In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 3

  Their father made no attempt to intercede. On the contrary, he went out of his way to encourage his three eldest boys, the ‘broth’ as he called them, in their bullying.

  ‘Tell us,’ their father would ask the ‘broth’ nightly. ‘And what have your sisters been doing today?’

  The ‘broth’ would laugh, and while they were laughing would kick and pinch the two youngest under the table, and while Ellie and Patsy were rubbing their bruises, steal the food off their plates.

  This constant persecution only served to throw Ellie and Patsy together. They came to the kind of unspoken understanding real twins enjoy. They soon learned not to talk when just a look would do, and even when separated, each seemed to know instinctively when the other was in trouble. This particularly infuriated Dermot, the pack leader, and sometimes he would knock Patsy about so badly that finally his father told him off, not for hitting the little boy, but because Patsy’s subsequent sobs kept Patrick Milligan senior from his sleep.

  When her fourth birthday dawned, Ellie secretly hoped that it might be a day just a little different from all the others. She had seen her three elder brothers enjoying their birthdays and being fussed over by their father, but neither her’s nor Patsy’s birthday had ever been celebrated. When she woke up that morning, with just a small hope in the corner of her heart, she found Patsy already awake, sitting upright in the old cot they still shared, his dark brown eyes shining with excitement from under his mop of brown hair.

  ‘Happy birthday, Ellie,’ he whispered, handing her a gift. ‘That’s for you.’

  Ellie opened it. It was a birthday card, hand-made by her brother out of cardboard. He had painted a greeting on the front and inside had drawn a picture of an animal and signed his name.

  ‘That’s a dog,’ he grinned. ‘In case you didn’t know.’

  ‘Thank you, Patsy,’ Ellie whispered back. ‘I shall keep it for ever and ever.’

  She tucked the precious card under her pillow and then got out of her cot to get dressed. Both she and Patsy still had to sleep in a cot because their father had not bothered as yet to buy them each a proper bed. They both got dressed, quickly and silently, and then tiptoed out of the bedroom and down the white painted wooden staircase. It was a Saturday, their father was sleeping in, as were their three elder brothers, so for once they had some time to play by themselves, which they did in the yard. They played hopscotch, their favourite, in the ever brightening sunshine, throwing a white pebble into the boxes they had marked out on the ground, and then trying to hop to where the pebble landed without touching any lines.

  ‘’Allo?’ A voice called to them from above.

  Both children stopped playing and looked up to see who had called them. It was their next door neighbour, the woman with the red hair. She was standing and smiling down at them from an upstairs window.

  ‘Would you like some cookies maybe?’ she asked. ‘I ’ave made some. So if you like, come and I will let you in the kitchen.’

  Patsy looked at Ellie to see what they should do. No-one had ever offered them cookies before, particularly not their strange-sounding neighbour, whom they hardly ever saw.

  ‘It’s all right!’ the woman laughed, as if guessing their thoughts. ‘I shall not eat you!’ Then with a beckoning wave she disappeared from the window.

  Encouraged by their neighbour’s cheeriness, Ellie and her brother went round to the back of her house and shyly waited to be let in. After a moment the woman threw open the door.

  ‘Voilà!’ she said.

  Neither Ellie nor Patsy knew where to look, because the woman was still in her dressing gown. So they both stared religiously at the ground pink-faced. Their father never opened their front door without first pulling on his coat, no matter what state he was in, and none of the boys were ever allowed to admit a visitor while they or anyone else was in a state of undress.

  ‘Good ’eavens!’ the woman laughed. ‘Whatever is wrong? You have never seen a woman in her peignoir before?’

  Ellie wasn’t at all sure what a peignoir was, but if it was what the woman was wearing, no she most certainly had not. Nonetheless, she remained silent.

  ‘Come, come,’ their neighbour said, taking them both by the hand. ‘Do not be shy.’ And she led them inside her house and through to her kitchen. ‘There,’ she said, taking a jar from the sideboard and placing it on the table. ‘Please. You ’ave just as many as you like.’

  Patsy looked at Ellie and Ellie looked at Patsy, but neither moved. The woman waited with a smile on her face, then sighed and took a cookie out for herself, from which she then took a good bite.

