by Anne Weale
'Which way do you go when you leave here?' he asked her.
She told him.
'That's my way,' said Hal. 'You know where McDonald's is? The fast-food place with the big yellow M sign? Let's go there.'
A little while later, when she joined him at a table in McDonald's after making her call, he said, 'Who are the people who would worry if you were late home? Your family?'
'No—Mrs Hardy and Emily. Mrs Hardy is my employer's housekeeper, and Emily is his thirteen-year-old niece whom I teach. She has health problems which have prevented her going to school.'
Hal stirred his coffee, although he hadn't put sugar in it, or saccharine.
He said, 'When I told you I was in construction, maybe you thought I was one of the bosses. I'm not. I'm strictly blue collar. My job is laying tiles on roofs.'
It was obvious to her that, in his mind, a tiler was someone a teacher might not want to know. It was an unexpected attitude to find in a country where social divisions were supposed to be looser than in Europe. It made her wonder if, at some time in the past, he had been given the brush off by a girl with snobbish ideas.
She said, 'It must be hot work in summer when, so everyone tells me, the heat here is really broiling.'
'Yeah, I guess so, but you get used to it. Most jobs have some drawback. I'd sooner fry than freeze the way they do up in New England and places like that.'
'How is your mother getting on? Where is she in hospital?'
Hearing about his mother's progress and explaining her own lack of relations took up the rest of their half an hour together. In the parking lot they said goodnight, and for about half a mile he drove behind her until their ways home diverged.
'It's nice that you've made a friend,' said Mrs Hardy, when she got home.
The housekeeper was keeping Emily company in the little upstairs sitting room which at night was a cosier place to sit than the large living room downstairs.
Summer agreed. She guessed that Mrs Hardy assumed her friend was another woman, and she didn't correct this misapprehension. She had a feeling Mary Hardy might not approve of her making friends with a man.
The next time Eleanor weighed her, Summer had lost another four pounds. It was the last meeting before Christmas and the lecturer's talk to the members was about ways to withstand the temptations of the festive season.
At the end of the meeting, Hal said, 'How about a coffee, Summer?'
She hadn't been sure he would ask her and had hoped he wouldn't because there was a programme on TV which she wanted to watch. But when he did ask her, she didn't like to refuse in case he thought it was because of his blue-collar job.
At McDonald's, he produced a small package in Christmas wrapping paper.
'It's not much,' he said, when she thanked him.
It hadn't occurred to her to bring him a present, even a small one, and she was embarrassed by his gift.
'Shall I open it now, or keep it till Christmas Day?'
'You can open it now if you like.' Clearly he wanted her to.
She read the message on the gift tag—To Summer: Merry Christmas: Hal—before she undid the wrapping. Inside was a small cardboard box papered to look like an old-fashioned well with a roof and a bucket dangling on a chain.
'It's a wishing well, made in England,' he told her.
Inside the box was a pottery thimble, shaped and painted like a well.
'It's... darling,' she said. 'Useful, too. I do quite a lot of needlework. Thank you very much, Hal.'
When she got home, she put it away in a drawer. She was grateful for the kindness of Hal's thought while disliking the object he had chosen. It was an ugly little thing which didn't fit her thimble finger and was too clumsily made to be of practical use. When she sewed on a button, or did needlepoint, she wore an antique silver thimble bought for twenty-five pence at a village jumble sale.
She and Emily had already bought Christmas presents for Mrs Hardy, the Antonios and Skip, and the next day they spent the morning in one of the big shopping malls where they separated to hunt for a surprise present for each other.
Lord and Lady Edgedale had stopped filling a Christmas stocking for Emily several years earlier. Summer felt that, this year, it would be fun to revive the custom. The shops were full of delightful stocking sniffers and she had more money to spend on the person dearest to her.
Going to bed on Christmas Eve, she tapped 0630 on the miniature keyboard fitted to the wall by her bed. She wanted to be up early to swim extra laps in the pool to work off the one glass of Mrs Hardy's egg nog she had allowed herself during the evening. She had resisted the mince pies.
