‘He was bound to enlist,’ Ellie poured them some coffee. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’
‘But why didn’t he mention it?’ Artemis wondered, to Ellie still sounding wondrously calm. ‘I mean in an earlier letter? He didn’t even hint at it. Not once.’
‘Listen, it’s not even certain that America’s going to come in. They say if they lift the oil embargo –’
Artemis shrugged. ‘They say – at least it’s what I’ve heard from the back seat of the car I drive about the place – that they’re not going to lift it. Not unless the Japs get out of Indo-China. And China. And apparently they’re not likely to do that. Which means war in the Pacific.’
‘I’m afraid it will. If that’s the case.’
‘Exactly.’
Ellie drained the last dregs of her coffee and put her cup down. ‘You knew Patsy wasn’t one to sit at home.’
Artemis said nothing, but sank into a chair by the fire and sat staring up at the ceiling.
‘Any idea where he’ll be?’ Ellie asked. ‘Does he say anything in his letter about where he’s being posted.’
‘No.’ Artemis replied. ‘No idea at all. Which is just as well.’
‘Why?’
‘Because nothing would stop me joining him.’
Ellie looked at her, understood at once, and felt even more alone.
As Christmas approached, Artemis did her best to involve Ellie so deeply in the preparations that she would have less time to brood on the change which had come over Hugo. The old Hugo, the real Hugo had rarely if ever sworn. If he had, it would be only the mildest of oaths, and one never sworn in a hot temper. Nor did he lose his temper. Ellie was the temperamental one, the one with what they all called the ‘Irish’, a flaring but short-lived temper for which she would get unmercifully teased by Artemis and Hugo. But now he suffered terrible rages during which he would throw whatever was to hand at whoever it was he thought had offended him, before burrowing deep down at the bottom of his bed where he would stay for hours. It was a nightmare come true, and to Ellie he now seemed like a total stranger. Small wonder then, Artemis thought, that she wore such a fixed smile all the time, and seemed day by day to be just going through the motions.
So Christmas presented Artemis with the ideal chance to distract her. She managed to make Ellie as determined as she was to make sure the men would have a Christmas to remember, so that if they all survived the war they’d be able to recall Christmas 1941 as the year they were at Brougham.
Early on Ellie set about organizing Cook on errands of begging, borrowing and scrounging food and drink for the coming feast while Artemis and she sat up every night in the ‘sulking’ room making decorations for the tree and the wards. They also, on an inspired whim of Artemis’s, made small papier mâché models of all their patients, all in their various service uniforms. Artemis passed on to Ellie the knowledge of modelling and painting she had learned at the hand of Miss Dennis, her governess, who had taught her in a room two floors above the room in which they sat. Ellie and she would sit by the fire modelling and painting and talking until midnight every night, until Artemis was glad to see that the worry lines on Ellie’s face were growing slightly less.
But there was no reprieve it seemed as far as Hugo was concerned. He had now become totally apathetic, which in some ways was even worse than his tempers and tantrums, and would just lie in bed staring at the ceiling, not even bothering with his puzzles, and ignoring all invitations for a game of draughts or Halma. Seeing him like this, moody and sulky, Artemis often got an uncontrollable desire to go and slap him, and tell him to get up and out of his bed. After all, he had the full use of his limbs, unlike so many of his less fortunate compatriots.
‘Don’t you feel like that?’ she asked Ellie one evening, as they sat winding bandages. ‘I do. I want to go and slap him, because it’s as if he’s pretending.’
To her surprise, Ellie suddenly laughed. ‘That’s one of the things I love most about you, you know!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re so darned honest! Sure I do! There are so many times I want to slap him! Not on the hand, or even the face! You know where? I’d like to put him over my knee and slap his backside!’
They both collapsed with laughter. They knew it wasn’t that funny, but they also knew they needed to laugh.
