Summertime Page 3

  Molly began again, after a long pause, obviously trying to marshal all her strength not to sound too excited.

  ‘Well. Trilby. You know how I said we had a friend who had friends at court? Well. It has turned out that he has indeed, but what he has too – that doesn’t sound very grammatical, does it? But you know what I mean. To cut a long story short, what he has done is show your drawings to his proprietor, the man who owns the newspaper group that he works for on the management side, and guess what?’

  Trilby shook her head, still too happy about being in the Nichols’ sitting room to take much notice of what Molly was talking about.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, cheerfully.

  ‘He wants to buy your drawings. He wants to buy your cartoons, Trilby. He wants to buy The Popposites.’

  Trilby frowned. ‘I see,’ she said in a shocked voice, not really understanding what was being said, or the actual import of what might be about to change her life for ever, which meant that, after a pause, she asked, tentatively, ‘but I mean, what for?’

  ‘What for!’ Molly laughed delightedly. ‘Why, for his newspapers, Trilby. For his newspapers, and for himself too. He fell in love with them. He said so to David Micklethwaite, this friend, well, acquaintance really, this acquaintance of ours, he said he had fallen in love with The Popposites.’

  ‘What will he do with them?’

  ‘Do with them? Why, he will publish them in one of his newspapers, and he will pay you money for them, too. He might pay you quite a lot of money.’

  Trilby stared. Money. She had never thought of being paid to draw. The whole idea seemed too fantastic to believe. After all, as everyone knew, cartoons were completely a male preserve, as her stepmother had always taken such great delight in telling her.

  ‘You’ll never sell those silly drawings of yours, Lydia, not in a million years, will she, Michael?’

  But Michael would always manage to avoid replying to this kind of challenge, instead waiting until Agnes had gone out before searching Trilby out and saying with his kind smile, ‘I think they’re jolly funny, I should carry on if I were you.’ Then he would wander off in search of something to do, which seemed to be his lot whenever Agnes was out for the evening, and he was left to do the crossword and listen to music.

  Once Agnes had a bee in her bonnet about something, however, it would take another war to stop her, and she would return to the subject of Trilby’s drawings again and again, and again.

  ‘You’re just wasting your time, really you are. You would do far better to take up fashion drawings. Now there really is a place you could find a niche, drawing dresses and so on, and it would get you into all the fashion shows. You could sell those, I should think.’

  But Trilby had never wanted to draw dresses and hats. She did not want to dwell in the ephemeral and ever-changing world of the wasp waist, the New Look, or the little black cocktail dress. She loved human beings, not what covered them, and, more than that, human beings made her laugh. For her there could not be a moment’s enjoyment in just drawing a hat or a shoe, but put the right, or rather the wrong, face under the hat, and the wrong pair of shoes on the wrong legs, and she was away.

  ‘Now listen, Trilby, we have a problem, because you know you are at the office all day long, at your job? Well, this chap is going to telephone here, tomorrow, so really you should be here, because I gave this as your number, because, you know, I know how it is with you know who. She won’t really like this at all, will she?’ Molly stared at Trilby.

  They both knew what or rather you know who was, and how she was about Trilby’s drawings. They both knew how much she had mocked Trilby’s hobby, and how she had, on occasion, even accused her of making fun of people who were fond of her, people who had brought her up, suspecting perhaps, Molly had once suggested to Trilby, that somewhere among the ladies that peopled Trilby’s cartoon Agnes herself lurked. This was far from being the case, for Trilby, having no affection for Agnes, could not find anything about her in the least bit amusing, and that being so would not have been able to draw her even should she have wanted to do so. It was just a fact. She had to be fond of people to caricature them.

  ‘We will have to make a plan.’

  Molly, and Berry, always said this when they were hatching something.

  ‘Yes, we will.’ Trilby had put down her champagne glass, and was now sitting up really very straight, thoughts whizzing through her brain in a way that she had not thought possible.

  ‘I could ring up Lifetime Assurance and tell them you were ill.’

