In Sunshine Or In Shadow Read online

  They stared at each other for a moment, and in that moment Ellie felt at once as if she knew this girl, as if they had always known each other. And then the girl at the bar turned away and continued to stare into the mirrors behind the shelves.

  Ellie looked round, uncertain of where to go or what to do.

  A steward came to her rescue. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said. ‘Are you meeting someone? Or if not, would you perhaps like me to bring you a drink through to the library?’ The second half of the sentence was less of a question and more of a helpful direction. Ellie thanked him, ordered an orange soda, and then allowed herself to be shown out of the bar and into the book-lined library.

  As she was leaving, Artemis looked back at her as surprised to see the girl in the wedding dress as she was curious as to why she was aboard. Honeymooning, no doubt, she thought, turning her back to the bar. Honeymooning with her old husband.

  ‘Another drink, sweetie?’ the elder of her two English companions asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Artemis replied, turning back to the bar. ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Good show,’ said the younger man. ‘Then we’ll all have dinner.’

  ‘Good show,’ the older one repeated. ‘Yes, why not?’ He looked at Artemis. ‘OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ Artemis said, as her third dry martini was placed in front of her. ‘Perfectly.’

  Ellie was seated at a table for one at the side of the balconied dining room, but was accorded the same sort of service the guests at the Captain’s table were enjoying. As she waited for her first course, she examined the details of the huge saloon, with its ornamental plaster ceiling, from where was suspended an enormous crystal chandelier, and its balustraded second floor, which overlooked the main eating area. The table cloths were of fine linen, the glass was heavy and cut, and the plates were bone china. In the corner a small string orchestra played, and were it not for the motion of the ship and the ever audible throb of its massive engines, Ellie imagined she could be in a grand hotel, or at a party in some vast private house.

  The food was excellent, fresh melon, clear chicken soup, succulent sole, a tender sirloin, and a featherweight peach melba. It was quickly eaten, Ellie having no company to delay her.

  Thanking her waiter for looking after her so well, Ellie rose to leave just as the girl with the limp was coming down the main staircase, in the company of the two young men with whom she had been seen in the bar. The young men were laughing and joking, while the girl with the limp, either because the ship was now rolling quite considerably or because she had drunk too many cocktails, looked deathly pale and was holding on grimly to the left handrail while swinging her bad right leg out in front of her as she made her way down the stairs. A little late in the day one of her companions suddenly remembered his manners, and offered her an arm which was at once refused.

  Ellie eased herself past the threesome as it made its awkward way down, but this time the girl with the limp was too busy concentrating on her progress to notice her.

  ‘Hard a-starboard!’ one of the young men laughed, waiting for the girl to get to the foot of the stairs. ‘Hard a-port!’

  ‘Abandon ship!’ called the other. ‘All hands on deck!’

  Before disappearing in search of her suite, Ellie gave one more look behind her as she reached the balcony and wondered why such a beautiful girl should need to keep such company.

  ‘No.’

  Ellie woke suddenly, aware of something wrong, but unsure what.

  ‘I said no.’ It was a girl’s voice, from somewhere nearby. Ellie sat up and at once grabbed the rail on the wall by her bed, so violent now was the motion of the ship.

  ‘Just one little kiss,’ said a man’s voice. ‘Be a sport.’

  ‘No!’ The voice was now considerably raised, and contained a definite note of panic. ‘Don’t be such an idiot! I said no!’

  By now Ellie had worked out where the voices were coming from, and was out of bed and hanging on to the knob of the intercommunicating door, the door which, had things been different, should have led Ellie through to her husband’s cabin, but which now contained a girl in trouble.

  ‘If you don’t get out now,’ the girl’s voice continued, ‘I’ll ring for the steward!’

  Ellie pressed her ear closer to the door in order to catch the reply, but heard nothing. So she dropped to her knee and peered through the keyhole.

  She could just make out two figures on the bed, a man in evening dress, who seemed to be struggling as if in slow motion with a girl in a pale pink evening gown. The girl was being held down and was beating the man on his back with her one free hand.

  Ellie knew who it was by the dress long before she saw the silver topped cane lying on the floor.

