Artemis called for him, but the yard was deserted, and realizing there was no time to spare, she took the key from the peg, unlocked the cupboard, and took out the loaded gun. She would have to despatch the animal herself.
Hurrying back out to the yard, she called once more for Jenks, but there was still no reply. She looked at the gun in her hand and tried to remember the procedure. She had seen it done often enough not to need too much reminding. Straight down, between the ears, and a quick and merciful death. She left the yard as quickly as she could go, and by the time Jenks had returned from checking the horses out at grass, there was no longer any sign of her.
Ellie was so busy talking and laughing with Hugo that she didn’t notice Artemis as she hurried as fast as she could back across to the field.
Hugo did. All at once he stopped and stared ahead of them, as the sunlight caught the barrel of the gun.
‘What’s the matter, Hugo?’ Ellie asked, turning back to see now Hugo was no longer at her side. He was standing behind her, with his eyes wide open, an odd, lost look about them. ‘Hugo?’ Ellie called to him again. ‘What’s the matter – don’t you feel well?’
Above the noise of the engine, he could hear nothing. It was so hot, appallingly hot, so hot you could hardly breathe. And there was dust, no not dust, it was sand. Everywhere there was sand. And blood. There was blood everywhere as well, on him, all over him, blood everywhere, all over the inside of the boiling vehicle, and there was this dead man in his arms, across his lap, the blood still shooting out of his head and drenching him, soaking his shirt and his shorts and his bare arms and his hands as he held the dead man, this man who had been alive a moment ago and was now dead. Shot through the head by a sniper’s bullet.
Through the haze of sunshine and the glare that was in his eyes, Hugo searched and stared, but there was no-one there now, just a gate to a field beyond swinging on its hinges, and the hot desert sun blinding his eyes. Hugo put a hand up as a shield from the sudden brightness of the light that seemed to have burst somewhere deep inside his head, as at that moment, that very moment he heard the unmistakeable crack of a gunshot.
‘No!’ he shouted suddenly, grabbing Ellie’s hand. ‘No! No quickly! She can’t! She mustn’t! Quickly – Tom can’t shoot herself! Not without us! Remember? That was the agreement! If one goes, we all go! Quickly! Quickly – run, Ellie, run! Run!’
And running, running, running as fast as he could and as fast as he could take his wife with him, and before Ellie could say anything or ask anything, Hugo ran to find Artemis, who when they finally reached her was standing over the body of her dead horse.
The sorrow of losing the mare was drowned in the euphoria which followed Hugo’s recovery. At first Hugo’s sole concern was for Artemis, mindful of the love she had for her horses, while Ellie was torn between feelings of joy at Hugo’s apparent return to normality and Artemis’s loss.
‘We have to keep things in perspective,’ Artemis said, taking Ellie aside when the three of them had repaired to the Dower House. ‘I’ve lost a horse, but you’ve recovered Hugo. Which is more important. And who knows? If the mare hadn’t died like that, at that particular moment and everything, who knows? Hugo mightn’t have got his memory back. Not ever.’
‘I know,’ Ellie agreed. ‘It seems when he heard the shot –’
‘Exactly,’ Artemis interrupted. ‘As Nanny was forever saying, reproaches are often blessings in disguise, or some such. So come on. Let’s all get tight.’
Artemis despatched Rosie to her cellar to fetch two of her few remaining bottles of champagne, while Ellie sat with Hugo on the sofa.
‘All I can remember, Ell,’ he told her in answer to her question, ‘is I remember the explosion. That’s not true. I remember everything up to the explosion, the driver being shot, and his head – I can remember his . . .’ Hugo stopped and stared silently at the unlit fire, before putting both his hands on both his knees and gripping them tightly. ‘I remember us hitting what must have been a landmine, I suppose,’ he continued, ‘and then the next thing I remember is being in the field. And finding Artemis. With you.’ He turned to Ellie and smiled at her, but there was great sadness in his eyes. ‘What happened, Ell?’ he asked. ‘Something else must have happened. What happened to me – in between?’
Ellie took one of his hands in both of hers. ‘You lost your memory, Hugo,’ she told him.
