Summertime

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Welcome home, Mrs James.’

  Their honeymoon had been filled with happiness, but even so Trilby was glad to be home, not for herself, but for Lewis, who she had sensed, after the first ten days, was beginning to turn his face towards London again.

  In fact Lewis had enjoyed his honeymoon more than he could have thought possible. After the disasters of Bognor Regis and having to try so hard to earn the wretched stepmother’s – and therefore the father’s – approval, to his amazement Cornwall had answered every honeymoon need. Long breakfasts in bed, followed by day trips on a small sailing vessel that he had hired for their use. Luncheons overlooking the sea, dinner followed by a game of cards, or dominoes. For Lewis it had all been inescapably, but delightfully, ordinary, whereas for Trilby, trying to become used to the luxuries that he had spread before her, it had been precisely the opposite.

  Naturally Lewis had photographed Trilby at every possible opportunity, but there were some moments, moments that he could not snap, that he would always hold to him, that just the mention of her name would for ever conjure.

  Trilby looking for shells on the beach, hopscotching on the sand. Trilby hanging up seaweed in the hall of the hotel in order to forecast the weather the next day. Trilby lying on her pillows after he had made love to her with an enraptured look on her face, staring ahead of her wordlessly. Those were the images that he held close to him, moments that made him wonder, over and over again, if he would be able to hold on to her, asking himself endlessly and unnecessarily if she would always love him as she did now, unable to contemplate the thought that she might not, that she might fall for someone else, some younger man.

  Now he stared at her dark head on the pillow and found himself wishing suddenly that it was greying a little, as his was, wishing that they were equal, that she did not have such power over him. They had just made love for the first time in his house and he was, as he had been for the past fortnight, overcome with happiness.

  She was, she had to be, perfect, this one at last; this woman was going to be perfect for him in every way. He was sure of it – quite, quite sure. She would not let him down. She was a sublime gift that only he had received. All his life he had been searching for such perfection and now he had found it in little Trilby Smythson. Most of all she was an original. She was not like other women, the other women he had known, the other women who had let him down.

  As if to prove him right she turned to him, and where other women might have said something trite after lovemaking, words that immediately lowered the temperature such as ‘That was perfect’ or ‘Wasn’t that wonderful, darling?’ Trilby now said, ‘I was thinking – isn’t it funny, afterwards – you know – after you’ve made love, you can’t really remember much about it, can you? I mean not the exact sequence of events. At least, I can’t, can you?’

  Lewis laughed hugely, because just hearing her voice, knowing that she had not of a sudden changed, even in the last minute, was as always a gigantic relief.

  He drew her closer to him. It was true. It was difficult to remember making love after it was all over; in a matter of minutes you could hardly recall the sequence of events that you had just lived through. He smiled. ‘I agree. It’s the feeling that you remember, not a great deal more.’

  What a strange creature she was. He never quite knew what she was thinking. However much he wanted to, so far he had never been able to guess where her mind might be straying, into what light or dark areas. In this way too she was not at all like the other women he had known and enjoyed. Lewis knew that if he said ‘A penny for your thoughts’ to Trilby she was quite capable of replying anything from ‘Mongolian goats’ to ‘I was just wondering how long it would take to learn the double bass.’

  As if sensing Lewis’s overpowering feelings of possession Trilby moved away from him, rearranging herself on her own pillows, and giving a small contented sigh. Lewis watched her, as always after lovemaking feeling once more objective, studying her closely as if she was an editor he was considering employing, someone quite detached from him. Unlike an editor, however, he truly wanted to know everything about her. He did not want her to surprise him, yet at the same time he did not want to cease appreciating her for her individuality, for the fact that she was bringing something new and quite different into his life, just as a new editor had to be seen to be introducing something original into one of his papers. Besides, he was all too aware that it was vital that he remain undeceived. This time he really did not want any surprises.

