Summer's Awakening

by Anne Weale

  Next morning James said, 'I won't come to the airport with you. I have an appointment at the time you need to arrive there, and I'm sure you can manage to get from the taxi to the check-in without any assistance. There'll be luggage trolleys available. You won't have to carry your bags.'

  'Yes, of course we can manage,' said Summer. 'There would be no point in your coming.'

  'When you land at Miami, a car will be waiting to take you to an hotel for the night. Tomorrow it will pick you up and take you back to the airport to fly to Sarasota. I've decided that, as you've only just passed your driving test—having learnt to drive on the left—it will be better for you to have some practice on quiet roads before going on any main highways.'

  'When shall we see you again?' his niece asked him.

  'I don't know, but I'll call you regularly to hear how things are going.'

  'I wish you were coming with us.'

  He answered that with, 'When I do come, I'm expecting to find you a pretty good swimmer. Maybe you can get the boy who cleans the pool to give you some coaching.'

  Which means he doesn't have much confidence in my coaching, thought Summer. Perhaps he was right. There were twelve years and many pounds of flesh between her and the slim ten-year-old of whom she remembered her father saying proudly to someone, 'My daughter must have a mermaid in her ancestry. She's the best little swimmer you ever saw.'

  They said goodbye to him in the street, beside the taxi which was taking them to Heathrow.

  'Take care not to let the sun burn you, the first two weeks,' was his parting advice to Emily. 'Enjoy yourself.' He stooped to kiss her on the cheek and received in return a swift but enthusiastic hug.

  To Summer, he said, 'You'll have to be careful, too. Your skin is even fairer than Emily's. The midday sun can be fierce, even at this time of year. Slap on plenty of sun cream. Goodbye.'

  'Goodbye.' They shook hands.

  Then she turned and stepped inside the taxi.

  Emily waved to him through the rear window till she could no longer see him. Summer didn't look back.

  As the child turned to settle herself for the first lap of their long journey, she said, 'I hope it isn't very long before we see him again.'

  Summer was having a final check through her bag to make sure she had the airline tickets, their passports and the American money which James had given her to cover incidental expenses until they reached his home. She gave a non-committal murmur.

  Her personal hope was that it would be as long as possible before their next encounter with him. And when they did meet again, she intended to be a different person.

  PART II: FLORIDA

  'It's beautiful! Oh... isn't it beautiful!'

  Emily's face was close to the pane and she was craning, enraptured, at the sight of Miami by night; hundreds... thousands... millions of lights, some of them in static rows and clusters, some of them moving in streams.

  It reminded Summer, peering over her shoulder, of the jewellers' windows in Bond Street. Here were the jewels which had been missing from them; here were the diamond necklaces, the sparkling bracelets, the brooches; all flung down in lavish confusion on a bed of black velvet.

  'If this is America—' breathed Emily.

  Summer found her throat tight with emotion. She was thinking of some lines by Housman.

  That is the land of lost content,

  I see it shining plain,

  The happy highways where I went

  And cannot come again.

  But she had come again. There it was below her, glittering Welcome. Welcome back.

  As she fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, her eyes brimmed and overflowed. Emily, turning to exchange a delighted glance, saw two tears rolling down the older girl's cheeks.

  'You're crying,' she exclaimed, in dismay.

  'I know. Isn't it silly of me.' Summer was smiling and crying at the same time.

  Suddenly Emily's eyes filled with tears of sympathy. She flung her arms round her tutor.

  'Don't cry,' she said, in a choked voice. And then: 'Oh, Summer—I do love you.'

  'I love you, too,' Summer answered shakily, hugging her.

  Their embrace was the first demonstration of the close, sisterly affection which had been building up between them for more than a year. But neither of them was used to displaying their feelings and, drawing apart, both felt a little self-conscious.

  'Can you see the airport yet?' Summer asked, to give Emily an excuse to turn back to the window while she herself wiped her eyes and recovered her composure.

  'No... not yet. But it can't be far away. We're getting lower every minute.'

