In Sunshine Or In Shadow Page 7

  ‘I’m not in the slightest bit interested,’ Diana Lanchester retorted. ‘All I’m interested in is where you found that damn’ horse.’

  ‘Mine you mean?’ Artemis’s stepmother enquired ingenuously. ‘This is a new chap. Came from Buffie Stanford’s.’

  ‘The horse Artemis is riding, Katherine. Where did it come from?’

  ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he, Diana? I rather fancied him for myself.’

  ‘Where did he come from?’ Diana Lanchester repeated. ‘Has he seen hounds?’

  ‘He was passed on to us by a friend, darling,’ the second Lady Deverill replied. ‘With a known history. But I’m terribly sorry, you see, because he just isn’t for sale.’

  ‘I don’t want to buy the damn’ animal!’ Diana Lanchester said, raising her voice, and earning looks of disapproval from the gentlemen nearby. ‘All I want to know is what you think you’re playing at!’

  ‘Playing at?’ Artemis’s stepmother laughed. ‘Playing at? Why should I be playing at something, Diana darling?’

  ‘Telling Artemis her father had bought the animal!’ Diana Lanchester replied. ‘John may be mad, but he’d never buy a horse as hot as that as a first horse for his daughter!’

  By now the disapproving looks Diana Lanchester had been earning had turned to ones of open curiosity as those around became intrigued by the confrontation.

  ‘You bought it, didn’t you, Katherine?’ Diana Lanchester demanded. ‘But where from? And why?’

  ‘Darling, if you will persist in raising your voice while the hounds are drawing, sweetie,’ the second Lady Deverill sighed, ‘John will only send you home.’

  ‘He should send his daughter home, damn it.’

  For a moment Artemis thought her godmother was going to strike her stepmother with her hunting whip, which she was now holding half-raised. But in fact the whip was for Artemis’s benefit, and not her stepmother’s.

  ‘But if he won’t, I will. Artemis,’ she said, hooking the end of her whip round Artemis’s forearm, ‘take that animal back to the stables at once.’

  ‘But Godmother –’ Artemis began to protest.

  ‘This instance, do you hear?’ her godmother interrupted.

  But it was already too late, because just as Diana Lanchester was issuing her orders, there was a crash of hound music as they found in the kale, and they were away, the fox streaming out of the vegetation and through a large hedge which led to the adjoining field. Artemis’s horse whipped round twice, plunged and bucked, and then with Artemis, much to its apparent displeasure, still well on board, took off after the leading group.

  The first hedge seemed to pass miles below Artemis as Hullabaloo landed a good ten or twelve feet the other side. Artemis, who had never sat such a prodigious leap on a horse, let alone one taken side-saddle, leaned well back and sat the jump well. Through her reins she felt the horse cock his jaw in the hope he could take hold completely, but having sat enough ‘bolts’ on both Buttons and Paintbox, Artemis was wise to this, and she quickly shortened up her reins and then relaxed them, confusing the horse quite deliberately. The manoeuvre worked, and by the time the second hedge loomed in front of her, Artemis had some semblance of control.

  She knew this hedge well, having jumped it both ways innumerable times. There was a ditch the other side of it, which should present no problems provided they met it on the right stride. Hullabaloo had ideas of his own and put in a short one. Artemis responded by sitting and kicking on hard, which drove the horse at the bottom of the fence so that he would have to take off or run into the obstacle head-on. He took off.

  They landed well over the ditch and as Artemis gathered him up, she looked ahead and saw that hounds, her father and his huntsmen were all swinging right and heading towards a line of big hedges in the Vale. Normally Artemis would have responded by kicking on and flying the raspers behind the leading group, for to her way of thinking there was no feeling like it in the world. But today, realizing the problems she might have in controlling her mount let alone in staying on should it prop at a hedge or peck on landing, she decided discretion was the better part of valour and shortening her left rein swung Hullabaloo away in the other direction to take what was known as the Funks’ Run, which ran round a long ridge of elms, across the brook at its narrowest point, and then over a good two miles of open ground, with only one reasonable sized open ditch and hedge to be jumped at the bottom of the dip before a long run uphill which led back to the last of the Vale hedges. Artemis had sometimes taken this run when out with her cowardly cousins, although she would always jump the open ditch and hedge while her cousins were fumbling with the gate.

