In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 27

  ‘Hurrah hurrah!’ the men around her carrolled, echoing Jorrocks as they made their way to dine, ‘the dahlias are dead!’

  Most of the guests were much older than Artemis and seemed to be friends of Leila Masters rather than her son, who appeared to stand apart from the company rather than be a part of it. Artemis had been watching him during the pre-dinner drinks, moving easily enough from group to group, but never staying very long, listening and laughing at things said to him before soon moving away on and around the assembled company.

  ‘Sometimes I suggest to mother we should dine in the stables,’ he said as he sat down at the head of the table next to Artemis. ‘Were you with the Barkers or the Brayers?’

  ‘The Barkers, mostly,’ Artemis replied. ‘But don’t worry. I was brought up on it.’

  Sheridan leaned back as his soup was served and stared down the table. ‘What do you think gets into people when they get on a horse?’ he asked. ‘Do you see Ursula there? In the dark blue dress? He nodded at a handsome raven-haired woman halfway down the table. ‘She lost all her front top teeth one day, riding to the meet. On her horse’s head. Banged her in the mouth. But rather than miss anything, she stuffed the teeth in her pocket, hunted all day, and then drove up to Dublin the following morning to get them all replaced.’

  ‘Don’t you hunt?’ Artemis asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never. But it’s not a question of principle. I don’t have principles. Principles are too unforgiving.’

  Artemis wasn’t certain of what exactly her host meant by that. But because he was smiling so engagingly she took it very much as an indication of compassion.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Artemis replied. ‘I think I am actually.’

  It was true. Once she had conquered her nerves in the car, set foot over the threshold and heard the sound of all the banter and the laughter, she had realized all at once just how lonely she had in fact been. She turned to the man on her right, whose face was the colour of a damson, and engaged him in conversation while Sheridan talked to the thin tough woman who was sitting on his left.

  Later, and inevitably, the talk turned to the topic of the moment, Edward and Mrs Simpson.

  ‘She’s a perfectly ghastly woman,’ the thin tough woman said. ‘But then of course she’s American. So what does one expect? All Americans are perfectly ghastly. Don’t you agree?’ The look was across the table to Artemis.

  ‘No,’ Artemis said. ‘I’ve been to America and the people I met I liked. Of course unlike you, I didn’t meet all the people.’

  The thin tough woman stared back at Artemis in silence. Then she bared her upper teeth in an odd but good humoured smile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you did. Damn good. No I don’t suppose you did.’

  ‘I can’t be done with him meself,’ the damson-faced man beside Artemis rumbled. ‘He’s such an odd cove. And has some damn’ odd chums, too.’

  ‘I think they’re both quite dull, personally,’ said the thin tough woman. ‘I can’t imagine they’ll last a minute.’

  ‘He can’t ride, and that’s for certain,’ said Artemis’s neighbour. ‘Saw him decanted twice at the Harkaway.’

  ‘Come to Cork with me on Wednesday,’ Sheridan turned to Artemis as the argument ripened, ‘and let’s have lunch.’

  ‘You want to go all the way into Cork?’ Artemis enquired. ‘Just for lunch?’

  ‘That depends,’ her host replied.

  ‘On what?’ Artemis said.

  ‘Whether it’s just for lunch.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Whether it’s just for lunch,’ her host told her, ‘rather depends on what happens at lunch.’

  What happened over lunch was that Artemis became convinced she was in love. Having always thought of herself as physically unattractive to men, she found it quite overwhelming to be the subject of such obvious desire. Sheridan Masters could not take his eyes from her. He was early at the restaurant, waiting for her impatiently, a bunch of flowers in one hand and a box of expensive chocolates in the other. He kissed her hand when Artemis arrived, ten minutes late, and held it until they were sat at their corner table, where he suddenly fell silent, before groaning and then mopping his brow with a red silk handkerchief.

  ‘This is absurd,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what is happening to me.’

  ‘Are you unwell?’ Artemis asked, picking up the menu.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Very. At least if we were in India I would be diagnosed as being so. Did you know that? That in India they look on love as a sickness?’

