In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 19

  ‘If you hadn’t left me a note,’ Artemis said, suddenly looking up at her, ‘I wouldn’t be sitting here now. Can you drive?’

  ‘No I can’t,’ Ellie said. ‘And I don’t see what that’s got to do with what we’re talking about now.’

  ‘Come on,’ Artemis rose, and her dog rose with her. ‘I’ll teach you. It’s terrific fun.’

  Ellie sighed and got up to follow.

  ‘“OK”,’ Artemis said slowly, staring at the dashboard. ‘First you turn this key, then you press this button.’ Artemis followed her own instructions and the car jerked suddenly forwards, catching Brutus off balance on the back seat so that he fell in a heap between the two girls.

  ‘That must be wrong,’ Artemis said with a frown. ‘Of course. First you have to pull this stick back here, so that it waggles.’ She demonstrated what she meant, disengaging the gear stick and setting it in neutral. ‘Then you press this button,’ she continued, pressing the starter, ‘and the engine should start.’

  It didn’t. No matter how often Artemis pressed the button. Ellie frowned and tried to help fathom it out.

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have turned this key back off,’ she said, pointing to the ignition key.

  ‘Of course I shouldn’t,’ Artemis said, turning it back on. ‘Quite right.’

  This time the engine fired first time, bursting into life and then ticking over in the manner of a large sewing machine.

  ‘OK,’ Artemis continued slowly, pulling suddenly at her small chin and as she tried to recall what she should do next. ‘Yes! Then you push this stick here!’ Artemis had hold of the gear stick which she was trying to ram up into first gear, but without depressing the clutch.

  ‘That can’t be right!’ Ellie yelled over the quite fearful grating noise.

  ‘No!’ Artemis agreed, looking down and frowning. ‘It can’t be, can it? No – of course. I forgot. You have to press a pedal. This one. That’s right. The one on the left.’ This time she managed to engage first gear almost noiselessly, with just a single clunk, while still frowning deeply and staring at the car floor. ‘And then –’ she said, doing her best to remember. ‘I know. Then you let the pedal go – sort of slowly.’

  It was all done with deep concentration. Ellie too was staring down at what Artemis’s feet were doing, quite fascinated, and quite unprepared for the subsequent stall the engine abruptly suffered as Artemis removed her foot from the clutch without opening the throttle, which this time threw them both backwards, but the dog again forwards, so that he became quite firmly wedged between the two front seats. Artemis tried to push him off with her left elbow.

  ‘Do sit down, Brutus,’ she ordered. ‘You’re really not helping. Let’s start again. Key on, press the button. Shove down the pedal, push up the stick. So what did I do wrong here?’ There was a short silence while Artemis racked her brain for the answer. Then she suddenly banged her hands on the steering wheel. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Press the other pedal. The one that makes the stupid thing go.’

  Because of her bad right leg, Artemis’s seat was pushed as far forward as it would go, practically jamming Artemis against the steering wheel, so that she had to steer with both elbows stuck out at right angles. Now she rammed her right foot down on to the accelerator, until the engine practically reached the limits of its revolutions.

  ‘And then!’ she yelled, turning to Ellie, ‘then you let go of the left pedal – like this!’

  She disengaged the clutch and the car shot suddenly forward again, but this time, thanks to the engagement of full throttle, in a series of much more violent bounds, forcing Ellie to cling to the top of her door, and the dog to abandon ship altogether over the side. Finally the engine stalled, nearly shooting Ellie out of the open top and wedging Artemis even more firmly against her steering wheel.

  ‘I must still be doing something wrong,’ Artemis said, totally bewildered.

  ‘You don’t say,’ Ellie retorted, rubbing her bruised knees.

  ‘The handbrake, idiot,’ Artemis suddenly said to herself. ‘You forgot the stupid handbrake. Key. Button. Left pedal. Stick thing. Right pedal. Honestly – it’s like falling off a log once you remember what to do. Other pedal – left pedal that is – and handbrake. And that’s it.’

  Free at last, the little blue car shot off at speed round the carriage sweep with Brutus chasing it, barking joyously all the while.

