Summertime

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Classic, quite classic,’ she asserted, patting Trilby on the arm approvingly. ‘And really, Aphrodite, really, you are only thinking like that because you have gone off the man who gave it to you.’

  ‘I certainly have gone off him.’ Aphrodite frowned. ‘As a matter of fact I have so far gone off him that I can’t even remember his name, Melanie, I can’t really.’

  Mrs Johnson Johnson mouthed, ‘Not since the electrodes on her head,’ at Trilby behind Aphrodite’s back.

  Trilby nodded briefly, understanding what she was saying, but not wanting Aphrodite to see.

  Poor Aphrodite never did seem to remember anything nowadays except Geoffrey’s being annoying and, occasionally, a recipe which she happened to have made a few hours earlier. Otherwise, nothing.

  Once dressed Trilby felt overpoweringly smart, which made her hold her head rather stiffly and walk in a funny way, she thought, but Molly insisted that if Trilby was being asked out to the Savoy by such a powerful figure as Lewis James she must not be seen to let the side down. She must look as if she came from not Glebe Street but Knightsbridge, which although only ten minutes’ walk from their houses might as well have been Paris, as far as they were all concerned.

  To get herself used to how she looked, to become accustomed to this new sophisticated image, Trilby walked up and down the street for a little while, and so, eventually, to Berry and Molly’s house. Molly opened the door to her.

  ‘This is terribly exciting really.’ Berry handed Trilby a glass of sherry while noting that she was looking really awfully pale. ‘I mean he probably wants to syndicate The Popposites, duck, hence all the floral adulation, wouldn’t you say? Imagine that! And then we shall probably see The Popposites in the Herald Tribune, and heaven only knows what other places.’

  Trilby knew that the Nichols were trying to calm her nerves, that they were both aware that an invitation to dinner might not just be for business reasons, and that being so things could get complicated, or awkward, or at the very least confusing and unreal.

  ‘Make sure to tell Mr James that you have promised me to be back by midnight, Trilby,’ Molly said as Trilby, seeing the chauffeur-driven car drawing up outside the Smythsons’ house, put her glass down on the side table beside the old faded chintz armchair with its old faded satin cushion collapsed in its centre and hurried off back into the street.

  ‘Yes, of course, but we are not going to be alone, so don’t worry, Molly, really.’

  Trilby pulled on short white evening gloves and walked towards the gleaming, polished motor car. She felt so odd in her floor-length satin evening coat, and her satin evening skirt and white organdie blouse, just as if she was in a play, not herself at all, more like some actress walking onto a stage somewhere in the West End – or ‘London’s Theatreland’, as they always called it on the wireless.

  The chauffeur opened the door for Trilby and as he did so she turned and waved back to Berry and Molly, who were standing at their window, unmoving, more like figureheads on the prows of ships than people, like children playing statues. Too late, as the chauffeur heaped her skirt in beside her Trilby noticed her father standing at his window and looking out. She waved at him but she was not sure that he had seen her. If he had, he did not wave back, but turned away, into the room, probably pacifying Agnes who, unlike her father, had not approved of her accepting the invitation to dinner with Lewis James.

  ‘I think my father’s going to stand there all evening until I get back,’ Trilby joked to the chauffeur, who did not smile.

  ‘Mr James will be waiting for you in the foyer at the Savoy, Miss Smythson.’

  Trilby had the feeling that the chauffeur had said this sentence many times before, and to many other women. Perhaps he realised that his words must have sounded too well rehearsed, because he quickly glanced at her in the mirror and said in a more normal voice, ‘Have you been to the Savoy before, Miss Smythson?’

  Trilby shook her head. ‘I have hardly been anywhere, I am afraid. I shall probably use all the wrong knives and forks.’

  The chauffeur smiled, understanding. ‘In that case the Savoy is the best place to start learning, miss, if that’s any help. Start as you mean to go on, with the best.’

