In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 28

Artemis merely stared at him, without expression.

  ‘Because you married me, that does not mean I have to be accountable for everything I do, everything I say, or everywhere I choose to go.’

  ‘I see,’ said Artemis after a short pause. ‘I only married you. You didn’t marry me.’

  Sheridan smiled, then poured himself some more coffee. ‘I’ll try not to wake you again,’ he promised.

  At a loss quite what to do, Artemis accepted the situation, in the faint hope that Sheridan would soon come up with an explanation for his behaviour. During the day he was a model husband, attentive to all her needs, and taking her wherever she wished to go, which was quite simply everywhere. Together they saw every sight, and although it emerged that Sheridan had been a frequent visitor to Paris, he never bored once, and was always willing to discuss their daily excursions over lunch and dinner, meals which were always taken at the best restaurants. He took his young bride to the opera, to the theatre, and to every exhibition and gallery she wished to see or visit. And then late at night they would walk in some new part of the city, perhaps visiting the quartier latin for coffee and cognac, or stroll through Montmartre listening to the dance music filtering out from the busy cafés. In appearance they seemed the model lovers.

  But then he would leave her back at the hotel, to go to bed alone. And every night he’d leave her the same way, suggesting it was time for her to go to bed, and then slipping away while Artemis undressed.

  At last Artemis summoned up the courage to challenge him directly. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Is there something wrong with you? Shouldn’t we talk?’

  Her husband lowered his newspaper and looked across the table at her. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t think what? That there’s anything wrong with you?’

  ‘That we need to talk.’ Sheridan raised his newspaper and continued to read.

  Taking this to mean that he was possibly too embarrassed to discuss whatever problem he had, Artemis fell silent for a while, reading on the front of Sheridan’s copy of La Monde something about the appointment by the Spanish Insurgents of General Franco as their Chief of State.

  ‘Can’t I do anything to help?’ she finally enquired, breaking an interminable silence, and summoning up the full quota of her courage.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘We are meant to be married. And apparently, or anyway so I’m told –’ Artemis put down her coffee cup, for fear of spilling the contents. ‘I understand,’ she began again, ‘that there can be well – difficulties. Between men and women. And someone said that they’re not always, I don’t know. Insurmountable.’

  Her husband slowly lowered his paper and stared at her with cold blue eyes. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said after a moment, and without a trace of gratitude in his voice, ‘but I assure you I have no trouble with my potency, if that’s what you’re rather clumsily trying to say. None whatsoever. Unlike yourself, my disability is not a visible one. It’s a metaphysical one. I am only disabled, you see, in the company of women.’

  He went to pick up his newspaper once more, but Artemis stopped him, placing her hand quickly on it. ‘Why did you marry me then?’ she asked, feeling suddenly frightened and desperately alone.

  Sheridan shook his head and removed her hand off his newspaper. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘You’re free to do as you choose. You can go where you like, and do as you like, with whomsoever you please. The only proviso is that you must remain my wife.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think I’ve answered quite enough questions for one day, don’t you? You said you wanted to go to the Louvre once more before we left Paris.’ Sheridan began to fold his newspaper, prior to getting up from the table, but Artemis picked up her cane, and pushed him hard in the chest, forcing him back down in his seat.

  ‘Suppose I don’t want to remain your wife?’ she demanded. ‘Supposing I leave you? And seek a divorce?’

  Her husband looked at her once more with steel-blue eyes, and then pushing the end of her cane from his chest, he rose. ‘I wouldn’t advise trying to leave,’ he said, ‘or seeking a divorce. Not under any circumstances.’

  For most of the journey back to Ireland they travelled in silence. Artemis tried to read, but the words meant nothing. She tried to find refuge in sleep, but failed, so she spent her time deep in thought, staring at the passing countryside. Occasionally her husband would make some comment about what he was reading, or about something he had seen from the papers, further news about the Spanish Civil War, or the latest about Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson, but these remarks were not intended conversationally, but were made rather as pronouncements, particularly when there was anyone else present in their railway compartment. Otherwise he was as silent as his new young bride.

