Summertime Page 8

  ‘I suppose I will have to ask for your hand, from your father, I mean? Is he very stern?’

  Trilby laughed gaily. It was all so old-fashioned and formal. She held up both hands in front of Lewis’s face.

  ‘Which hand will you ask for, Lewis? This one – or that one?’

  Lewis sighed. Trilby had a way of making him feel even older than he was. Very well, he was thirty-five, very, very rich, and very, very powerful, and had enjoyed many, many women, but he wanted this girl, Trilby, so much that she made him forget all the others.

  ‘What is it really that your father and stepmother so dislike about me?’

  Trilby looked serious for a moment. She stared ahead to something that Lewis could not see in the distance.

  ‘I had rather not tell you, really, Lewis. I mean, I think you would rather not know.’

  ‘I would not have asked you if I did not want to know, Trilby.’

  ‘Very well, I will tell you.’ Trilby faced him, her face grave, her expression for once sad. ‘No, I don’t think I can, not really. It would hurt your feelings. No, I won’t.’

  ‘Yes, you must.’

  ‘For a start, and I know you won’t understand this, but my stepmother does not like rich people. And what is more, I am dreadfully afraid that she thinks that you are just too, too rich. She thinks that you have too much money and too much power, and that you will not be able to interest me, when you are older. I mean,’ Trilby continued artlessly, ‘you know when you are much older, even though I will be older too. And my father thinks you will spoil me, and it will be bad for my character. And, well. That’s all, really.’

  Lewis stared at Trilby, and without his realising it his forehead started to redden. He had wanted the truth, of course, but he was not sure that he wanted so much truth, at least not all at once.

  ‘Go on. Continue, please.’

  He did not want her to continue. As a matter of fact he suddenly felt as if Trilby was one of his editors giving him hard facts, or someone coming in from abroad with the latest news from some far-flung part of the world. Of a sudden, too, the occupants of this street in Chelsea were less like anything he had ever known, less like anything he could ever imagine. More like the inhabitants of one of those far-flung foreign posts to which he sent his men.

  How could anyone possibly object to him on the grounds of his money? Or his power? It did not seem possible. He had everything that everyone else wanted. More than that, he could have anything he wanted, whenever he wanted it, and now he was willing to share it all with little Trilby Smythson, which would be wonderful for her, after all, wouldn’t it? So how could these people who lived in downtown Chelsea object to him? If Trilby married Lewis James she would have the best of everything for the rest of her life. It was just a fact.

  ‘I can’t go on – not really. The thing is, well, I have to admit, Agnes is pretty peculiar of course, but I am afraid she is not alone. The others, in the street, they don’t really approve of you either. Not because of your age – no, they just think that you’re too rich. But I mean to say, I said to them – you can’t be expected to give away all your money, after all, can you? Also, I said, well, I said it was not your fault that you inherited all these newspapers and so on. And I mean, it isn’t, is it?’

  Trilby put up a hand to Lewis’s tanned face. He was looking so helpless and worried that she felt quite protective of him.

  ‘What shall I do, then? To convince all these neighbours, all these friends of yours, that I can make you happy?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. But if you think about it, it will be over two years until I reach my majority and by that time you will probably have grown tired of me anyway.’

  ‘Never!’

  Lewis started to stride about the immaculately kept lawn, loosening his evening tie from around his stiff white collar and lighting a cigarette, in other words giving every possible outward display of impatience and frustration. Inside himself, however, he felt no frustration, only a breathless amazement that he, Lewis James, proprietor of a whole world of communication, was being turned away on account of the very thing that the rest of the world admired him for – his wealth. It did not seem possible, and yet it was possible! And it was happening, and to him.

  However, he was not so stupid as not to know that fathers and stepmothers, however eccentric, could be most influential with their daughters. How could he prove to Trilby, to this innocent beauty, that he would and could make her happy for ever and ever? He was so used to being offered ideas that he now found he could not think of one for himself, but seconds later a thought of his own did occur.

