In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 18

  So far the talk had been general, Ellie telling her cousin how all her brothers were doing, paying particular attention to Patsy, since he was Cousin Rose’s godchild. She told how it had always been a struggle for her father to raise the five of them until the boys were old enough to work, and how it had been just as well she’d been a girl and able to help him. Cousin Rose listened in silence. In the half darkness it was impossible for Ellie to make out what her relation was thinking, because she couldn’t see the expression on her face. Perhaps because of this she finally stopped.

  ‘Yes, go on, go on,’ urged Rose.

  ‘That’s all there is, nothing more. Not really.’

  ‘Interesting,’ her cousin nodded. ‘And what I’ve always thought. When people tell ye their histories, there’s no need for romances.’

  The butler returned to try and sound his small hand-held gong for the second time. ‘Will yous both come and eat?’ the butler demanded. ‘Before Aggie packs her bags for good?’

  There were no lights on anywhere, so Ellie followed her cousin, who from habit obviously knew her way in the dark.

  ‘Keep to the right along here!’ Cousin Rose called ahead of Ellie down the corridor. ‘For there’s precious few floorboards to your left!’

  Ellie did as she was told, running her right hand along the wall to guide her. And then at last there was a flicker of light, as the butler threw open the door of the dining room.

  Cousin Rose waited for Ellie at the threshold, and took her arm before Ellie could enter. ‘Ye’ll need to go steady here too, Eleanor,’ she announced. ‘Go round this side here. For the floor’s gone by the fire, too.’

  As she made for her place, Ellie could see what Cousin Rose meant. On the far side of the room there were no floorboards at all. The candlelight flickered and danced over an empty dark space where once had been laid a polished wooden floor.

  ‘It was a damp old winter,’ Cousin Rose informed her. ‘So we had to burn more of the floor than usual, but we’ll soon have it all to rights.’

  ‘We will not,’ the butler replied, pulling out Ellie’s chair for her. ‘We never do.’

  The table was quite beautifully laid, with Irish linen, Waterford glass and heavy silverware. And from what Ellie could see of the room, that too was beautiful, with its fine mahogany furniture, and the paintings on every wall. Every wall that was except one which was totally bare except for a large crack which zig-zagged down it. There was also a pile of rubble in the corner by the bare wall, which seemed to be old plaster which must have come from the ceiling, for there was a gaping hole above, just to the right of the long sideboard. And there was trouble with the fireplace too, since as her eyes became accustomed to the candlelight Ellie could see it was being kept standing thanks only to a couple of sturdy timber supports.

  ‘We won’t have the electricity,’ Cousin Rose said as she sat down. ‘Will we, Tutti?’

  ‘You won’t, madam,’ the butler replied, flapping at something unseen on the sideboard with a napkin. ‘I could do with some, personally.’

  ‘I won’t have the electricity,’ Cousin Rose continued, ‘because it wouldn’t do for the house. Besides, I’ve heard it gives ye headaches.’

  The butler sighed and left the room, while Cousin Rose threw open her stiff linen napkin which she then laid over her bosom, high up near her chin, like a child.

  ‘’Tis the mice, Eleanor,’ she said. ‘They have us annoyed.’

  Whatever the disrepair of the room the food was delicious and Ellie, who by now was starving, tucked in to the fresh brown trout which was served with just one fluffy cream coloured potato, the roast lamb served with more potatoes, fresh spinach and baby carrots, a mouthwatering savoury called Devils on Horseback, and a pudding made from whipped honey and cream, served with little sweet biscuits which Cousin Rose called ‘ratafias’.

  ‘Aggie’s a grand cook,’ was Cousin Rose’s only comment on the meal, ‘when she’s half sober.’

  To Ellie it was a dream, a fairy-tale spun round both the place and the people. For all this could surely not be connected to her dead mother’s past? Ellie had always understood that her mother’s family were poor. That they were of peasant stock, who had worked land belonging to others, and who had lived in rented shacks like the poor who lived and worked further down the line outside Boston, the poor whom Ellie had once seen and never forgotten when she had journeyed by train to visit a relative in Chicopee. And yet here she was, sitting in a grand house, albeit one which needed some repair, furnished with antiques and silver, fine paintings and glass and owned by a wonderful and striking woman who was her dead mother’s first cousin.