  He had always appreciated, from the moment that Trilby had walked into his drawing room wearing a black matador hat and clothes that were a tiny bit dated, that she was independent, and spirited. In fact Trilby’s independence was something that Lewis had particularly liked about her from the start. He remembered her standing in his drawing room downstairs looking as if she was about to whip off her modish hat, throw it on a chair, and sit and draw what she could see around her, so much did she look fascinated by her surroundings.

  Added to this sense of independence, she seemed to have no sentimentality. Of course she liked to laugh with him, she liked to make love, but she was not suffocating, as so many of his former girlfriends had been, she did not cling, she did not chatter. Perhaps it was because of this that Lewis sensed that there was something deep inside her that he could not reach, that stayed aloof from him, some inner pair of eyes that he instinctively knew were staring out, but not at him, at other things, at other people. And this again was different from any other woman he had known.

  The thought suddenly occurred to Lewis, and it was intoxicating and exciting, that if only he could reach those inner eyes, he could put his hand over them. He could blindfold them. He could make her tell him what they saw. Silently he vowed that one day, he would. Normally the idea would have excited him so much that he would have stayed to dally, but today business called and he had to get on.

  Trilby watched Lewis climbing out of bed and walking across the room. He was very well made. His legs were long. He had a fashionable tan, no white strips in places which might have made him look slightly silly when he was naked. Of course she had no-one to whom she could compare him. She knew nothing of what or how he could be as far as other women were concerned, and frankly she cared less. He was a wonderful lover, thoughtful, attentive, tender and imaginative. She did not know, but she assumed that it must be rare in a man, and therefore she must be very lucky. More than that, she was happier than she could have ever dreamed was possible.

  ‘’Bye, darling. See you at lunch.’

  Trilby had fallen asleep and now Lewis, immaculately dressed for business in a pale grey suit and pale grey tie, was kissing her goodbye. She smiled up at him from her pillows.

  ‘Is oo going to telephone me from the office when oo has arrived safely?’

  He stared down into her large dark eyes, knowing that she was teasing him, making fun of lovers’ talk and despite the inherent mockery in her tone, which made him feel uneasy, he laughed.

  ‘No, I am not, oo will be happy to hear.’ He walked to the door, and then he stopped and turned. ‘Yes, I am.’ He turned back to the door. ‘I am going to telephone to oo.’

  He hurried down the wide staircase to the spacious hall below, where he knew that Paine would be waiting to hand him his hat and his umbrella. It would be best if he telephoned her. After all, she had said earlier that she was going to stay in all morning.

  ‘Madame?’ Mrs Woo, Trilby’s personal maid, scratched at the door, and her small, dark head appeared at about the same height as the door handle.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Woo, will you lay me out something beautiful to wear for lunch at home?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs James. Of course.’

  Trilby lay back against her pillows once more. It was incredible to think that she, Trilby Smythson, was Mrs James, and that she was now lying in a vast bedroom with a great satin bedspread and contemplating being called to a bath drawn by her own maid. From now on she knew that, as Mrs Lewis James, sh
e would always be expected to take her maid with her everywhere.

  Lewis had explained this to her. It was just a fact. At the time the very idea of it had made Trilby laugh disbelievingly, although of course she had accepted what he had said as the truth, because after all Lewis moved among such different people, people who had always had their personal servants, people who would not understand a man and wife arriving without a valet and a maid. People who would think that you were not one of them if you should do so. What was involved, it seemed, was prestige and status, and that was more than important for Mr and Mrs Lewis James – it was vital.

  Trilby, tongue in cheek, had pretended to search for a comparison.

  ‘Would it be like the Queen opening parliament wearing a feather in her hair instead of a crown?’

  ‘Precisely the same,’ Lewis had agreed. ‘I am expected to be a certain kind of person, and for the sake of the newspapers that I own, it is vital that I am also seen to be that kind of person. I cannot go to the office on a bicycle, or eat my lunch from a paper bag on a park bench. It is just a fact. And now, darling, as my wife, I am very afraid, nor can you.’

