The Four of Us (53 page)

‘Though she's wasting her time, of course,' Hugo said to Matt, ‘because when we marry she won't need a separate property of her own.'

‘And when do you intend popping the question?' Matt asked, fascinated by his friend's decision to venture down the aisle after fifty-six years of bachelorhood.

‘When her divorce comes through,' had been Hugo's confident

reply. ‘And uncontested divorces don't take long these days, so

you'd better start thinking top hat and tails, buddy.'

At Christmas, Orlando and Sholto made Artemis radiantly happy by driving down to Ruthven on Christmas Eve for a three-night stay. It was a visit enlivened by Josh, who brought a great deal of south-east London Jack-the-Lad chutzpah with him.

‘Your son and my two are never going to get on,' Artemis had said frantically before they had arrived. ‘Orlando and Sholto are too much like Rupert – they're very snobbish.'

‘It won't worry Josh,' Primmie had said serenely. ‘He isn't easily put down. Just you wait and see.'

To Artemis's relief, Orlando and Sholto hadn't been standoffish with Josh and were more than perfectly civil towards Hugo. They'd even been kind about Cornwall, saying that they intended coming back in early summer to check out the surfing.

There had been no Lucy or Dominique. Dominique had telephoned Geraldine from Rome, where she was spending Christmas with an Italian count who was, she assured Geraldine, on the verge of popping the kind of question that would make her a countess.

Lucy had telephoned on Christmas Eve, just as Primmie came into the house weighed down with armfuls of holly and ivy. ‘I'm in Hawaii, Mum. I'm coming home the pretty way and it's taking longer than I thought,' Geraldine heard her say and then, a little while later, ‘My goodness, Mum! You sound as if you're having an enormous house party. Who are Orlando and Sholto? They sound very top drawer. And who is Hugo and this Matt person you seem so fond of? I'm not going to come home to find you married again, am I?'

Primmie had laughed and told her not to be so silly, but Matt, who had taken the holly and ivy from her arms and was decorating the room with it, had also overheard the remark and Geraldine thought he looked more as if a secret were out, rather than embarrassed at Lucy having come to the wrong conclusion.

Later that evening, as Kiki went off with Brett to deliver presents to his married sister, who lived in Penzance, Geraldine, Primmie, Matt, Artemis and Hugo went into Calleloe to a Christmas carol concert, whilst Orlando, Sholto and Josh checked out the local pubs.

On Christmas Day morning, while the younger members of the house party were still in bed, there was more than one surprise where presents were concerned.

‘A Harley?
A purple
Harley?' Kiki said dazedly when Brett roared up to Ruthven at the crack of dawn astride her present. ‘But how can you afford it? You
couldn't
have afforded it! It must have cost thousands!'

‘Well, it's second-hand, but even so, it did rather stretch the budget,' Brett said with masterly understatement. ‘I figured we'd be riding it together most of the time, though, and that we'd have a lot of fun with it.'

‘A lot of fun?' Kiki threw her arms round him, ecstatic with joy. ‘I'm going to have far more fun than that! I'm going to have the most fun I've had since I was fifteen!'

‘A ring? Oh, Hugo. It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful.'

The square-cut antique sapphire, surrounded by diamonds, glittered on a bed of black velvet. Knowing that she was going to cry, grateful that they were alone in the Christmas-tree-decorated sitting room, Artemis lifted it from its box and slid it on to the fourth finger of her right hand.

Very gently, Hugo removed it and slid it on the fourth finger of her left hand.

As she sucked in her breath he lowered his powerful frame down on one knee, saying emotionally, ‘I was going to wait till you were free before I did this, my darling, but I simply can't wait any longer to know what your answer is going to be. Will you marry me, Artemis? Will you light up my life as no one else could possibly do? Will you be my wife, as well as my friend?'

‘Oh, yes!' Artemis didn't even try to restrain her tears of joy. She was loved again – and this time loved for the person she really was, not for the person she seemed to be. ‘Oh yes, Hugo!' she said, taking hold of the large white Irish linen handkerchief he was, not

for the first time, so dependably offering her. ‘I want to marry you

more than anything else in the world!'

