In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 21

  ‘There’s a caravan, Miss,’ Tutti replied. ‘And where there’s a caravan, there’s tinkers.’

  ‘It could be someone on holiday,’ Artemis said vaguely.

  ‘On holiday?’ Cousin Rose asked with a laugh. ‘Did ye ever hear such a thing? Did ye ever? In a tinker’s caravan? I never heard such a thing!’

  ‘It belongs to a friend of mine,’ Hugo explained to Artemis the next morning, ‘who has a house down here. One of the MacGillycuddies. He bought it off a tinker and had it in his drawing room as a conversation piece.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Artemis replied. ‘Much better than the weather.’

  ‘There’s little wrong with this weather,’ Hugo mused, continuing to paint. ‘I was told to expect nothing but rain.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Artemis. ‘Would you sell that painting?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like it.’

  ‘That’s not what I said,’ returned Artemis. ‘I asked if you would sell it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hugo agreed. ‘Why? Do you want to buy it?’

  ‘No,’ Artemis said. ‘Because if you’re willing to sell it, it can’t be any good.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh – because you’re an amateur painter. And amateurs never sell the paintings they like. They sell only paintings they don’t think much of.’

  Artemis stared at him, and then picked his sketch book up from the top of his paint box, only for Hugo to take it back from her at once. ‘I only wanted to look,’ she complained.

  ‘And I don’t want you to look,’ he stated.

  The next time he stopped painting to turn and talk to her, she was gone. Hugo looked down the beach and saw her getting back into her car. He stood up to wave and call, and then thought better of it and sat slowly back down.

  Artemis did not go back to the beach the next day, nor indeed for several days. The following morning she persuaded Ellie to put down her paintbrush and go fishing instead on Glenbeg Lake, where they caught several good trout. They then drove round Ballycrovane Harbour and up to Kilcatherine Point where opposite Inishfarnard, under a clear blue sky, they ate the picnic lunch Aggie had prepared them.

  ‘Cousin Rose says they haven’t had a summer like this since before the war,’ Ellie said, shading her eyes against the sun.

  ‘You do know there’s going to be another war, don’t you?’ Artemis announced, beginning to peel a hard-boiled egg piece by careful piece.

  ‘Not today, Artemis,’ Ellie sighed. ‘We’ve had this over dinner all week.’

  Artemis threw a crust of bread to a circling gull, who swooped and plucked it out of the air. ‘I suppose Hitler’s just playing games,’ she said after a silence. ‘Having all those people assassinated so he could become chancellor.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful day, Artemis,’ Ellie groaned. ‘Can’t we just leave politics alone for once?’

  ‘It’s probably a beautiful day in Germany, too,’ Artemis replied, pulling herself up on her stick. ‘The same sun’s probably shining on all those young men who are being forcibly conscripted. And all the Jews they’ve passed laws against. I suppose they’re all thinking what a beautiful day, I’ll bet.’

  Ellie watched Artemis walk off with her big brown and white coated dog loping behind her, but knew better than to get up and follow. Instead, she packed the picnic up, put it back in the car, and then wandered down to the tiny beach below, where she lay down in the sun to doze.

  The next day Ellie was persuaded to go for another expedition, but that too fizzled out in what Ellie considered pointless argument, this time concerning America’s apparent indifference over Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia. The third day they drove down the finger of land the south side of Bantry Bay to Sheep’s Head, round the north side of Dunmanus Bay and down to Mizen Head, a trip specially requested by Ellie as she wanted to stand on the very bit of Ireland she had first glimpsed from the S.S. Baltimore. It was yet another fine, clear summer day, and Ellie did her very best to relish all the wonderful country and coastline they drove through and along, but she found her enjoyment confounded by the increasing darkness of Artemis’s mood.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ Ellie said as they neared Mizen Head. ‘But I just don’t seem to be able to say a thing right.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Artemis agreed. ‘You don’t.’

  ‘What the hell’s got into you anyway?’ Ellie rounded on Artemis. ‘It’s as if these past few days you’ve taken me out on these trips just to take it out on me!’

  Artemis said nothing. She just stared round briefly at Ellie and then drove on.