  He would ask Micklethwaite. He would ask David Micklethwaite what he should do. David Micklethwaite would know.

  ‘Let’s go in to dinner.’

  Lewis stared across the lawn to the windows of the dining room. There were beautiful flowers on every surface in the room, and he could see them from where he stood. He could also see the great displays of candles on the sideboards, and knew that his collection of French paintings, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist, and some English modern art was all about his house, hanging in place on his silk-lined walls, waiting for him to stand in front of it and admire it.

  From where he stood he could also see two of the maids checking his dining room table, their black and white uniforms standing out starkly against the dark oak-panelled walls of the room.

  He wished of a sudden that his life could be like the maids in their uniforms, black and white, and capable of being ordered the way he wished. But it was never as easy as that. At least, it was as easy as that when it came to the running of his newspapers. He could have whatever he wanted there and in any way he liked it, but not now he was in love again. Now he was in love again, nothing was easy. He did not want one moment of this intensity, this frightening passion of his for this young girl, to go, or disappear, or to be thwarted in any way.

  He put his arm round Trilby, and as she leaned her head against his shoulder her hair momentarily brushed his face and he could not avoid breathing in her youthful scent.

  Something terrible but familiar ran through him as the perfume of her innocence enveloped him, and not wanting to frighten her he quickly let her go, saying, ‘I love the smell of gardenias – don’t you?’

  They walked towards the house, up the steps, and so to the dining room, where they dined opposite each other, each staring down what now seemed to Lewis to be a vast distance. A distance that he had to shorten, and quickly.

  David Micklethwaite, small-eyed, small-boned, and with the look of a man who had too much to hide, could see the problem at once.

  Lewis had known that he would, but nevertheless was shocked that his right-hand man was not more surprised by the objections that had been put up.

  ‘Trilby Smythson is so young, and you are, from her point of view, of course, some sort of mogul. Coming from her background – I mean, I know her father and stepmother and they are not the kind of folk who like rich, powerful men, I am afraid, sir.’

  Lewis shrugged his shoulders. ‘I own newspapers. I am not a dragon.’

  ‘Exactly, but she is not to know that, if you don’t mind me saying, Mr James. What you want to do is to take them all down to the seaside, some nice quiet place, some ordinary place – Bognor, say, or Brighton, or Seaford, anywhere like that, and show them a good time. But not your kind of good time. Show them that at heart you are just a simple man who likes simple things. That is what will go down well with them, if you convince them that you like walks on the beach and simple fare, all that kind of thing; convince them that you are as old-fashioned and full of the right kind of values as they imagine themselves to be. Be at pains to be ordinary, a nice sort of chap who can be forgiven for being what he is.’

  Lewis stared at Micklethwaite. He had not had that kind of seaside holiday since he was a child. Moreover, he had not quite liked the nostalgic tone that had crept into Micklethwaite’s voice when he described this type of holiday. He him
self had twice, if he remembered rightly – yes, twice, in the past two years taken Micklethwaite with him to the West Indies in the winter, and on his yacht in the summer.

  Not only that, but Micklethwaite had accompanied Lewis to Scotland for shooting and to Norfolk for more of the same. Why on earth would Micklethwaite like to go to Seaford or Bognor and enjoy walks along the beach when he did so many other more exciting things with Lewis? Exciting and expensive things, things that Micklethwaite could never afford on his own, not in a million years.

  ‘Very well, Micklethwaite. I will do as you say, but it had better work, because quite frankly it sounds to me as if it is going to be hell.’

  ‘Bognor? We have been invited to Bognor Regis, did you say?’

  ‘Lewis has hired a house on a private estate and he wants all of us to go with him. It sounds an awful lot of fun. He has a beach hut, and we can bicycle everywhere, which will be good, don’t you think?’

  Trilby could hear her pleading tones and heartily despised herself for it.

  Her father took out his diary and studied it. ‘I can’t possibly go, I’m afraid, Trilby. I can’t do anything until well after Christmas, so much on at the office. Agnes could go, though, couldn’t you, Agnes, as a chaperone, and so on?’