  ‘Yes, you could.’

  ‘I could ring them up and say that you were sick, and if it is only one day, well, you won’t need a doctor’s certificate, will you?’

  Trilby shook her head. ‘What about you know who, though?’

  Molly nodded. They both knew that you know who would see everything and anything unusual in the street, and that being so, Trilby would have to leave for the typing pool as usual, and slip back to the Nichols’ house when Molly or Berry had created some kind of distraction.

  ‘I’ll send Berry to borrow flour from her, or something, that will distract her all right. And I’ll give you a front door key, so you can double back and quickly let yourself in here and hide up until the telephone call comes through.’

  Trilby nodded. ‘That’s a good idea.’

  They looked at each other directly, suddenly serious. Molly finished by sighing, for both of them.

  ‘Gracious, what a palaver, duck, to have to go through all this in order for you to take a very exciting telephone call. It doesn’t seem right somehow, but what else can you do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Trilby agreed. ‘After all we both know that Agnes hates The Popposites. She wants me to do fashion drawing, that kind of thing, you know? I mean, she really, really hates The Popposites, worse than sin. I always have to hide my things when she comes into my room. Nowadays, I lock my door, because sometimes she used to creep up the stairs and burst in, trying to, you know, trying to catch me at it.’

  ‘Personally, I think she is quite dotty. I know I shouldn’t say it to you, but I do really. And honest to God, duck, why your beloved father doesn’t give her a good clip around the head, I don’t know.’

  This was from Berry, who had overheard the last part of their conversation and now strode past them to the drink cupboard.

  ‘Now Berry, darling boy, that is no way to talk. Besides, it has nothing to do with anything, as it happens, because Trilby and I have devised a plan, and as it happens we are going to need you to borrow something.’

  Berry groaned, half mockingly. ‘Not a “borrowing something” plan, please!’

  ‘Yup, Berry darling. You are going to go next door tomorrow morning and borrow from Agnes, while I keep watch, and Trilby leaves as usual, except she won’t. She will not leave for work, she will come here and take David’s call about Mr James.’

  ‘Sounds frightfully complicated to me. Bound to go wrong.’

  ‘Nevertheless, that is what we shall do.’

  Deceit had not come naturally to Trilby until Agnes entered her life, and then she had never thought of it as deceiving Agnes, merely as avoiding her persecution. Nevertheless, Molly and herself had undoubtedly hatched a plan to deceive her stepmother, and Trilby could not help feeling guilty as she called goodbye to her the following morning.

  ‘Goodbye, Agnes.’

  ‘What time will you be back?’

  ‘The same time, around six o’clock, if there are no retypes at work.’

  ‘Very well. Supper will be at seven. Try not to be late.’

  This was their usual conversation. It was so usual that Trilby could hardly bring herself to hold it, although she nevertheless always did. Today she walked out of the house convinced that her stepmother was watching her. Perhaps it was the guilt of knowing that Molly was going to lie for her to the Lifetime Assurance Company, but Trilby had the feeling that Agnes had removed herself from her usual station in front of h
er dressing table mirror and was watching Trilby from her first floor window. Watching her walking down the garden path and turning right, as if to go to the Lifetime Assurance Company, instead of which, after duly passing an aproned Berry leaving his house for theirs with an empty flour bin, she quickly doubled back, and let herself into the Nichols’ house with Molly’s front door key.

  ‘Phew!’ Trilby collapsed dramatically against Molly’s hall wall, and they both laughed. ‘I don’t know why, but I had the feeling that she was watching me today.’

  ‘Oh, I dare say she was. Agnes is most peculiar, really she is. Too little to do, Berry always says. Coffee?’

  At home the coffee was always part chicory. At Molly’s house it was quite different, resoundingly French and delicious, and always served with a swirl of cream. Molly was a great believer in swirls of cream, delighting in post-war produce and its availability, enjoying everything that now came their way where once even a piece of four-day-old fish had been a treat.