  As, shading their faces from the light within the aircraft's cabin, they peered at their destination, Summer saw that the dazzle of downtown lights had given place to straight rows of dimmer street lamps illuminating a chequer-board pattern of residential blocks.

  All the houses she could see were detached with unfenced gardens round them. Even from the air, the suburbs surrounding Miami looked different from those surrounding London where most of the houses were either built in pairs or in terraces.

  After touchdown, the next excitement—instead of having a long walk from arrival point to baggage reclaim—was to ride in a vehicle like the London Underground train they had been on yesterday, which glided slowly up a sloping rail to the main part of the airport.

  'It's more like a disco than an airport,' said Summer, surprised by the purple carpets and the brilliant pools of light shed by downlighters in the ceiling. She had never been to a disco, but she had heard about them.

  They had had a taste of racial intermingling during their brief time in London, the home of large numbers of Indians and West Indians, and smaller communities from most of the world's nations.

  Here in Miami there seemed to be an even more striking mixture of races and nationalities. As many travellers seemed to be speaking Spanish as English, and fair-headed people like Summer were outnumbered by dark-haired ones.

  The American Immigration officer studied her passport without comment. After looking at Emily's, he fixed her with an expressionless stare, and said, 'So you're Lady Emily Lancaster. How about that?'

  If he had said it with a smile, she would have beamed back at him. But Summer could see that she found him alarming.

  Before Summer could reassure her, the Immigration officer said, 'Cat got your tongue, Lady Emily Lancaster?'

  Emily shook her head. With a glimmer of a nervous smile, she said, 'James says I should call myself Miss Lancaster in America. It's more democratic.

  Regardless of the people waiting in line behind them, the officer leaned his elbows on the desk and gazed into her eyes. 'Does he now? And who might James be?'

  'He's my American uncle. We're going to spend the winter at his house in Sarasota.'

  'Is that so?' Suddenly his face creased in a grin. 'You know something? That sure is a cute British accent.' He straightened again. 'But I guess some of these people'—with a nod at the queue—'would rather go where they're going than stand around listening to you and me having a talk. So'—he tapped her on the head with her passport—'on your way, Miss Emily. Enjoy your trip.'

  'Thank you. Goodbye.'

  For an instant, as the child gave him her most radiant smile, Summer caught another glimpse of the charmer she was going to be... one day.

  'Wasn't he nice?' said Emily, as they moved on to have their luggage checked by Customs.

  Soon after emerging into the public concourse, followed by a porter with their luggage, they saw a man in chauffeur's uniform holding a placard with Roberts/ Lancaster written in large letters on it.

  A few minutes later they were in the back of a large limousine, sweeping luxuriously past the travellers who were lining up for taxis or climbing aboard buses.

  'Did you have a good flight, ma'am?' the driver asked.

  'Very good, thank you—but we shan't be sorry to have a bath and stretch our legs. Where are you taking us?' Summer asked.
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  'To the Fontainebleau Hilton, ma'am. You'll find it a very good hotel, right on Miami Beach overlooking the ocean.'

  'Will you be taking us back to the airport tomorrow?'

  'Yes, ma'am. Your flight to Sarasota is scheduled for four o'clock. I'll be there to pick you up at three.'

  After driving for a time on an expressway, they came to a long causeway crossing a stretch of water which the driver said was Biscayne Bay.

  Summer had caught sight of a sign: Julia Tuttle Causeway.

  'Who is Julia Tuttle?' she asked him, expecting to hear the causeway had been named after a local benefactor.

  'Mrs Tuttle lived here when there was just a small settlement on the Miami River, ma'am. She wanted to have the railroad come down here, but Henry Flagler who built the East Coast Railroad didn't want to bring it further south than Palm Beach. In those days the Gold Coast, as it's called now, was a real wilderness. Nothing but forest and swamp. Back in 1895, the year when most of the state's crops were destroyed in a freeze, Mrs Tuttle sent Flagler some orange blossoms which hadn't been touched by frost. That made him decide not only to bring the railroad down, but to build a town here. That's the story anyway.'