  ‘OK?’ she asked. ‘They are not poison!’

  Then she laughed out loud and turned away to find her cigarettes. As she did both Ellie and Patsy stuck their hands into the jar together for the delicious looking cookies. By the time their neighbour had turned back, her cigarette lit and in a long ebony holder, both the children’s mouths were full of her home-made produce.

  ‘Ah, bon,’ she said. ‘Now, I must introduce myself. I am Madame Gautier. And you are Eleanor, or Ellie. And you, young man, you are Patsy – yes?’

  The children nodded their agreement, their mouths too full of cookies to speak.

  Madame Gautier watched them for a moment, drawing deeply on her cigarette. It was perfectly apparent the children were half-starved.

  ‘You would like to eat them all, yes?’

  ‘Oh, no, Madam,’ Ellie said through her mouthful. ‘No we couldn’t.’

  ‘Perhaps later, yes? We cannot ’ave them go stale, you know.’ And as if to brook no further argument, Madame Gautier took a large paper bag and emptied the entire contents of the cookie jar into it.

  ‘Eh voilà,’ she said, twisting the bag up and over expertly, like a shop assistant. ‘Now go and enjoy them in the sun. As you play your games. And Ellie – you ’ave a ’appy birthday, yes?’

  Ellie looked back, astonished that this woman should know it was her birthday. She was about to enquire as to how she knew, but Madame was already chasing them out good humouredly.

  ‘Allez, allez!’ she laughed. ‘Allez-vous en!’

  There was still no sign back home that, anyone else was yet up, so Patsy put the paper bag down where they were playing and the two of them resumed their game. And whenever they stopped, they had a cookie. They were utterly delicious, quite unlike anything either of them had ever tasted before, light, crisp and lemony, with a fine dusting of sugar.

  A shadow fell over them and neither of them had to look up to know who it was. They could both just feel his presence.

  ‘What have we here?’ their father asked, leaning down and picking up the paper bag. ‘And what might these be pray?’

  ‘They’re some cookies, Da,’ Patsy said tremulously.

  ‘Yes,’ Ellie added as fiercely as she could. ‘They were given to me as a present. For my birthday.’

  Her father stared down at her before taking hold of her arm and pulling her to her feet.

  ‘Your birthday, did you say, child? Your birthday? How dare you, you miserable little spalpeen. Your birthday indeed.’

  ‘Well so it is, Da,’ Patsy ventured. ‘It is. It’s Ellie’s fourth birthday today.’

  ‘It is nothing of the sort!’ his father roared back at him. ‘Have neither of you a mind what day this is? Have you no mind at all! Tell me what day this is, Eleanor! You tell me or I’ll beat it out of you!’

  ‘It’s my birthday, Da!’ Ellie shouted up at him. ‘And you’re hurting me!’

  ‘It’s the anniversary of your mother’s death, you little scut! That’s what day it is! And that’s what this day will always be! The day your blessed mother, may the Lord have mercy on her, was taken from me! There’ll be no celebrating this day. Not now. Not ever!’

  Then he seized the bag of cookies, and on his way back indoors, threw them where he considered they belonged, in the trash can with the rest of the garbage.

  2

  For Christ
mas the following year, the month after the Armistice, Artemis was given a new doll. She didn’t much like dolls, and this one was no different. It was far too pretty, like most dolls, with huge blue eyes in a ridiculously beautiful china face, and the most exquisite clothes. Artemis much preferred things that were real, such as the injured squirrel she had rescued and nursed back to health, and her pet hen Jemima whose broken leg she and Rosie had mended, and who every now and then was allowed up to the nursery. Dolls were wet, and this doll, Artemis decided, with its great round eyes and silly little mouth, was without doubt the wettest doll of all.

  Even so, she had to pretend to like it, particularly because it had been given to her by her father. Artemis could not remember him ever giving her anything ever before. But it was quite definitely from him, because that was what was on the gift tag. ‘To Artemis, from Papa.’

  She went over to where he was standing by the fire and thanked him.

  ‘You must thank me too, Artemis,’ said a voice from behind her. ‘Because really it’s from me as well.’