As if he’d sensed it, Hugo suddenly turned over a new leaf, on the morning of Christmas Eve, actually getting up from his bed unprompted, for the first time in weeks, to go and wash and shave. Later, after he had helped with everyone else to put up the decorations on the Christmas tree, which Ellie had placed deliberately in its usual position in the hall in the hope of jogging his memory, he then asked one of the nurses if she would fetch his clothes. Running upstairs, but only after she was well out of Hugo’s sight, Ellie hurried to their bedroom to fetch something for Hugo to wear, which she gave to the nurse.
Ten long minutes later Hugo reappeared, immaculately dressed in shirt and tie, fair-isle sweater and grey slacks. Ellie kept out of sight, hidden with Artemis, as the nurse helped dress her husband. Hugo seemed like his old delightful self, not cursing the nurse when she did up his shirt and trousers, or pushing her aside when she pulled on his socks. He sat there smiling happily, as if he’d more important things on his mind.
‘Come on,’ Ellie whispered to Artemis, taking her hand. ‘Let’s give it a try.’
‘No,’ Artemis replied, withdrawing her hand. ‘You go. If he’s going to recognize anyone, it has to be you.’
Ellie stared at her, but Artemis just stared back, nodding her head for Ellie to go to Hugo. After taking a deep breath, Ellie went.
‘Hullo,’ Hugo said, giving Ellie a warm smile. ‘Just the person I was looking for. Come on.’ He took her by the elbow. ‘Take me round this rotten old hospital you run, nurse.’
Ellie took him round the house, about which Hugo asked questions as if he had never seen any of it before. This at least was encouraging since Ellie considered it had to show a return to a certain level of consciousness which had previously been absent. He also wanted to know what he was doing in hospital? Ellie told him he’d suffered a head injury, that it had affected his memory, but that hopefully he was now well on the way to recovery.
‘Where did I hurt it? Did I fall over?’
‘You hurt it abroad,’ Ellie said. ‘In the desert. You were in an explosion.’
Hugo turned and stared at her, then started to laugh. ‘I’ve never been abroad,’ he said. ‘So that’s not true. And I’m too young to have been in a war.’
Before Ellie could discuss the point further, although she could see the ground falling away in front of her, Hugo’s attention was suddenly arrested by what he saw in front of him, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
They had been returning from the saloon the back way, quite deliberately, so that Hugo would have to pass through the hall where he had been painting his murals before he left to join up. This was where he had come to a halt. Without moving or saying anything he stared at the wall, covered in his unfinished paintings. Then he went to the foot of the stairwell and started to climb the stairs to get a better look. For ages he stood there, in complete silence, staring with mute astonishment at the figures before him, and the depiction of life at Brougham. Then he slowly sank down, on to a stone step, and started to weep.
‘What is it, Hugo darling?’ Ellie asked quietly, putting a hand on one shoulder.
Hugo moved his shoulder away sharply, away from her touch. He stared up at her, through his tears. ‘Tom,’ he said. ‘It’s Tom. I must find Tom.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Artemis asked, when Ellie found her.
‘I don’t know,’ Ellie said, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. ‘I don’t actually know.’ She looked round the doorway and saw Hugo still sitting where she had left him, rocking backwards and forwards on the step. Then she looked back at Artemis and grabbed her by the arms. ‘I don’t know!’ she whispered urgently. ‘Just go to him. Go on! Go to him!’
Artemis hesitated. She looked up at the wall paintings and then back to Hugo, who was looking straight ahead of him, somewhere back in the past. She went through the huge colonnaded doorway and walked across to where he sat. He never looked round as she approached, not once.
‘Hullo?’ she said as she reached the staircase. ‘Hugo?’
She held on to the iron balusters, not far from where he sat. He looked round at her, and when he saw her, a smile spread right across his face. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘Artemis. Thank God.’
Artemis was convinced there was only one person who was mad, and that was Hugo. She swore she had seen the light of madness in his eyes the night before when Ellie, against Artemis’s better judgement, had gone, as Ellie called it, for broke.
‘Look at me, Hugo, please,’ Ellie had said, very calmly and quietly when all other reasoning had failed. ‘Look at me, Hugo,’ she had said, ‘and then look at Artemis.’
