In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 32

  By the time Artemis moved into the Dower House the stables were a long way short of such a projection. But they were once more in use, for besides Boot, Artemis had bought four new horses, two six-year-olds to be got ready to go point-to-pointing in the next season, and a couple of unbroken two-year-olds whom she intended to break and sell on. They were all cheap horses, the four costing Artemis less than one hundred guineas, but that was of no matter, for to Jenkins a horse was horse, and his yard was alive again.

  As for Artemis’s new home, it was a house she knew well, for often on their walks if they were caught out when it suddenly rained, Nanny and she would shelter in the then uninhabited Dower House and Artemis would play in and out of all the empty rooms. It was a fine late seventeenth-century house, older than the main house, and in good structural order, needing only redecorating and furnishing before becoming fully habitable.

  Artemis plunged herself into the enterprise, determined to restore and furnish the house in the best possible way, something which took up all her time. She drove up and down to London frequently during the week, in search of materials and wallpapers, and scoured the countryside far and near for furnishings. By the end of the summer the house was ready and finished.

  Ellie and Hugo were invited to drinks to celebrate the official opening, despite the fact that Artemis had been camping out there since late spring. Ellie had an errand to do first, so she dropped Hugo off at the house before driving to the village.

  ‘It’s lovely, Tom,’ Hugo said, walking through from drawing room to dining room to study to morning room and back to the drawing room. ‘Excellent. Just as one would have expected.’

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ Artemis asked, looking in a large cupboard. ‘I only have gin.’

  ‘Gin will be fine, thank you,’ Hugo replied. ‘That red paper in the morning room –’

  ‘I know just what you are going to say,’ Artemis interrupted, still pouring his drink. ‘So I wouldn’t bother.’

  ‘I’m not doubting for a moment that it isn’t absolutely correct, Tom.’

  ‘That red is the colour which was here originally.’ Artemis handed him a glass which was mostly neat gin. ‘That’s the last of the tonic, I’m afraid,’ she added. ‘It’s probably flat.’

  Hugo tasted his drink. ‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed. ‘And it’s not tonic. It’s soda.’

  ‘Yes, so it is,’ Artemis said, looking at the bottle. ‘I should throw it away if I were you and just have gin.’

  ‘It’s all right, Tom. I’ll stick. It’ll all have the same effect. And there’s Ellie. No –’ he caught Artemis by the arm just in time. ‘No, you’re to wait in here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Ellie said so.’

  The reason became clear to Artemis a moment later when Ellie came through the door.

  ‘Rosie,’ said Artemis, staring at the apple-cheeked young woman with short dark curly hair. ‘Good heavens.’

  ‘Hullo, Lady Artemis,’ Rosie replied, and then she blushed. ‘I’m not sure I knows what to say.’

  ‘You’re not the only one, Rosie,’ said Artemis. ‘And who’s this?’ She stared at Ellie, who was now bringing a man into the room.

  ‘This is my husband, Lady Artemis,’ Rosie replied, blushing pink.

  ‘This is Mr Kemp,’ Ellie continued. ‘Mr Kemp is going to work on the estate, so I thought maybe Rosie could housekeep for you.’

  ‘If that’s all right that is,’ Rosie added, with a shy smile. ‘I mean if that’s all the same to you, that is.’

  Artemis nodded her agreement. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said. ‘Why not?’ She returned her old nursemaid’s smile, before walking over to open a large mahogany cupboard. ‘So what do you want to drink, Eleanor?’ she asked abruptly. ‘I’ve only got gin.’

  Outside the gates and walls of Brougham, the world watched uneasily as Hitler, Germany’s new self-appointed War Minister, marched into Austria, before turning his attention to Czechoslovakia. By September, after Germany had mobilized her troops and France had called up her reservists, war in Europe seemed increasingly inevitable.

  Artemis called in to see Ellie and Hugo on her return from a trip to London one day in late September. She was directed by Porter to the back hall of the house where she found Hugo up a scaffolding which had been erected against the wall of the staircase.

  ‘What ever are you doing up there?’ Artemis called.