  It wasn’t until she turned away from the elms that Artemis realized she was not alone. She took a look over her shoulder and saw a horse and rider behind her and at full stretch, but with the sun in her eyes, Artemis couldn’t distinguish who it was.

  But whoever it was, they were determined to catch Artemis, for when Artemis stole another look she saw the horse behind was really stretching out. This was just what Artemis didn’t want, some thruster charging up behind Hullabaloo whom she had just got settled, and trying to make a race of it, particularly with the big hedge fast approaching at the bottom of the dip. So she checked Hullabaloo, and, to her surprise, the horse came back to her, perhaps having now learned to trust his new jockey.

  Even so, Artemis had no time to relax or to shout at whoever it was still charging up beside her to slow down because the hill was beginning to flatten out into the dip and they were fast approaching the big open ditch.

  Which was when the other horse got to Hullabaloo’s quarters, a big, handsome bay, his bit covered in a white froth, his nostrils wide and red, and his eye set fast on the forthcoming obstacle.

  His weight was suddenly on Hullabaloo’s flank. Artemis was being purposefully ridden off, across the corner of the hedge towards the closed gate. She dare not look round at who was busily trying to kill her, but shout and scream she could and she did. It made no difference. The big bay three quarterbred was being driven hard into Artemis’s lightly framed thoroughbred, and Artemis could feel the distress signals through her hands and seat as the horse shortened its stride in a desperate attempt to find a way out. Which it quite failed to do.

  Faced with either crashing into the heavy gatepost or jumping the dark gaping ditch off far too short a stride, Hullabaloo tried to put in an extra stride and met the obstacle entirely wrong. A second later he lay dead on the far side of the hedge, his neck snapped in two, with his young rider lying prostrate in the grass beside him.

  The second Lady Deverill, having pulled her horse off Hullabaloo at the last minute, leaving herself just enough time to put him right at the ditch and hedge, didn’t even bother to stop and admire her handiwork before riding on up the hill to rejoin the hunt and tell her husband that there seemed to have been a rather fearful accident.

  4

  Ellie Milligan was scrubbing the back step when there was a knock on the front door. Wiping her hands on her apron, she went to see who was calling so early in the day. It was their neighbour Madame Gautier, dressed in a pale yellow linen coat and dress, with a matching cloche hat.

  ‘I am taking you out,’ she announced. ‘So ’urry now and change, please.’

  ‘I can’t, Madame,’ Ellie replied. ‘I have all the housework to do, and the shopping.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Madame. ‘Your father is away until the end of the week I know, with the three eldest. So you ’ave no reason to refuse. Now ’urry. I ’ave a cab waiting.’

  Madame sat down in Ellie’s father’s chair, by the unlit fire, and took out a cigarette from her purse, while Ellie stood uncertainly by.

  ‘I cannot wait all the morning,’ Madame said, lighting her cigarette. ‘You have until the end of this smoke.’

  Ellie ran upstairs, threw off her old blouse and skirt and her much darned stockings, and got hurriedly dressed in her Sunday best, yet another variation on the plain black dress with
detachable collar and cuffs she had been wearing for as long as she could remember. Then, having quickly brushed her hair, she rushed back downstairs just as Madame was throwing her finished cigarette in the fire.

  ‘Uhhh,’ Madame said disapprovingly, as she appraised Ellie. ‘This is something I should ’ave done a very long time ago. Alors. On va.’

  Ellie was now eighteen years old, and in all those years she had never travelled in a taxi-cab, nor had she ever been into the heart of Boston. She had spent all her formative years within the confines of the outlying suburb of Westfield, where there were few if any shops for ladies. Where she lived, there seemed to be nothing but barbers’ shops and grocery stores, drab haberdasheries, hardware stores and endless pawnshops. There were no stores like the ones she could now see flashing past the cab window, fine jewellers and milliners, bookshops and department stores, their windows displaying a variety of goods Ellie had only ever seen in the pictures of second-hand magazines.

  ‘Thank you!’ Madame called to the cab driver. ‘Stop ’ere if you please!’