‘No.’ Artemis had countered, knowing what was coming. ‘Don’t be such a damned fool, Eleanor.’
‘We’re going to have to find out sooner or later, Artemis,’ Ellie had returned. ‘So come on look at us, Hugo. Look at me, and look at Artemis, and tell us who you love.’
Hugo had absolutely no hesitation in telling them. ‘Artemis,’ he’d said, smiling, eyes shining. ‘Artemis. She’s my wife.’ And then he had taken up her hand and kissed it.
Ellie sent for a specialist. Someone Artemis had heard was brilliant. Mr Peake locked himself away with Hugo for most of the day. When they emerged, Hugo looked relaxed and happy, while the consultant looked at his wit’s end. He summoned Ellie back into her own office where he had conducted the examination and once again sat her down opposite him.
‘It would be easier if I could find him to be mad,’ he said finally. ‘It would make it all so much easier all round if we could just say it’s a very sad case, but the poor chap’s off his head. But it’s not as easy as that. You see, apart from this one central confusion, your husband seems about as sane as the next man.’
‘I see,’ said Ellie, ‘I’m a central confusion am I?’
‘I have to explain this in medical terms, Mrs Tanner. I have to view this totally objectively.’ Ellie stared at the floor, embarrassed for both of them. ‘Obviously your husband’s memory process is not properly repaired, of that there’s no doubt. That’s what I meant by a central confusion.’
‘But why has his mind done this to him? Has it done it because that’s what he wished all along? That he wishes subconsciously he’d spent his life with –’ she stopped and looked back down at the floor, then raised her head again, shaking out her hair. ‘You know what I mean, Mr Peake. Some people get a blow on the head and lose their senses. Perhaps other people get a blow on their head and come to theirs.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Peake replied. ‘No I don’t think that’s really the case at all.’ But from the look in his eyes, and from the way he stared over-deliberately into Ellie’s eyes, Ellie knew he must be lying.
She was only half concentrating when she opened the door of her house and found Hugo on the step, smiling at her. She had been reading a cablegram which had just arrived from Patsy, confirming his well-being and promising more news in a following letter. If she had been concentrating to the full, she might have better read the look in his eyes, the look she had seen the night before, when she had tried to prevent him from entering her house until she’d found out what he wanted. As it was, she didn’t, and before she knew what was happening Hugo was in the house and had taken her into his arms.
‘Hugo –’ she said. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing!’
‘I followed you, Tom!’ he whispered. ‘Down from the hospital.’
Artemis struggled to get free from his arms.
‘You’re not on your own, are you?’
‘Of course I’m on my own, Tom,’ he said. ‘We don’t want anyone else here, do we, when we’re making love. Love’s a secret.’
She pushed against him, but he had her held fast. Yet it wasn’t the Hugo she knew who was holding her, she could see that from his eyes. She was being held by a stranger, and all at once she felt a little of the fear and desperation that poor Ellie must constantly be feeling.
‘Why don’t we go into the drawing room?’ she suggested. ‘Let’s go in there and talk.’
‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘In a minute. First, I want a kiss.’
‘No,’ said Artemis.
‘Yes,’ Hugo insisted. ‘Christ knows I’ve waited long enough for another one.’ He lifted her off her feet and kissed her.
Artemis struggled, pushing at his chest with all her might, trying to move her mouth away from Hugo’s mouth which he was forcing against her own. But he was too strong, and even when she did manage to turn her face half-away from him, he simply turned her face back to him with a smile and continued kissing her.
Moments later, while she struggled to catch her breath, he lifted her off the ground completely, and with one hand under her knees and one round her slender waist, carried her into the drawing room.
Artemis realized there was no sense in shouting or screaming for help because there was no-one to hear her. Rosie was out, of course, gone away down to the village for some provisions, and there wasn’t anyone else within earshot. And she had shut Brutus away in the kitchen to finish off his food. Besides, from the strange detached way Hugo was looking at her, Artemis had an odd feeling that if she did try to shout or struggle, she might upset the precarious balance of his mind and put herself in even graver danger than she already was. So she decided to try and humour him, and perhaps to talk him down.