  ‘Painting a mural!’ Hugo called back. ‘It’s going to cover all this wall! Are you looking for Ellie? Because if you are –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter! You’ll do!’ Artemis replied. ‘Do you feel like some coffee? Shall I ring down for some?’

  They sat at the foot of the staircase, drinking coffee and eating digestive biscuits which a maid had brought them, while Hugo explained the plans for his mural. Artemis only half-listened.

  ‘I want to know what you think of this Czechoslovakia business,’ she asked Hugo, when there was a lull in the conversation. ‘I was at a thing with my godmother the other night, and the Coopers, who are friends of hers, they were there. And the Cranbornes. Oh and Hore-Belisha, and all that lot. Shakes Morrison, you know. And they were all getting dreadfully steamed up about this appeasement business. I didn’t even know. That Halifax had been working on Hitler privately? A whole lot of them have. Including, hardly surprisingly, my stepmother, Diana’s convinced she’s a proper fascist. Like so many of these so-called appeasers. They’re – what did Diana call them, yes, crypto-fascists. What exactly does that mean, Hugo?’

  ‘Secret fascists,’ Hugo told her.

  ‘Yes I know. And apparently any number of them have been sneaking across to Germany,’ Artemis continued thoughtfully, ‘visiting Hitler on the q.t., hoping I suppose either to keep on the right side of him, just in case, you know. Or to try and talk him out of all this. Can you imagine?’

  ‘I think we’d be surprised at just how many people in this country do have fascist sympathies,’ Hugo replied.

  ‘How many of the people we know, you mean,’ Artemis retorted. ‘Anyway. I think it’s dreadful about Czechoslovakia. Duff Cooper said this is one of the most shaming times in our history. Or rather it will be, if we don’t fight for them. Did you know there was a march up and down Whitehall the other day, Hugo? There was this huge march, with everyone shouting, “Stand by the Czechs! Chamberlain must go!”’

  ‘Yes, I read about it in The Times,’ Hugo said.

  ‘I was there. I joined in.’

  Hugo washed his paintbrushes off with turpentine and rubbed them clean on an old rag before replying. ‘Do you think we should go to war? I mean just on behalf of Czechoslovakia? You think that just twenty years on from the war to end all wars, we should get the rifles down again and go off to war? And that people should sacrifice their children? And the children of their children? Because of a squabble over where to draw the German-Czechoslovak border?’

  ‘Yes,’ Artemis replied. ‘It’s not a question of going to war on Czechoslovakia’s account. Any more than it was in 1914. We didn’t go to war then for Serbia. Or Belgium. We went to war because one of the things we believe in this country is that no one great power should be allowed to dominate the rest of Europe by brute force.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hugo thoughtfully, taking his glasses off and holding them away from him to stare through them distantly at nothing in particular. ‘Yes. Yes I see. Dulce et decorum est.’

  ‘I think perhaps sometimes – yes it is,’ Artemis agreed, just about remembering her schoolroom Latin. ‘It is sometimes a sweet and good thing to die for your country.’

  ‘Would you, Tom?’

  ‘Of course, Hugo. Wouldn’t you?’

  Hugo simply raised his eyebrows and nodded to himself, as they fell silent at the thought of what could be lying before them.

  They were both still sitting for a few seconds in silence on the bottom step of the back staircase when Ellie came through from the kitchens and found them.
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br />   ‘Artemis thinks there’s going to be a war,’ Hugo told her.

  ‘Oh Artemis, such a pessimist –’

  The three of them argued it out over lunch, Artemis provoking Ellie by deliberately misunderstanding her reasons for optimism, and Ellie infuriating Hugo and Artemis with her confident belief that America, simply by arbitration, was influential enough to avert any likelihood of war.

  ‘It isn’t as simple as that,’ Artemis said.

  ‘Meaning I’m as simple as that,’ Ellie countered, ‘but this European thing isn’t, because nothing European ever is.’

  ‘Look,’ said Hugo, trying to restore reason. ‘It was a perfectly sound notion of Roosevelt’s. There was nothing wrong with the idea in outline. And if he had managed to call the minor European powers to the conference table –’

  ‘If your prime minister hadn’t snubbed him!’ Ellie exclaimed heatedly.