She didn't expect to lose any weight this week, but she was determined to maintain the loss made so far; and somehow the thought of all the members of her class facing the same temptations had made it easier to say no to the hot, fragrant pies the rest of the household had eaten during the evening.
Promptly at six-thirty next morning the first quiet notes of the violin concerto which James Gardiner liked to be woken by broke the silence of her spacious bedroom.
She was lying with her eyes closed, listening to a glorious cadenza played by a single violin, when she became aware of someone else in the room. Opening her eyes she found Emily standing by the bed, holding the scarlet felt stocking which Summer had bought to contain a selection of little presents.
'I did knock, but you didn't hear because of the music,' Emily said. 'Happy Christmas!' She sat down on the bed and, as her tutor sat up, leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
Summer gave her a hug. 'Happy Christmas, darling.' Unconsciously, she used the Christmas morning greeting her mother had always given her. 'Haven't you opened your stocking yet?'
'Yes, I opened it the minute I woke up. This is yours,' said Emily. 'Mrs Hardy made me promise not to creep in a minute before half past six. I thought you'd still be asleep.'
'A stocking for me? Emily, what a lovely surprise.'
The child beamed. 'And there's nothing in it you mustn't have—no chocolate money or sugar mice,' she assured her.
It was the beginning of the most convivial Christmas Day since Summer's childhood. The Antonios were away for a week, spending Christmas with their son and his family and New Year with their daughter and her husband. But Mrs Hardy's son was in the Navy, overseas, and she would have been on her own but for Emily's and her tutor's arrival.
'Which I shouldn't have minded, but it's nicer to have you two here,' she said, smiling, as they ate pink grapefruit in the sunny breakfast room on the inland side of the house.
'If only James were here, instead of in Switzerland,' said Emily. 'Do you think he'll ring up this morning?'
'He may,' said Summer. 'But don't be too disappointed if he doesn't. He's a guest in someone else's house and that could make it difficult.'
For her own part, she felt the day would be more enjoyable for his absence. She couldn't have relaxed had he been with them. And she felt sure he would be bored out of his mind by a Christmas Day spent with three females, unless they were of the calibre of Sofia Damaskinos, or the other woman mentioned in the Newsweek article.
After helping Mary Hardy to clear the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher, they went to the living room to open the parcels piled beneath the Christmas tree.
To their surprise, these included a number of presents from James. He hadn't bought them himself; that would have been impossible. But he had sent his housekeeper a list of suggested gifts, and some cards on which, in a bold and legible hand, he had written appropriate messages.
On the card attached to the parcel for Summer, the message was a conventional With good wishes for an enjoyable Christmas, and the present he had chosen was a recent non-fiction bestseller.
For his niece there were many presents, but none of them unduly extravagant. In addition to several books, there was a Frisbee, a pocket calculator, a Garfield tee-shirt, a special pen for italic calligraphy and an inexpensive camera.
During the morning,
to Emily's delight, Skip came by. She hadn't expected to see him on Christmas Day, and certainly not to receive a present from him. It was a belt clasp in the form of two gilt turtles, nose to nose.
Grinning at her ecstatic thanks, he turned to Mary Hardy to say, 'If you need any help with anything while Mr Antonio is away, be sure to call me.'
'That's a very nice, thoughtful young man,' said the housekeeper, when he had gone.
Summer agreed. She hoped the child's other hero, her uncle, would be equally thoughtful and telephone her. In spite of what she had said to Emily at breakfast, she thought it unlikely that being a member of a house party would prevent James from telephoning. If he didn't call, it would be for selfish reasons, not Because he couldn't. He was the kind of man who would always find a way to do anything he really wanted to do.
When, at noon, the telephone rang, Emily dashed to answer it, her face alight with expectation. Almost at once her expression changed to disappointment.
'It's for you, Summer. Someone called Hal.'
Summer took the receiver. She said, perhaps a little too briskly, 'Hello, Hal. Merry Christmas.'