  ‘We’ll just go round the sweep a couple more times!’ Artemis called. ‘Until I’m absolutely used to it again! And then we’ll go off to the beach!’

  They seemed to Ellie to be going very fast, but this was an illusion caused by the car being driven flat out with the engine still engaged in only first gear. Which is the gear in which it stayed as without warning Artemis suddenly swung out of the carriage sweep and started to head down the drive, hurtling through every single pothole so that Ellie had to keep hold of the sides of her seat lest she be bumped out of the car altogether. Artemis bounced up and down beside Ellie in perfect synchronization as the car rose and fell and rose and fell through all the potholes, Artemis’s elbows sticking out at right angles while she clung on for her own dear life to the very proximate steering wheel.

  And then as the car rounded the last bend in the drive, it met Cousin Rose and Tutti coming in through the gateway in the pony and trap.

  ‘You’ll have to wave them out of the way!’ Artemis yelled. ‘I don’t think I can stop now!’

  Ellie found herself on her feet, grabbing hold of the top of the windshield with one hand, and waving violently with her other and shouting for Tutti to pull the trap over. He did so, just in time as the little car screamed past, and as Ellie sat back down in relief, she looked over her shoulder only to see the pony and trap disappearing into the laurel bushes.

  ‘Do you want me to go back?’ Artemis yelled as Ellie told her. ‘Because I can’t!’

  ‘It’s all right!’ Ellie yelled back, taking another look. ‘They’re out of the bushes! And they’re back on the drive!’

  ‘I would have thought your cousin would have had a car!’ Artemis said above the protests of the straining engine, as if that would have altered history. ‘Now which way do we go for the beach?’

  All the way to the beach, which fortunately wasn’t very far, Artemis drove in first gear. Ellie, who knew no better, just thought that the car was very noisy.

  ‘I agree,’ Artemis shouted back. ‘That’s the only thing I don’t like about it! In fact I was thinking of trying to buy a quieter one!’

  ‘Don’t you have to have a licence to drive?’ Ellie asked, as they turned off for the beach, straight in front of another trap whose driver tumbled slowly from his seat into the ditch as his pony shied away from the little blue car.

  ‘A licence?’ Artemis pondered. ‘Oh I shouldn’t think so. Not unless you’re carrying passengers, probably.’

  ‘So who taught you?’

  ‘No-one really,’ Artemis replied, stopping the car on the edge of the beach by applying the handbrake and then turning the ignition off while the car was still in gear, occasioning yet another series of precipitous jolts. ‘I picked it up sitting on one of the grooms’ knees when I was small, and he was driving the tractor. There’s not very much to it, you know. I mean it’s not like riding a horse, for instance. You just have to do things in a certain order.’

  The beach, a long pale yellow curl of sand running round a sparkling cove, was totally deserted, which was just as well since initially Ellie was an even worse pupil than Artemis was a teacher. It took Ellie a full quarter of an hour to get the car to go further than three feet without stalling it. By this time, Ellie was quite helpless with laughter, her sides aching with the pain of it, and the tears coursing down her face. Artemis did not find Ellie’s amusement at all funny, which only made Ellie laugh all the more.

  And then quite suddenly Ellie got the knack of the clutch and they were off, careering down the strand in first gear at nearly ten miles an hour, with the dog lo
lloping alongside them, happily splashing through the tiny waves and barking with joy.

  ‘This is easy!’ Ellie yelled. ‘Once you have the knack, it’s just easy! And fun, too! Oh boy!’

  Ellie started weaving back down the strand in a series of zig-zags, swinging the steering wheel from side to side, up to the water’s edge on one lock, and then to the top of the beach where the sand was still firm on the other. Finally she drove round and round in circles, big sweeping ones at first, and then down to the smallest she could make the car, until Artemis caught Ellie’s infection and began to laugh quite helplessly as well.

  ‘I’ve forgotten how you said you stop the darned thing!’ Ellie yelled.

  ‘Turn the key off!’ Artemis yelled back. ‘And pull on the handbrake!’