  ‘Your prime minister, Ellie,’ Hugo reminded her. ‘You live in England, remember?’

  ‘That’s beside the point, Hugo! OK. So let’s call him “the” prime minister, OK?’

  ‘OK!’ said Hugo.

  ‘If “the” prime minister hadn’t snubbed President Roosevelt quite so categorically,’ Ellie continued, ignoring the jibe, ‘if he had allowed him the opportunity to intervene – I mean he is the president of the United States!’

  Hugo looked to Artemis and widened his eyes. Ellie kicked him hard on his shin, under the table.

  ‘God!’ said Hugo, clutching at his leg.

  ‘If he had just allowed Roosevelt the chance to get everyone round a table talking, instead of telling the president to go run!’ Ellie maintained. ‘Saying that any intervention from America at this time would queer his pitch with Mussolini! I mean for God’s sake, Mussolini’s as big a goddam dictator as Hitler! And all your prime minister could think of –’

  ‘The prime minister, Ellie,’ Hugo reminded her, still grimly rubbing his sore shin. ‘The prime minister.’

  ‘You can go run, Hugo,’ Ellie warned him. ‘You know what I’m saying is true! Roosevelt could have averted this war!’

  ‘But we’re not at war yet, Ellie!’ Hugo said.

  ‘I agree with Ellie,’ Artemis suddenly announced. ‘Chamberlain’s not only an idiot, he’s a conceited one, too.’

  ‘I suddenly feel Czechoslovak!’ Hugo cried. ‘Everyone’s deserting me!’

  ‘That’s not funny, Hugo,’ Artemis said.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ Ellie agreed. ‘Not in the slightest.’

  ‘You know what the on dit, is don’t you?’ Artemis put down her knife and fork and drank some water. ‘Apparently what the A for Appeasers are hoping is that we promise to go to war on the Czechs’ behalf, and then on the q.t. persuade the French that it’s not such a good idea after all. And then we pull out as well, piggy-backing on the French.’

  ‘What nonsense,’ Hugo laughed. ‘That’s just café talk. That’s not how the English do things.’

  ‘It’s exactly how we do things,’ Artemis replied. ‘That’s how we’ve been doing things for centuries. Really.’

  ‘But if that’s the case, Tom,’ Hugo argued, ‘then there won’t be a war.’

  ‘No,’ Artemis agreed. ‘I don’t think there will be. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think that there shouldn’t be.’

  They all strolled through the grounds after lunch, through a fine drizzle of rain. No-one said much, they were all three too deeply preoccupied with the events they’d been discussing so heatedly over lunch. Chamberlain at that very moment was on his way back from Germany after his third visit, where he had met Hitler in Munich in the hope of improving the terms proposed to him by the Führer at their earlier meeting in Godesberg. By tea time that afternoon, when they had returned from their walk, Hugo tuned in the wireless and the three of them learned that the prime minister had landed at Heston with a signed agreement in hand, assuring the British people and the world at large that there was to be no war, and peace for their time.

  Hugo was delighted and giving a boyish whoop for joy, dashed off to find Porter to send him to the cellars for his best bottle of champagne. While he was gone, Artemis got up and went to look out of one of the huge windows, across a parkland already turning autumnal.

  After a moment, Ellie threw a log on the fire and sat back in her chair with a sigh. ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘After all that.’

  ‘Don’t speak too soon,’ Artemis said. ‘It’s only a scrap of paper.’

  ‘Aren’t you ever optimistic about anything?’ Ellie asked her. ‘The four powers have all signed! There is going to be no war!’

  ‘Not for the moment, Eleanor. No.’

  ‘You heard your prime minister, Artemis! Come on! It’s peace! Guaranteed peace! They saw Hitler down! And it’s peace! Peace for our time!’

  ‘It’s peace for the time being, Eleanor.’

  ‘What is it? You want there to be a war?’

  ‘That’s the very last thing I want.’

  ‘Because if there was a war, you know what would happen, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Do you?’

  ‘You bet I do.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Hugo arrived back at that moment, accompanied by Porter bearing a bottle of vintage Krug. As he came in, he was met with a silence.