  Infuriated that a man should be trying to take advantage of a girl, of whatever kind, Ellie allowed her Irish temper its full force. She shot the bolt on the door and praying that it wasn’t locked the other side, turned the handle. It flew open as she fell against it, thrown off balance by the rolling of the ship, and Ellie found herself propelled headlong into the adjoining cabin.

  The man didn’t hear her at first, he was too busy trying to force himself on the girl lying underneath him. But the girl saw Ellie and her cornflower-blue eyes widened. They opened wider still when Ellie jumped on the man’s back and with one knee in his back and both her hands sunk deep in his hair, pulled him off her. Astonished by the attack, he fell to the floor, his own balance helped neither by the amount of drink he had taken nor by the pitching of the ship.

  ‘What on earth –’ was all he managed to utter before Ellie, hanging on to a chair which was chained to the floor, kicked him as hard as she could, and where she hoped it would do the maximum harm. The girl’s assailant gasped and fell forward, clutching himself.

  ‘Good lord,’ Artemis said, sitting up and staring at Ellie. ‘Where on earth did you learn to fight like that?’

  ‘I’ve got four brothers. Are you OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Artemis said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I think I’m “OK”, thank you.’ She dwelt just overlong on the Americanism, and looked up at Ellie, staring at her with wide bright blue eyes.

  Ellie half-smiled unsurely, then pointed to the man who was still lying groaning on the floor. ‘Do you think we should call a steward?’

  ‘Oh I don’t think so,’ Artemis sighed, leaning over and taking a silver drink flask from a bedside drawer. ‘Too many questions and answers. You know the sort of thing. A man being in one’s room means one was asking for it, don’t you think?’ Again she fixed Ellie with her deadpan stare, before opening the top of the silver flask.

  ‘All I know,’ Ellie replied, ‘is that if someone tries to take advantage of you, he should answer for it.’

  ‘Really?’ Artemis asked, pouring out two glasses of brandy. ‘How quaint.’ She smiled, not as Ellie might have expected, a frosty little smile, but an impish one, as if the whole incident had been a huge joke.

  ‘Here,’ she said, offering Ellie a glass.

  ‘What about Jack the Ripper?’

  ‘I think we can let him crawl along now, don’t you?’ Artemis said, picking her cane back up off the floor and prodding her assailant in the backside. ‘I can’t imagine he’ll feel much like playing silly asses again on this voyage. Run along, Michael. Silly idiot,’ she added to Ellie, ‘can’t take his drink.’

  Still obviously in great discomfort, the man got up on his hands and knees, offering a target Artemis couldn’t resist, and picking up her ebony cane, she administered a well struck blow to his posterior, which sent him scuttling from the cabin.

  ‘There are such advantages in having a stick,’ she told Ellie. ‘Anyway, I’m Artemis Deverill. Who are you?’

  ‘Eleanor Milligan, but everyone calls me Ellie.’

  ‘From the way you fight, they should have more respect. And I should sit down if I were you. Before you fall down. It really has got quite choppy.’

  Quite choppy was an understatement. The wind was h
owling at gale force now, and the ship was rising and falling, higher and lower into ever-roughening waters.

  ‘Do you mind it choppy?’

  ‘This is my first time at sea,’ Ellie answered, ‘so your guess is as good as mine.’

  Artemis smiled and sipped her brandy. Then she pulled thoughtfully at her pretty little chin with her thumb and index finger. ‘Do you really have four brothers?’

  ‘Yes. But only one that I like. Do you have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No. Did your brothers teach you how to fight?’

  ‘One of my brothers did. My youngest brother, Patsy.’

  ‘The one you like, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘I have an uncle called Mary,’ Artemis said, thoughtfully pulling at her chin again. ‘Which I would think beats having a brother called Patsy.’

  ‘Pasty’s not a girl’s name,’ Ellie said defensively. ‘It’s a proper man’s name. In Ireland anyway.’

  ‘Well?’ Artemis stared back at Ellie without blinking. ‘Mary’s not a proper man’s name in England. Undo this, would you? I think I want to go to bed.’ She turned her back to Ellie so that Ellie could unfasten her dress.