  Ellie did as she was told and the car stalled abruptly to a stop. ‘Now that was fun!’ Ellie exclaimed. ‘I mean it! But this has to be a very basic car, you know, Artemis. Because compared with what I’ve been driven in back home, it’s kind of rough. I should reckon this is a beginner’s model.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Artemis frowned. ‘Yes. I suppose it is quite titchy.’

  ‘Titchy?’

  ‘Small. And I did ask for one one could manage. And the man in the village yes – he did say one couldn’t get much simpler than this. It used to belong to a very old lady.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ellie agreed. ‘And she wouldn’t want anything too fancy. Or too fast. Still, if it only does ten miles an hour, you could almost do that on a bicycle.’

  ‘Do you think I should get something faster then?’ Artemis enquired.

  ‘Maybe,’ Ellie answered cautiously, the memory of the drive to the beach still all too fresh in her mind. ‘When you’ve had a bit more experience.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind something a bit faster,’ Artemis mused, watching her dog playing at the water’s edge. ‘It did take an age coming over today.’

  They fell silent, Ellie unwilling to encourage Artemis any further, and Artemis slipping into one of her brown studies.

  ‘Come on,’ she suddenly said, opening her car door. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Ellie. ‘Have you brought your costume?’

  ‘You don’t need a costume,’ Artemis replied. ‘Who’s going to see?’

  Ellie looked around. There was no-one in sight anywhere. ‘There could be someone in the grass or something,’ she argued.

  ‘So what?’ Artemis replied, kicking off her shoes and then sitting down on the running board to roll down her stockings.

  ‘You’re not going to strip right off, surely?’

  ‘No,’ Artemis said. ‘I’m going to keep my camiknickers on. Sorry. I mean I’m going to swim in my “pantees”.’

  Artemis looked at Ellie and grinned impishly, before unbuttoning her skirt and blouse, and peeling them both off. Then she turned round to face Ellie with her arms folded demurely across her chest, but with a frown on her face. ‘You can’t swim, can you?’ she said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Don’t let it stop you,’ Ellie replied. ‘I’ll have a paddle.’

  Artemis gave Ellie one of her long blank looks and then shrugged. ‘“OK”,’ she said, and started to walk towards the water.

  Ellie followed on cautiously, as if it was she who had no clothes on. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t have a robe on?’ she asked. ‘They’ll throw you in gaol, I bet. If anyone sees you. There was a party of nuns here yesterday.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Artemis retorted. ‘I swim like this the whole time in Kerry. Come on, Brutus!’ She called to her dog who was now chasing seagulls, and the dog, with one last despairing leap at an escaping bird, turned and cantered back to his mistress.

  Artemis needed her stick to get her to the sea, but tossed it away behind her as she reached the water’s edge. Ellie, pausing to roll her skirt up and tuck it into her underwear, realized what this meant to Artemis. For in her state of undress, Artemis’s deformity was all too visible, and it was impossible to dismiss it any longer as just a bit of a limp, particularly when seen in relation to the rest of her really quite perfect body. Her right leg was not only considerably shorter, but it was twisted below the knee almost at right angles, and the muscles and ligaments both above and below the knee, although not wasted, were considerably tighter and smaller than those on her good leg. To judge from the shape in which they now were, her right hip and the right side of her pelvis had also been badly damaged in the fall, for instead of roundness and symmetry there was a flatness and inequality, and both at the top of her right thigh and running even as high as her waistline, there were large areas of scar tissue. It was a body which had suffered what must have been a devastating accident.

  Ellie hurried to catch her friend up, who was already testing the water with one foot, the foot of her bad right leg. Ellie arrived beside her, and ran straight into the water and then straight out again.

  ‘Gee!’ she cried. ‘That is cold!’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Artemis said. ‘Of course it’s not cold.’ And started to walk without flinching until the water was up to her waist.

  Ellie didn’t mind what Artemis thought, but to her the sea was cold. It was cold but wonderfully clear, clearer than any water Ellie had ever seen. Through its small shimmering waves she could see the sand and the pebbles crystal clear below her, as she stood waiting to wade in further. Artemis by now had plunged herself under, and was already swimming, with an intensity and vigour which quite astonished Ellie. She watched Artemis swim way out to sea, with long, quick and strong strokes. From the way she was swimming, it would have been quite impossible to tell she had an infirmity.