'Merry Christmas. Have I picked a bad time to call you?'
'No, not at all. Where are you? At your sister's house?'
'Yeah. Drinking beer with my brother-in-law. I'm darned if I'm going to diet on Christmas Day.'
'I'm going to try to. I haven't sinned up to now. But I'm further from my target than you are. I can't afford to.'
'You know something? You're a lovely girl whatever you weigh. See you.' As abruptly as James, he rang off.
'Who is Hal?' asked Emily, after Summer had replaced the receiver.
'He belongs to my Weight Watchers class.'
'I didn't know men went to Weight Watchers.'
'Why not? They have weight problems, too.'
'Is he the person you've been having coffee with after meetings?' Mrs Hardy asked her.
'Yes, he is.' She tried to sound casual.
At that moment the telephone rang again. Thinking it was Hal calling back, she picked up the receiver. 'Hello?'
'Merry Christmas,' said James Gardiner's voice.
'Oh... Merry Christmas to you. Thank you very much for my present. I'll put Emily on.'
'I'll speak to her in a moment. How are you liking Christmas Day in the sun?'
'Very much. We've just come in from the pool. In a little while we're going to help Mrs Hardy with the final preparations for lunch.'
'I'm dressing for dinner. Here, we've been skiing all day.'
'Well... Christmas is a moveable feast.' She didn't know why she had said that; except that it was the only answer which came to mind.
The last response she expected was to hear him say, 'If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.'
She had bought Ernest Hemingway's book The Moveable Feast in a second-hand bookshop in Oxford. She had an indistinct memory of her father speaking admiringly of Hemingway's contribution to American literature. The lines which James had just quoted were from a letter Hemingway had written to a friend before she was born. They had fired her with a longing to see Paris, even though she knew the city as he had described it had gone forever, the Paris of the 'Twenties.
One of her teenage pipe-dreams—more down to earth than the fantasies woven around the Chevalier Bayard and Lion Gardiner—had been of meeting someone who had read all her favourite books and with whom she could spend hours discussing them.
Before she went up to Oxford, she had day-dreamed that she would meet him in a bookshop. He would be a fellow undergraduate, or perhaps one of the younger dons. They would both reach for the same volume...
But of course it had never happened like that. Initially, even intellectual men were drawn to a girl by her appearance, not her mind.
That the first man ever to quote to her a passage which had the magic of poetry to her should turn out to be someone she actively disliked was a most disconcerting shock.
'Have you ever spent Christmas in Paris?' She was thinking of Sofia Damaskinos who, if she had worked for Paris Match, must have had an apartment in Paris.
'No, I haven't. I don't think any large city is an ideal place to spend Christmas. It's a small town festival.'
Summer agreed, although a sophisticated ski resort like Gstaad, where many of the chalets belonged to royalty, movie stars and other international celebrities, wasn't her idea of a small town.
However, she didn't say this. 'Emily is dying to speak to you. I'll put her on.'
She went back to where she had been sitting before Hal's call.
Only half-listening to her pupil's excited babble, she told herself that it wasn't really remarkable that James should know that piece by heart. Probably all Americans who had been to college would know it. Hal Cochran wouldn't, but Skip might.
What should bother her more than James's familiarity with Hemingway was that parting remark of Hal's. Perhaps, after a period of abstinence, a few beers had had more effect than in his pre-Weight Watchers days. Maybe that remark about her being a lovely girl had been the beer talking. She hoped so. Hal was a pleasant person, but apart from watching their weight they had little else in common.
By the end of January, Summer's Attendance Book showed a loss of twenty pounds.
She had never repeated the five pound loss after her first week on the programme. One week, not because of any backsliding, she had lost only three-quarters of a pound. But in general her weekly losses had ranged between two and four pounds. Now, with an aggregate of twenty, she was still a fat girl, a long way from being a slim one, but a shape was beginning to emerge.