  ‘Aren’t you going to get out?’ Ellie asked when they’d arrived at the top of the great cliffs which form the Mizen headland. ‘Don’t you want to see the view?’

  ‘I can see from here,’ Artemis said, settling herself below the level of the windscreen.

  ‘It’s hardly the same experience,’ Ellie protested.

  ‘You Americans and experience,’ Artemis sighed. ‘You’d honestly think you invented it.’

  Ellie stood on the edge of the cliffs, with the Atlantic far below her, and for the first time since she’d arrived in Ireland, as she looked back across the great ocean, she realized with some surprise she felt homesick. At this moment she would have given anything to be home, seeing Patsy coming home with something for her, a bunch of violets, a second-hand book, a new magazine, to tell her a joke he’d heard at the office or a story he’d overheard down at the drugstore. Whenever the others were out, she and Patsy would sit in the kitchen and talk for hours, about what they were going to do, and the people they both hoped they one day might meet.

  Ellie looked into the wind that was blowing off the Atlantic and thought how wrong she had been to leave America. She should have stayed home and seen it out. No-one could run away from their future. The future was already a part of you, she remembered her father saying, and you can’t run away from your future.

  Ireland was lovely, but Ireland was just a party, a diversion, a ceilidh as the natives called it, a lark and a caper before facing the serious business of life which had now to be faced, because it seemed the party was soon to be over, certainly in Europe, and according to Artemis the balloons were all just about to burst. When it got dark they’d probably find that these forces of evil had managed to take even the moon away.

  Then Artemis suddenly appeared at her side, startling her. ‘You know,’ she said, slipping her arm through Ellie’s. ‘I really don’t know what I’d have done. If you hadn’t been on that stupid boat.’

  They talked for the rest of the day, mostly about the past, as if Ellie’s unspoken thoughts had prompted Artemis into unaccustomed frankness, first as they lazed on Barleycove sands and then on the long slow journey home, during which they took it in turns to drive.

  ‘What about the house? Was there really no way you could prevent it being sold?’

  ‘Short of murdering my stepmother, no.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘My father’s favourite play is Macbeth,’ Artemis replied enigmatically. ‘Come on, it’s your turn.’

  Artemis braked suddenly, but Ellie was rarely caught unawares now, since when Artemis drove Ellie spent the whole time with her arms braced against the dashboard.

  ‘Your turn to drive,’ Artemis announced. ‘Except do try and drive a bit faster this time.’

  They changed places and Ellie took the wheel, proceeding to drive at the sensible speed at which she always drove, and which occasioned a series of deep groans from Artemis.

  ‘God,’ she said, ‘you certainly haven’t got much of what my godmother would call dash.’

  Ellie smiled, ignoring the jibe. She preferred to suffer Artemis’s good-natured insults rather than her recent long dark silences, for she had realized early on the jibes were not meant to wound. On the contrary, they were Artemis’s way of expressing affection. And besides, it was the most perfect of early evenings, with the waning sun making glin
ty stars dance on the waters of Bantry Bay as they passed through Glengariff and headed for home.

  ‘I’m reading this book Wine From These Grapes at the moment,’ Artemis said after a long and peaceful silence. She was lying back in her seat, staring up at the skies overhead, and trailing her left arm over the side of her door. ‘It’s by Edna St Vincent Millay. And she says, “childhood is a kingdom where nobody dies.”’

  ‘I think that’s how I thought, when I was very small.’

  ‘I think I probably did as well,’ Artemis agreed. ‘But it didn’t last very long.’

  She continued to stare above her, at the skies and the edges of trees that passed through her vision, and fell silent again. Ellie started to sing in a light and charming voice snatches of a song Artemis couldn’t identify, while Artemis settled lower into her seat and wondered why she hadn’t told Ellie about Hugo Tanner.

  And then she wondered why she was wondering, because she knew perfectly well what the reason was. She had wanted to keep him as her private friend, in that kingdom where nobody dies, which was absurd and selfish of her. As from tomorrow Hugo Tanner would no longer be her secret. She would bring him up to meet and be met by everyone at Strand House.

  ‘What was that you were singing?’ Artemis asked, still staring at the evening sky.