  A good way out from the shore now, Artemis paused, trod water and looked back to Ellie whom she saw still standing in the shallows, a Venus returning to the sea. She waved at her and Ellie waved back, before hoisting her skirts even higher and beginning to paddle. Artemis watched her, and then swam lazily back to within hailing distance.

  ‘This is another reason I prefer the sea,’ Artemis called to Ellie, as she turned to float on her back. ‘It’s far easier to swim than to walk.’

  ‘From what I’ve just seen,’ Ellie called back, ‘you could swim in custard.’

  ‘I love water,’ Artemis replied. ‘There have been times when I could have swum out to sea, and – just disappeared.’ And then, she was gone, turning back on to her front and jack-knifing herself neatly into the gentle blue sea, to surface again what seemed an age later, gasping for air, laughing and shaking the water from her ears and eyes.

  ‘It’s so clear!’ she called. ‘I’ve never swum in a sea so clear!’

  Ellie watched with growing envy as Artemis disappeared below the waves again, to reappear twenty yards or so further along. She then swam a good hundred or so yards out to sea once more without stopping, before turning and swimming all the way back to the shallows, where she lay letting the water break over and around her.

  ‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘Simply wonderful.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could teach me to swim,’ Ellie asked, paddling out of the clear sea.

  Artemis eyed her. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said.

  ‘“OK”.’

  There was no-one around on the beach when they got back to the car, and no sign in the sand that anyone had been anywhere near. Just the marks of their own shoes and feet, and the paw marks of the dog. They looked very closely to make sure, and with good reason, because after they’d dried themselves off on Artemis’s car rug, and Artemis had got fully dressed again, they found their shoes were missing.

  ‘That’s the little people,’ Cousin Rose told them over sherry. ‘They’re forever taking people’s shoes. Isn’t that right, Tutti?’

  ‘It is not,’ the butler replied. ‘It’s got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘But there were no footprints round the motor car, Tutti!’ Ellie explained. ‘Only our own!’

  ‘My very point, miss,’ the butler nodded, ‘which I was just about
to make, had I been allowed. For if it had been the little people, there’d have been some little footmarks.’

  There then followed a long and earnest argument between Cousin Rose and her butler as to who then the culprit could be, Cousin Rose sticking staunchly to the leprechaun theory, despite the lack of physical evidence, while her manservant elaborated on the possibility that a seabird might well have made off with the shoes in order to make itself a nest.

  ‘Did ye ever hear the like?’ Cousin Rose snorted. ‘And what size of seabird would it have to be, man? It could hardly be a gull, because it wouldn’t be strong enough. So at the very least it would have to be a Gannet or even a Shag, would it not? And then it would be too something big to sit and nest on a girl’s little shoe! I mean did ye ever hear the like?’

  ‘There were no other footprints, madam,’ said the butler, ‘so that is conclusive.’

  ‘Aha!’ Cousin Rose cried, halfway through the soup, ‘I have it! It could have been one of the little people! On the back of a Shag!’

  After dinner, Artemis having been invited to stay the night, she and Ellie walked in the gardens and watched the moon rising above Bantry Bay.

  ‘Everything grows like mad here apparently,’ Ellie explained, as they walked past the lush vegetation and under the shadows of the palm trees, ‘because we’re on the end of the Gulf Stream.’

  ‘It sounds as if you’ve found a home then,’ Artemis said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘You didn’t say “they’re on the end of the Gulf Stream”, Eleanor. You said “we”,’ Artemis replied. ‘And why not? If I were you, I wouldn’t budge from here.’

  ‘OK,’ said Ellie. ‘So don’t.’

  ‘“OK”,’ said Artemis. ‘I won’t.’

  Cousin Rose was only too happy to have Artemis to stay, and for as long as she liked. On the morning of the second day, Artemis announced she was going to drive back to Lough Caragh in order to fetch what she needed, but Cousin Rose at once scotched such a notion, saying it was too far for a young woman to be driving alone and that Tutti would drive her. Ellie and Brutus squeezed in the back of the little blue motor and the party set off on a fine sunny midday with the bowler-hatted butler at the wheel.