  ‘You enjoyed that,’ Cousin Rose said, as the butler brought in a tray of coffee and chocolates. ‘I can see from yer face.’

  ‘I’m enjoying everything,’ Ellie replied, ‘most of all just being here.’

  ‘I’ll bet ye,’ Cousin Rose said, squeezing a chocolate carefully between a thumb and a finger to ascertain its complexion, ‘that yer wonderin’ why yer mother ever left this place.’

  ‘I was wondering about a lot of things, as a matter of fact,’ Ellie answered. ‘This isn’t at all what I expected.’

  ‘What ever is?’ Cousin Rose sighed, rejecting one chocolate for another. ‘What ever is? Thank God.’

  ‘Am I really like my mother?’

  ‘Child – yer the spit of her. The spit. Only taller.’

  ‘My father –’ Ellie lapsed into silence.

  ‘If anything,’ Cousin Rose removed her linen napkin from her bosom and stared at Ellie. ‘If anything yer actually even better looking than she.’

  ‘But my mother was really beautiful. My father keeps saying how beautiful she was.’

  ‘Don’t you ever look in the mirror, child?’ her cousin asked her, ‘or have you always been too busy down on your hands and knees?’

  Ellie stared.

  ‘You can tell the truth and not a word of a lie, and you still won’t have told the truth,’ said Cousin Rose, nodding at yet another chocolate. ‘And isn’t that the truth?’

  The two of them sat on as the fire sunk into a grey dawn of its own making.

  ‘Yer mother would never have left these shores, Eleanor,’ Cousin Rose finally told her as somewhere in the dark of the room the grandfather clock chimed two, ‘she’d never have gone at all, if it hadn’t been for the tragedy.’

  ‘What tragedy might that be, Rose?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘Your mother was engaged to be married, d’ye see?’ said Cousin Rose impatiently.

  ‘Yes. To my father.’

  ‘Ah, before that, child,’ Cousin Rose corrected her, with growing irritation. ‘Yer mother was engaged first to be married to a local boy. Thomas Hackett. The rector’s son. He was as handsome as could be, and yer mother and he they made a grand couple. And then he was drowned, early one spring morning. Out by himself, he was, with the mayfly just hatched, hardly a mile up river from here, tickling trout. And didn’t he fall into the pool, dash his head on a rock, and wasn’t he killed. We thought that wouldn’t be the only death. We all of us thought yer mother would also die, from her grief.’

  ‘How old was she?’ Ellie asked quietly, and shivered in the growing chill of the room. ‘How long was it before she met my father?’

  ‘It was the year before. She was seventeen. And the year after, midsummer, yer father arrived from America, to see his own father, who was in Cork General, dying of nephritis. Ye know the rest. Yer mother was looking after yer grandfather, ye’ll remember. I’d paid for her to take up nursing after Thomas was drowned, do you see? And when her grandfather died, yer father proposed marriage just a week later. And yer mother agreed, and no wonder. For by jingo – but yer father was a sight! He was a fine-looking man. Strong boned and upright, and with the charm of the devil. Ye’d have to say he quite swept yer mother clean off her two feet.’

  ‘And then she followed him to America?’

  ‘She went and was married to him six
months later, wed to a man she’d barely known three weeks. Still, she had to go. Better that than staying here.’

  ‘But you said she loved it here.’

  ‘She’d not have married here, Eleanor,’ Cousin Rose replied. ‘All she’d have done was mourn. And been a spinster like meself.’

  ‘Why?’ Ellie asked her. ‘Are there not enough young men?’

  ‘There are not,’ Cousin Rose replied. ‘But that’s not the reason why I never married.’

  ‘May I ask?’ Ellie said after a moment, ‘what was your reason?’

  ‘Of course you may, child,’ her cousin replied, with a laugh. ‘I’d no mind to have a man bossing me around and isn’t that a caution? For look at me now?’

  Tutti appeared in the door of the old room, his shadow elongated by the flickering light of the lamps. ‘Come on now, have you no mind of the hour?’