  They both sipped their coffee without saying anything, and their eyes strayed to the old black telephone with its Chelsea number, now so faded that anyone who did not know it would have been hard pushed to read it on the old, round label.

  ‘Just like a watched kettle not boiling, a watched telephone will not ring. Let’s go upstairs and try on hats, that will make it ring. He did say, David Micklethwaite did say that he would ring here this morning.’

  They both tried on Molly’s old hats, and then Molly’s new hats, and they did prove to be a complete distraction, but it did not do the trick, still the telephone did not ring.

  ‘He is a very busy man.’

  Trilby nodded, not really paying much attention, because she was now trying to remember if a day missed, even through illness, meant that she would have a day’s pay docked from her wages at the end of the month.

  If so she would be in trouble with Agnes, who always took her pay packet from Trilby with a peeved look, the expression on her face implying that if only Trilby, not to mention Trilby’s father, would work a little harder they would bring more home for Agnes to spend.

  Just as the excitement brought about by simply the idea of good luck coming your way raises the temperature of everything around you, now, Trilby discovered, despite the warm autumnal weather, her temperature was being unnaturally lowered by the non-ringing of the telephone.

  She felt almost damp with despair, and bewildered too, because, really, when all was said and done, none of the excitement, the deceit, or the probably impending disappointment had been caused by her.

  ‘I feel awful. Perhaps David Micklethwaite was having me on?’ Molly stared at her watch. It was twenty past twelve, well past what she herself considered to be morning. ‘I really do feel awful, Trilby. I mean, if that was just tinky tonky talk, I will go round and personally berate him, really I will. I mean, to raise all our hopes this way, and then not even bother to ring when you say you will. It’s the way the world is going now, believe me, it really, really is. Nothing but hard, cold, commercial people, post-war spivs who do nothing but think of themselves and their wretched bank balances—’

  ‘Molly—’

  ‘I always thought that David Micklethwaite was a bit of a spiv, and now I know that he is. I really, really would not credit it. It’s not as if he is not on the management side, it’s not as if he—’

  ‘Molly—’

  ‘I promise you, Trilb, I feel like going round and boxing his ears, really I do.’

  ‘Molly, the telephone is ringing!’

  They ran downstairs to the sitting room, and Molly fairly plucked the receiver from the telephone in a movement that suggested a red-hot plate being removed from an oven. Then, her lips firmly closed, her eyes wearing their most startled expression, she handed the receiver to Trilby, who heard herself saying in a low voice ‘Hallo?’ and then, not being able to remember Molly and Berry’s number, she said ‘Hallo’ again.

  ‘Hallo, yes. This is Trilby Smythson. Good morning, or rather good afternoon. Oh, I see.’ She covered the telephone and whispered, ‘It’s not Mr Micklethwaite, it’s a secretary asking for me, on behalf of a Mr Lewis James?’

  Molly’s hand went round her throat and she fell against her sitting room wall and slid down it.

  ‘That’s him!’ she hissed. ‘That’s, you know, the man who owns everything, all the papers.’

  Trilby felt herself losing all colour, until she knew that she must have turned a very, very delicate shade of green. Her mouth went dry and she breathed in and out as slowly and carefully as she could as she heard the secretary saying, ‘Mr James? I have Trilby Smythson on the line for you.’

  ‘Hallo, Miss Smythson?’

  ‘Mr James.’

  ‘I wanted you to know that I so enjoyed your cartoon series, what’s it called, yes, The Popposites. So enjoyed it, wonder if you would care to meet for luncheon, at my house. Perhaps tomorrow? I don’t want anyone else to buy it, Miss Smythson, really I don’t.’

  He had a deep voice, mellifluous, beguiling, so much so that Trilby felt her colour changing from white to pink as she realised in a second that he must be very attractive.

  ‘Meet you for luncheon? Tomorrow? Yes. Of course. At your house, did you say?’

  ‘If you don’t mind? It’s much quieter than a restaurant, I always think.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’ Trilby nodded at the telephone receiver as if she was nodding at the man himself, and then realising suddenly she quickly added, ‘Except I don’t know your address.’