  After her bath Trilby allowed Mrs Woo to lay out her clothes, but yet again indicated that she had no intention of letting the small, light-boned Chinese woman in her black and white frock dress her.

  ‘No, really, I would hate to be dressed.’

  It had been a battle that had been going on for some time, a good-natured battle but a battle nevertheless, with Trilby racing to dress herself every morning before the maid could help her.

  ‘Madame! I must beg you. Monsieur will be velly cross with me, madame. My other mistress she always lay on the bed and Mrs Woo dressed her. She never, never dress herself.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Woo, but from what you have told me she was eight hundred and nine, and not used to lifting even her own little finger by herself. I can do up my own suspenders and step into my own coat and skirt, thank you very much, really I can. Besides which, it’s not fair on you, to have to dress me. Really, it isn’t.’

  At this the wretchedness on Mrs Woo’s face was so palpable, and she looked so bereft, that Trilby herself felt quite torn up and guilty.

  ‘I am sorry, I didn’t mean to sound horrid. I did sound horrid, didn’t I? But you see, I am not quite, yet, used – to – to having a maid.’

  Mrs Woo turned away. ‘No, madame. Maybe this evening I will be allowed to dress madame, if you please, madame?’

  ‘Of course, this evening.’

  Trilby found herself swallowing hard at the prospect of being dressed by Mrs Woo every morning and every evening. It would take hours!

  Putting the thought out of her mind, she skipped downstairs to the library dutifully wearing Mrs Woo’s choice for her, a black and white knitted wool jacket and matching dress, the jacket cut so tight it was more like a jumper. She felt strangely grown up in it, and yet also chic; also very much Mrs Lewis James.

  ‘Allow me, Mrs James.’

  The butler stepped forward, out of the shadows of the dark-panelled hall.

  ‘Oh, Paine, goodness! Heavens, you gave me a bit of a fright, I can tell you!’ Trilby laughed. ‘I didn’t see you standing there. You’re a bit like the white rabbit, now I see you, now I don’t, as it were.’

  They smiled at each other as Trilby walked into the library, and over to the fire that was burning in the large marble fireplace. She sat down. Paine closed the door. As soon as the door was shut, Trilby, already at a loss as to what to do with herself until lunchtime, stood up again, her beautifully shod feet in their Rayne shoes still looking, to her eyes, as if they belonged to someone else.

  Now was obviously a good time to start discovering what there was in the room. While the servants played at dusting and mopping, the mistress could make time to explore. She had married Lewis in such a hurry that she had never had time to ask him about any of his possessions, least of all the history of his house, its paintings and its objects.

  As she had thought, the man over the fireplace was called William Barnaby James and was obviously a grandfather. He still looked as solemn as the day she had first lunched with Lewis. Very straight-faced, almost biblical, more like a religious leader than a founder of a newspaper, it seemed to her, as she stared up at him.

  She straightened the painting, and walked on to a table filled with objects and photographs, some of which she picked up and examined. Babies on fur rugs, women in Victorian dress, very solemn, full of the look of people who would never miss church of a Sunday, dogs and horses grouped together with smiling grooms. All the photographs were crowded together in the acceptable fashionable manner, as were the silver-framed photographs of royalty on the piano in the music room to which they had retired the night before.

  Trilby’s eyes wandered slowly over the photographs, and she picked some up as she moved along the side of the table. She always loved to imagine the reality of the people behind the stilled images, wondering how they must have sounded, what they were truly like, whether she would have enjoyed their company. Finally, at the very back of the table, out of reach of Trilby’s curious fingers, was a really rather arresting photograph of a woman in a beautiful white dress. Trilby stared at her for some time, wondering who she might be. After a while, so arresting was the photograph, it seemed to Trilby that, in a curious way, the young woman was staring right back at Trilby. Refusing to be put off, Trilby continued to stare, but unable from such a distance to distinguish any family likeness she went on to the next table, also crowded with objects and photographs, again some old and some really quite new, including photographs of Lewis with film stars and sporting personalities, Lewis standing grouped or smiling with people whose faces even Trilby recognised.