  France passed by, green going brown in autumn, and still bearing the scars of the terrible catastrophe she had hosted for five years. The channel was crossed, its burly brutal seas buffeting the steamer, and then England, her king dead and her new monarch busy playing the fool. The newspaper hoardings on all the station platforms seemed taken up with this one subject to the total exclusion of everything else.

  ‘As if it mattered,’ Artemis said to herself as the boat-train left Euston for Fishguard. ‘Europe’s about to burn, but all we can do is fiddle about a king’s mistress.’

  Her husband looked up at her, visibly surprised, as if amazed that she was still alive. ‘I wonder what you know about it,’ he said. ‘Nothing except what you read in the papers.’

  Artemis didn’t reply, turning instead to another part of The Times.

  ‘I know the King,’ her husband continued. ‘We were in the South of France together. It’s not as easy as that.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘It’s not a question of just whether or not he should marry Wallace Simpson. He may be the King, but that doesn’t mean when he’s crowned –’

  ‘If he’s crowned,’ Artemis interrupted. ‘Actually he’d be far better off calling it a day, as far as the crown goes, and going off and living with Mrs Simpson in Germany, where he’d be quite at home.’

  Sheridan shot Artemis a look before getting up and opening the door into the corridor. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

  She curled herself up in the corner of the carriage and again tried to doze, but sleep just wouldn’t come. Her mind was too active, too occupied with trying to work out exactly how she had managed to get herself into such an inextricable situation. Because there was no doubt at all that it was entirely her own fault.

  It had been hard enough when Ellie had married Hugo, but she had prepared herself for that. She had made a conscious decision to distance herself emotionally from Hugo, because she knew that much as she loved him, he did not love her, which was why she’d decided it was better to give best, rather than live on with false hopes and ridiculously unrealistic expectations.

  But then the letter had arrived from Diana, and once again Artemis could make no sense of her emotions. It was only a house, she kept telling herself, hundreds and thousands of times as she had ridden her horse up into the hills to try and sort out the muddle in her head. Brougham was just a house, like any other house. It was just a mass of stones, and stone upon stone, lath and plaster, wood, slate and brick, windows, doors, mouldings, cornices and chimneys, made from inert substances and lifeless materials, so what possible difference could it make who owned it? And why and how could it possibly hurt if its new owners were Hugo and Ellie?

  And yet it did hurt. The news had hurt her so much she’d taken to her bed where she lay for days pale, jaundiced, and alone, except for old Mary coming in. She lay there seeing how she’d been made by her father and stepmother to sacrifice Brougham, to sell it for a pittance because of a legal loophole. They had made her give up her home, her mother’s home, the home of her ancestors, and it hurt, because although to the eye Brougham might appear to be just a mass of stone upon stone, and wood upon plaster, to the heart it had been transformed by the lov
e of those who’d built it and then lived in it, until the house itself lived, with a soul and a life of its own.

  And if the coin had spun differently and fate had decreed it to fall heads up for Artemis, had she had a perfectly even stance and a right leg to match her long and elegant left one, then Hugo might have looked at her the way Artemis had so often seen him looking at Ellie, and Artemis wouldn’t have taken him back up to Strand House but kept him as her secret in his red tinker’s caravan; or have him tow it up to the lake, her lake, where they would have walked and argued and fished and ridden. It would be her, Artemis, who would be back at Brougham now, restoring the red of the walls and the blue of the walls, and the pale yellows, and the pinks, and the creams and the greens and the greys. And the stables would be full once more of horses, and the wings staffed with servants, and the hunt once again would open its season meeting as before in the shade of the great, double, exterior staircase, and Ellie would be the one to be asked as a guest, to come and stay and admire the great house, her house, Artemis’s house and Artemis’s rightful home, her beloved Brougham.

  And most of all, Artemis would never have rushed into such a foolish marriage with a man about whom she knew absolutely nothing.

  She had just fallen finally asleep, when the carriage door clattered noisily open once more, awaking her with a jolt.