‘Altogether?’
‘Yes,’ Ellie said. ‘Altogether.’
‘I didn’t even know you?’
‘No, Hugo. It was as if we’d never even met.’
‘My God,’ Hugo sighed. ‘God Almighty.’
Artemis, who had been standing with her back to them at the window, crossed the room and tipping Brutus out of her chair, sat down opposite.
‘Didn’t I know anyone, Tom?’ he pleaded. ‘No-one at all?’
‘Not a person, Hugo,’ Artemis replied. ‘You had no idea who or where you were.’
‘My God,’ Hugo repeated. ‘How terrible for you both. You must have despaired.’
‘Yes,’ Artemis said. ‘We did.’
The champagne changed the mood. That and the findings of Mr Peake when he arrived half an hour later to examine Hugo in order to try and ascertain whether or not his recovery was complete.
‘I told him what we told Hugo,’ Artemis said to Ellie, on her return after settling Hugo and his doctor in her morning room. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘On the contrary,’ Ellie replied, taking Artemis’s hand and sitting her down beside her on the sofa. ‘I wasn’t quite sure what we should tell Hugo. I didn’t want to confuse him.’
‘Quite,’ Artemis agreed. ‘I’d say we’d had quite enough confusion, wouldn’t you?’
The two women looked at each other, and then raised their glasses of champagne in celebration.
‘Cheers,’ said Ellie.
‘Absolutely,’ said Artemis.
Mr Peake’s initial diagnosis was guarded but optimistic. He told Ellie that Hugo appeared to have recovered his memory totally, with the exception of the period between the incident in the desert and the death of Artemis’s horse. ‘Over that period, his illness and confinement both in Cairo and here his mind is a complete blank,’ he assured Ellie, ‘which I hasten to add is no bad thing. And I would guess, and it’s only a guess because heaven alone knows how the mind works, I would guess that period of his life will always remain unremembered, probably because his brain has decided it is really of no importance.’
‘There’s no chance of my husband losing his memory again, is there?’ Ellie enquired anxiously. ‘Through another shock? Or – or an accident or anything?’
‘That I can’t guarantee, I’m afraid,’ Mr Peake replied with a smile. ‘After all, there’s a war on, and even were there not, who knows what tricks the mind might play? But provided he doesn’t overtax himself, and given your husband’s intelligence, I would say there is every chance of a full and total recovery.’
And in fact once he had accepted that there was a period in his life which was and would remain a total blank, Hugo never looked back, so much so that within two months he was determined to return to work. Ellie not unnaturally opposed such a notion, and lobbied for him to remain at Brougham and help her run the hospital.
‘Sorry, Ell,’ Hugo grinned. ‘No offence, but that’s really girls’ work.’
‘You’re not for a moment even thinking about going abroad again, are you?’ Ellie asked in horror.
‘There’s a war on, Ellie!’ Hugo laughed. ‘I’ll go where I’m told and do what I’m told!’
‘They won’t send him abroad,’ Artemis retorted when Ellie told her. ‘I mean he’s really still one of the walking wounded.’
‘Where there’s a will, Artemis,’ Ellie sighed. ‘You know Hugo. No of course they won’t send him abroad, but he might persuade them to give him a desk job in Whitehall.’
‘He could get killed anywhere, Eleanor,’ Artemis replied. ‘They’re
dropping bombs all over the place.’
‘This might seem ridiculous, Artemis,’ Ellie said. ‘But I’m just as worried about him being in the middle of an air raid, and not being killed, but . . . well. Losing his mind again. But this time for good.’
‘I see,’ Artemis said thoughtfully. ‘In that case, I’d better ring Diana. And she can have a word with my father.’
A month later Hugo was offered a job by the War Office.
‘In Whitehall?’ Ellie asked innocently.
‘No,’ Hugo replied. ‘In Woodstock. Blenheim Palace actually. I asked if there wasn’t anything in London, but apparently there isn’t. At least not anything suitable.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Artemis, scratching Brutus’s head between his ears. ‘What hard luck.’
