Summertime Page 33

  And it was only every now and then, because they had already been snowed in twice, although admittedly for only a few days at a time. But with the larder stacked up with tins and every imaginable comestible, and a good recipe book, a cheerful acceptance of their situation had settled over both Trilby and Topsie.

  Now Fred stood at the door stamping his feet and blowing on his mittened hands.

  ‘It’s not snowing but might as well be, miss, might as well be. Eee, but this is the longest winter, intit, ’bout as long as the one we had last year!’ He handed Trilby out some shopping bags from the back of his car.

  ‘Would you like to come in for a cup of tea, Fred?’

  ‘Aye, I would that.’

  Fred stood in front of the small cottage fire looking round the tiny sitting room. ‘You’ve made this place right homely you have, miss, really you have.’

  ‘I love it here, I feel so safe.’

  Trilby brought in tea on a tray, prettily laid with odd pieces of pottery and china, reminding her of all the other odd pieces of pottery and china she had used for tea and coffee in Berry’s studio in Tankridge Street.

  ‘And dropped scones, I have made some dropped scones.’

  Fred took one, ignored the proffered plate, and bit into it appreciatively. After eating it in silence, he looked at Trilby.

  ‘They’re not as good as my missus’s scones, but they’re coming on, I will say that, they’re coming on. Thou will never have quite the knack of a Yorkshire woman, but enough to please I’d say.’ He took another one and stared at the jam piled onto it. ‘And thou’s generous with the jam, I’ll say that for thee.’

  Fred now drained his tea, and placed the cup and saucer back on the tray. Trilby, as was their ritual now, filled the cup once more to the brim, and he once more took it up.

  ‘Thou knows that Christmas is coming, does thou?’

  Trilby nodded. ‘Yes. I heard it on the wireless.’

  They both laughed, and then there was a long silence while Trilby stroked the top of Topsie’s head.

  ‘And thou knows about Christmas being a time to share what thou hast?’

  ‘Well, yes, I heard that on the wireless too, and as a matter of fact I plan to share a chicken with Tops.’

  ‘Nowt else thou can do, is there?’ asked Fred, reasonably.

  ‘Nowt else,’ Trilby agreed, smiling.

  ‘Well, my missus and I, we have no family like this year, so we were wondering, at least she was, if thou and Topsie here would like to share our meal with us? Would thou like that, Tops?’ To take the embarrassment out of the invitation he bent down to Topsie and this time it was he who patted the dog.

  ‘Goodness, that’s awfully kind of you and your missus, Fred. We would love to, wouldn’t we Tops?’

  Fred nodded, serious. ‘Yes, thou can bring the dog, like I said, Trilby, and no more said.’

  Trilby looked up, startled. Fred had never called her Trilby before, and having drawn a great deal of money from the bank before leaving London she had taken care to pay him cash for her weekly shopping.

  He smiled at her. ‘Thy name’s on thy drawing pad – see?’

  Trilby stared down, and sure enough she had signed her name at the bottom of her latest drawing. Trilby Ardisonne. Funny how habits like that died hard. She smiled across at Fred.

  ‘I am afraid you will probably have a rather unoriginal present, you and Mrs Fred, because of not getting to a shop.’

  ‘Something thou makes thyself is better’n anything from a shop. And missus’s name is Hilda. Fred and Hilda, that’s us. We’ll have a slap-up day, we will, just you wait.’

  Fred grinned suddenly, and replacing his cap on his head he strode off to his car. Trilby watched him from the door. The only time that she ever felt isolated was when Fred drove off. For those few minutes, standing alone at the cottage door, her isolation in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales became all too real.

  She must have fallen asleep in front of the fire because she was awoken, she did not know how much later, by another knock. It took a few seconds to come to and realise that she was still alone, still in the cottage, and that outside it was getting dark, and there was no telephone.

  As soon as the knock had reverberated around the little sitting room Topsie barked while Trilby waited, not feeling in the least bit anxious to open the door. The curtains were not drawn, but thanks to the low ceilings and strange geography of the old cottage she knew that it was impossible to see into the front room. Even so, it could be anyone, and she was, after all, more alone than the sheep that grazed outside on the moors. And Fred had called only hours before, so logically it could not be him.