  Lewis James was standing in the foyer. He was in evening dress, immaculate, tanned, and perfectly turned out from his shining evening pumps to his beautifully cut hair. Trilby felt at once that she must be going to let him down. But he did not seem to notice, or mind, that her clothes were seasons old, for he came towards her with the most delighted smiled and immediately led her upstairs to a private room.

  ‘This is your first print dinner, Miss Smythson,’ he said, taking her coat from her, and moving her round the guests, all of whom were smiling in such a way that Trilby had the feeling that they had been told to be there well in advance of Trilby herself.

  ‘Congratulations,’ they murmured, each in turn, as they shook Trilby’s hand.

  Lewis moved her from one small group of his chattering guests to another with the expertise of an accomplished and experienced host, and, having given Trilby a glass of champagne, took one himself and raised it to her.

  She looked everything that he had hoped she would look. Young, beautiful, her short dark brown hair combed back from her forehead, pearls around her neck, large dark brown eyes, perfectly arched dark eyebrows, the white organdie blouse showing off her perfect complexion, the full-skirted, dark blue satin evening skirt emphasising her youthful figure.

  ‘She is beautiful, sir, congratulations, not only talented but beautiful. What a discovery! I mean she truly is not just talented, but beautiful.’

  Lewis turned and, seeing his second in command David Micklethwaite, smiled in a proprietary sort of way.

  ‘Yes, I am very grateful to your friend, David,’ Lewis agreed, still not taking his eyes off Trilby, who had fallen into conversation with his old friends Henri and Lola de Ribes and, judging from the way that they were smiling, was enchanting them as much as she had already enchanted him. ‘Believe me, I asked her to luncheon only out of curiosity, but you can imagine, when she came into the room . . .’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I was captivated at once. The thing is, she is such an original.’

  ‘What I like about her, and her work, is that she is so fresh, so innocent, and insouciant, I think that is the word I would use.’

  ‘Insouciant. Yes, I would say that is just the right word for her work, Micklethwaite, insouciant.’

  Lewis moved off and David Micklethwaite watched him for a few seconds, making his way towards Trilby Smythson. He had not worked very long for Lewis James, but long enough to know all about his numerous affairs. He imagined that there could be little hope for Miss Smythson, really. She would never be able to hold the attentions of a man as attractive, handsome and powerful as Lewis James. It would be surprising if she was able to interest him for more than a few weeks.

  Lewis James was literally irresistible to women. Perhaps his fascination for them was that he did not seem to have ever cared over much for any one of them. Perhaps he was too much of a challenge. Love came too easily to him in the form of willing, beautiful women, and so he had never learned to respect it; or perhaps he had not wanted to make mistakes. He had remained resolutely single for many reasons.

  ‘She’s enchanting,’ Lola de Ribes whispered to Lewis as they all took their seats for dinner. ‘Quite enchanting.’

  Lewis did not reply, but only stared down the candlelit dinner table at Trilby, who, of a sudden, looked directly at him, and smiled. She did not know it at the time, but that mischievous smile sealed her fate.

  From now on, as Lola de Ribes remarked later to her husband, ‘she has not a chance!’

  ‘Oh, not more flowers,’ Agnes moaned as a smart dark trade van with discreet gold writing drew up outside the house. ‘Oh, please, not more flowers.’ She went from her small chintz-curtained drawing room through to the pale yellow-painted hall where she called up the stairs, ‘Trilbee! Flowers!
More flowers!’

  She had to shout for Trilby, because if she called for Lydia she knew Trilby would never answer.

  Trilby sprang down the stairs, a pencil stuck behind her ear like a bus conductor. Agnes at once reached forward and removed it, as if even the delivery boy might be shocked by the sight of it.

  ‘Sorry, Agnes.’ Trilby straightened her hair where the pencil had been. ‘Sorry, I mean about the flowers again, but goodness, what can I do? I mean I can’t very well tell Mr James to stop sending me flowers, I mean to say – he might sack me!’

  They both now smiled a little wanly back at the professionally smiling delivery boy, and Trilby reached out and took in yet another over-tall flower arrangement. The front door closed and they were left staring at the heavily scented, multi-flowered offering. A minute or two later, as if on cue, Agnes started to sneeze.