Even before Primmie was faced with the stunning surprise of her own Christmas present, her morning had been joyously memorable. Whilst it was still dark she had milked Maybelline in the warm, electrically lit cow shed, and Black Hearted Alice in her spanking new, equally modern convenience-equipped shed, hardly able to believe that her life had changed so drastically since Christmas last year, when she'd been a Londoner hardly knowing the front end of a cow from the back.

She'd walked out of Alice's cosy sleeping quarters just as Brett had roared up on the Harley.

From then on, after he and Kiki had sped euphorically off for a Christmas-morning ride, she had had her holly-and-ivy-decorated kitchen to herself for an hour or so. Listening to carols on Classic FM she had stuffed the turkey with the chestnut stuffing Artemis had made before going to the Christmas Eve carol service, rubbed it all over with butter, layered its breast with bacon rashers, covered it loosely in foil and put it in the oven.

By the time Hugo arrived, a small gold-wrapped present in one hand, she was peeling potatoes.

She didn't find herself peeling them for very long. When Artemis rushed into the kitchen to tell her that she and Hugo were engaged, all Christmas-dinner preparations were put on hold.

Orlando and Sholto were woken by their mother announcing her news. Geraldine was woken by Primmie with the same news.

As a bleary-eyed Orlando and Sholto manfully made it downstairs in order to toast their mother and her fiance in champagne, Matt had arrived and even a hungover Josh had put in an appearance.

It was after all the congratulations had been given that Matt said, ‘And now it's time for me to give you your present, Primmie.'

‘Now? In front of everyone?' she had said, bemused. ‘Can't it wait until after I've made the bread sauce?'

‘Absolutely not. But I can't bring it into the sitting room unless I blindfold you first.'

Giggling, aware that everyone seemed to be in on the secret but herself, Primmie allowed herself to be blindfolded with the turquoise silk scarf Geraldine had been wearing.

‘Right,' Matt said authoritatively. ‘Now you must sit down on the sofa, Primmie.'

Primmie did as she was told, aware that something heavy was being brought into the room and that a lot of activity was going on.

Geraldine sat down on one side of her and took hold of her hand, and Artemis sat down on the other side of her and took hold of her other hand.

‘Right,' Matt said again. ‘Now this present is a bit of a concerted effort, Primmie. I wouldn't have known how much you wanted this if Artemis hadn't told me. And I wouldn't have been able to buy it unless Hugo had lowered its price to one I could afford. It does, though, come with all my love, dearest Primmie – and all my thanks, for having changed my life far more than I could ever have imagined.'

From behind her, with one hand lovingly on her shoulder, he took off her blindfold.

In front of her, hanging in luminous, jewelcoloured glory, was
Summer Memory
.

Disbelief, gratitude and radiant joy flooded through her in so many successive waves that for a moment she thought she was going to do an Artemis and burst into tears.

Covering Matt's hand with hers, she turned her head, looking up into his ruggedly handsome face. ‘Thank you so much, Matt,' she said sincerely. ‘It's the most beautiful,
wonderful
Christmas present anyone has ever given me.'

After Christmas was over, life settled into a domestic routine that Primmie would have found blissful if it hadn't been for her escalating anxiety where Geraldine was concerned. At the end of January, Geraldine made another trip back to Paris, to see Mr Zimmerman, but this time there was no telephone call from her saying that there was news of a bone marrow match.

‘Just what
is
the matter with Geraldine?' Artemis said to her as they tramped together across frost-rimed grass towards the hen arks. ‘She's constantly tired, bruises as soon as you look at her, has nosebleeds more often than anyone I've ever known. When I ask her, she just says that she's anaemic, but it must be something else, surely?'

Wishing desperately that she could share her burden of knowledge and knowing she couldn't possibly break her word to Geraldine, Primmie slid the door of the nesting boxes back and said; ‘Geraldine does have anaemia, Artemis. Truly.'

‘Then her doctor should prescribe iron tablets for her. There's a herbalist in Calleloe. I'm going to go in there tomorrow and see what he advises.'

The next morning, just as she was about to leave the gallery's flat, the telephone rang.

She put down her handbag and lifted the receiver, expecting it to be Hugo.