  Again, another knock, while Topsie continued to bark, running up and down the small room, deftly avoiding the furniture.

  ‘Open up, open up! It’s the landlord.’

  Trilby flung herself against the door, and not thinking what she was doing she wrenched it open and stared out into the already darkening countryside outside. There was no-one there, and for a second her heartbeat accelerated frighteningly. Panic-struck, thinking that she had in some way been tricked, with one hand on Topsie’s collar and the other on the door, she started to slam it shut again.

  ‘Boo!’

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God, it is you! Oh, Berry, I could kill you, really I could.’ She flung her arms round him and hugged his dear silly old spectacled face, while Topsie ran round them both, still barking.

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ Berry said, looking round a few seconds later when they all stood inside, ‘but I am here to tell you that it says in the lease no dogs at Gingham Cottage, not for all the tea in China. Talking of which, ducks, my tongue is as swollen as if I had come across the Sahara. Make me a cup of the best Yorkshire brew, would you, while I take off my boots. Where’s my van, by the way?’

  ‘It conked out, Berry. I am sorry. I left it in Somerset. Piers brought me here. He was worried about someone spotting it, the police, or someone, or something, you know, number plates and things, and the fact that you painted it yourself, it makes it really rather distinguishable, Piers thought. You know, in case Lewis put my going . . . out on . . . the news . . . or something silly. And also, it would take twice as long as his, your van would, I mean.’

  ‘Very sensible.’ Berry took the cup of tea, and collapsed in one of his own armchairs as Trilby heaped up the fire again. ‘I left yours back outside your hubbie’s house, and bought something else for myself. A Ford, I think. I think it’s a Ford, anyway, it goes.’ He looked around the cottage, the fire burning, the little homely touches, and sighed with content. ‘I say, wonderful to be here. Do you know, ducks, I feel like Captain Scott and all the other people in his expedition rolled into one? What a jay for journey! It’s taken me the best part of a day I should think, stopping for refreshment on the way, that is.’

  Now that he was sprawled all over an armchair sipping at his tea Trilby wanted to ask Berry why he was there, but since it was his cottage it did not seem quite right. After all he had the right to arrive at his own cottage any time that he liked, so instead of questioning him, which she thought might be impertinent, she went upstairs and started to make up the spare bedroom with fresh sheets for herself, and put more of the same for Berry on the double bed that she had been using.

  From downstairs she could smell Berry’s cigarette, and hear him coughing intermittently as he sometimes did, Gauloises being so strong.

  Helping him set about unpacking, trotting backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the sitting room with parcels of food and packets of what he called ‘goodies’ and heaven only knew what else, it occurred to Trilby that Berry was so generous that he could well have come all the way from London just to bring her food and presents, a tree and everything else, because that was the kind of person Berry was.

  But as it happened, she could not have been further from the truth.

  ‘I was afraid of Lewis, Berry, that is why I ran away from him in the summer.’<
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  ‘Yes, that fact had rather come to my notice, ducks. After all, one does not up sticks and run off because one is wildly happy, does one? I was ever so glad, as it happens, you know.’ Berry’s hair seemed to be sticking up a little bit more than usual, and he lit another of his Gauloises and breathed out the smoke, traces of half-removed oil paint on his fingers giving the gesture an odd kind of bohemian insouciance. ‘As a matter of fact Lewis always struck me as being peculiar. No, more than peculiar, he always struck me as being quaint to the point of insanity. I mean I know that he had given you everything that this world could offer, but I always felt that he behaved as if he had seen you and bought you at auction, the way he buys everything. See it, want it, take it.’

  ‘Well I thought he was just the bee’s knees. I didn’t really think about much else except that he was tall, handsome and fun to be with. But you’re probably right.’ Trilby paused. ‘The true story of Lewis is, however, far from being that, I am afraid. He is tall and handsome, but once you’re married to him – well, the story changes. And, you see, Berry – I didn’t know that he had been married before, years ago, in Canada. That he had a first wife and that she killed herself, after only a few weeks of being married to him.’