22
The car had been the break he needed. After the first night in the woods outside the town, the initial elation had given way to a more realistic appraisal of his fortunes, and he realized that one slice of luck wasn’t going to be enough to see him through.
But then, two hours after darkness fell the second night, to his surprise he heard a car. Yes, there was a track below, he knew that. He’d seen it in the daylight, below the tree. But from where he was hidden, deep in the woods, the track looked hardly used. So perhaps the car was military. Perhaps it was a search party. He held his breath, hidden up among the high branches, and waited.
But the car was small, with a high revving engine, a private car. After a moment, the driver killed the engine and the lights, and then after another moment, a longer moment, opened his door. His passenger opened his door as well.
Or rather her door. He could see them below, in the moonlight, a man and a woman. He saw them embrace, and kiss passionately, and then strip down to their underwear before running off to make love in the woods. Availing himself of his good fortune, he stole all the man’s clothes.
On the third day he ran into a patrol. In response, he started to sing the verse of a song the extras in The Mortal Storm had sung, a song he had been delegated to teach them, while smiling and waving casually at the men on the opposite side of the road. The men passing him by were also singing. Most of them laughed and waved back.
Later that day he was stopped. The man who stopped him leaned out of his car and asked him something, something which he didn’t understand. So he shrugged, and as he shrugged the idea came to him to be deaf and dumb. So he pointed to his mouth, putting a finger on his lips, and then to his ears, while shaking his head.
The man opened the door of his car and gave him a lift to a village eighty miles north, talking to him non-stop, even though he was pretending to be deaf and dumb. Beyond the village he crossed the river hidden in a barge, and then over the next three days walked sixty miles across country with the help of the map he had stolen from the man who had given him a lift. He took food where he could, and wine or beer also, discovering that the more brazenly you stole something, the less chance there was of being apprehended.
The last leg was the hardest. The weather had turned cold, freezing at night and sleeting by day. For four days he had to stay hidden while waiting to stow away on a fishing boat which would take him to the island. But the boat didn’t dock. Instead it turned back, two or three miles from the coast, and so he had to slip overboard and swim ashore.
Half dead with hunger and cold and ready to concede defeat, he stumbled on a remote farmhouse where they fed him and hid him for two weeks until he could cross to the mainland on the far side of the sea. There he was safe, and there Patsy stayed, until the time finally came for his return.
23
Rosie gave her a set of hand stitched napkins.
‘Drawn threads and embroidery,’ Artemis said admiringly. ‘Whenever did you find the time, Rosie?’
‘In the evenings,’ Rosie told her, shyly. ‘I was as sure as anythin’ you’d noticed.’
‘They’re absolutely lovely, Rosie,’ Artemis said, showing them off to her guests. ‘Thank you.’
It was only a small birthday party, just Artemis, and Ellie, Hugo and Rosie. But it was a perfect one, exactly how a birthday should be. The four of them had lunch, cooked by Rosie from specially saved rations and laid out in the panelled dining room of the Dower House. Then they moved to the drawing room, where they all sat warmed by the log fire while Artemis opened her gifts.
There were cards and hand-made gifts from the nurses and the patients, as there were from all the staff and the ever faithful Jenks. Diana, as always, hadn’t forgotten, and had sent her a funny card and bottle of Scotch whisky.
‘She must have her own distillery,’ Hugo said. ‘She’s the only person we know who’s never short of a drop.’
Most surprisingly of all, there was a card and a gift from Artemis’s father. The card was a hunting print, naturally enough, signed ‘With best wishes, Papa’. But the present was much less predictable. It was a deep red leather bound book.
‘Surtees, I bet,’ said Hugo with a puckish grin. ‘Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour.’
‘Who’s Surtees for goodness sake?’ Ellie asked.
‘Wrote all about hunting in the nineteenth century,’ Hugo told her. ‘Marvellous stuff. Well?’ he asked Artemis.
‘Wrong,’ Artemis smiled, holding the book to her. ‘It’s poetry.’
‘John Masefield,’ guessed Hugo.
‘Percy Bysshe Shelley,’ Artemis replied.