  ‘OK,’ Ellie said and unhooked the girl’s dress.

  ‘OK,’ Artemis echoed and yawned, then holding on to the back of the chair, she unhitched the straps of her gown and then clung to it as it fell round her breasts. ‘Thanks again, but I really must go to bed now,’ she said. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ellie said, rising and putting her unfinished drink down on the dressing table.

  ‘Oh you can take your drink with you, it’s all right.’

  ‘I’ve had enough, thanks,’ Ellie replied. ‘I hope you sleep well.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Artemis agreed, still yawning gracefully.

  ‘Come on, American,’ Artemis said, shaking Ellie yet again. ‘You don’t sleep like a log. You sleep like an entire tree.’

  Ellie stared up at the serious blue-eyed face surrounded by a mop of blonde curls which was staring back down at her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Artemis asked. ‘You haven’t had the heaves, have you, Helen?’

  ‘I was asleep,’ Ellie replied. ‘And my name’s not Helen. It’s Eleanor.’

  ‘So come and have a walk round deck, and some breakfast,’ Artemis sighed irritably. ‘It’s a nice morning.’

  It was a perfect morning. The storm had abated sometime during the night, leaving a heavy swell but a bright blue sky. Gulls cawed overhead and hovered round the stern awaiting the next offering from the galleys, and now and then one of the last of the storm waves broke like fragments of frozen glass over the prow. The wind whipped off the sea, salting the girls’ skin and taking their breath away as they turned round to face it.

  ‘Wow!’ Ellie gasped. ‘I never reckoned it would be anything like this!’

  ‘You’re at sea now, you idiot!’ Artemis called back over the noise of the engines and the flapping of the rigging and the crash of the ocean. ‘What did you think it would be like?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Ellie laughed. ‘But not like this!’

  After two turns right round the promenade deck, Artemis stopped and leaned on the broad guard rail. ‘Imagine falling into that,’ she said, pointing at the grey-blue sea as it rushed past the hull. ‘What would you do, Helen, if I fell in?’

  ‘I wouldn’t jump in after you,’ Ellie replied.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Artemis agreed. ‘I should think not.’

  ‘I would if I could swim,’ Ellie said.

  Artemis looked at her, blue eyes widened, but without expression. ‘I keep getting your name wrong, don’t I?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ellie.

  ‘It isn’t Helen, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Ellie. ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘And I didn’t thank you properly for last night, did I?’

  ‘No,’ Ellie replied. ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘I was a bit tight, you see,’ Artemis said.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Ellie nodded. ‘I see.’

  ‘That’s “OK” then,’ Artemis smiled suddenly, the first proper smile Ellie had seen her give. ‘So let’s go and have some breakfast.’

  They turned their backs to the ever roughening wind and walked unsteadily back down the deck. As they went, Ellie held on to Artemis, and she to her.

  For the next twelve hours they talked. They talked through breakfast, which soon became lunch, which then turned into tea. For ten hours they sat and talked, and walked and talked, and ate and talked, played cards and talked, and even dressed for dinner with their bedroom doors open so they need not stop talking. With the consequence that, by the time they sat in the library sipping cocktails, they felt as if they had always been friends.

  ‘I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Me too,’ Artemis agreed, pushing an olive round the bottom of her glass. ‘Let’s have another drink.’

  She tapped the back of a passing waiter’s coat, instructing him to bring them another Martini and an orange soda, and a whole dish of olives.

  ‘Do you always do that to waiters?’ Ellie asked curiously.

  ‘Do what?’ Artemis asked, sucking the stone of her olive.

  ‘Pull waiters’ jackets like that.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Artemis tossed back her blonde hair and sighed. ‘Of course you had your brother to talk to,’ she said. ‘Patsy.’

  ‘And you had your nanny.’

  ‘Yes.’ Artemis shrugged. ‘Though one could hardly call talking to Nanny talking. I used to talk to Rosie.’

  ‘Who was Rosie?’

  ‘Oh Rosie was rather fun,’ Artemis replied solemnly, ‘Rosie was one of the nursery maids –’

  ‘Maids?’ Ellie echoed, picking up the plural. ‘How many did you have?’