  ‘So what’s the matter with you two?’ he grinned. ‘Don’t you feel like a party?’

  ‘I’ll say,’ Ellie said, putting out of her mind the image of Hugo in uniform.

  Artemis stared at Hugo, who in her mind had become just a cross on yet another grave. ‘Blast,’ she exclaimed, suddenly picking up her stick. ‘Sorry. I forgot to feed Brutus.’

  Ellie discovered what had happened before Christmas and after the initial shock, decided to say nothing to Hugo. Instead, she bought an extra present and placed it under the tree with a special card attached. She then continued busying herself helping Hugo as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  The house was almost finished. In the short time Hugo’s father had owned it, he had managed to find and buy some fine paintings, and a certain amount of the right furniture, but Hugo had determined on making the house his and Ellie’s, rather than a memorial to times past. Happily Ellie and Hugo shared exactly the same tastes, despite their very different backgrounds, and the end result, due to Ellie’s sense of homeliness and Hugo’s classically trained eye, was a house which combined a sense of history with a feeling for comfort, and one that welcomed rather than overwhelmed its guests. All the important rooms were furnished without pomposity. Instead visitors got the impression of unity, of a sense of perfect order, as if the eighteenth century had been conjoined quite seamlessly with the twentieth. And at Hugo’s insistence, all the rooms were used whenever possible, such as when their friends were gathered for one of their increasingly popular parties, when endless treasure hunts or protracted games of sardines and hide and seek were played all over the house, or when Ellie and Hugo were alone together and decided that Pelmanism was even harder to play when the cards were laid out over the entire marble floor of the great hall.

  Sometimes the games were more intimate, as when Hugo would dismiss the Porter and the footmen and make Ellie pretend she was visiting royalty, sitting her at the huge dining table all by herself, while he attended to her needs and served her dinner as if he was a footman. Ellie could never get very far into these particular evenings without becoming quite helpless with laughter, particularly since Hugo played it all so seriously, managing to ignore the muffled sound of laughter while he bowed and scraped before her, backing out of the drawing room to leave Ellie to drink her champagne alone before dining, and then making her eat her food while he stood rigidly behind her against the wall, never uttering one word, unless in character.

  She would then be led by candlelight to be put to bed alone in the state bedroom, which once again boasted a superb handcarved wooden fourposter. The first couple of times they had played this game, by the time they reached the b
edroom Ellie had been begging for mercy, so helpless had been her laughter. But even then Hugo had ignored her, and disappeared to leave her to undress and get into bed alone, only to reappear under cover of dark sometime later and slip into the bed with her and make passionate, glorious love to her. By then all laughter was forgotten as Ellie thrilled to Hugo’s wonderful lovemaking, and to the notion of his mischievous fantasy.

  And then all would be laughter again as Hugo would leap out of bed, and back in his footman’s character, would charge around the state bedroom with only an eiderdown wrapped round him shouting that he, modest Jack Smith the footman, had ravished the queen or princess of whatever country Ellie was meant to be ruling that night.

  Which was how Hugo came to be given a Christmas present that year from Queen Hecuba of Heligoland, with a card that wished the season’s greetings to her most loyal subject, with her majesty’s deepest gratitude for what they had managed to make on the occasion of her last visit.

  Inside the wrappings was a baby’s silver rattle.

  15

  The house had been full at Christmas, full of friends and relatives, and the children of friends and relatives. Rather than going to London which had been her original plan, to stay with her godmother, Artemis had instead been persuaded to invite Diana Lanchester up to Brougham to celebrate the festival with Hugo and Ellie and their house guests. And once she had accepted the invitation, Artemis was, as Hugo used to joke to Ellie behind the closed doors of their bedroom, no end of a help.

  ‘Here goes,’ she announced grimly, at the beginning of December, ‘I know I’m going to be told to M Y, but there used to be certain traditions here at Christmas.’

  Hugo deliberately left a long silence while he continued to sign the Christmas cards Ellie was handing on to him. Ellie also kept silent, aware of her part in the good natured provocation of their friend.