  Berry stared at her and after lighting another cigarette he shook his head in disbelief, and as always coughed a little. ‘I say, Trilb, all just a tiny bit Bluebeard, isn’t it?’

  Trilby nodded. ‘You bet. I only found out by chance. Well.’ As Berry stared at her, Trilby found herself having to be honest. ‘No, it wasn’t by chance, I was snooping in his room, as a matter of fact. And let’s face it, if you look, well, you will nearly always find something that you shouldn’t, and I did, I mean both looked and found something that I wished I hadn’t, namely all this other girl’s clothes, her trousseau, everything, the account of their wedding in Canada, her death certificate . . .’

  ‘Pretty upsetting, ducks.’ Berry looked sympathetic and tapped his cigarette on the side of the pottery ashtray.

  ‘But I didn’t just find her clothes, I found all my clothes! All these clothes that had been designed for me – at the top of his cupboard.’

  ‘Maybe the maid put them in the wrong cupboard, love, maybe she was worse for wear and you know—’

  ‘No, no, not the clothes I was wearing, I still had all my clothes. No, Berry, everything that he had bought for me, all my trousseau, every dress, every suit, every coat – they were all stored up there in boxes, duplicated, for heaven’s sake. What I had thought was just the old-fashioned, grown-up taste of an older man was in fact this – this other girl’s clothes. With the exception of my wedding dress, every single thing of hers had been duplicated again, and again, and reproduced for my trousseau. I mean I must say – I did always wonder why Lewis had taken such a close interest in my wardrobe, but again I just thought it was an older man’s way. But it wasn’t. It seemed he was determined to try to make me turn back into his first wife. There must have been something about me that was similar I suppose. Or just the fact that I was young and inexperienced, someone he could mould. I don’t know, something anyway. Right from the start when I went round to lunch with him that time, I must have represented for Lewis another opportunity to be married to this other girl who had killed herself. That is why he was so obsessed with me. In his imagination I was this first wife, this girl who had died, but now with me wearing her clothes he must have been able to pretend to himself that she had come back to him, that she had never killed herself, that she was still with him.’

  ‘I have heard of this before, now you mention it – men putting women in their dead wives’ clothes – but, oh lud, it must be – well, Trilby love, it just must be a mite, a tiny wee bit spookalorium, I should have thought.’

  ‘Once we were back from honeymoon, I suppose he just thought of me as her come back to life. That is why he had me followed all the time. That is why he came back unexpectedly at odd times of day, to keep me under his thumb, make me powerless. In some way he must have seen it as another chance for him to prevent me from being taken from him, from dying, as she had done. Just imagine, after I had found all those clothes, all her trousseau, every time he made love to me, every time he looked at me, I knew that in reality he was not making love to me, not speaking or looking at me, but at someone else, a dead girl. Until in the end, well, in the end, I felt I might as well have been wearing Talia Fisherton’s shroud.’

  Berry stared at Trilby, before giving in to a short bout of coughing. She was looking much better than when she had fled Lewis James’s house and come round to his studio in such a fuss, but nevertheless, going over old ground the way she was now doing, had made her tense and upset.

  ‘Yes, but, in that case why didn’t you face him with it, old love? You know, have the kind of conversation that begins I have been meaning to talk to you about something?’

  ‘I know, I should have done, but I just couldn’t.’ Of a sudden Trilby reached out and took one of Berry’s cigarettes for herself and lit it, and then she too coughed, but neither of them smiled, because she had after all, in the dim and distant past, smoked with Berry before, but only when she was upset about Agnes or something. ‘Yes, I should have, as you say, I should have.’ Almost immediately she hated the taste of the cigarette but did not care, because smoking it was somehow justifiable in the circumstances. ‘Yes, I kept telling myself that I should, you know, face him down with it, but you see, Berry, I had snooped in his cupboards, and you know when you snoop you keep feeling that it’s your fault if you find something. And then I got pregnant, and miscarried, and all that.’ She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, and stared at its strange snakelike outline as it fell into the ash. ‘And he was so much older than me. You know, everyone that I have ever really known has always been so much older than me, and I never realised it, until now. All the time I was growing up, I was always with older people. And sometimes it seemed as if there was some secret that they all knew, that they were all going around with, locked up in their heads, some secret about life that they were not telling me, so I stayed hanging around these much older people, always hoping that I might find out what the secret was, but now I realise there was no secret, just – they were older.’