  Artemis held the gaze that was holding hers, and although she felt herself badly in need of taking several deep breaths, instead she dropped her eyes and stared at the menu.

  ‘What are you going to eat?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Sheridan continued, putting a hand on the menu, forcing Artemis to lower it. ‘Believe me. This is the last thing I wanted.’

  ‘I agree,’ Artemis replied. ‘Me too.’ There was a silence. ‘Perhaps it would be better if I just got up and went.’ She put a hand out, reaching for her stick.

  ‘Don’t,’ he warned her, leaning forward and catching her hand. ‘You do and I’ll find you, wherever you are.’

  Artemis stared back at him, trying to resist his hold on her. ‘How can you possibly want the last thing you want?’ she asked.

  ‘What I meant was I wasn’t prepared for this, Artemis,’ he said. ‘A flirtation, yes. The moment I saw you I wanted to make love to you. You’d have enjoyed it. We both would have enjoyed it. And that would have been that.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Artemis said as factually as she could, removing her hand.

  ‘You doubt that would have been that?’

  ‘No. I doubt your assumption – or is it presumption? That we both would have enjoyed it.’

  But even so, Artemis didn’t get up and leave. Instead she picked her menu up again and tried very hard to make sense of the words which swam before her.

  ‘I’d recommend the mulligatawny soup and the game pie,’ Sheridan Masters said, also picking up his menu.

  After lunch, they walked idly down Main Street, stopping and looking in all the best shop windows.

  ‘I like that hat,’ Sheridan announced, pointing to a small dished straw with a polka dot band. ‘May I buy it for you?’

  ‘No,’ said Artemis.

  ‘And then we’ll go back to Caragh Lodge,’ he continued, dropping his voice and putting his hand in her’s.

  ‘It wouldn’t suit me,’ Artemis concluded.

  ‘How do you know till you try it?’

  ‘Till I try what?’

  ‘I wonder.’

  ‘I was referring to the hat.’

  ‘Of course. Wasn’t I?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Artemis said, removing her hand and walking slowly on.

  When she stopped on the street corner and looked back for him, Sheridan had gone. Artemis waited and then crossed the road and walked on, feeling a mixture of relief and disappointment. Moments later she heard footsteps behind her, and then he was once more by her side, carrying a hat box which he thrust at her.

  ‘There!’ he said breathlessly. ‘If that doesn’t suit you, I’ll eat it!’

  Seeing that Artemis wasn’t going to open it in the street, Sheridan took the box back from her and lifted out a little blue hat, made of shiny dark blue straw, shaped like a helmet, with a bunch of mock flowers on the front and a half-veil. Even off, just held in someone’s hand, it looked enchanting. Still Artemis made no move, and said nothing. She was totally unprepared for such moments in life and had no way of dealing with them.

  Mistaking her silence for stubbornness, rather than helplessness, Sheridan sighed and shaking his head slightly in impatience, put the box on the ground and the hat on Artemis’s head. ‘Mmmm,’ he said thoughtfully, standing back. ‘Uh-huh,’ before making a slight adjustment. ‘Divine. Très chic. Yes, very très ch
ic.’

  His odd choice of words made Artemis smile and her sudden smile made him smile back. She turned and looked at herself in a shop window and saw that the hat was indeed divine, and also very chic. And seeing this was so, and that instead of it looking foolish the hat looked pretty and fashionable, and seeing the look on the face of the man who was looking at her, who was looking as if he was melting, Artemis suddenly and at last in her life felt adored, and wanted and loved, and so she put her arms up round Sheridan’s neck and kissed him.

  They were married a month later in the little Protestant church of Brinny, in a service conducted by a sweet-faced white-haired rector called the Reverend Noel Arthur, who wore his fishing trousers and shoes under his cassock, and attended by only the bridegroom’s immediate family and friends. Artemis neither invited nor told anyone, not even Cousin Rose, not even Dan Sleator, and least of all Ellie and Hugo.