  ‘“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”,’ Ellie said, changing down a gear and turning into the drive. ‘The new Jerome Kern.’

  Artemis was sitting on the terrace reading when Hugo arrived. He was wearing his crumpled canvas suit and battered straw, with a clean white tennis shirt, a red bow tie spotted white, and not so white tennis shoes worn without socks. When he took his hat off to say good evening, his thick fair hair was still matted with sea-salt and sand, which in addition to his deep tan made him look as though he had stepped straight out of a coracle.

  ‘Did you know the Irish monks sailed the Atlantic in those extraordinary boats?’ Artemis asked as they sat waiting for the others, drinking home-made lemonade. ‘They got as far as Iceland, apparently. In something like 6 BC.’

  ‘Greenland, actually,’ Hugo corrected her. ‘In 4 BC.’

  ‘They’re only wickerwork and canvas, you know,’ Artemis continued blithely, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s unimaginable.’

  ‘Religion is a powerful force,’ Hugo replied. ‘People will do anything for their religion.’

  ‘Except live for it,’ Artemis said. ‘Here are the others.’

  Hugo rose as two women came out of the house, followed by an oddly attired butler who was carrying sherry and glasses on a silver tray. The older woman, introduced to him as Miss Lannigan, was defiantly handsome, with a magnificent leonine head on a strong and well boned body, dressed in a black gown embroidered in gold thread at both the neck and half-sleeves, which by its length and shape identified it as belonging to the very early Twenties rather than the now mid-Thirties. She had piled her mass of still dark brown hair up on top of her head and wound it convulsively into what looked for all the world like two bunches of large and hairy grapes, divided in turn by a large fresh red rose cut straight from the garden. Hugo knew that to be the case, for he could see the greenfly in it, still alive and at work. But somehow, such was Cousin Rose’s character and presence, the end result which should by rights have been risible was nothing of the sort. It was eccentric perhaps, and idiosyncratic certainly, but it was also utterly entrancing and oddly glamorous.

  There was nothing oddly glamorous about the young woman, however, who was standing by her side, and was introduced to Hugo as Miss Ellie Milligan, Miss Lannigan’s second cousin from across the water. As far as Hugo Tanner was concerned, Miss Ellie Milligan had stepped right out of a dream. He tried to remember if he had ever seen such original beauty as flesh and blood, and standing before him shaking his hand, rather than as a lifeless photograph in some fashionable magazine, or as a flickering image up on a silver screen. By the time he had finished gazing into those strange grey-green eyes with flecks of brown, set in the most open and expressive face he had ever seen, Hugo decided that the nearest he had come to being in the presence of such natural divinity, if indeed there was such a thing, was when he had stood entranced and staring up at the girl in the centre of Millais’ painting of Autumn Leaves.

  The girl in the painting had long brown hair, whereas this girl’s hair was considerably shorter, but the expressions were the same, open and accessible, but also sad and private. He remembered how he had stood before that painting for what seemed like hours, oblivious to everything but the face of that wonderful girl, lit by the warmth of the bonfire of leaves, and how he had found himself falling in love. And now it seemed he was standing in front of that mythic creature’s double, a brown-haired girl with deep soulful eyes, lit by the glow of the late summer sun.

  ‘I must paint you,’ he said to her, much earlier than he had intended. They had drunk some sherry, played an eccentric game of croquet, and now, at Cousin Rose’s insistence, he was enjoying a refreshing gin and tonic, as she sipped lemonade.

  ‘Mr Tanner’s a Sunday painter,’ Artemis explained, eating a slice of lemon.

  ‘I do wish ye wouldn’t do that, darling,’ Cousin Rose admonished her with a sigh. ‘For heavens it dries up all one’s gastric juices.’

  ‘It’s terribly good for the skin,’ Artemis replied.

  ‘Could you perhaps call me Hugo?’ their guest implored. ‘The “Mr” sounds so formal.’

  ‘I agree,’ Cousin Rose said. ‘It’s a bit like being in stuffy old England. You must call me Rose.’

  ‘And me Ellie,’ Eleanor agreed.

  Artemis said nothing. She just reached for another slice of lemon.

  ‘And you?’ Hugo finally asked her.