  ‘Goodness, you really have had a very exciting life so far, Mr Lewis James,’ Trilby said out loud, and as she did so the library door quietly opened.

  ‘You rang, Mrs James?’

  Trilby stepped back away from the table, surprised. ‘Well, actually I didn’t ring, Paine, but now you are here, perhaps we should discuss dinner tonight?’

  ‘Mr James has already discussed dinner with Cook, Mrs James.’

  ‘Oh – good.’

  Trilby felt fractionally disappointed. She had really rather looked forward to discussing menus with Cook herself, but if Lewis had already done so there was really nothing she could do. It would only upset things if she changed his orders.

  ‘I was just beginning to feel like someone in a film,’ she confided to the butler. ‘So, if there is nothing to be done with the menu, I wonder what I can do? Go on feeling like someone in a film?’

  Paine hesitated. ‘There is always the placement,’ he told her, tactfully. ‘We will be sitting down twenty tonight, only a small dinner, but perhaps you would like to see the placement folder?’

  Trilby nodded, suddenly silent. ‘Placement’ sounded really very solemn, like confirmation, or marriage vows, particularly since Paine had said it in the French manner, making it sound most particularly serious, in fact making it sound positively grim.

  ‘Tell me, Paine. Placement is all about seating people in the right way so that they are amused by each other, and not getting on each other’s nerves, isn’t it? And all about getting their nearness to the host and hostess right, so that the important people are on the right of the host and hostess – or the left . . . which is it, Paine? I am afraid I don’t know.’

  ‘Allow me, Mrs James.’

  Trilby sat down again on the large Knole sofa, and the butler carefully placed a large, double-sided porcelain folder, very heavy and beautifully decorated, on her lap. When she opened it Trilby could see, attached to the pleated grosgrain on both sides of what must have once been an old letter writing folder, tiny cards, all with Lewis’s crest printed at the top, and each one now carefully annotated with a guest’s name.

  ‘You will see from this that you are one end of the table, and Mr James the other, and down each side, here and here, we put the names of the
guests. When we are quite happy with the placement we take it to the dining room and we place each card above the setting of each guest. Then we take the folder and we duplicate the place settings on a large gold plate on the hall table, so that each guest, as he or she comes in, realises where they are to be seated, and beside whom.’

  ‘I see.’ Trilby stared down at the beautifully written names, some of which were already familiar to her, like Henri and Lola de Ribes. Thank heavens there were already a few people on the cards that she had met several times.

  ‘The protocol is that we turn to the right during the first course, and to the left during the second course, so that each person in turn is talked to, no-one is left out. Then, at a signal from you, Mrs James, the ladies leave to powder their noses, and the gentlemen take port and join the ladies after their coffee. Cigarettes and cigars may be smoked at this point.’

  ‘Goodness.’ Trilby looked up at Paine. ‘And to think I used to think that having dinner was fun!’

  Paine smiled encouragingly at his young mistress, but his words were not so encouraging.

  ‘Oh no, Mrs James, I think that you will find that dinner here is not expected to be “fun”, as you put it. No, dinner here is a formality, a way of going on, it is about politics and power and influence. Fun is for the lower orders.’

  Trilby pulled a glum face. ‘Oh dear, Paine, perhaps I could join you for dinner?’

  Paine smiled as if he had not heard what she said. ‘You will find everything here usually goes along quite smoothly, Mrs James,’ he told her. ‘Very little need concern you.’

  That night Mrs Woo dressed Trilby in a black and white dress chosen for her mistress by Marion Holton. It had been part of Trilby’s trousseau, a black wool sheath with a white ermine bib. As she dressed her Mrs Woo made little panting sounds. Half were gasps of admiration at the beauty of the dress and the jewellery she was handling, and half the panting sounds that anyone as small and round as Mrs Woo would make, what with the stretching and the bending that dressing someone else entails.