  ‘I do apologize,’ her husband said, accompanied on his return by a dark-haired supercilious young man. ‘I had no idea you were sleeping.’ He closed the door again behind the young man, who stood staring at Artemis with ill concealed impudence. ‘Good. Now if you’ll sit up, I’ll introduce you,’ Sheridan continued, ‘This is –’ He fell silent, all the while looking at Artemis and smiling.

  ‘Ralph,’ said the young man.

  ‘This is Ralph,’ her husband said. ‘We became acquainted in the bar.’

  Ralph came and stayed at Shanangarry. Artemis was given a large bedroom with dressing room and bathroom down the west end of the house, while Sheridan slept, washed and dressed in the east end. His guest was given a room next door to his host.

  Leila Masters was still in residence on their return from France, but no sooner were they home, than she started to pack.

  ‘As I told you, my dear,’ she said to Artemis. ‘I’m off to live in America.’

  ‘May I ask you something?’ Artemis said, at least happy from being reunited with Brutus, who now sat, as always at her feet.

  ‘When we first met, you and I, and you said you were going to live in America, you also said now that the house was by rights your son’s. What did you mean by that? By rights?’

  ‘Family matters,’ her mother-in-law smiled at her, patting her hand. ‘They really needn’t concern you.’

  ‘I’d actually quite like to know,’ Artemis insisted.

  ‘You wouldn’t, my dear,’ Leila Masters sighed.

  Artemis took the paw Brutus had suddenly decided to offer her and pushed her fingers into the clefts of the pads below. ‘I don’t know this man he’s brought home, Leila. Sheridan met him on the train.’

  ‘I met his father on a train, you know,’ Leila Masters replied. ‘And he proposed to me at sea.’

  ‘No,’ said Artemis, starting again. ‘I don’t think you understand.’

  ‘Oh, I understand, my dear,’ her mother-in-law said. ‘I understand very well. His father was the same you know.’

  Artemis looked at her, then let go of the dog’s paw. He immediately raised it again. ‘No, Brutus, lie down.’

  ‘Would it make any difference if I told you what I meant by the house being rightfully Sheridan’s?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘It was difficult, you know, very difficult, giving my assent. I like you so much, you see, Artemis my dear. I liked you the first moment I saw you. If I’d been blessed with a daughter, I’d have wanted her to be like you.’

  Artemis pulled at her dog’s ears, saying nothing, not even looking at her mother-in-law.

  ‘The family estate, Shanangarry. It isn’t just the house, you know. There are shops in Cork. Houses, too. And land. And houses and land up north as well, besides property in England. It’s worth a tidy sum. But my husband – well. You must understand my husband was a very conservative man. He was military. And a magistrate. Very conservative indeed.’

  There was a silence while Mrs Masters poured them both another half cup of now lukewarm tea.

  ‘The thing is, Artemis dear,’ she continued, ‘Sheridan is an only child. But his father put a stipulation in his will that he was not to inherit, that the whole estate would pass to his first cousin, with me provided for of course, but the rest of the estate, the grand bulk of it so to speak, Sheridan would see nothing of it unless he married within two years of his father’s death.’

  ‘Yes,’ Artemis said, ‘I see. Except suppose his father had lived until –’

  ‘Forgive me interrupting, my dear,’ Leila Masters said. ‘But his father knew he was dying. Which is why he redrew his will to this very effect, do you see?’

  ‘I see everything except the point, Leila. What is the point of forcing someone – someone who might not want to get married – into marriage?’

  ‘I think his father thought it might help.’ Artemis’s mother-in-law looked past her, in embarrassment.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Artemis confessed.

  ‘Do nothing, Artemis,’ Leila Masters advised. ‘Sheridan is now very rich. You will be very rich. You can do as you like, as long as you stay married. It may seem a little strange to begin with, but if you think about it, my dear, that’s how most marriages are these days anyway.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Artemis said, reaching for her cane. ‘But I’m also sure it’s not the sort of marriage that I’d choose.’