  They were almost across the causeway when he added, 'Most people think Miami and Miami Beach are the same place. That's not so. Miami is the town we just left, in back of the Bay. Miami Beach is this strip of land up ahead. Seven and a half square miles, that's all there is, but I guess you won't find more or better hotels anywhere in the world.'

  Certainly neither Summer nor Emily had seen anything like the view from the parlour of their suite, to which they had been conducted by a friendly young man from the reception desk.

  It was Emily who discovered the view while Summer was tipping the bell-boy who had brought their baggage up to the seventh floor in a separate elevator.

  'Summer, you'll never believe...' she breathed, in an awed voice, from the window.

  Summer crossed the deep-pile green carpet which toned with the green and white wallpaper which matched the curtains and covers on the two long sofas.

  'Oh... my goodness!' she exclaimed.

  As the driver had told them, the hotel was close to the ocean, and their window looked out on a moonlit sea lapping a beach of pale sand.

  In the foreground were the hotel gardens with palm-fringed walkways winding among well-kept lawns. And at the heart of the gardens was a huge flood-lit, free-form swimming pool, roughly the shape of an oak leaf. In the centre of the pool was an island with several palm trees growing on it, and in the place where a leaf would have its stem, there was a great crag of rocks with several cascades streaming from it like shining veils. All around the pool was a spacious deck with many sun-beds. A number of people were still swimming.

  'Can we swim tomorrow morning?' Emily asked. 'It's not deep everywhere. Look, those people over there are only up to their waists.'

  'We haven't any bathing-suits,' said Summer. 'But perhaps we could buy some. Right now I'm going to take a shower. How about you?'

  Each of the two luxuriously furnished bedrooms had its own bathroom. They wouldn't have to take turns. While Summer was unpacking, she heard Emily give a shriek of excitement. A moment later she rushed in and seized Summer's arm.

  'You must come. I've found something specially for you.'

  Wondering what it could be, Summer allowed herself to be hustled back to the parlour.

  She had noticed the large television, the table lamps, the round dining table on which a meal could be served, and the large indoor plant growing in a jardiniere. She had also noticed a beautiful arrangement of cut flowers in a vase on the coffee table, but not the small envelope tucked among the blossoms.

  'It's addressed to you,' Emily told her.

  Puzzled, Summer looked at her name for a moment before she opened it. Inside was a card.

  Welcome back to America. James.

  'Who is it from?' asked Emily.

  Summer showed the card to her.

  'How could he send you flowers from England?'

  'He must have ordered them by telephone and dictated this message. This must be the florist's handwriting,' Summer explained.

  'Isn't he kind to us,' said Emily. 'Arranging for us to stay in this super hotel, and sending you flowers and everything. I think he's the kindest person I've ever known.'

  'Yes, very kind,' said Summer. And very unkind sometimes, she added mentally. Cruelly unkind.

  For a moment or two the flowers and the message accompanying them had pierced her implacable dislike of the man for whom, but for Emily, she wouldn't have worked if he'd offered her twice her present salary.

  But as she resumed her unpacking, she thought it more than likely that all the arrangements for their arrival in America had been handled by James's secretary or personal assistant, including the ordering of the flowers and the message with them. Yet how could his secretary have known Summer was returning to America. She couldn't. He must have dictated the words on the card. Well, it was a flattering attention to detail on his part, but it didn't wipe out—nothing could—the memory of those brutal words spoken on the Grand Staircase at Cranmere.

  In her bathroom she found not only an abundance of thick fluffy towels ranging in size from a bath sheet to a face cloth, but also a disposable shower cap and phials of shampoo and body lotion.

  She undressed and hung up her clothes. Here, unlike the bathroom at the cottage, there were large mirrors everywhere, making it impossible to avoid seeing her naked body. It was a depressing sight, increasing her guilt at her lapse from grace on the aeroplane.