As he carried her over to the sofa, where he put her carefully down, Artemis thought fleetingly of the irony. For so long all she had done was resist Hugo, and bury the love she had for him: in Ireland when they first met and then in London and in Brougham when they had been left alone with each other. On every occasion she had refused him, although she would have given anything, at times she thought perhaps even her life itself, to have him make love to her just once. Now she was desperately trying to find a way to stop him doing so, to prevent him doing the very thing she had so often hoped and prayed he might do, sweep her up in his strong arms, and make love to her.
‘So what do you want to talk about, Tom?’ he asked, as he sat down on the sofa close beside her, putting a hand on her arm lest she move away.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ she said vaguely. ‘We’ve got so many things to discuss.’ With her free hand Artemis brushed her hair once again from her eyes, while she cast a careful eye around to see if there was anything she could use as a weapon to protect herself, or if it came to it, with which to hit Hugo. They were sitting by the fireplace, but all the heavy fire irons were arranged on the far side and well out of reach.
‘I don’t really think I want to talk, Tom,’ Hugo sighed. ‘I think I just want to make love.’
‘No, Hugo,’ Artemis began. ‘No! Wait!’ But it was too late. Hugo had turned her to him and once again was kissing her. ‘No, Hugo!’ Artemis cried, getting free momentarily. ‘Please!’
Hugo just smiled, and kissed her into silence. He pushed her back on to the sofa, half lying, half sitting against the cushions, smiling at her all the time, as he undressed himself. Then leaning over her, he began to undress her, slowly, taking his time, still smiling, unbuttoning her wool shirt and then bending down to kiss her as he ran a hand inside her open shirt to touch and hold one of her breasts. He looked at her again, right in her eyes, but the smile was gone and his own eyes were open wider, as if he was surprised by what he saw as he eased off her shirt and slipped the straps of her camisole down from her pale white shoulders, running a hand through the back of her soft long blonde hair, and then leaning over to her again, but lower now, to kiss both her perfect breasts. And as he did Artemis hardly moving, hardly daring to breathe, reached out as slowly as she could to pick up the decanter from the drinks table, which she then raised very slowly. Wr
apping Hugo’s head to her breasts with her other arm and moving her arm at the last moment to leave herself a clear target, she brought the heavy decanter down on the back of his head and Hugo fell away, slipping silently and slowly to the floor, where the blood from the wound on the back of his fair head trickled on to the floorboards.
Artemis reached for the telephone, never taking her eyes off the unmoving body, as she felt for the dial and rang Brougham. ‘It’s me,’ she said when Ellie was at last fetched to the telephone. ‘Look, I think I’ve killed Hugo.’
‘I don’t quite understand how he got here,’ Artemis said to Ellie, after explaining what had happened. ‘Normally you keep such an eye on him.’
‘He gave his nurse the slip,’ Ellie explained. ‘He complained of a headache and took himself back to bed. Then he stuffed some pillows under his blankets –’
‘That old trick.’
‘Yes. That old trick,’ Ellie agreed. ‘But it worked. What about you? Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ Artemis said. ‘I’m all right. It just gave me a bit of a fright, that’s all.
Ellie looked at her as they sat together in the drawing room, waiting for the hospital’s resident doctor to finish his examination of Hugo, who had been carried half-conscious upstairs to the spare room.
‘Is something the matter?’ Artemis asked, noticing Ellie’s odd look.
‘No of course not,’ Ellie replied. ‘I was just wondering.’ She paused and looked down at her fingernails, before continuing. ‘It’s just that I don’t quite understand why you let him in?’
Artemis explained that she had already explained. ‘I just wasn’t thinking,’ she said.
‘I know,’ said Ellie. ‘But it still seems rather strange. I mean you must have wondered what on earth he was doing down here. By himself.’ Ellie lapsed into silence for a second. ‘Unless –’ she went on with a little shrug of her shoulders.
‘Unless what?’
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I let him in, Eleanor,’ Artemis said quite crisply, ‘because I didn’t have much choice.’
In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 51