  Ellie looked across at Cousin Rose. ‘I see what you mean.’

  8

  ‘Hullo,’ said a voice after nearly six weeks.

  ‘Artemis?’ said Ellie, trying not to sound surprised.

  ‘Where exactly are you?’ Artemis enquired. ‘I thought I’d drive over and see you.’

  Ellie paused to take stock of things before replying. Since she had left the note with her address and telephone number for Artemis at the desk of the Metropole, she had heard nothing from her, not a word.

  ‘Eleanor?’ she heard Artemis ask. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Listen,’ Ellie said, trying her best to sound as matter-of-fact as Artemis was sounding, ‘where are you?’

  ‘On the edge of a lake,’ Artemis replied. ‘In Kerry. I’ve tried to find Ballinacree on the map but I can’t. Someone said it was on Bantry Bay.’

  Ellie confirmed that it was then explained the route she should take down from Kerry, to Kenmare, on to Glengariff and then west along the coast road until she reached Adrigole Harbour. ‘Then before you come to Derreeny,’ Ellie finished explaining, ‘there’s a little road marked private. You go down that, and we’re at the bottom. Opposite Loughure Island.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘I’ve got the map here,’ Artemis said eventually, ‘and I’m just measuring it with my fingers. It’s just over twenty miles as the crow flies. Except I’d better stick to the road, the one here.’ There was another silence. ‘Look,’ she concluded. ‘It can’t be more than forty or fifty miles at the most. So I’ll see you for lunch.’

  And then the telephone went dead.

  Artemis finally arrived mid-afternoon. Ellie had intended to take the trap into Bantry to collect some more floorboards, but had cancelled the trip after Artemis had called and instead persuaded Aggie to change her day off until the morrow so that she could cook lunch for her and her guest, since Cousin Rose was away visiting in Ballydonegan. Aggie, who was three parts drunk by mid-morning, nonetheless managed to assemble a delicious looking confection of fresh prawn salad and salmon poached in white wine and cream, which sat on the dining room sideboard under glass covers until lunchtime came and went. Rather than concede defeat, Ellie ate a piece of freshly made soda bread with some cheese, and then went back to her work relaying the floorboards.

  Since Cousin Rose had quite strenuously opposed the notion of Ellie leaving her house in order to start earning her living, Ellie had agreed to stay on only if she could work for her keep. She was as determined to work as her relative was to have her stay, so finally Cousin Rose agreed that in return for her board and lodging, Ellie could do odd jobs around the place. The sort of jobs Cousin Rose had in mind were helping Aggie occasionally in the kitchen, and driving with Tutti and herself into town when there was any special shopping to do. By odd jobs she did not mean the complete renovation of Strand House, which is what Ellie had in mind.

  For in the five weeks since Ellie had started ‘odd-jobbing’, with the help of the garden boy, the hall had been reboarded and painted, as had the dining room. The holes in all the downstairs ceilings had been repaired and the dining room fireplace had been reseated. The only floors that were still awaiting new boards were on the landings and corridors of the uppermost floors, which must have been a source of plundered firewood for years, since all that remained anywhere was just a single one plank gangway.

  In fact Ellie was just on her way up to join the boy on the third floor to take up one or two boards which were rotting and dangerous, when she heard the high whine of a motor car engine coming up the drive. Forgetting that she had left him hammer in hand, Ellie rushed outside, just in time to see a little dark blue ragtop juddering to a halt in the carriage sweep, with Artemis at the wheel. Behind her sat a tall thin dog with a serious and lofty expression, and a coat of long wiry brown hair. It yawned as the car came to a halt, stood up and stretched, and then leapt effortlessly and gracefully out to go and inspect the adjacent undergrowth. Artemis, meanwhile, turned the ignition off while the gearbox was still engaged, so that the little car gave one last final leap and heave before lapsing into silence.

  ‘Blast,’ Artemis announced. ‘That’s the bit I always forget.’ Too late she disengaged the gear lever, before turning round to smile at Ellie. ‘Hullo,’ she said.

  ‘Hi,’ Ellie replied, opening the car door for her guest. ‘I take it not only did you not take the crow’s route, I imagine you didn’t even bother with the roads.’