  This time the message when Trilby opened the little white envelope read As brilliant as ever! L.

  ‘Down the garden! Down the garden with it! Or take it to Molly!’ Agnes pointed towards the garden door as if the flower arrangement were a dog who was about to have an accident in her hall. ‘If Lewis James goes on sending you these floral displays for the rest of your life, I shall have hay fever all the year round,’ she told Trilby, her voice tailing off as she noticed that the card was signed only ‘L’.

  This was a significant fact that was not lost on Agnes. Trilby had already been out with Lewis James twice, so she supposed it was not that extraordinary to sign himself in that way. On the other hand, she could not approve of L, as he was happy to call himself. She would not approve of anyone who thought Trilby attractive.

  As a matter of fact, as she kept telling Michael, she could not understand someone like Trilby’s being attracted to a man like that. She herself had never been able to get on with anyone as rich as Lewis James. They were always so suspicious. Too much money was like everything too much – it was too much. She wished that Michael would stop it. But Michael would not stop Trilby going out with Lewis James.

  Michael saw it differently, it seemed. He saw that the situation between Trilby and this Lewis man was even more difficult than it usually was with the terribly, terribly rich, because Lewis James was his daughter’s boss, her employer, the owner of the magic wand, the person who could make or break his daughter’s burgeoning career.

  ‘Oh dear!’

  ‘Something the matter, Agnes?’

  ‘No. Just my sinuses, brought on by hot-house flowers, most likely.’

  Trilby stared after her departing stepmother for a second. The now twice weekly flowers were becoming a nuisance, she could quite see that, and then again the telephone ringing all the time, that too was annoying, but still, it was not the Bomb, it was just flowers for goodness’ sake, nothing lethal.

  ‘Trilbee! Lewis James!’ Agnes called up the stairs, accusingly, a few hours later.

  Agnes stared malevolently at Trilby while holding out the telephone. Trilby took the receiver without looking at her. Somehow it was so embarrassing, Agnes always saying Lewis’s name like that – Lewis James!

  It would be so much easier, too, if Trilby was able to take telephone calls anywhere except in the hall with Agnes standing so close to her that she could say nothing to Lewis except ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and occasionally ‘I quite understand.’

  ‘Are you one of these people who hate the telephone?’ Lewis asked her that evening when his chauffeur, himself and of course his Rolls-Royce picked Trilby up from Glebe Street.

  ‘Oh, yes, absolutely,’ Trilby lied, because she could not very well tell him that there was only one telephone in their house, in the hall, and that it was always listened in to by Agnes.

  ‘To the theatre tonight to see An Unusual Woman, and then I thought a quiet supper afterwards at the Savoy.’

  Trilby turned and smiled at Lewis. ‘Thank you so much for the flowers. They are beautiful.’

  ‘Did they send you something beautifully scented? I always ask for something heavily scented.’

  ‘Oh yes, they were very heavily scented,’ Trilby agreed, remembering with some guilt how often Agnes had sneezed once they had entered the house. ‘And they are truly beautiful.’

  In fact far from making the house look beautiful Agnes had now decided that the garden was beginning to look ‘positively idiotic’ with vast floral arrangements standing about it like guards outside Buckingham Palace, but of course Trilby could not tell Lewis that, any more than she could tell him what her stepmother thought of his asking her out not once but now three times in less than two weeks.

  She had kept saying, in a rather low, almost guttural voice, a voice not at all like her normal tones, ‘He’s after his oats, that’s all. Just after his oats.’ She had said it so often, before she left the house, or when she came back, that the previous night Trilby had dreamed that Lewis was a horse and she was feeding him.

  The dress that the long-suffering and ever more depressed Aphrodite had loaned Trilby this particular night was strapless but had a dark stole, which Trilby had been forced to rehearse many times in order not to look, as Mrs Johnson Johnson said, ‘as if you’re pulling a curtain across you, my dear. Never make a stole look like that.’