  Leila Masters, however, was delighted with the match, and embraced Artemis as a daughter, before announcing she was leaving Shanangarry, since the house was now by rights her son’s, to go and live with her brother in America. There was no Mr Masters senior, Sheridan’s father having died suddenly the year before.

  Cousin Rose heard on the grapevine a week before the ceremony and through sheer persistence finally tracked Artemis down at Caragh Lodge. After congratulating Artemis, she then scolded her roundly for not asking any of her friends to the wedding, and most particularly Hugo and Ellie.

  ‘There’s bad luck in it for ye,’ she said over the telephone. ‘Friendship’s not a flower ye can wear on yer sleeve.’

  ‘You’re not to say anything about it, please,’ Artemis replied. ‘I’ll tell them in my own time.’

  ‘But why?’ Cousin Rose cried. ‘Are they not to be included? Were ye born to break people’s hearts or what, child?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rose,’ Artemis said suddenly, and put down the telephone.

  They honeymooned in Paris, travelling by the Golden Arrow, and arriving at the Gare du Nord mid-afternoon. Besides a somewhat formal kiss after the actual wedding ceremony, there had been no physical contact between Artemis and her new husband. Artemis didn’t consider this unusual. In fact it was as much as she’d been led to expect, no more and no less. Nanny had always brought her up to believe that love was something you learned to do. First people got married, then they learned how to love each other. Romance was strictly for the poor who needed it. So even though Artemis felt strongly attracted to her tall blond husband, and longed for his embrace and whatever physical adventures this in turn might lead to, she was quite happy to wait and see.

  Since their first lunch in Cork, when Artemis had felt certain she was falling in love with Sheridan, and when he’d been so open about his own feelings, without ever actually declaring his love for her outright, there’d been few other overt displays of affection, or references to their emotional state. Instead their relationship had quite simply become a fait accompli. When they were out walking, Sheridan would take her arm, when he came to collect her he would bring her flowers, at the end of days spent together they would sit and talk in front of the fire at Shanangarry, either side by side on the sofa, or with Sheridan sitting at Artemis’s feet, his arms across her lap. At such times they would talk about the present and the future, which by mutual assumption now seemed to belong to them both, so that when Sheridan arrived one evening to Caragh Lodge to collect Artemis for dinner at Shanangarry and proposed to her as they sat in the window seat overlooking the shadowy lake, it seemed only natural for Artemis to accept.

  And despite the doubts she had expressed to Rose Lannigan on the telephone, until the day she was married Artemis never had real cause to regret her decision. Sheridan was the ideal companion: articulate, well informed, attentive and intelligent. It seemed that with the exception of horses, he and Artemis had everything in common, and while there was no passion as yet in their relationship, in her innocence Artemis thought it only a matter of time before this state of affairs was rectified, and that in time that would come quite properly after they were married.

  Consummation, however, did not take place on their actual wedding night. The berths on the night train were extremely narrow and the channel crossing was very rough, precluding, it seemed by necessity, any proposed intimacy. At least that was what Artemis thought when she was left alone in the cabin to get undressed, and when Sheridan failed to return by the time Artemis was fast falling asleep. Turning on her side and settling down into an uneasy sleep, Artemis concluded by her husband’s continued absence that this night was obviously not to count as the first night of their marriage, and their honeymoon proper would begin as soon as they had arrived in Paris.

  From the Gare du Nord, they took a cab straight to their hotel on the lie St Louis. Through the driver’s open window, Artemis savoured the tang of Paris, strong tobacco, garlic and fresh onion, rough wine and fried oil. The late October weather seemed to make the air even more pungent, adding a vapour of autumn and wrapping a faint mist around the city. The hotel was pretty and charming, set around a cobbled courtyard which their balconied room overlooked, and upon which balcony Artemis now stood, drinking in the atmosphere of a city she had always longed to visit and was now doing so under the most perfect of circumstances, with the man she loved.

  Sheridan came to her side and put an arm round her waist. ‘Ah, Paris,’ he sighed. ‘A man has no home in Europe save in Paris.’