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Molly darting off to her telephone pad and waiting, poised with a pencil. She slowly repeated the address in Holland Park, and Molly scribbled it down.

  ‘Thank you, Mr James.’

  ‘On the contrary, thank you, Miss Smythson.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr James.’

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Smythson.’

  Trilby put down the telephone and turning to Molly she heard herself saying in a shocked voice, ‘Lewis James wants me to have luncheon with him tomorrow. He just said that he wants to buy The Popposites, for one of his newspapers, before someone else does!’

  Molly bounced forward and shook both Trilby’s hands at once.

  ‘I told you, darling Trilby, I told you! Your cartoon is most amusing, we all think so. Even Aphrodite thinks so, and she really has no sense of humour at all, so that is a compliment, if it makes her laugh!’

  There was a Strauss waltz playing on Molly’s wireless, which she left on at all times for some reason. Downstairs Trilby could hear Berry singing in tune with what he could hear, through the open windows, was playing on the floor above him. Trilby looked at Molly. She was wearing a blue cardigan, and a white blouse with lace edging around the collar, and she was smiling so widely that she could have been an advertisement on the Underground.

  ‘Well, now, darling, in that case we had better think about the all-important question. What will you wear to your luncheon?’

  Trilby started to laugh. ‘I thought maybe I should go like this?’

  There was a small silence as they both stared down at Trilby’s office clothes. A pleated navy blue skirt, a white blouse, a navy blue cardigan, dark stockings, and black shoes with a small heel.

  ‘I think the spinster look will not be quite right, duck! But I tell you what, Aphrodite might have something for you, I know. Pop across and tell her the good news and she’ll be sure to fish something out of somewhere for you. Geoffrey, her lover, he’s always going to America, and you know how it is there, you can get just anything in America.’

  The reference to Geoffrey as Aphrodite’s lover, while not being new, was nevertheless always exciting. In the Smythson household people did not have lovers, or if they did they were never, ever referred to as such. People had friends, or they were married, or confirmed bachelors, and that was most definitely that.

  ‘I can’t pop across to Aphrodite, you know who might see me.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.
Can’t send Berry to borrow anything more, can we?’

  ‘Nope, don’t think so. I say, Molly . . .’ Trilby stretched out her arm and they both looked at her shaking hand with detached interest. ‘I’m shaking, look, I’m shaking.’

  ‘You would be, love. It is very shaky-making being rung by someone like Lewis James, really it is. Anyone would shake. So. Look. Tomorrow, the plan will be, the two of us will just have to wait for the proper moment when you would normally come back from work, which should be all right. Now, at this moment, straight away, and without more ado, I will call you know who and say that you are having supper with me tonight. So then you can go to Aphrodite’s house and sort through and try and find what she will be prepared to lend you for tomorrow. I’d lend you something but we are not the same size, duck. Oh, dear. It’s all so exciting.’

  ‘I know, but, Molly, I’ve suddenly realised that I will have to be sick tomorrow too, won’t I? I will have to tell Lifetime Assurance that I am ill on two days. The supervisor will go mad, she will, really.’

  ‘Listen.’ Molly patted Trilby on the arm. ‘If Lewis James is after your drawings you are not going to need the Lifetime Assurance Company. In fact, you won’t have to go back to that wretched typing pool ever, ever again. Think of that!’

  At six o’clock, having spent a very pleasant day with the Nichols, helping Berry in the kitchen, and Molly in the house, Trilby opened the front door and paused for a second on the top step. Outside the sun was still shining and the sky was still blue, although whether they really were or not she could not have told, for, with Lewis James interested in her drawing, it seemed to her that from now on they always would be.

  Molly had duly telephoned Agnes, as planned, and while Agnes sounded mildly disapproving of Molly’s inviting Trilby to supper, on the other hand she sounded vaguely uninterested too, so that Trilby knew that she herself must be going out to dinner.