  ‘Oh joy! Thank you very much, Michael, just what I could do with.’ She glowered at her husband, who fingered his tie and stared into the middle distance.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to go, do you, Agnes?’

  Even Trilby felt sorry for her.

  Agnes sighed heavily. ‘I shall have to do it, if Michael can’t, I shall have to go.’

  ‘He is only bringing his right-hand man, his assistant, with him, no-one else, although there will be someone coming in to do some cooking from time to time. But otherwise it will be just us, and Lewis, and David Micklethwaite, you know, his right-hand man person. Everything will be quite informal. It could be nice.’

  ‘It could also be ghastly. You do realise that, don’t you?’

  Michael carefully folded the Daily Telegraph into a small square so only the crossword was showing.

  ‘I am sure you will like them, when you get to know them, my dear,’ he murmured quietly.

  ‘Very well, I suppose we will have to say yes to this invitation. I suppose we will have to say yes! As a matter of fact I can’t very well see what else we can do, seeing that he is your boss and pays you and so on.’ Agnes lit a cigarette, and stalked off towards the garden.

  Trilby smiled. She was not going to be such a blithering idiot as to say ‘I know you will like Lewis, Agnes.’ Agnes was not the kind of person who responded to that kind of persuasion.

  ‘With any luck,’ Agnes called back, ‘with any luck I shall fall ill before the dreaded day.’

  Unfortunately for Agnes neither of them fell ill, and so, the packing done, which in both their cases was hardly considerable, the chauffeur called to collect them in a Rover in which he drove them down to Sussex at a steady speed. They stopped on the way at a pleasant hotel for what Agnes called ‘a typical hotel lunch’ with soup and cold cuts and all sorts of salads.

  Privately Trilby thought it was all very agreeable, so agreeable, in fact, that by the time Agnes was climbing out of the car, the chauffeur holding open the door for her and Trilby, and Lewis was stepping forward to greet her at the door of Shell Bourne – the garden of which actually had palm trees growing in it and a swing seat overlooking the Sussex sea – Trilby, ignoring the woman beside her, found that she was brimming over with happiness.

  The house was quite unassuming, 1920s and a nice double oak door, and mock Tudor windows, which she always found quite charming by the seaside. Inside it was large but modestly furnished, at any rate to Lewis’s eyes, but to Trilby it seemed really very luxurious in the way that Aphrodite’s house was luxurious. It had obviously been quite recently done up, because it sported the newest in turquoise colours, and glowing paints. And the wooden floors had large fur rugs, and there was something that Lewis called a ‘rumpus room’, which sounded really rather American but turned out to be a room with a television and a ping-pong table. All in all the house positively beamed a welcome to them, and at the same time glowed with quiet wealth.

  To Trilby, newly in love with Lewis, Shell Bourne was everything that anyone would wish for in a holiday house, and what with the sun shining outside, and a bedroom and bathroom each with a balcony overlooking the garden and unimaginable luxuries such as bowls of fruit in their bedrooms and extra-large bars of soap and piles of towels in the bathrooms, she felt she was in a small corner of paradise.

  Agnes thought quite differently.

  ‘What a time to come to the seaside! Really. The weather feels positively autumnal.’

  ‘Lewis thought we would enjoy it being so quiet, and the weather forecast is good.’

  Having hung up some coats and skirts and jumpers in the large cupboard, where they looked really rather shabby, Trilby followed Agnes into her room to help her unpack, only to find her feeling about in the bottom of her suitcase until she produced a flat half-bottle of Gordons gin, which she promptly put into the drawer of her bedside table.

  ‘I always travel with my own drink,’ she told Trilby, adding for no reason, ‘after all, you never know, do you?’

  Trilby took care not to say anything, but only turned towards the windows and the view of the sea. ‘Your view’s the same as mine.’

  ‘Well, it would be, since both rooms face the same way.’

  Trilby nodded absently, and continued to stare out of Agnes’s floor-length windows for a second before bending down and promptly standing on her head, a favourite pastime of hers when she was in a happy mood.