  The cab drew up outside an enormous emporium in the very heart of the town, and Ellie alighted while Madame paid off the cab. The store was called O’Hara’s, of which Ellie had often heard, mostly from Madame, and of which she had, of course, seen photographs in the newspaper advertisements. But nothing had prepared her for the monumental size and sheer glamour of the building. It seemed it was not a shop, or a store, but a palace, full of the stuff of dreams, stocked with fancies and sheer imaginings, desires and private caprices. Ellie felt an elemental thrill as she stepped through the great swing doors, as if she was entering an ancient cathedral rather than a modern monument to commercial enterprise.

  ‘Ready-made,’ said Madame, as she guided Ellie towards the elevator. ‘I think this is our first port of call, yes? I would ’ave preferred couture, of course. But alas, as you say, we are not made with money.’

  The first dress which was tried on her would have suited Ellie somewhat more than fine. To her it was quite perfect, a light red costume made of silk, which seemed to cling to her like a second skin.

  ‘’Opeless,’ said Madame. ‘I do not know what I am thinking. Go please – and take that off at once. Then come with me.’

  Back in her drab black dress, Ellie was escorted smartly out of the ready-made department and back into the elevator.

  ‘Have I done something wrong, Madame?’ Ellie finally asked, afraid the dream was already over.

  ‘No, no, chèrie,’ Madame sighed reassuringly. ‘No I am the foolish one. You need underclothes! You cannot wear today’s dress over such things as you ’ave on!’ Madame laughed, ignoring the stares of the elevator’s other occupants, and Ellie’s quite visible embarrassment. ‘You poor child! You cannot feel like a woman in such ’orrible bloomaires!’

  Ellie recovered her composure and understood perfectly well what Madame meant once she had tried on her first set of crêpe de Chine camiknickers.

  ‘Voilà!’ said Madame from her chair in the corner of the well-curtained booth. ‘Perfect. You have such a good figure!’

  Ellie had never really given her shape much thought up until that moment. She was always in such a hurry, jumping out of bed and straight into her workaday clothes, that she had failed to take notice of the fact that she was growing into a very shapely young woman. But now as she stood looking at herself in a full length looking glass, she could see that she had indeed what the magazines described as the perfect figure, firm round breasts, a narrow flat waist, good hips, a small posterior, and long slender legs which were greatly enhanced by the silk stockings the assistant had carefully rolled on to them.

  ‘We will take that, please,’ Madame ordered. ‘And the chemise and knickaires also, in triple ninon I show you in the display case.’

  Ellie was ordered to keep her new lingerie on under her old black dress as they made their way back downstairs to the ready-made department. Here Madame rejected the dress Ellie had previously tried on, in favour of a pale blue two piece, with a scalloped and belted waist, a calf-length pleated skirt, a large but neat bow to one side of the neckline, and two very small bows on the elbows of the wrist-length sleeves.

  ‘Très chic,’ Madame announced. ‘Très très chic. Except for your feet. And your ’ead.’

  Shoes were no problem, and Ellie was soon fitted with a pair of navy blue leather shoes, with gently curving two inch heels. The question of her hair, however, brought about a confrontation, Madame arguing that Ellie’s long hair, even caught up as it was in a chignon, was completely out of fashion, and quite ruined the look Madame was trying to create.

  ‘Besides, chèrie,’ she argued, ‘with such ’air you cannot wear an ’at! The cloche is still the fashion, whether we like it or no, and with your ’air as it is! What can you wear? Nothing!’

  ‘My father will murder me, Madame!’ Ellie pleaded, as Madame marched her off to the coiffeuse two floors up. ‘The one thing my father likes about me, or rather about the only thing he isn’t directly rude about, is my hair!’

  ‘Your father ’e can go smoke,’ Madame retorted, sitting Ellie down in a chair. ‘You are a beautiful young woman, not some old-fashioned Irish ’ousemaid! Now please!’ Madame instructed the hairdresser who was now in attendance. ‘We will ’ave all this off, yes? And waved. But ’ere – the shingle – ’ere we will ’ave a curl. No shaving you understand, but cut into a soft curl just ’ere. Comme ça.’

  Madame indicated the preferred style from a set of drawings in a folder and Ellie, attached as she was to her mane of dark hair, was forced to agree how chic the chosen style was. Particularly when Madame bought her a matching pale blue cloche, cut quite high at the back, and with a deep brim on the right side, which practically obscured her right eye.