  Artemis turned and looked at the owner of the voice, a beautiful woman in a blue dress, with bobbed blonde hair. Artemis frowned, trying to remember where she had seen her before, and then she remembered. She was the woman in the pale fur coat in the back of the car that day with her father.

  ‘You see,’ the woman was saying, bending towards Artemis and putting a long cold finger under Artemis’s chin. ‘I chose it for you, darling. Especially. It’s meant to be from me as well.’

  Artemis looked up at her father and found him staring down at her with a deep frown, as if to say, Artemis felt, that she should have known.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Artemis told the woman, moving slightly away from her so that the finger could no longer reach her chin. ‘But it didn’t say on the card.’

  ‘Oh, John –’ the woman sighed, turning to Artemis’s father. ‘John.’

  It was a scold. Artemis knew that from the way the woman had sighed. Nanny often did that when she was cross with Artemis for leaving her clothes in a heap, or a dirty glass by her bedside. ‘Oh Artemis,’ she would sigh. ‘Really.’

  The woman with the bobbed blonde hair was bending down towards her again. ‘It says Mama,’ she smiled, her teeth slightly yellow against her over red lips. She also smelt of cigarettes. ‘Listen.’ She took hold of the doll and bent it slightly forward.

  ‘Mama,’ the doll croaked. ‘Mama.’

  ‘John?’ the woman said, looking back at Artemis’s father.

  ‘Later,’ Lord Deverill said. ‘Not the time now, Bunny. Later.’

  The woman stared at him for a moment, without expression, and then with a little smile handed the doll back to Artemis.

  ‘Mama,’ it said, as Artemis carried it across to where her other presents lay. ‘Mama.’

  There was a lot of whispering in the nursery at bathtime. Artemis sat absolutely still in her bath, trying to hear what Rosie and the other maids were saying, but all she could hear were their silly giggles. She asked Nanny what they had all been talking about as Nanny towelled her dry.

  ‘Not for me to say, dear,’ she replied. ‘All I’ve heard is rumours.’

  ‘What’s a rumour, Nanny?’ Artemis wondered aloud.

  ‘A rumour is half a lie, darling. “They say so” is half a lie. That’s what a rumour is.’

  ‘Fact of the matter is,’ her father told Artemis when he took her aside before lunch on Boxing Day, ‘you’re to have a new mother. Yes?’

  ‘No,’ said Artemis. ‘I mean, how?’

  Her father paused and stared at her. ‘How, did you say?’ he asked. ‘You say how?’

  ‘What about Mama?’ Artemis said.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘What will Mama say?’

  Her father stared at her again, seeming even more baffled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well I imagine she’ll say good show. Point is, do you see, whatever your Mama might have said, point is, it’s time you had a new one.’ He walked away then and left Artemis trying to puzzle out what her father meant by putting her mother in the past tense.

  She asked Nanny when they sat down to lunch. ‘You said Mama had been gathered, didn’t you Nanny?’

  ‘That’s right, child,’ Nanny answered curtly, clearly not wishing to entertain morbid thoughts at such a festive time.

  ‘You said Mama had crossed over somewhere,’ Artemis continued, ‘but we’d all meet again. But if we meet again now, and she finds I have another Mama –’

  ‘Sssshhh, child,’ Nanny said, between mouthfuls of goose. ‘You won’t all meet now. Not in this life.’

  Artemis stared at the old woman’s whiskery face. ‘But Nanny you said –’

  ‘No buts, thank you,’ Nanny interrupted. ‘Butts are for goats, not little girls.’

  ‘You still haven’t said how I can have two mothers, Nanny,’ Artemis persisted, raising her voice and attracting the attention of a red-faced man at the main table.

  ‘They can,’ Nanny said firmly, ‘if their fathers choose to remarry.’

  ‘Gracious,’ said the red-faced man, turning to talk across to their separate table. ‘I had three mothers. All quite beastly, too.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Artemis said.

  ‘It’s not for you to understand,’ Nanny said, stifling a small hiccup.

  ‘Your mother on the other hand –’ the red-faced gentleman smiled at Artemis. ‘Now your mother was a splendid creature. Finest huntswoman I’ve ever known. Loveliest creature ever to follow hounds.’ He picked up his wine glass and drained it. ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he admitted. ‘Cried me eyes out when she was killed. Terrible business. Cried my eyes out. Howled like a wolf.’