  ‘Irish signposts are very deceptive,’ Artemis said, reaching for her stick and pulling herself up out of the car. ‘They say one thing, but mean quite another. What a good spot.’ Artemis stood and looked for a moment out into the bay, the breeze ruffling her soft blonde hair.

  ‘What’s your “spot” like?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘I prefer the sea to lakes,’ Artemis replied. ‘Lakes can sometimes get awfully doomy. Brutus?’ She called to her dog who was happily rolling in something private. ‘Brutus, stop that and come here.’

  The big dog got up, shook his slim body, and wandered over to sit by his mistress, who laid a hand on his fine head. He looked up at Artemis and then at Ellie, as if to seek an introduction. He had very pale and slightly squinty eyes, set quite close together, which gave him a distinctly comical air. He held a large paw up and dandled it at Ellie, waiting for it to be taken. Ellie, unable to resist the look in his eyes, took the paw and solemnly shook it.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s fun?’ Artemis asked, turning to look at the house. ‘He wandered up to the house one day and adopted me. Haven’t a clue where he came from, although at least six people have tried to take money off me for him. He didn’t belong to any of them, because he barked at them all. I had to leave my two terriers in England, so I’m rather glad really. I do like this house. It’s about 1780 isn’t it? My favourite.’ Artemis began to wander across to the house, and as soon as she moved the dog was at her heels following.

  ‘Artemis –’ Ellie started, preparing now to demand an explanation for her friend’s behaviour.

  ‘I suppose I’ve missed lunch.’

  ‘It’s practically teatime, actually.’

  ‘I’m starved,’ Artemis said, turning round to Ellie and wide-eyeing her. ‘I could eat lunch and tea.’

  Which she did. They both did, after Ellie had fetched Aggie’s cold collation out to the terrace where they sat in the warm afternoon sunshine, and devoured the lot, followed, after a decent interval of an hour or so, by tea and scones.

  ‘Aren’t there any staff?’ Artemis enquired, as Ellie returned with the strawberry jam for the scones.

  ‘It’s cook’s day off,’ Ellie explained, ‘or rather it was until you phoned and said you were coming for lunch.’

  ‘Sit,’ Artemis instructed her dog before feeding it a scone, and ignoring Ellie’s comment. ‘And don’t snatch.’

  ‘And there’s a butler called Tutti,’ Ellie finished, ‘who’s driven Cousin Rose over to Ballydonegan.’

  ‘Is he Italian?’ Artemis enquired. ‘The butler?’

  ‘No,’ Ellie replied. ‘Cousin Rose called him �
��Tutti” because when he first arrived, years ago, all he would say was “tut, tut, Miss Rose”. As a matter of fact, he still does on occasion. Whenever Cousin Rose asks for another sherry, or a second helping or something. It’s so funny to hear him. I didn’t know where to put myself for the first few days.’

  ‘What’s Cousin Rose like?’ Artemis asked, buttering and strawberry jamming yet another scone.

  ‘I guess she has to be just about the nicest person I’ve ever met,’ Ellie replied with a smile.

  Those were the first direct questions Artemis had asked since they sat down to eat. Although Ellie had tried to elicit information from Artemis as she ate her way through the cold salmon and salad, Artemis either totally ignored Ellie’s questions, or answered them with a series of typical Artemis non-sequiturs, so that by the time they were drinking tea and eating home-made scones, Ellie was really none the wiser as to what exactly had happened since she had left the table in the hotel that day and gone to ring Cousin Rose.

  ‘Artemis,’ Ellie started again, determined to sort matters out. ‘You really still haven’t told me exactly why you vanished that day in Cork.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if I’d vanished,’ Artemis replied. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  ‘I see,’ Ellie nodded. ‘It’s just quite normal, is it? I mean it’s normal behaviour not to leave word as to where you’ve gone? And why?’

  ‘What was the point? You weren’t interested in my proposition.’ Artemis shrugged and bent down to scratch her dog’s chest.

  ‘That doesn’t explain why you just got up and went,’ Ellie retorted. ‘If I hadn’t left you a note –’