wondering what was in it, what Patsy had been up to, and what was the latest American news. When she got back to the Dower House, she would pour herself a glass of whisky, sit by the fire Rosie would have laid, and read the letter at her leisure.
Artemis finally arrived at Malmesbury well after midnight and yet she found Jenks waiting for her at the station.
‘Good lord. How long have you been waiting, Jenks?’ Artemis asked as they walked towards the old Humber.
‘No time at all, your ladyship,’ Jenks replied. ‘I’ve a nose for trains.’
There was another surprise. In the front seat, well wrapped up in rugs, sat Ellie.
‘I can’t say how good it is to see you,’ she told Artemis.
‘Patsy’s joined the Air Force,’ Artemis said, as factually as she could. ‘He joined up six weeks ago.’
Artemis had taken Patsy’s letter to bed to read, where she had read it, and she had re-read it and then read it again, as if she simply could not believe it. Then in the morning, she had gone straight up to the house to tell Ellie, whom she assumed wouldn’t have known either, and had run her to ground in the ‘sulking’ room, which Ellie had kept for her official office being the room formerly occupied by the estate manager.
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