  She stood up and, hiding the sudden pain which shot through her right leg, began to walk towards the stairs.

  Her mother-in-law rose and hurried after her. ‘Don’t do anything foolish, Artemis,’ she urged. ‘After all, an arrangement like this. For someone like –’ Then she stopped and dropped her eyes as Artemis turned to stare at her.

  ‘Someone like me should be grateful, shouldn’t I, Leila? After all, how many tall, handsome and rich men would marry someone like me?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, my dear.’

  ‘You did, Leila, but what you didn’t mean was to hurt me. Besides, it’s true. It’s a perfectly sensible arrangement.’

  From that moment on Artemis determined that it was going to be an arrangement which she was going to work to her best advantage. Once her mother-in-law had sailed for America, and once Sheridan had bored of the shallow and conceited young man he had picked up on the boat-train, Artemis took her husband at his word and did what she liked. She bought herself a brand new Aston Martin, in which she proceeded to terrorize the neighbourhood with her eccentric style of driving, a new wardrobe of clothes, including the most expensive hand-made hunting habit, as much old and beautiful jewellery as she could find in Cork and in Dublin, the kind of fine paintings which she liked and she knew Sheridan did not, and six new horses, two to hunt, and four to ride and race point-to-point. She also commissioned the redecoration of the entire house, with the exception of her husband’s bedroom and dressing room, in which she had no interest since she never once entered them.

  But whatever she did to the house, she still hated it. So did Brutus. It was sometimes as much as Artemis could do to get her dog to come indoors, even when it was pouring with rain. He would stand in the porch, pulling backwards as soon as Artemis had hold of his collar, grunting and heaving as he tried to escape. If he lost the battle, he would then slink inside and hide under the kitchen table, away from Sheridan, and any of his friends who might be calling.

  Sheridan had many friends, none of whom Artemis liked. To a man and a woman they succeeded in making Artemis feel she was very much an outsider. There was something vaguely clannish in their behaviour whenever one or more were met, and if Artemis left their com
pany or rejoined it, she always got the impression of a distinct change of key, of a shift in emphasis. They were not unwelcoming, they were not impolite and they were not offhand. What they were, Artemis decided, was tolerant. They all tolerated her, they endured her company patiently and with good manners, they talked to her on general subjects, and were openly grateful for her hospitality. But all the time she knew they were simply treading water, simply waiting for her to leave.

  At first, before she realized that this was what they wished, Artemis assumed the keeping of late hours at Shanangarry to be part of the life she had come to embrace. In Ireland most people rose late and went to bed even later, so that day became night, and night became day. Even hunting was affected by everyone’s inability to keep time. In England as a girl Artemis had been drilled to be utterly punctilious when following hounds, arriving early at the Meet and back on time at the end of the day. But in Ireland even if hounds moved off a mere half an hour late, it was usually only to recongregate a couple of miles down the road at the nearest bar, where the next hour was spent in fortifying the inner man before the day’s sport began in earnest.

  So when her husband’s guests stayed late in the evening, Artemis assumed this to be the norm, and as their hostess she would attend to their needs well into the small hours, in spite of her increasing fatigue, for Artemis herself was always up early to supervise morning stables, no matter what time she went to bed. And so it would have continued, with her seeing to her husband’s guests until they all finally left, had she not been instructed otherwise.

  ‘There’s no need for you to stay up so late,’ Sheridan remarked casually to her one night as they were climbing the stairs to go to bed at four o’clock one morning. ‘It’s different for our guests. Most of them sleep in till lunchtime. So in future, after you’ve served coffee and we’ve had a drink, you can go to bed. Why don’t you?’

  This was Sheridan Masters’ way of giving orders, as a question rather than as a directive. Artemis had learned to recognize this, and whenever she was in the mood to aggravate her husband, she would answer his question with a question of her own, which he would answer with another question, and she again with yet another question, until the whole dialogue degenerated into a childish exchange. But with this particular directive, to go to her bed early and leave her husband and his friends to their own devices, Artemis was only too happy to comply.