  ‘But would you give it up for love?’

  Sheridan Masters frowned as he stared down into the courtyard where a young waiter had come out of the building to scatter crumbs for the birds.’

  ‘Si le roi m’avait donné Paris, sa grand ville,’ Artemis quoted, ‘et qu’il me fallut quitter l’amour de ma vie, je dirais au roi Henri – reprenez votre Paris.’

  ‘I see. You would rather have love than Paris, yes?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’d much rather have both,’ Sheridan said, as the young waiter looked up and caught his look. ‘At one and the same time.’

  They dined out at Maxims, on Saumon en Gelée à I’Estragon, washed down with a 1927 Chablis. Afterwards they walked back by the Seine and then across it, watching the bateaux mouches gliding under the bridges through dark waters which sparkled with a thousand dancing lights. By the time they’d reached their hotel, Artemis felt at last and for the first time truly happy.

  They stood for a long moment on their balcony, without speaking, the stars far above them and the sounds of the city far below. Then Sheridan bent down to whisper in Artemis’s ear. ‘It’s very late. Why don’t you go and get ready for bed?’

  Artemis turned to him and looked at him, expecting to be held, and to be kissed. Which indeed she was, briefly by one elbow, as her husband leaned a little closer and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he whispered. ‘Go on.’

  As Artemis sat on the side of her bed taking off her shoes, and then standing to unclasp her silk gown, she felt grateful for her husband’s tact. She had honestly been afraid of this moment, of the time when she would finally have to undress in front of him, to stand awkwardly without her stick, lop-sided and a little unsure, while he pretended not to look or to notice. They had talked about her accident and she’d described what had happened, and what the surgeons had had to do to her afterwards. And Sheridan had been understanding and sympathetic. But words were one thing, Artemis thought, as she all but lost her balance trying to pull off her stockings while still standing. Words were one thing, things heard, invisible things, but reality was something seen, images perceived, truths without explanation. And Artemis had been afraid, fearful of what her handsome strong husband would think when he saw the reality of her imperfection.

  He must have sensed her disquiet and her anxiety, otherwise why else would he so quietly and discreetly have withdrawn, leaving his new bride to undress herself privately and get into bed in her new peach silk nightgown?

  It took a long tim
e before Artemis finally realized, long after midnight, that he was not coming back. At least not to her bed. She woke from a fitful sleep sometime just after four, according to her watch on the table beside her bed, and under the door saw the light in the little sitting room go on. She sat up in bed, afraid to call out, because she knew instinctively that anyone returning to their bedroom on the first night of their marriage did not wish to be asked for reasons, since the reasons must be obvious enough. So instead, Artemis pulled the sheets up tight under her chin and waited.

  After a while, not long, just a matter of two perhaps three minutes, the light went out again, and a door opened and closed. Then there was silence. Artemis waited, her heart pounding in her chest, the sheet still pulled up to her face and held clenched in both hands. And then she got up and, taking her stick, went as quietly as she could to the bedroom door and slowly opened it. In the half darkness she could see her husband’s discarded clothes, thrown over the back of a chair, with his shoes and socks left lying on the floor, but she could not see her husband.

  She could not see him, but she knew where he was, because she could hear him breathing, heavily, deep somnolent exhalations from behind the door opposite her, a little secondary bedroom furnished with just a plain bed and a chair, and designed for a travelling maid or manservant. Not for a husband on the first night of his honeymoon.

  But that is where Artemis’s husband now was, in the maid’s bed, and to judge from the sound of his breathing, not only in bed but in bed and fast asleep.

  ‘Where were you?’ Artemis asked him at breakfast.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he replied, looking up from buttering his croissant. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘Where were you?’

  He glanced up at her. ‘In the maid’s room.

  Artemis tried a different tack. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘I think we have to get something perfectly clear from the outset.’ Sheridan stared at her before wiping a few stray crumbs of croissant from his mouth with his napkin. ‘I am not accountable to you.’