  She held her position on the floor steadily, while pursuing the conversation with, ‘I love all that turquoise colour downstairs, don’t you?’

  ‘Really?’ Agnes continued with her unpacking, ignoring her stepdaughter’s unconventional pose. ‘I think it is perfectly frightful.’

  ‘I love colour. Daddy was saying that he could do with more colour at home, only yesterday, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Where exactly? Where did Michael say that?’

  ‘Oh, you know, in the drawing room, or perhaps upstairs in my room. It’s so jolly, colour is so cheering.’

  Agnes stared out to sea and for a second there was a look on her face that Trilby could not translate. ‘Your father never tells me anything.’

  Trilby stood upright again. She wanted to say, ‘That’s probably because you never ask him, Agnes.’ Instead she fell silent, and all they could hear for a few seconds was the sound of the sea outside, until Agnes said in a dull voice, after a small sigh, ‘I suppose we had better go downstairs. No-one’s changing, I understand, so we might as well go downstairs.’

  The following day, after a surprisingly jolly supper, Lewis looked out of his window to see Trilby in a bright red bathing costume stepping gingerly down the short pebble-strewn beach to the sea, now at high tide. Despite great inward gasps at the cold of the water, swimming backwards and forwards, her bright red swimming hat bobbed about, at times looking more like a beach ball than a swimming hat with a head in it.

  Trilby was the only one to swim that morning, not surprisingly, for when she returned to the house her teeth were chattering, and her hands and feet vaguely blue in colour. Not that she cared a threepenny damn. She was determined to swim every day. She loved the sea, was mesmerised by it, and living in London seldom saw it, but always dreamed of its magic, its splendour, its compulsion.

  Lunch was laid out on the terrace, an informal affair, red napkins, checked tablecloth, and a large beach umbrella. Here Lewis took care to command the drinks trolley, while David Micklethwaite supervised the daily maid who had come in to cook and shop for them, because in the end it seemed that neither of the men could quite run to that.

  ‘No, can’t run to cooking, David, really I can’t, not even for Trilby Smythson, not even for a second. And I refuse to be by the seaside eati
ng your burned toast and watery vegetables. No, you will at least have to hire us a maid who can cook and shop and clean, and that sort of thing, never mind the lack of grandeur.’

  ‘We really will have to do tea in the beach hut though, sir. We can’t ask the maid out there, or she really will think we’re complete phonies.’

  Even as Lewis mixed some really quite startling martinis for the three of them, and a less potent cocktail of orange juice and a thimbleful of gin for Trilby, he knew that the beach hut test was at last looming, and before he had even downed his first martini he thought he could see the awfulness of the sandwiches, and taste the weakness of the tea that he and Micklethwaite would attempt to make them all, after a jolly game of beach cricket, and yet another swim for Trilby. Never mind, it had to be got through. It was part of his proving to Trilby and her sour if beautiful stepmother that he was not just some rich and powerful man who thought he could buy everything and anything at whim, part of proving that he was worthy of a penniless girl. How perverse could people be, he thought, suddenly feeling petulant, and yet somehow how very English, to not want someone to be rich and powerful.

  A few hours later Trilby thought that she had never seen a man look so embarrassed as when Agnes stared down into the cup Lewis was holding out to her, and from the cup to his face, and then back to the cup again.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked in a voice not very far from reaching its highest note, which happily in her case was not very high.

  ‘This is a cup of tea, Mrs Smythson.’

  ‘If that is a cup of tea, Mr James, then I have seven children. Can’t you even make a cup of tea for yourself ?’

  There was one second of horrified silence as both David and Trilby saw Lewis’s mouth tighten and a small patch of red gradually appear across his forehead. He was quite obviously not used to being made fun of, and certainly not to being told off. Following this moment of tension David Micklethwaite fairly leaped forward and seized the cup and saucer.

  ‘Oh dear.’ He could not help starting to laugh. ‘Dishwater with leaves.’