  ‘Maids or nursery maids?’ Artemis asked. ‘There were four nursery maids and I don’t know how many maids downstairs. Why?’

  ‘There were four maids and a nanny?’ Ellie wondered. ‘Just to look after you?’

  ‘I thought you wanted to hear about Rosie?’ Artemis frowned.

  ‘Four maids and a nanny.’ Ellie shook her head in wonder.

  ‘Rosie,’ Artemis continued after giving Ellie a small look, ‘was rather big, with a sort of moon face, and always smelt of carbolic. And she had all these perfectly hideous stories about having babies. Everyone she knew was always turning black when they “birthed”. And biting their fingers off. Or chewing on iron bars. And she told me if I wanted to get pregnant, all I needed was to go into the graveyard at night. That’s all she heard her mother say. “Ah well”, she’d say when some girl from the village got into trouble, “that’s what comes of going down the graveyard”.’

  The waiter returned and put down a silver dish of green and black olives on the table in front of them. Artemis at once attacked them with her cocktail stick. ‘I actually only drink Martinis because I like the olives. And I’ve just had an idea for dinner.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ellie said to the waiter with a smile.

  ‘Are you listening, Eleanor?’ Artemis enquired tetchily. ‘I said I’ve had an idea for dinner.’

  ‘I’ll think I’ll start with the Charlotte Russe tonight,’ Artemis instructed the waiter. ‘Eleanor?’

  ‘I’ll think I’ll start with the trifle and cream, thank you,’ Ellie replied, staring fixedly at the menu.

  Artemis turned to the waiter and stared up at him. ‘Is there something the matter?’

  ‘I think I must have missed part of your order, madam,’ the waiter answered very gravely. ‘It seems I only have down your desserts.’

  ‘No, you haven’t missed anything,’ Artemis told him, having consulted his notepad. ‘You have it all down quite correctly.’

  ‘You both wish to start with a dessert?’

  Artemis sighed loudly and stroked her small chin suddenly. ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I wish to start with the Charlotte Russe, and Miss Milligan wishes to start
with the trifle and cream. I shall then have some cheese. Will you also want cheese to follow, Eleanor?’

  ‘I think so, please,’ Ellie muttered from behind the menu which was now hiding her face.

  ‘Good,’ said Artemis. ‘A little ripe Camembert for us both, please. Then I shall have the poitrine d’agneau, slightly underdone please. Eleanor?’

  ‘I shall have –’ Eleanor began, but then lost control and had to take several deep breaths before she could start again. ‘I shall have the roast duck.’

  ‘Miss Milligan will have the duck,’ Artemis repeated, in case the waiter had not heard Ellie’s faint order, ‘then I would like the filet de sole –’

  ‘That’ll do just fine for me, too.’

  ‘Then I think the potage à la tortue –’ Artemis ordered.

  ‘I’ll have the tomato soup, please,’ Ellie whispered.

  ‘And to finish –’ Artemis paused and took a long look at the menu. ‘Yes to finish I’ll have some caviar. Eleanor?’

  There was silence from behind Ellie’s menu, broken only by the occasional faint sniff. ‘I’ll have –’ she finally attempted. ‘I’ll just have the grapefruit!’

  ‘No of course you won’t,’ Artemis scolded. ‘That’s far too dull for dessert.’ She turned round to the waiter and handed him her menu. ‘Miss Milligan will have the vermicelli rissoles.’ Artemis took Ellie’s menu from her so that she had to turn away quickly, lest the waiter see the tears of laughter which were streaming down her face.

  ‘Would you perhaps both care for an aperitif, madam?’ the waiter asked, prepared now for anything.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Artemis replied. ‘We’ll have some black coffee and two cognacs.’

  ‘I think I’m going to die,’ Ellie confessed after the waiter had left.

  ‘I’ll let you off that outburst,’ Artemis warned her crossly, ‘but if you as much as smile again, even once, before you finish the last mouthful, you lose.’

  ‘Oh come on!’ Ellie protested. ‘We don’t really have to eat this, do we?’