  ‘What’s in a name?’ Artemis replied. ‘Why not call me Tom?’

  ‘If that’s what you’d prefer,’ Hugo said.

  ‘Maybe I’d prefer Maud,’ Artemis countered. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘Much more suitable,’ Cousin Rose replied, finishing her gin. ‘“Maud with her exquisite face, and wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky, and feet like sunny gems on an English green”. Much more the thing. Shall we go in now everyone?’

  ‘“Birds in the high Hall-garden,”’ Hugo said as they rose. ‘“When twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, they were crying and calling.”’

  ‘Actually, come to think of it, I actually prefer Tom,’ Artemis said, walking in ahead of him, her stick searching on the wooden floor for the sounder of the boards.

  Dinner initially was a disaster. For once Aggie failed them, which Cousin Rose suspected might be the case when what was intended to be iced cucumber soup came out of the tureen at near boiling point, and which Cousin Rose decided definitely to be the case when the pheasant casserole was set before them minus the necessary pheasants.

  ‘’Tis the company, isn’t that the case, Tutti?’ Cousin Rose enquired of her butler.

  ‘It is not,’ the butler replied. ‘That has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘She’s always the same when we’ve company,’ Cousin Rose continued. ‘We had the suffragan bishop here last Christmas, and she shrank the turkey to the size of a walnut.’

  ‘Because she was blind dead drunk, that’s the reason,’ the butler said. ‘And that’s how you’ll find her now.’

  ‘Well you sure can’t eat this,’ Ellie said, getting up, ‘what’s left of it. It’s nothing but onions and a few carrots. I’ll go and see if I can fix something.’

  ‘Don’t you love Americans?’ Artemis asked. ‘They fix food, they don’t cook it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to help?’ Ellie asked Artemis.

  ‘Not really,’ Artemis replied. ‘Someone’s got to organize a diversion.’

  Ellie went off to the kitchen, with Tutti bringing up the rear, carrying the inedibles.

  ‘Cook was insensible at teatime, Miss,’ the butler’s booming voice echoed down the corridors. ‘I’d to hold her up under the arms whil
e she made the soup.’

  The kitchen was a fearful sight, as if a war had been raging there, with one of its combatants apparently lying dead in a chair in the corner. A closer inspection by both Ellie and the butler revealed Aggie still to be alive, but fast out.

  ‘There’s not a whit between her and a scag,’ Tutti said, nudging the prone form with a booted foot. ‘For all the use she is, she might as well be an old cigar butt.’

  Luckily there was plenty of cold food in the larder, chicken and ham, salmon and trout. There were plenty of cooked potatoes too, as always, since as Ellie had discovered, the Irish would rather have the roof off their house than to be found without a potato cooked anywhere. She made a perfect mayonnaise, a French dressing for the salads she had prepared, and sliced the potatoes up with butter and fresh parsley.

  ‘With cheese to follow,’ Ellie said, ‘and then plenty of raspberries and cream, I don’t think anyone will go hungry.’

  Aggie groaned as the butler held the door open for Ellie. ‘’Tis a wonder she didn’t stew the raspberries,’ the butler sighed, looking round at the cook, ‘the state she was in.’

  Hugo and Cousin Rose were all but hysterical with laughter when Ellie brought in the food.

  ‘It’s absolutely hopeless,’ a stone-faced Artemis announced. ‘We’ve been trying to play word association, but we can’t get anything past Rose.’

  Hugo wiped a tear from his eye, and still laughing helplessly, apologized to no-one in particular.

  ‘I don’t see what’s so funny!’ Cousin Rose cried, weeping into her napkin. ‘’Tis the daftest thing I’ve ever heard!’

  ‘Just listen,’ Artemis nodded to Ellie, as she and Tutti started to lay out the picnic. ‘Fair,’ she said.

  ‘Foul,’ Hugo said.

  ‘Egg,’ said Cousin Rose, to the detriment of Hugo who all but disappeared under the table.

  ‘Why egg?’ Artemis asked as patiently as she could.

  ‘Sure why not?’ Cousin Rose asked her back. ‘Sure what else do fowls do but lay eggs?’

  At this, Hugo fell off his chair and disappeared under the table completely.