  ‘Died?’ Artemis said, staring first at the red-faced gentleman and then back at her nanny. ‘But –’ she began.

  ‘Eat up, child,’ Nanny commanded. ‘You’re lagging behind.’

  ‘But, Nanny,’ Artemis insisted. ‘What does he mean? My mother isn’t dead.’

  ‘Of course she is, child,’ her nanny replied impatiently. ‘What on earth else do you think happened to her?’

  Artemis lay in bed that night, and wondered in the black, black dark. Her mother was dead like the badger she had seen last week in the woods, with its hair all stiff, and its mouth curled open.

  She had spent all afternoon trying to ask Nanny more, but Nanny had been in a funny mood, laughing one minute and crying the next, and not making any sense of anything she said. At last she managed to tax Rosie who looked at her astonished.

  ‘But I don’t understand, Lady Artemis! All this time? You mean all this time you thought your mother – no, I just don’t understand. Whoever let you imagine such a thing?’

  ‘If they had told me Mama was dead,’ Artemis had told Rosie gravely, ‘I would have understood, you see. But all this time, all this time I’ve thought – she was just gone.’

  ‘Nanny Brougham told you, I was sure of that.’

  ‘No. All Nanny kept saying was that we would all meet again,’ Artemis insisted. ‘And that I mustn’t worry.’

  ‘Well, now there’s a thing,’ Rosie had said, with a shake of her head. ‘All this time, and there was you thinking.’ She gave another shake of her head. ‘Now there really is a thing.’

  ‘And now I’m to have a new mama, and I don’t really like her one bit.’

  ‘She’s very beautiful, Lady Artemis.’

  ‘No, she’s not Rosie. Really. She’s horrid.’

  Artemis hated her mama-to-be as much as she disliked the doll she’d given her. It took little time to decide that her new mama was just like the doll, with her big blue eyes, and her made up face and blonde hair.

  She stared at the doll which Nanny had put on the shelf, and the doll stared back at her with cold blue eyes. Artemis reached up and took it down off the shelf. ‘I hate you,’ she told it, tipping it back to make her talk.

  ‘Mama,’ said the doll, ‘mama.’

  ‘And I am not going
to be your mama!’ She threw the doll with force back on to the shelf.

  Perhaps it was the force, but the doll fell to its side, hit the wall, and then rolled off the shelf on to the floor. Its china face was smashed in, and one blue eye had disappeared. Artemis panicked. Looking round for somewhere to hide the wrecked toy she climbed on to a chair and put the doll on top of the nursery cupboard.

  ‘Mama,’ it called faintly. ‘Mama.’

  Much later, when she returned from her walk with Rosie, she found her mama-to-be inspecting the nursery floor with Nanny.

  ‘Hello, my sweet,’ she said, seeing Artemis. ‘I’ve come to see where you live.’

  Artemis said nothing, struggling to get out of her coat and gloves, hiding the panic she felt.

  ‘Terribly gloomy up here, Nanny?’ the new chatelaine announced. ‘Really terribly gloomy, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, your ladyship,’ Nanny agreed. ‘Although the decoration is really not my providence.’

  ‘Province, no, I know, nor should it be. No, it’s mine.’ She turned to Artemis who knew what was coming before the question was asked. ‘Where’s your new doll, my sweet?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t know, because I don’t like her.’

  ‘Great heavens, child,’ Nanny said quickly. ‘Where are your manners?’ But she wasn’t quick enough for the woman who was to be Artemis’s new mother.

  ‘And why don’t you like her, my sweet?’

  ‘I don’t like the way she says Mama.’

  ‘And where is she now?’

  Artemis shrugged and pointed. ‘Up there,’ she said. ‘On top of the cupboard.’

  The next Lady Deverill nodded for Rosie to fetch the doll down, which the nursemaid did, while everyone else waited in the growing silence. Rosie handed the doll to her new employer, who when she saw the doll’s broken face flashed a look of pure hatred at the child before her.

  ‘How did this happen, my sweet?’ she asked. ‘I hope it was an accident.’

  ‘Yes it was,’ Artemis agreed quickly, remembering another accident. ‘We were playing horses, and she fell off.’