Quickly she turned to opening her gift from Ellie, which was a gorgeous old hat Ellie had found in the attics of the house and which she’d retrimmed herself.
‘It must have been one of your ancestor’s, I guess,’ Ellie told her as Artemis tried it on. ‘Anyway, it’s just the kind of mad thing you like.’
‘You’re right,’ Artemis agreed. ‘I love it.’
Artemis was so delighted with it, she wore it while she opened Hugo’s present, which after giving a sigh of admiration she held up for all to see. It was a perfectly exquisite watercolour of Brutus, whom he’d pictured lying in the middle of a field of buttercups, and which he’d entitled ‘Brutus Absolutely Refusing To Fetch Any More Sticks’.
‘Thank you, Ellie,’ Artemis said. ‘And thank you, Hugo.’ She kissed them both.
For a while, after Rosie had cleared away lunch, time stood still, and the war-torn world seemed an age away. There was idle talk round the fire, reminiscences, moments fondly recalled of other birthdays and moments shared, and most importantly there was laughter, something that had too long been absent from their three lives, and which had only returned to Brougham with the restoration of Hugo’s memory.
After tea, in the late afternoon, Ellie and Hugo made their excuses and slipped away, leaving Artemis sad because the main part of the celebrations were over, but content that it had been such a happy day. She threw another log on the fire, and settled back with her shoeless feet up on the sofa, to read her much thumbed copy of The Secret Garden which Diana had given to her many birthdays ago. Brutus, now very deaf but otherwise in sturdy health, sighed deeply with contentment as he settled back down in front of the fire, and within minutes he was snoring deeply, fast asleep.
Artemis prodded him with her stick. ‘Sssshhhh, dog,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll only fall asleep as well.’
The dog looked round at her quizzically, and then settled down. Within seconds he was snoring again. This time Artemis smiled, and leaned over to ruffle his coat. Then she lay back on the cushions and opened her book.
‘I do love this book, Brutus,’ she murmured. ‘It’s odd. But one’s childhood books are rather comforting at a time like this.’
The dog snored ever more deeply, while the logs settled on to the fire with a hiss and a sigh. Artemis yawned and stared at the words in front of her, doing her best to keep awake. But the warmth of the fire and the sound of her dog sleeping finally proved too much for her.
The corridor she was in was long and dark, lit only by the candle in the palm of her hand. Like Mary, she knew this wasn’t the right cor
ridor, that the door she wanted was in a shorter passage, and that the door was covered in a sort of fabric. There was a crying sound somewhere, but it might be a bird, because she knew she was somewhere near the sea, and then there were some steps, a double set of steps which swept up to a wooden house. Opening the door she could still hear the crying but she knew the plane was down there somewhere, just the body of it, no wings, just the broken fuselage, while the light flickering in the palm of her hand sputtered and grew dim.
She was in the room. She had found it and she was in it. But all the furniture which had been so fine was burned and broken, and still she could hear the crying, and she knew who it was. The crying was her crying, and as she looked at the bed she saw Patsy sitting there, in his flying jacket and helmet, under which tumbled out some of his brown hair, over his forehead, dark against the paleness of his face with huge grey brown eyes which seemed too big. And although he was smiling, she knew he’d been tired, and exhausted, and close to death.
She drew nearer while the wax from the candle fell on to the palm of her hand. But now she was in the bed, she was lying on the pillows looking up and seeing him, turning her head round to him, opening her eyes wide to see him as he bent nearer and nearer to her, and she could feel the tears running from the corners of her eyes, tears which came from her heart, tears which she didn’t want to spill in case she woke up, and if she woke up he would be gone.
‘Who are you?’ she said at last, in a half-frightened whisper. ‘Are you a ghost?’
‘No,’ Patsy said. ‘Are you?’
It was Cousin Rose’s idea they should get married in Ireland, a notion with which Artemis was only too happy to concur.
‘I’d have thought you’d have wanted to get married here,’ Ellie had said, after she had spoken to Cousin Rose on the telephone. ‘I’d have thought you’d have chosen Brougham.’
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