‘Artemis?' The voice was young, female, cut-glass and so distressed as to sound on the verge of hysteria. ‘It's Serena Campbell-Thynne. There's been an accident. Rupert was thrown from his horse and it rolled on top of him. He's …' She broke off, sobbing, and someone else, a man, took the telephone from her and said, ‘Mrs Gower? Rupert is badly hurt and he's asking for you. He's in Bristol Royal Infirmary, in intensive care.'

Artemis could feel herself swaying as if she were about to faint. ‘The boys … Orlando and Sholto … do they know? Are they with him?'

‘Orlando is on a ski-ing trip in America. He's been contacted and is on his way back to Britain. Your younger son is at the hospital.'

In a daze Artemis tried to grasp what was being said to her. ‘Is Rupert's life in danger? I'm sorry, but you're not being very clear.'

‘He's in a critical condition,' the man said again, not answering her question, ‘and he has asked to see you.'

‘Then I'll be there. It will take me about three hours.'

When she severed the connection, she immediately telephoned Hugo. ‘It's Rupert,' she said unsteadily, aware that she was shaking with shock. ‘He's been badly hurt. Perhaps fatally hurt – whomever it was who spoke to me said that Orlando was flying home from America. He wouldn't do that, would he, unless Rupert were in danger of dying?'

It was a question Hugo couldn't possibly answer. Aware that his beloved angel was in no state to be driving to wherever her estranged husband had been hospitalized, he said merely, ‘I'll be right with you,' and put the phone down.

Seated beside him as he drove at ninety miles an hour in the outside lane of the motorway, tears rolled down Artemis's cheeks.

‘I'm not distressed because I'm still in love with him,' she said, clutching a familiar white linen handkerchief in her hands. ‘But I do still have some feelings for him. How could I not when we were married for thirty-two years? And he wants to see me. I won't be able to bear it if it's because he wants to say sorry. Rupert
never
says sorry. The word just isn't in his vocabulary.'

At the hospital, clutching hold of Hugo's arm, Artemis allowed herself to be led, with rising apprehension, into the intensive care unit. In the waiting room attached to it were Sholto and Serena.

‘Dad's been badly crushed,' Sholto said, white faced. ‘He's had surgery but it's going to be a miracle if he pulls through.'

Artemis looked across at Serena and barely recognized her. There were deep circles carved under her eyes and her breath was coming in great shuddering gasps.

Leaving Hugo with Sholto she was escorted by a nurse into the room where Rupert lay.

He was attached to a plethora of monitoring screens, tubes and drips, an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, his eyes closed.

Weak kneed she sat down on the chair beside the bed. Not for one minute did she think he was going to ask her, if he recovered from his injuries, to give their marriage another go. Instead, she was certain that he was going to apologize to her for his years of unfaithfulness and the way he had so insensitively and abruptly ended their rocky marriage.

‘Rupert?' Her voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘I'm here, Rupert. It's Artemis.'

His eyes flickered open.

Very lightly, she covered his hand with hers.

He made a gutteral noise in his throat and the nurse stepped forward, lifting his oxygen mask away from his mouth.

‘A … bugger,' he said with enormous effort. ‘Bloody horse …' He closed his eyes again, rallying strength. When he opened them again, he said, ‘There's something I have to tell you, Artemis.'

His words were rasping and slurred.

Tears blurred her eyes. ‘It doesn't matter, Rupert. I don't want an apology. I just want you to recover.'

He made a slight movement of his head. ‘It isn't to do with you and me, Artemis.' He shut his eyes again and then, his eyes still shut, he said, ‘It's to do with Destiny.'

Artemis felt as if the world had stopped revolving. It was so unexpected, so moving. He'd never granted himself the comfort of talking about Destiny and now, when he thought he might be dying, he wanted to do so. And he wanted to do so with her.

He opened his eyes again, the expression in them one of quite dreadful reluctance.

‘She isn't dead,' he said after an interminable pause. ‘I'm sorry, Artemis. I acted for the best. She didn't drown. She didn't die. Destiny is alive.'

For a second she just sat, poleaxed, hardly able to grasp that after all these years of resolutely not uttering Destiny's name he so desperately wanted her still to be alive that his partially anaesthetized brain had made the wanting a reality to him.