  They had travelled first class and she hadn't been able to resist the lavish lunch or, later, the afternoon tea served by attentive stewardesses. She hadn't refused anything, not even the chocolate-covered mints brought round with the post-luncheon coffee, or a second slice of fruit cake at tea.

  With champagne before lunch, and different wines with each course, she must have consumed enough calories to undo all the good of several days' self-denial.

  Why had she weakened? Why couldn't she control her appetite? What was the matter with her that she had this compulsive urge to gorge foods which she knew would add flesh to her heavy hips and bulging tummy?

  She woke with the sun on her face and the sound of music corning from somewhere nearby.

  At first, dazzled by the bright golden light, she couldn't think where she could be. Blinking, she pushed herself up on her elbows and peered at her surroundings.

  The vast bed in which she was lying settled her confusion. She was back in America... home.

  The night before she had opened both pairs of curtains; the pink ones which matched the wallpaper, with their sun-proof linings, and the filmy net glass curtains. Then the sea had been dark except for the silver moonglade stretching from the beach to the horizon. Now, as far as she could see in both directions, the Atlantic Ocean shimmered and sparkled in the brilliant sunlight of a cloudless December morning.

  The music had stopped and now there were voices coming from the next room. Summer put her head round the door and found her charge watching television.

  'I thought you were never going to wake up,' said Emily, bouncing off the sofa. 'I've been awake for ages... since five o'clock. It's a good thing I saved some biscuits from tea yesterday—I'd have starved without them. Can we have breakfast soon?'

  'What time is it?'

  'A quarter to eight but that's quarter to one in England... almost lunchtime.'

  'We didn't go to bed until the small hours—by our body clocks,' Summer reminded her.

  They had been too keyed-up after the journey, and it had seemed a good idea to stay awake as long as possible. So although they had gone to bed early by local time, in England it would have been three in the morning when they said goodnight.

  'I'm going to wash and get dressed. You can ring Room Service and order breakfast,' she continued. 'I'm not very hungry. I'll have grapefruit, if they have it, and coffee.'

 
As she brushed her teeth, she made herself a solemn promise that yesterday's lapse would be the last one—ever. Today was the beginning of a new life; a fresh start. From now on, before she put anything in her mouth, she would think: Do I really want to eat this? Or do I want to be slim and elegant and desirable?

  By the time she was dressed, a waiter was laying the table in the other room. His 'Good morning' was said with a strong foreign accent. He looked as if he might be Cuban, certainly Latin-American.

  Determined to eat her grapefruit without sugar, Summer was agreeably surprised to find it naturally sweet, and much juicier than the grapefruit sold at the village shop. Both the flesh and skin had a rosy tinge.

  Emily had ordered a full American breakfast, starting with orange juice and ham and eggs with hash-brown potatoes, followed—because she had never had them—by waffles with maple syrup.

  They were wondering if there were any shops nearby where they could buy bathing-suits, when the telephone rang. When Summer answered it, a switchboard operator said, 'I have a call for Miss Emily Lancaster.'

  'One moment please.' Summer beckoned Emily. 'It's for you,' she mouthed.

  'For me?' Emily looked baffled. She took over the receiver. 'Hello? Yes... speaking. Oh—James! Good morning.' A pause. 'Yes, super, thank you. Yes, we both did. The Captain was nice. So was the other pilot.' Another pause. 'We're just finishing breakfast. If we can buy some bathing-suits, we're going to swim in the fabulous pool they have here. Have you seen it? Have you stayed here?' A third, longer pause. 'Yes, hold on a minute.' She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. 'He'd like to speak to you.'

  Conscious of a tiny stab of nervousness, Summer took back the receiver. 'Good morning. Thank you for the flowers.'

  'My pleasure. I gather you had a smooth trip. Are you feeling jet-lagged?'

  His voice sounded deeper on the telephone, but his American accent was less pronounced than when they first met. The longer he stayed in England, the more he reverted to the long a's and the British emphases of his youth.