  ‘I ’ear,’ Madame laughed as Ellie examined herself in a mirror hand-held by the assistant, ‘that in London these new ’ats are lethal! Because the way the English drive, on the wrong side, with the brim –’ and to illustrate her point, Madame put a hand up to her right eye, ‘with the brim comme ça they cannot see the oncoming traffic!’

  ‘Such is happily not the case in Boston,’ the assistant said, making a final and quite unnecessary adjustment to Ellie’s new hat.

  ‘No, no,’ Madame agreed happily. ‘Nor en Paris. Where naturellement the fashion ’e start. As always.’

  ‘But why is it important for me to be fashionable?’ Ellie asked as they climbed once more into the elevator. ‘Please don’t think I’m ungrateful, Madame, because I’m not. But I don’t quite understand the purpose of this outing.’

  ‘Ah, the more we understand,’ Madame replied, ‘the less then our pleasures.’

  ‘But when am I going to wear these clothes, Madame? It’s not as if I ever go out.’

  ‘No no, ma choupette. It is as if you ’ave never gone out, yes. But this does not mean you not ever go out. Today for an instance, yes? Today you are out! Today you are out to lunch!’

  There was a young woman waiting for Ellie and Madame as they stepped out of the elevator, which now only they occupied, on the very top floor. Ellie wondered to herself what new department she was being taken to now.

  ‘Madame Gautier?’ the young woman enquired. ‘Mr O’Hara is waiting for you.’

  Mr O’Hara? Ellie wondered with a shock. The Mr O’Hara? The name above the building?

  ‘Madame – ?’ she began.

  ‘Quiet, chèrie,’ Madame interrupted. ‘Just straighten your dress, and do not say anything too foolish.’

  A young man in an immaculate dark blue suit took over from the young woman who had met them at the elevator and led them into a vast room, furnished with antiques. Ellie understood this to be an office, because there were young men in dark blue suits and white shirts, and young women stenographers in dark blue dresses with white collars sitting at mahogany desks carefully checking perfectly arranged papers, or moving silently across the deeply carpeted floor to file immaculate folders away in mah
ogany bureaus. Every so often, as the young man led them across the room, a telephone would ring, but quietly, its bell having been adjusted to suit the tone of the office, and someone would answer the muted telephone in a lowered voice. No-one stared at Ellie as if she had no right to be there. If anyone caught her curious eye, they just smiled politely back and got on with their business.

  Ahead of her, the young man opened one of a pair of tall deeply polished rosewood doors. ‘Your visitors, sir,’ he announced before stepping aside. ‘Madame Gautier and Miss Milligan.’

  Madame swept in while Ellie hesitated, afraid that any moment she might wake up from a dream. She looked to the young man as if for reassurance, and he smiled back and nodded for Ellie to go on in, which she did without, much to her surprise, suddenly finding herself sitting upright at home in bed, clutching her thin bedding around her and wondering how her mind could imagine such things.

  ‘Miss Milligan,’ a man said somewhere in the haze in front of her. ‘This is indeed a pleasure.’

  Ellie saw him now, perfectly clearly, an elderly man, short, bespectacled, immaculately dressed and judging from the hand he was extending to Ellie, beautifully manicured. His face was open and pleasant, with a skin as pink as a child’s.

  ‘I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Milligan,’ the man continued. ‘I’m William O’Hara. But my friends all know me as Buck.’

  Ellie shook his hand, which was small, soft and uncalloused, so unlike her father’s, which was large, hard and leathery. She looked round the room, unable to believe her surroundings. Again, she had only ever seen pictures of rooms like this in magazines, in the homes of film stars: enormous chambers furnished as this one was with deep wing chairs and buttoned leather chesterfields, warmed by a huge log fire blazing in the grate, and with every wall hung with various and ornately framed oil paintings.

  One particular painting caught her eye, and Ellie found herself staring back at it, time and again as Mr O’Hara and Madame began to chat. It was of a harbour on a rough and windy day, which some small sailing ships were trying to enter with, it appeared to Ellie, no little difficulty, while behind them a steamer was cutting through the seas at great speed.