  ‘It’s always been a tiny bit awkward for you, old love, with Agnes being how she is and your dad a trifle stifled, to say the least. But don’t let’s talk about it any more. I don’t believe in chewing the cud about anything that is not pleasant. What’s the point-ski? Makes one so mizzy, and then it gets to one’s tum and one can’t chew one’s food or appreciate the gorgeous things of this world, which is a shame. So, let us bury the old miseries with the old year?’

  ‘No, you’re right, there is no point in going over old ground. But I had to tell someone, and you’re the only person I could tell. I couldn’t tell Piers. In so many ways we have got past that point, you know – in too deep. Anyway he is such a happy person, like you, always seeing the best in everything, I wouldn’t want to pull him down.’

  Berry looked at Trilby as he saw her face soften at Piers’s name. ‘It’s quite a thing, that you waited to tell me, ducks, really it is. Kind of flattering too, to be able to confide in old Berry, really. In fact more than kind of, positively squishy making. It could even be a weepy moment, couldn’t it?’ He smiled suddenly as Trilby stared at him not quite registering what he meant. ‘Don’t you remember, that’s what you used to say when you were knee high and trudging after me with your Warners junior easel and paint box? Oh dear, Berry, weepy moment. Dead rabbit to be buried, knock-out sunset, all that, always the same I think this is a weepy moment, Berry.’ He reached out and stroked Topsie’s head. ‘So, where from here, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean the good thing is that Lewis has not called out the police and gone mad searching for me, so perhaps he really has accepted that I have left him and perhaps is even now trying to divorce me and find some other poor soul to dress up in Talia Fisherton’s clothes.’
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  ‘He hasn’t been faithful, you know, if it’s of any interest to you. Molly found that out, you know.’

  Trilby stared at Berry, feeling strangely thrilled at this news. It meant that she was of a sudden completely free now in a way that she had not thought she would ever be again. She sighed. ‘Oh, but Berry, that is wonderful. How simply terrific, and how dear of Molly to go to the trouble of finding out.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it was rather dear of her. She is dear, in many ways, she really is, although sad to relate she just doesn’t like living with me now, which of course doesn’t stop her being dear, but does mean I rather miss her, now that she has gone off with Aphrodite’s old lover Geoffrey.’

  Trilby went to say something and then stopped because as always she thought it better not to say anything at all rather than say something that was out of place. She remembered Aphrodite saying that Molly had always fancied Geoffrey, what now seemed like a hundred years ago.

  Seeming to understand her silence, Berry continued, ‘Molly always was in a fret, a sort of underneath fret about me not bringing home the bacon, or at least not quite enough of the stuff, and quite frankly she’s still a good-looking woman, looks chic, kept her figure, and so on. And as you know, he was always coming round to the house since the year dot.’ Berry sighed. ‘But then you know Glebe Street, no-one ever stays in their own house, doors are always open, that sort of thing. The va et vien of life, cocktails and laughter, ha, ha, ha, that sort of thing.’ He lit another cigarette and breathed out the smoke. ‘And then, lately, they kept meeting at your stepmum’s house, more and more cocktails and laughter – and what comes after everyone knows. And I have spent so much time away daubing duchesses; I think she thought she ought to jump ship while there was another ship on which to jump. Et voilà. Nothing much more to say. Molly has left me and Glebe Strasse, and gone to live with Geoffrey in downtown Kensington, but you know she will have all the things that she has always wanted, and that I have never given her, and no more lodgers and all that. The truth is, finally, I got her down, but the other truth is – I loved her. I failed her, but I did love her.’