  The bodice, like the stole, was black and made of hand-knitted stocking, very tight. A grey belt circled her waist and emphasised the lilac satin skirt, which was tulip-shaped and ankle length. With this she wore no evening hat, but her hair brushed back and tucked behind her ears.

  It seemed that tonight’s dress had been yet another gift to Aphrodite from yet another lover, the one before Geoffrey: ‘Don’t ask me why, Trilby, but men always seem to feel the need to give one clothes!’

  As the car arrived outside the theatre, a small crowd gathered, ten or twelve vaguely curious people with nothing better to do than to peer into the Rolls-Royce as it drew up. The chauffeur jumped out of the front and opened the door for Trilby. She stepped out onto the pavement and heard several women sigh, and amid the small flurry of interest a voice was heard saying, ‘I say, who is she? Must be a film star surely?’

  Since it was a warm evening Trilby let her stole fall a little, revealing bare shoulders, and a slight tan from sitting in Berry’s garden of an afternoon. She knew she looked beautiful. She smiled back at Lewis, the architect of the moment, and as she did she saw something in his eyes that was gratifyingly proud, and protective. He put out his arm and guided her into the theatre, and up to their box. Older man, younger woman, Rolls-Royce motor car, chauffeur in uniform, it all fitted. The front of theatre staff and the other members of the audience knew it, as Trilby did, and she realised as Lewis showed her to her seat that he did too. Of a sudden they looked a couple. Thanks to Aphrodite’s clothes Trilby looked older than she was, and, more than that, she felt older, and sophisticated, and when they discussed the play over drinks in a little ante-room at the back of the box during the interval she realised that she had started to sound older too.

  She was grown up at last, and on this third evening together she realised that she no longer thought of Lewis as her boss, or even a newspaper proprietor, so it was no surprise when at the end of the evening, as he saw her to her door, pausing under the light of a street lamp, he kissed her long and tenderly, and of a sudden Trilby found that kissing a man was quite, quite beautiful, and not at all what she had dreaded it might be, awkward or uncomfortable, or even a little silly.

  ‘Did you mind my kissing you, Trilby?’

  ‘No, it was what I wanted.’

  ‘You know I am falling in love with you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Trilby smiled up at him, and, as she did so, unbeknownst to her Lewis felt his heart was about to explode in his chest. He leaned forward to kiss her again, and again, but he leaned towards nothing, because a second later Trilby had darted away, up the steps to her house, pausing only to kiss her fingers to him, and it seemed to him that he had been dreaming, that the moment had never really happened.

  It was only when
she had opened the front door with her key and found Agnes standing in her dressing gown with her father behind her that Trilby realised they must have witnessed everything.

  ‘No good will come of this, Trilby,’ Agnes said, turning on her heel.

  ‘If you are going to make a display of yourself it would be better if it were not in the street.’ Michael too turned on his heel.

  Trilby stared up the stairs after them, feeling ashamed.

  She waited, calming herself, until she heard their bedroom door shut and Agnes’s voice raised, as usual in awful protest against her, then she slipped into the drawing room to stare down the street after the Rolls-Royce, which was still outside, the smoke from its exhaust making a stream of white-grey as it filtered past the street lamp.

  Eventually it moved off, but so slowly it was as if Lewis had told his chauffeur not to drive off too quickly, as if he too was staring out of a window, back to Trilby, who waved even though she knew that he could not see her any more.

  Lewis was not someone even his best friends would have called patient, but when all was said and done, this was not so very surprising. If you were as rich as he was, there was no real reason to wait for anything. His least whim could be satisfied, and was, at every turn. Now to his horror he discovered that he was being made to wait, and by a slip of a girl who seemed to him to be forever out of reach.

  ‘My father and stepmother think that I am too young for you.’

  This was Trilby’s tactful way of saying that they thought Lewis was too old for her, and they both knew it.

  Lewis stared into Trilby’s dark brown eyes. It helped that he was holding one of her small white hands, and that she was wearing a dark dress with white gardenias pinned on the shoulder, and that they were in the garden of his house, and that he felt that she belonged there now, beside him, in his garden.