As she spent so much time in a bathing-suit, instead of attempting to alter the one she had bought in Miami, she had bought another. She hoped it wouldn't be long before she was fit to be seen in a two-piece and could tan her midriff to match the rest of her.
For that was the second great change which living in Florida had wrought; she was now on the way to becoming as golden brown as Skip.
The third change in her appearance was her hair. No longer confined in the unbecoming coil of braid, it now swung loose on her shoulders, re-styled by Mrs Hardy's hairdresser. But the highlights had come about naturally. She had not had to sit with some of her hair pulled through holes in a plastic cap, in the way she had seen other women achieving their highlights. Hers had been bleached by the sun. The wonderful, warm, day after day winter sun which they continued to enjoy while most of the rest of America endured months of penetrating cold.
Early in January she had been handed details of the Pepstep Program, a choice of two exercise regimes designed to promote loss of fat. However, as she was already swimming an increasing number of laps in the pool, taking long daily walks on the beaches in search of shells and, twice a week, attending aerobic dancing classes with Mrs Hardy, she felt that it wasn't necessary for her to do Pepstep. But this was the only way in which she failed to conform to a Weight Watcher's life-style. In every other respect, she adhered to the programme rigidly.
During March she lost another thirteen pounds, making the second bathing-suit start to fit loosely. She went to Edlyn, a shop in St Armand's Circle, and bought herself some new clothes; an emerald-green wraparound skirt which would adjust as her hips deflated, and a green and white shirt. At another shop she bought some green canvas espadrilles, the rope-covered wedges equivalent to medium high heels. When she tried her new outfit on, with a new, smaller bra, the full-length mirror in her bedroom reflected a girl who seemed to be a different person from the plodding, double-chinned frump she had glimpsed in the mirrors in Harrods.
Emily had also changed, although not as visibly as Summer. She had begun to menstruate and her flat chest was starting to show some signs of feminine shape. When she wasn't in her bikini, she lived in white shorts and sun-tops, and a belt clasped by Skip's gilt turtles.
She had long weekly c
hats on the telephone with her uncle who called her from wherever he was—Manhattan, the west coast, Chicago. But when, at the end of their conversations, she asked when he was coming to Florida, he was always too busy.
Summer was glad that he called Emily regularly, but she doubted that he would exert himself to visit her until he felt like a vacation, which might not be till the spring, if then.
From time to time, during this period, she would dream that she had broken her diet, or that she was back in England, still 'an uncontrollable glutton' and 'as fat as a pig'. She would wake up sweating with horror, as from a nightmare.
One night she had a particularly horrible dream in which it was she who was partially paralysed, and her aunt who was caring for her. She was propped up in bed at the cottage and Miss Ewing was forcing her to eat a mountain of stodgy suet dumplings. She was being spoon-fed, and each mouthful of the soggy white dough made her gag. But her aunt wouldn't listen to her pleas that she wasn't hungry.
'Nonsense, Summer. You must eat to keep up your strength. Dr Dyer gave me strict instructions that you were to have at least five dumplings at every meal. Come along—open your mouth.'
'I can't eat any more, Aunt Margaret. I'll throw up.
At this point she woke up, trembling, filled with rage and despair at her helplessness and the torture of being forced to eat those horrible white lumps of glob.
Even after she had switched on the light and could see that she was thousands of miles from the cottage, and fully mobile, not a bedridden hulk of blubber, she still felt upset.
Presently she was able to see the absurdity of Dr Dyer prescribing dumplings. It was strange how the subconscious mind twisted facts into fantasies. Her aunt had liked one or two dumplings as an accompaniment to meat and gravy, and Summer had taught herself to make excellent dumplings, as light in texture and weight as those in the dream had been heavy.
It was now half past one in the morning, but she felt wide awake and disinclined to lie down again. Perhaps she would read for a while. On impulse, she flung back the bedclothes and swung her feet to the floor. The room was warm. There was no need to put on a robe to go to the window and stand looking out at the garden. Not that she would see it with the light on. She turned off the bedside lamp and immediately the warm light was replaced by the silver radiance of moonlight.